Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games

The company says "Emily" is considered to be one of the first animations to have bypassed the "uncanny valley" -- which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.
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6 comments:

Tony F. said...

Hmm, tried the link but nothing came up. I guess Kurzweil's server is self-aware.

Good for him/her/it!

10:27 PM
Anonymous said...

I'm sure Kurzweil just linked to the first video he came across, but he could have at least taken a minute to find a more complete version of the demonstration video:

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=41938

And it would have been a more impressive demonstration of the technology if the CGI version of Emily had been made to look less like the real life Emily. Though, with the contrast between the two, you can see where the CGI Emily still lingers in the valley.

I have to agree with some of the comments at poe-tv.com, there's still something that's off with this animation... something about the smoothness in Emily's motions. There's a liquidity to her face that still keeps us slipping back into the valley.

It also would have been nice to see a higher resolution version of the video.

1:13 AM
Anonymous said...

Don't get me wrong, though, it's still pretty cool, and does fool at first glance.

1:16 AM
Anonymous said...

Yeah, I'd agree with Justin, above:
Emily could not pass through my personal "uncanny valley," although "she" does seem more virtually humanoid than most of such CGI work I've seen done.

What I'm wondering is if "Emily" can be designed for use as a more realistic, facially animated avatar in "virtual worlds" like Second Life, not just stand-alone gaming, and if her code is tranportable to other virtual environments, networked or not.

I read something the other day which indicated work is being done so one could use the same avatar within a variety of virtual world systems--and that perhaps one's avatar of this type could actually "emigrate/immigrate" to and from other virtual world systems that may one day be intercompatible--oh, wait--I think I hear the screaming sirens of the Virtual Department of Homeland Net Security from their border patrol agents' Humvees... Iieee! Run for your digital lives! 8^}

8:43 AM
Tony F. said...

It certainly leaves something of the aesthetic to be desired; a totally, photo-realistic computer generated image would have to be the same as if we were looking through a camera lense.

I guess this is my way of saying I don't get it.

10:18 PM
Mac said...

a totally, photo-realistic computer generated image would have to be the same as if we were looking through a camera lens

I suppose that's the best way of saying it. I suspect the day is coming...

11:04 PM

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