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Image Metrics May Revolutionize Facial Animation
iStorm writes, "I've been interested in computer animation for a long time and have recently started cracking down on my studies in an effort to eventually move myself from hobbyist to professional... then I find this article about Image Metrics, which can map an actor's emoting onto a generated face or onto the image of another actor, living or dead. How does a seasoned animator view this sort of push ahead in technology? If so much of the creative process is made so easy, where's the need for traditional animators spending exponentially larger amounts of time to create work of equal or lesser quality? How did animators view motion capture when it first appeared? Will there still be room for creativity if this tech comes to fruition?" The article doesn't say what kind of time or processing power Image Metrics's "high-fidelity, performance-driven facial animation" requires.
We did all our art in MacPaint. We only had the basics mind, a line tool, a square tool, but we didn't complain.
My roommate is a digital animator and if his comments are worth anything then Mo-Cap is not all it's cracked up to be. This new great thing may end up there, where it can map facial expression but does it in a way that isn't quite right looking to the human eye, thus requiring hours and hours of cleanup afterwards.
I think it'll be a while before the industry starts putting out photo realistic digital animations of people.
A blog about stuff.
I doubt that this technique will knock animators or traditional animation out of business. Animation is art. Did the video camera kill painting? Did the internet kill reading?
Animation from an animator gives it style, and feeling just as much as an actor does. Just watch any old Disney cartoon if you want to see the flow of such animation.
How did painters view photographic technology when it first appeared?
Humans hold human characters to a higher standard than other CGI. It's part of the reason why Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., A Bug's Life, and Over the Hedge have focused mainly on non-human characters or a cartoon-like story. When a more "adult" story is tried, as with Final Fantasy, the technology still comes up short. It's a step in the right direction, but until you can't discriminate between a CGI actor and a real one, this isn't going to be used in "serious" movies.
Crappy acting will still be crappy acting. Just like the foley artist is still happily employed enhancing the audio soundtrack (either digitally or old fashined foot stomping). The animator will remain gainfully employed improving and enhancing the final product.
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I don't care how much processing power it takes, unless we are talking simulation on the level of some of the whole-world-weather simulations any additional processing will be a drop in the bucket compared to the current amount of time and processing power already devoted to any production quality animation.
How does a seasoned animator view this sort of push ahead in technology? If so much of the creative process is made so easy, where's the need for traditional animators spending exponentially larger amounts of time to create work of equal or lesser quality?
Technology usually advances so that it is not only more advanced, but also more efficient. It's fairly obvious that Hollywood studios (just an example) would want cheap CGI, and since there's a need for this to happen, there's also someone working on making that happen.
A skilled animator shouldn't be worried, however. Creativity is hard to replace with software and someone will always have to create whatever's portraited. How it's done and how fast is a different question.
Full Tilt
I've been doing 3D character animation for well over a decade, and I've also been exposed to automated facial animation systems including mocap (in many of it's various forms) over the years. I actually think mocap is not bad for certain applications, particularly whole body stuff like athletics. If you really want that golf swing to look like Tiger Woods in his video game, then mocapping him is a very valid option.
What it's not good at, however, is animating the face. People have been trained since birth to observe human faces and we're experts. It makes us very aware of anything that's unnatural. Only a human who innately understands the subtleties of human emotions can truly finesse facial animation so it looks pleasing to the human eye. An animator is just that type of person. We study facial expression, musculature and all sorts of things, then combine it with acting skills and artistic knowledge to make a result that's looks pleasing to the eye (or not.. depending on budgets and deadlines - and I suspect this technology will filter down to the low end productions that don't care as much about the final results)
Here's a quote, usually attributed to the WWI German flying ace, Baron Von Richthofen:
"It's not the crate...it's the man inside the crate."
I'm gonna ask you to ponder this and extrapolate to the imagined quandary you propose. Also, I'm going to leave you with a bit of personal history:
I started in the graphic design business back in the early 70's, when a well-stocked "micro-studio" would set you back about around $50,000 (in 1974 dollars) for equipment, which included: a digital typesetter, process camera, film/paper photo processor, drafting table, waxer, light table...plus a few other lesser (though expensive) goodies. A decade later, inexpensive (relatively) personal computers with laser printers and scanners could be had for less than $10,000, essentially replacing my studio gear. Meaning every small business on the planet could suddenly be competing with me in the graphic design biz on some level. Predictably, a whole bunch of them tried. Did it put all the typographers/designers/pre-press craftsmen out of business? Well, it separated the wheat from the chaff, certainly, casting adrift the bottom 20% (subjective talent evaluation on my part) of the professional industry. It also produced an explosion of amazingly awful graphic design/typography, produced by folks whose accountants convinced them to attempt to save money by doing it themselves. However, those of us who actually had some skills/talent/Mojo actually thrived, selling our work by pitching the client on a comparison of our stuff to the examples of sub-par work that resulted from trying to replace talent with technology. Yes, I pitched a lot of FUD back then, showing a potential client the absolute worst examples of things produced by People Who Really Shouldn't Be Allowed to Touch Photoshop. Only...maybe it really wasn't really FUD. 'Cause when you objectively look at it, the good Baron's quote still rings true:
"It's not the crate...it's the man inside the crate."
All the computer programs in the world, along with all the hardware in the world, don't help if you don't got that Mojo to begin with. The tools are subservient to the talent, not the other way around. At least until someone develops a keyboard with a button that says "creativity."
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Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.
--Josh Billings
It's another tool.
There will be some things it is suitable for, and some things it's useless for. I can't see this having much use in the production of a show based around drawings, for instance!
Back during the production of "Snow White", Disney shot a lot of reference film. Some of the animators leaned heavily on this, essentially just rotoscoping the model and stylizing her a little into Snow White. Master animator Grim Natwick would refer to the first and last frames of his reference film, to make sure it hooked up properly with the adjoining scenes, and essentially ignored the rest.
Guess whose scenes had the most life in them?
For some purposes, the raw data out of this will be fine. For other, it's a starting point for an animator to go over, and possibly completely abandon.
egypt urnash minimal art.
>If so much of the creative process is made so easy, where's the need for traditional animators
/anyone/ could make a pretty good looking web page. Did a lot of web page authors bite the dust then? Sure. But the ones who remained advanced their art - now they are masters not just of HTML but PHP, AJAX, JAVA, Flash, and a host of other cutting-edge web functionalities.
>spending exponentially larger amounts of time to create work of equal or lesser quality? How did animators
>view motion capture when it first appeared? Will there still be room for creativity if this tech comes to fruition?"
This sort of thing has always come along. For example, WYSIWYG applications like Front Page let people like me create web pages without knowing hardly any HTML. Suddenly
Computer Aided Drafting did the same thing to mechanical drafters who worked on drawing boards with pencil and paper.
That's kind of the point of technology - to make what were once difficult or tedious expenditures of effort become effortless. Talented people who specialized in those old efforts will have to move on to tackle new things that are still difficult. There's always a new cutting edge.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
So you used Corel's predecessor Coral? Sounds like luxury to me.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
wow?? I've been doing character animation professionally (read: features) for 10yrs on the computer and I didnt see anything new there...and certainly nothing that made me say wow. I sure didnt think that African Warrior was very far beyond Polar Express. Every couple of years this same old hype gets dragged up and people get all excited and then the studios hit the bandwagon and make another Final Fantasy or Polar express. It sucks, the eyes are dead, and its creepy. Uncanny Valley revisited. The imporvements each time are incremental at best (to my eye.) But the real bottom line of all this is that its kind of gimmicky. Character animation is meant to *EXAGGERATE* reality, not replicate it. What they describe here is really more visual effects than character animation. Studios love this because they hope someday they can stop dealing with all those annoying actors, animators, and artists. If you want to make a movie about James Dean dating Marilyn Monroe, go right ahead. But if you want to make a movie about a fish thats in love with a bug, mocap (facial or gestural) isn't going to be the most appealing solution. The only photoreal CG Character that ever made me say wow was Gollum and there were many, many animators (whom i know personally) who both animated and cleaned up facial motion capture for thousands of hours to make Gollum. No slight to Andy Serkis who is a very talented performer, but it just ain't that simple. Animators will be around as long as there are children (and adults) who want to see thier imaginations taken somewhere its never been before. (i.e. forever)
Thousands of p0rn "actresses" just lost their jobs.
I can't believe I'm the first person in this thread to realize this!
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Say... Keanu Reeves. Since he's only got one facial expression, all you need is a camera and... well, that's it.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...