Emily is not real.

Take a stroll through the uncanny valley with Emily, an impressive example of how far facial animation has progressed -

Previous methods for animating faces have involved putting dots on a face and observing the way the dots move, but Image Metrics analyses facial movements at the level of individual pixels in a video, meaning that the subtlest variations - such as the way the skin creases around the eyes, can be tracked.

"There's always been control systems for different facial movements, but say in the past you had a dial for controlling whether an eye was open or closed, and in one frame you set the eye at 3/4 open, the next 1/2 open etc. This is like achieving that degree of control with much finer movements.

"For instance, you could be controlling the movement in the top 3-4mm of the right side of the smile,"

CGI house Image Metrics has certainly done some amazing work here - but I'm still left with that eerie feeling of faux-humanity. - Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games [via Neatorama]



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Comments

Oldest comments listed first.

Posted by: thomas veil on August 20, 2008 at 10:28 PM

That's weird, she looks like Natalie Portman.
Nice job though, but IMO there's still a cold vibe on this face.


Posted by: Collin Cunningham on August 20, 2008 at 11:20 PM

wow good call - i couldnt quite place the resemblence.

I wonder how much simply knowing it was fake influenced my "creepy" judgement. If/when CGI persons become commonplace, viewers would likely become more doubting/suspicious of images in media. I could imagine a future fashion trend where people attempt to look/act more artificial intentionally … but I suppose in some ways, that's already taking place :/


Posted by: japroach on August 21, 2008 at 2:12 AM

The quality on the youtube video is just terrible.. Timesonline link is not really any better.

Would be nice to see something high res.


Posted by: Collin Cunningham on August 21, 2008 at 3:29 AM

that's odd, the vimeo version looks like crud as well -
http://vimeo.com/1562801

hmmm … perhaps the illusion breaks down without the proper compression artifacts :)


Posted by: chris on August 21, 2008 at 8:37 AM

yeah, it's still creepy. I think the realism magnifies the little discrepncies like when her mouth moves in odd ways, or the lack of fine-tuned emotions.


Posted by: imvain2 on August 21, 2008 at 10:43 AM

Reminds me of a movie with Al Pacino, called "SimOne (Simone)". I really enjoyed the movie, worth a rent.

But.. If I wouldn't of read that she was fake, I would of thought she the mouth just moved weird when she talked [like Jessica Simpson's mouth when she sings] and that the sound track wasn't in sync with the video.

It is still impressive.


Posted by: Embassy Pro Books on August 26, 2008 at 9:08 AM

Still amazing

Either way it is still amazing how far technology has come. If I watched this without knowing it could have passed for a human easily


Posted by: peter on August 27, 2008 at 1:02 PM

the specular one looks like a clip from batman begins


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