The uncanny valley has been reached
artd3D
Posts: 165
in The Commons
When will Daz be able to do this?
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If it ever becomes as expensive, powerful and full featured as Maya and becomes a game engine, LOL
I think you mean the uncanny valley has been crossed? I've been trying to contact Snappers for months now to try and purchase a rig from them. I think they only deal with the big players, they seem to be based in Egypt. That's one impressive rig.
I think a lot of people don't really know the true definition of Uncanny Valley. If the human-like figure doesn't "elicit feelings of eeriness and revulsion" it's not the "Uncanny Valley". The feeling is what uncanny valley is all about.
What is uncanny valley about that man? He looks good to me.
+1 I agree.
Plus he looks a bit like Thomas Jane to me, which is a bonus. lol :)
@DazSteve I don't suppose you're going to introduce this kind of realism to Daz Studio anytime soon?
though this is indeed very creepy to be because it looks like Patriots QB Tom Brady being maniuplated, I don't think this is the uncanny valley referenced in 3d and automated people.
This is no problem as far as G8 goes. The most unrealistic and unlifelike (pug-ugly) bunch of characters you're ever likely to come across. No valley to cross at all for them.
Notice at about 27 seconds they show the wireframe, and it's higher poly than Genesis 3 and 8?
I'll give Daz a pass on Genesis 3. Genesis 8 though... Since Daz still seems aimed at stills, I really hope they bump up the poly count on Genesis 9.
Excellent new tool for the Fake News industry.
Thank you for saying that. :) The Uncanny Valley is also a different threshold for different people. Some people find wax museums freaky by default, for example. For me,the Uncanny Valley is something I associate more with The Polar Express and the old Beowulf CGI.
I'm glad you addressed that factor, saves me the effort. An online acquaintence (I can't really say a "friend") seems to be "repelled" any CG imagery more complex and "realistic" than Platonic solids. But a hand drawn stick figure done in crayon? She'll praise it like it were Da Vinci masterpiece.
Sincerely,
Bill
To me, Uncanny Valley is that the faces look ultra realistic, but the facial movements and movements of the facial skin and the eyes still look "off", usually movements being too slow for the real, jerkier and random movements of facial muscles, especially the eyes. This makes the characters come across as "robotic" or "animated mannequins" that are emotionless ;).
Laurie
I suspect that is the case for a lot of people. The "body language" is "off". That's why audiences are more accepting of, say, a CG animated dinosaur than a human. Even if we are not conscious of it, through experience we know how a human should move. But a prehistoric beast? Well, we can make reasonable guesses based upon size, weight and general anatomy, I mean, a T-Rex ain't gonna' scamper around like a mouse, but if something is "slightly" off, well, we just don't have first hand experience for our brains to say, "that ain't right."
Sincerely,
Bill
Indeed. Doing those facial expressions by hand would certainly put the figure into that "uncanny valley" territory. This was the case with the CGI Beowolf and Polar Express movies.
But if a future film's production staff married facial capture tech in conjunction to the Snapper technology, then full-length CGI movies with realistic human figures might finally be doable--and at a fraction of the cost of having real actors in front of green screens.
When will we see John Wayne, Steve McQueen, Marlon Brando and other late screen greats making movies again with technology
like this. You've seen what they did with Golem in lord of the Rings with motion capture.
Unfortunately those actors lived before there was face scanning technology but if this tech is ready for real-time assets like in Unreal 4, we will see (or may have already been seeing) lots of digital doubles in the near future.
A lot of people found this cool and totally worked.
Me, it kept tripping into uncanny territory for me and really threw me from the movie every time he appeared.
Something about it was off to me too. I thought it was the real lack of animation to the face but I went back and looked at Peter Cushing and he really did move like that so I don't know what the heck it was anymore.
The skin texture just felt... off, rubbery somehow. And the walking around felt too fake.
But reading about the process used, I have no idea why it would come across that way; they had a stand in who was good at his job, and ... enh.
They slightly "over acted"
the facial movments of peter cushing and his features seemed out of synch with each other making his face look "creepy"
The real peter cushing was a more stoic, deadpan british man, not taken alot of variance
in his facial expression much like his contemporary fellow Christpher Lee.
I agree entirely, and what you said coincides with how the creation of the CGI Moff Tarkin was documented in Cinefex Magazine a while ago. They seem to have gone for an "imitation" of Cushing and that is part of what threw it off for many. As for me, I found the illusion convincing except for when the director had Moff Tarkin in close-up and that's because I saw the film on a very big screen. It would have worked much better if they disguised this a bit by having Moff Tarkin speaking via hologram.
Yes timmins.william, I thought the general in that star wars movie looks really cool, but the cgi princess leia? oh no, leia was definitely in that uncanny valley.
Being that this is star wars, I suspect when the tech updates the CGI will be redone. I anticipate we'll have Star Trek with the original cast someday.
I think the issue was that we went into the movie knowing that the head was a digital re-creation. Because of that, your brain is immediately trying to critique it as a piece of 3D art.
For those of us who work/play in the relm of CG people, we will notice the little details. For the "Normies" it's movie magic.
On a personal level though, I was more in awe at how far this technology has progressed in the last few years.
Can't forget to mention the cameo at the end of the movie.
In a way this one was quite a bit more challenging to create. With Peter Cushing they had a bust made from a full head casting (from around the same time as Star Wars) to 3D scan in for a base to work from. With Carie Fisher they had to model her from 2D sources.
This is an opinion piece.
This is another reason why Genesis 8 is so disappointing to me. Daz really needs to up their game, because in just a couple of years video game technology will surpass Daz3D in both realism, usability, and animation. You can render animation with these engines in REAL TIME. That is something that Daz Iray cannot do, not even close. And if you can animate in real time...well making a single frame image is as fast as snapping a picture with a camera. There are no periods of waiting overnight for a single image to render praying your PC doesn't have an issue while you sleep. That is what makes video game engines something to look at for animation and still rendering. Unity has made big strides in the past couple of years, and it happens to be free just like Daz is with a product store to support it. Hell, even Daz's sister site Morph3D store sells Unity assets. Daz3D should be looking at Unity as a threat and a competitor. Yes, I know, the video above is from Unreal, but in time this is where Unity will be at as well. It is only a matter of time.
This video animation was played in real time at 1440p with -ONE- GTX 980. That's right, a four year old GPU and its not even a Titan or ti class! That to me is the most impressive thing about this video, that it can be done with such "modest" hardware. That is yet another reason why Unity and game engines need to be taken seriously.
Maybe you can nit pick small details here and there, and yeah, there are no real human faces on display, but again, this is a 980. In real time. You cannot do this with Iray, not even with 4 brand spanking new Titans burning up your home. And this is only the beginning, the tech is only going to get better. Maybe it will be there next year, maybe 2018, I don't know, but that time is coming. Will Daz3D and Iray keep pace?
So the question is this: Will we still be building out ridiculous rigs to slog through hours rendering single frame images with Iray in 2020? Or will we be moving on to an engine like Unity that can render still frames in no time at all, and render real time animation? Will Iray, the one time savior of Daz only hold it back in the long run? The store is doing ok right now, but I believe the clock is ticking on that success unless dramatic things happen in a very short period of time. And that goes for both Nvidia Iray and Daz Studio, because Daz can only move at the pace Nvidia does with Iray as Daz is very dependent on Nvidia. The "big things" that Daz has teased later this year better be amazing.
Unity and other game engines can render such images in no time because they cheat. This comes with major tradeoffs. I would love to have the ability to cheat this way in DS, but I would be very disappointed if support for Iray was dropped to accomodate it.
Yeah. you can't compare a ray tracer to a realtime engine. They are different animals. I wouldn't be in favor of Daz dropping the raytracing option (though I'm not fond of Daz's implementation of iRay), but if they added a realtime rendering option, that would be cool for a lot of people.
I have one word that sums up why the uncanny valley is no longer an issue with animation compared to real actors
BOTOX
not even with 4 brand spanking new Titans burning up your home.
I love when posts have these little burts of observational creativity. Makes them entertaining to read. Well written.
My living room is still the warmest place in the house.
I said a long time ago that nothing stays the same forever. Without innovation, this whole system will be one of those things that people stick to out of loyalty and familiarity. I had a hard time choosing between 3D modeling and a game engine when I was looking into this direction.
What's the best way to manipulate highly detailed characters with enough room to make original stuff and also have pre-made assets...?
Daz won round one - only because, the same things apply. I did some computer programming, I don't find it fun or enjoyable.
My dad was a software programmer and he LOVED debugging and figuring out what human error caused something to be off.
I like wonderful surprises and that's about it. You don't really get that coding.
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The mid-point is if Daz makes assets or its assets available to anyone creating in those other gamer-engines.
Their strength is still content, not the free D/S. So this whole place ADDs morphs and textures and such for people working with game engines.
If anything- maybe iray needs to have the evolution or revolution, where either a hardware piece (1 video card) that can crush and crunch those numbers for game-like results and or a better/faster iray engine or engine OPTION that reduces render times.
That seems very possible.
And if that happens you are back to where you are today.
If you want HEAVYWEIGHT results or options go with this new-uber-advanced-game-engine or if you want simple hobbying with great results, use this easier D/S system.
Daz isn't a goto for animation - so unless those game engines are wizards at exporting their assets and or frames and/or renders or whatever the 2D world needs...
I still think it's up for grabs.