Toon Zone Talkback - Image Metrics Debuts Software to Create Highly Realistic CGI Animated Actors

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juansangel619

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This is the talkback thread for Image Metrics Debuts Software to Create Highly Realistic CGI Animated Actors.

So, let me get this straight. They spent thousands to millions of programmer hours to develop this technology and then spent a week to make 90-seconds of film that you can't distinguish from live-action?

I can hardly wait for some genius filmmaker to spend millions and millions of Hollywood dollars to make a movie with this tech that would have been cheaper to do if they just shot the whole thing live-action.

-- Ed
 
It does seem kind of...unnecessary. I mean kudos to developing it and everything but I don't know. I'm rather wary of my cartoons becoming increasingly life-like. Maybe I just want my cartoons to be "cartoony".
 
It's just for facial animation, right? And it looks weird anyway. But I could see it in cases where you need realistic facial animation in a scene that you also want to use CGI characters because human actors can't jump out of explosions or something.
 
Her eyes looked a tiny bit weird, but overall, very impressive. I went into it expecting the part where they reveal that you've actually been watching a CGI actress the entire time, but I still wasn't sure until the reveal actually happened. I was all prepared to say, "Oh, I thought she was CGI, because that would've been impressive."

Now, when it comes to movies... I don't really want the technology to be used except in rare cases, like certain special effects scenes. (It would make sense to use it for something like Two-Face, for example.)

For games, though, this could definitely be a good thing.
 
Cgi her, then it backtracked through the process and then it went to real her

It took me till just after the video finished to realize that wasn't her and apparently it did the same for you so they did their job. Although after you realize that it's not a real person you notice some of the fakeness.

Overall it's interesting but would be more useful for live action films than animation.
 
Yeah, great, wonderful, marvelous. I was completely fooled. Now, if they can only explain what would be the point of it all, I might think it's peachy. Other than superimposing an actor's face over his stunt double so that Harrison Ford can continue playing Indiana Jones well into his AARP years, I don't see the practicality of all. It's just whiz-bang technology for the sake of bragging rights. They can't use it to, say, save money by using a CGI Tom Cruise instead of hiring the real one (and at this stage of the technology, I'm still not sure which would be cheaper), because actors - or at least smart ones - protect their likeness from illegal exploitation, and this would certainly qualify. I guess you could use it to keep making Mission Impossible movies for decades after Cruise's death, but I'm not sure what would be the point of doing so.

And of course, they still need real actors for voices.
 
I thought I heard that name from somewhere. They are the ones behind the animation of Gnarls Barkley's Who Gonna Save My Soul Video where the heart is singing its soul out....literally ......:evil:
 
OK, it's great that we can have CGI that's virtually indistinguishable from live action, but why would there ever be a need to employ such when you could just, I don't know, maybe hire live actors?

Call me old fashioned, but when I watch a cartoon, I want it to look like a cartoon.
 
On one hand, that would be incredibly useful and awesome....but on the other hand, it's disrespectful to the deceased actor and a computer can't copy his personality. :shrug:
 
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