The Future Of Motion-Capture
Animation: Building The Perfect Digital Human
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Finishing Humanity
Once the skeletal motion and the movement style are created,
the shader developer creates the visual surface elements, such as
shading, lighting, rendering and texturing. "Shader development
is creating the 3D programming tools to be able to mimic real life
surfaces," says Giant's effects supervisor Rudy Poot. Formerly
the Lead Color and Lighting Supervisor for Warner Bros' The Matrix,
Poot is now Giant's resident expert on shading development. "No
one's ever really been able to do human skin before," he says.
"Human skin is really something that everyone is trying to
achieve because it's so complex. There are so many layers of light
being absorbed by our skin and bounced around, and it's very hard
to mimic that in a program. With virtual humans like Webbie, we
have to take many high resolution photographs of real skin, and
then we have ways to stretch that skin onto the 3D model. And then
a special code is written so that skin will react naturally to light."
While the creation of photo-realistic skin is supposedly just a
few months away, creating realistic hair is proving to be a bit
more difficult. "Hair is still evolving," says Madden.
"The 3D people in the industry have done a really good job
improving the look of fur, but hair isn't quite there yet."
Once this technology is perfected, the ultimate result will be digital
humans that look so photo-real, we won't be able to tell the difference
between a computer-generated person that's being digitally manipulated
by an animator, and a videotaped image of a flesh-and-blood human.
"It's kind of scary, but it was bound to happen," says
Poot.
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Some
early wire frame models of Webbie Tookay. © Giant Studios.
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Cut!
The big question is, why make digital humans at all? Sure, they
look cool and they've got a certain kitsch value, but what purpose
do they really serve in society? "Considering the growth of
the Internet, and the many different digital features such as on-line
movies and virtual fashion shows, we believe that virtual celebrities
are a perfect fit," says Ricardo Bellino, co-founder and executive
director of Elite Models, Inc. "Besides," he says, "you
can already see the trend of the `virtualization of Hollywood' in
big productions such as Titanic and Toy Story."
Digital humans, it seems, will primarily be used to pitch consumer
products and facilitate the production of thrilling, never-before-seen
special effects in movies.
"For things like The Matrix, for example," says
Madden, "if you want to do things that are a little bit superhuman,
you can have [digital characters] climb up the wall, do their back
flips off the wall, and still make it look like maybe that's possible,
so the audience doesn't think that's obviously an effect. The character
can have this capability that's never been seen before. It's not
just a stunt man falling off a building." And unlike stunt
men, digital humans can be built to look exactly like your lead
actor, even close up. This has the Hollywood stunt community understandably,
though perhaps unnecessarily, nervous. "They were concerned
about this making their job obsolete," says Madden, "but
that's certainly not the case. In fact, you rely on stunt men more
than ever to do a lot of these captures that are extremely difficult.
You still need people to be the source for this motion."
