"Cyberface" to make standard CGI character animation obsolete?

The New York Times has a report on a new graphics technology from Image Metrics that maps real, human-generated facial expressions onto an avatar. The technology is very accurate in capturing movements and even transferring the facial "soul" of the actor to the computer-generated face, says the Times' Sharon Waxman.

It’s not just that the virtual woman looks happy when the actress looks happy or relieved when the actress looks relieved. It’s that the virtual woman actually seems to have adopted the actress’s personality, resembling her in ways that go beyond pursed lips or knitted brow. The avatar seems to possess something more subtle, more ineffable, something that seems to go beneath the skin. And it’s more than a little bit creepy.

While using humans to model computer graphics is old hat (see an example from a 2004 car commercial), it traditionally has been used to capture strong body movements, rather than slight facial expressions. And older "hand-drawn" computer graphics can't capture eye movements, which Image Metrics' technology is able to do.

Potential uses of the technolgy, says the article, are re-animating dead actors, or letting living actors use a younger version of themselves in films. The technology can also save time and money -- it will be used in an animated full-length movie called Foodfight!, and will supposedly take just months to make instead of the years required for typical Pixar or Disney fare.

The technology was created by British experts who were working on image analysis, which was first used to better understand spinal X-Rays, says the New York Times article.

The Image Metrics website notes that the technology helped make the film The Polar Express, which, as noted in a previous Web3DNews article, some people felt to be "creepy."