Will 3D Characters Ever Replace Live Models?
Big Al Gruswitz
Posts: 3
I'm an illustrator in advertising. My company, Boundless Creativity by Big Al Gruswitz has been operating since 1994 specializing in 3D and 2D photo-reailistic illustration, medical illustration, and difficult retouching.
I recently posted a blog on my new site entitled, "Will 3D Characters Ever Replace Live Models? An Open Discussion" and posted a link to it on LinkedIn. The blog includes several images of a variety of available Genesis 8 figures and has generated quite a few visits to my site. I thought you might be interested in see my post as well. You are invited to comment on the bottom of the post.
Here is the link: http://www.boundless-creativity.com/will-3d-characters-ever-replace-live-models-an-open-discussion/
While you're there, you are welcome to visit the various galleries on my site.
Big Al Gruswitz
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Comments
That's been done for about a year already.
Already has in China.
Sure and I think it will be great. I hope we’ll see more 3D actors and actresses as well.
...many years ago I toyed with the idea of a political thriller influenced by Robert Serling's novel The President's Plane is Missing, (which in 1973 was adapted for a film of the same name) but updated a bit, where after the president mysteriously disappears, very lifelike 3D representation of him is substituted as a replacement for televised appearances using cutting edge technology (and a lot of coercion) to make it seem that nothing was amiss (this set in a society not too different than what we have today where people are so totally hooked on electronic media, that what they watch is the only "reality" they know).
Isn't that the character of a forum user here? Karuki I think? :) They do excellent work. She's quite realistic looking, imo! :)
*Edit - I found their character's Instagram, really lovely work! https://www.instagram.com/shudu.gram/?utm_source=ig_embed
Create a "Lara Croft" scale from the early 90's until now. As trends continue, you'd have to really not be paying any attention at all to think that it's not just probable, but inevitable, and already beginning to happen.
I think Hollywood would love not to have to pay the Tom Cruises of the world millions of dollars per movie because a single person that is nice to look at, has presence, can act (and in the case of Bollywood, can dance too) is one in a million. Now, an entirely different person can contribute just one of those characteristics, or be synthesized altogether. How can this *not* happen?
I don't know.
Ah yeah, it is Karuki, I found the post: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/3423156/#Comment_3423156 :) Very cool character and I love seeing people "pushing the envelope" to see how far they can get with 3D character realism.
That's pretty close to reality, with the ability to create fake videos. Video evidence is questionable today.
Haha you got me! I clicked on this topic because it’s a question I get asked all the time. From what I’ve seen I don’t think we’re ready to really replace models, and I definitely don’t think they’ll be replaced by 3D models like Shudu. Most likely it will be done using deep fake / machine learning.
DAZ is good but I don't think the realism is near close enough to try and claim it can be used to replace real people for an entire movie and the audiences be fooled. For one DAZ render, given all the excessive and unnatural editing to real people's images that gets printed in the media outlets, yes, you might fool them into thinking it's a real person, editing in a Vogue or similar magazine sort of fashion excess.
However, I do think the days of centralized entertainment businesses might be starting their decline. They were always an unnatural fluke caused by technology to begin with, enabled only by the proprietors access to huge sums of money to use technology to woo audiences and make lots of money and weld undue influence.
Traditional storytellers did not have the huge sums of money to compete. Sorry Grandpa and Grandma, you must buy things now to entertain your Grandchildren as they don't want to listen to verbal stories when that colorful troupe of underwear clad actors are on TV & on the big screen.
Now with very good technology, and ever improving too, that can be used to create very competent entertainment technically, becoming cheaper and more affordable, year by year, eventually the skills, capabilities, and audiences to storytell will be again decentralized since technology will be an equalizer, like it should be. Maybe even one day in the future the ideal of paying to go to a theatre to see a movie made in Hollywood will seem an antiquated fluke that was caused by technology and wealth in the hands of a few.
I think once DAZ and DAZ-like businesses make models that are human and animal realistic the only thing that could possibly keep Hollywood actors and the sort in business is simply the desire to 'gossip' and hold 'role models' on a pedestal but I don't think that's sufficient motivation to convince people to pay all that money and give up all that power to people just because they act in Hollywood movies.
I disagree. We're social animals. People have been going to the theatre, listening to minstrels and watching gladiators fight together since forever. The reason to go to a movie is not just to watch the moving pictures, but to experience the emotions in a group. The current trend to isolate ourselves has to do with our preoccupation with ourselves and the sense that being part of society doesn't profit us. Communal worship isn't even what it used to be. That will pass, eventually. I mean people could listen to politicians online, but we whip each other into tribal frenzies, because it's something we do.
...when you combine CGI with live action video/film that is where things break down. I frequently spot inconsistencies in reflections, shadows, gamma settings, and AO. I also find particle physics (particularly flames and explosions to just not look as good as physical pyrotechnics. OK yeah, I work with this stuff on a regular basis, so yes, It tends to sometimes stick out like a sore thumb to me.
On the other hand I've seen many product promos that are entirely CG generated which look incredibly photographic. For example, many car adverts, even those on television, will use 3D models. Adverts for fine furnishings, table, kitchen and other housewares often use CG images. The trouble is, inanimate objects are much easier to make look real than living ones, particularly a realistic human character or animal. There is so much more that has to be taken into account like hair, the way it reacts to motion or the environment, and the sense of depth. Then there is skin, the texture and appearance of which is even more complex to get it to look natural in close ups as well as long shots. Why, there is an entire long thread here (I believe it went into its second "life") just on working with skin in Iray. Next is clothing how it drapes how it moves with the character. All this adds up to an creating an incredible load on hardware resources.
For the film Brave, Pixar had to design and build a system just to handle development of the main character's hair, and this was still done in a "toon" rather than photo real style for inclusion in a fully CG rendered environment. This is why, for myself, films like Brave and The Incredibles "worked" as everything, the characters, the scenery, the props, and the effects were all visually consistent with each other. I also knew these were a fanciful, stylised animated films that didn't intend to be "realistic" and was satisfied with that. On the other hand when I saw one of the Transformers films, and Star Wars: Rogue One, I felt bothered to the point of wincing at times feeling that the visual effects in many places were just not all that convincing (Tarkin in "Rogue" particularly so).
Interesting as what I consider one of more visually stunning scenes was from another Star Wars episode, The Empire Strikes Back when where Luke is walking through the snow to his X-Wing to head to Dagobah, and the Millenium Falcon streakes past in the background. That was all done with live actors, models, and mattes, yet looked incredibly real (to the point I could even perceive depth and distance) compared to much of the CGI I see today.
Again, I work with this stuff, so yes, maybe it just makes me notice these things more, makes me a little more "picky".
Now you know why the term "personnel" was changed to "human resource."
...yep.
I agree completely.
impressive still images of Iray Renders mean absolutely nothing as any attempt to create convincing humans will have to involve ANIMATION and that is where the Daz Genesis figures& technology fail badly
particularly with facial animation and hair movement.
Will it happen? Yes. But not all the time, I suspect.
When will it happen? That is the real question.
I think I can suggest when the conditions will be right for it to occur, but not when. It will be when it is cheaper and quicker to make a film without humans. Think of the big stars. What extras do you get when you pay for one in your film? You get mistakes, a pumped up ego and whims to satisfy on the negative side. On the positive side, the actor can bring something more to the film, an innate flair, and millions of followers worth of publicity. When the 3d character can do this too - appear to have a life beyond the film and appear in other films bringing something distinctive with them, then that is the day human actors will be relegated to 'craft' acting and will contribute little of significance to the main part of the industry. And their input will diminish over time.
This sort of thing has progressed a long way in engineering. The role of the skilled machinist has almost died in mainstream industry. It has all been replaced by CNC machines, and skilled machining is relegated almost to craft status with hobbyists and one-off jobs too small to program economically become the limit of what humans really do, and 3d printing may well kill off human input in hobby machining too. It's sad but inevitable as the price comes down of computer controlled stuff, that it will displace humans more and more. Acting is just another place where it'll happen.
It'll take a bunch of years, current 3D models aren't that good. We are getting closer than ever before when it comes to realism, but we are still a bunch of kids trying to launch a rocket with ducktape and a lot of hope in technical terms. Look at ILM, who threw every resource and scrap of expertise they had to remake Leia for Rogue One and people were still like 'meh'. Even deepfakes, which the world is going bonkers about, are failing 99% of their creation attempts and the few seconds of video that work still get spotted by anyone with a good pair of eyes.
We should be proud at how far we've come and it's beautiful, but we ain't there yet. Going to take a bunch more processing power, more realistic skin details and faults, skinflesh actually bending and creasing (look at your fingers now), better skin tickness with micro depth changes (skin isn't the same tickness every inch of your body) and animation pretty much needs to get integrated into models like it's nothing (imagine opening a Genesis 12 character and the breathing and blinking eyes are already in place and active during modeling).
CGI characters will happen when corprates think its cheaper to make the necessary animation technology than pay the actors. Your typical 44 minute TV show is about 79,200 still shots with 16 minutes left over for commercials.
Right now they use live actors and CGI what they need in. Sometimes the actors don't even know what the final costumes or schene will look like until the movie is complete.
We are not that far from multi-million doller actrors being able to be tossed out the window in favor of paying someone far cheeper to act a roll and CGI a computer generated character in the actors place.
Sometimes you can take one look at a character in the movies and see the character is CGI'd. One common thing they do now is to film live actors to get the animation right and CGI over it. Most films are 30 or so still frames a second streamed continuously.
A 2 hour movie is 216,000 still pictures shown real fast one after another, even with all live actors and real props.
Eh there is nothing new about this concept
shops have been doing it for years
they are called mannequins
and dress patterns, catalogs etc used to all be illustrations, in my lifetime I recall them
living models are really only a recent phenomenon when you think of it, before industrialisation people had tailored clothing or homespun
Real people have loose rolling skin over flexible muscles over rigid bones. And many of the muscles, especially in the facial area, move unvoluntary. Animation rigs are still far removed from that.
Acting is a highliy intuitive, emotional thing.
That's not in the realm of computers. Hence the motion capturing. By real actors. And a lot of the smaller muscular movements are not captured at all. Which brings us in the uncanny valley.
I think we're still far removed from fully digital actors.
And why would I want to see those anyway? When I could watch real live people?
(Cartoony stuff is different for me. There I love the stylisation and exaggeration. I like it because it is everything else than realistic. Which is how I like my animation. I'm not into this hyperrealism hype. Not even where Iray and other unbiased renderers are concerned. Why do a hyperrealistic Lion King when there is a far superior cartoony one?)
They already do.
We see lots of entertainment that contains 3D models instead of live action.
Do you mean, where it isn't obvious it's been done? Was an advert a year, maybe two ago, that wasn't immediately obvious.
.................⬆ this ⬆
.................⬆ and this ⬆
I think it's inevitable that 3D characters will replace real-life humans in several areas such as advertising, entertainment, and news broadcasting. Though we are far from it at the moment, it will almost assuredly happen eventually. Just as real-life jobs are getting more and more automated every year, more and more entertainment, modelling, advertising, and broadcasting jobs will be taken over via 3D. It's already happening largely in the entertainment industry. Companies opting to use CGI over real-life pyrotechnics, real crashes, and real stunts. It's safer and often cheaper to go the CGI route. The entertainment industry is like almost any other business, it's all about the money (Building a 3D mansion is MUCH less expensive than building a real-life mansion). And it's much cheaper to do a CGI explosion than to hire an entire crew of professional pyrotechnicians and stunt people (not to mention insurance, on-sight medical people in case something goes wrong, etc).
Humans demand salaries, benefits, over time, they get tired, they get sick, they need days off, etc. Cost is always going to be a factor with most companies, and when 3D characters get to the point when they're nearly indistinguishable from a real human, you better believe that many jobs will be taken over. There will always be a desire to watch real humans do things, but as 3D gets more and more realistic and gets cheaper there will definitely be areas where humans will be hired less and less for certain jobs.
Just as many factories and jobs are being automated, there will be a time when humans tune into the nightly news and it's being brought to you by a stunningly beautiful, never sick, never has a bad hair day, never gets grouchy, never gets pimples, never messes up news anchor. And it will be so commonplace, like self check out lines and self service kiosks, that no one blinks an eye about it.
Everybody sees it. Most people just don't care, as long as they can find a way to care about the characters and the story being told is worthwhile.
You didn't care about inconsistencies in Brave but you cared about them in Transformers. That's fine, but I am quite certain that most people don't care, again...as long as they can care about the characters and the story is good. The Transformers movies were very successful.
We sure do. Iron Man, Avengers, Justice League, Thor, Hulk, Brave, The Incredibles, Big Hero 6, just to name a few.
I think we're already there.
I suspect that it's probably a lot less expensive to hire a thousand technicians for a movie than it would be to hire a couple of leading Hollywood names.
And there's one other thing too. A lot of people like me are completely turned OFF by Hollywood, for one reason or another. So I won't go pay money in a theatre with big names I dislike. I also don't pay to see them on Netflix or any other streaming service. I'll watch a good animated movie while I wait for Pirates of the Carribean 85 to show up on Prime. Prime streaming is "free" for me because I have prime for my shopping needs. If Amazon pushes me too far, I'll cancel it; the media streaming won't prevent that.
There was a movie about that, "Simone". She was a virtual character; an actor. It's years old.
But it's actually worse than you say. I (and millions like me) don't feel that "the news" is very reliable or that it properly prioritizes the things that are important to me. I decided about 6+ years ago to cancel my satellite service, and that was mostly because I couldn't find a good 24 hour news station. Since that day, I haven't tuned into the "nightly news" even once. The "paid" news was costing me $150 per month, so now I get more reliable news from other sources. And I pay zero for fake reality and unreliable news stations.
I don't know if news organizations will move toward artificial-delivered news. I don't think it matters all that much. If the news serves me well, I'll be there. If not, well I'm gone. They can be good or bad with or without real people.
By the way, there's a newsman in Washington, named Jamie Dupree. He's on the radio in many markets. He lost his voice a few years back...completely lost it, and it didn't come back. With computer technology and recordings of the phonetics of his prior radio news deliveries, they were able to build him a new voice, called "Jamie 2.0". He can type the words out and have it played back in his own voice, including words that he had never uttered back in the days when he had his voice. It's vaguely artificial sounding, but his deliveries are just fine. I don't listen to the station that he's on (for other reasons), but once in a blue moon I'll hear him. It's amazing that we have the technology to make stuff like this happen and help people carry on after something devastating happens to them!
I think it's possible. I remember when Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was released and there was constant talk (particularly on the news) about if 3-D models/animation would soon replace humans in media. Of course, that wasn't the case back then. At least it started a conversation about the idea.
Not all DAZ models are realistic enough to fool me, though I know folks that would take one look and think they're seeing a photo. Under the right conditions, a DAZ model can look realistic enough to fool its audience. But for me, there's always signs. The most common giveaway (at least for me) is skin reflectivity. And in animation, the figure's movement isn't fluid enough.
Thanks everyone for your comments! I figured the people who work with Daz figures would have a lot to say about this subject.
Animation no matter how good usually gives it away, that’s why I too prefer less realistic animated models as the more real they are the more they fall into the uncanny valley animated.
Aiko, Zelara etc look fine animated but some of the ones like Mrs Chow are terrifying I have rendered her talking and it’s scary.