Perfect Digital Skin

ILMfan writes "BBC Technology is describing a new graphics algorithm for creating perfect virtual skin. This technique by graphics wizard Henrik Jensen (the guy who invented photon mapping) is already being used in movies (it was used on Gollum in Lord of the Rings, and it will be used in the soon-to-be-released van Helsing movie). And perhaps more exciting is that several game companies are planning on using it for their next generation games. So John Carmack are you listening? Any chance this can be included in DOOM3? Of course there are endless other opportunities for virtual humans with perfect skin :-)"

porn

[kinzillah]

Imagine the effect on the porn industry.

Porn Economics

[Game Genie]

A couple of posts, as well as the original post allude to the potential use of this technology to the pornography industry. While I realize that it is a multibillion dollar industry, and could certainly afford to utilize high end CG, I wonder how the cost-benifit ratio would work out. After all, paying engineers is obviosly more costly than paying hores.

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Re:porn

[Jugalator]

The porn industry don't do that anyway.

Re:soon to be release Van Helsing?

[ZeikfriedDuvalier]

It's yet to be released in the UK, this country being almost always left a few months behind when it comes to film releases. And this is a BBC article after all.

Games are getting ridiculous

[RedCard]

Any chance this can be included in DOOM3?

You're absolutely right - expectations of today's games are getting completely insane.

Didja see the new lens-flare algorithms? They're 16% more realistic than anything ever seen before. (Requirements: Dual P4, 300 gigs available on HD, 2 gigs RAM, etc...)

Whoop-de-doo. Good games don't need stuff like this, and that's something that I'm afraid the game industry is losing sight of. As games get more expensive and cost-intensive to produce, are we headed for another video game industry crash like in the early 80s? The answer, of course, is a definite maybe.

The sociological implications are stunning...

[gearmonger]

Today, we're raising a generation of people who believe that everyone engages in Cialis-enhanced multi-partner sex just like they see on the Internet (don't you?!).

Tomorrow, we'll be raising a generation of people who believe that all those seemingly real people on the Internet are flawless as well.

How disappointed they will all be when they realize that the imperfection of humanity can't compare with the perfection of a digital world. Hopefully they'll also realize that it is those same imperfections that make life interesting.

Re:porn

[Threni]

> Of course, not wearing rubbers is one of the contributing factors of the current
> HIV scare in the industry at the moment.

I don't know...i'm surprised the distributors didn't just slap another $10 on the price and place a `SNUFF!!!` sticker over the title.

The problem is...

[polyp2000]

In real life people dont have perfect skin. Surely we are really after the look of imperfect skin.

nick ...

Forget skin, Doom 3 need realisitic gibs!

[pjwhite]

Doom 3 will need realisitic blood and guts rendering as much as it needs realistic skin rendering.

Re:porn

[packeteer]

Plenty of people like to masterbate to all kinds of sick shit like animated porn and porn where people dress up like animals.

Re:porn

[q-the-impaler]

There is a lot of porn Anime out there. Everything has a market.

Re:Porn Economics

[kzeddy]

Also think reuse of the models (not intended as a pun). so after the characters are created you have unlimited use to create scenes. your rate of production would be faster.

Skin isn't the problem...

[PaSTE]

... in that, unless you are working with extreme closeups or funny lighting, the standard, bounce-the-light-off-the-surface-of-the-skin model works just fine, especially for quick-moving CG characters like Binks or Golum, where their intrinsic flexibility is seen by some directors as a green light for "move as stupidly/unnaturally as possible." This bizarre movement causes them to not remain still on camera for extended periods of time like human actors, and the details in the skin are washed out by the constant motion.

However, I have yet to see really, really realistic hair on human-type CG actors. Eyebrows are usually thick and static, eyelashes either suffer from the same symptoms or are hardly noticable, there is little to no dynamic body hair, and the hair on the CG's heads don't seem to flow or react to the environment as you'd expect it to. Final Fantasy: TSW came pretty close with the head-hair issues, but even there it was still either too fluid or too clumpy instead of strandy.

I understand that rendering each individual hair with the physics of the environmental interactions would take countless generations for some movies like Final Fantasy, but I want to believe there is a happier medium between this and helmet-head than what we have today.

Re:Old news...

[John Harrison]

Is there a reason nobody is mentioning that he shared the Oscar with Stephen R. Marschner and Pat Hanrahan?

Re: Game use

[bogie]

I honestly don't really think I want to play games where you can't tell the characters from the ones in real life. I'm currently playing through Call of Duty again and if all of the soldiers I killed looked exactly like real people dying I don't think I could actually do it. There is something to be said for being able to experience things more realistically, but I just don't think it would be fun anymore. The reason why games don't lead to violence in real life imho is because its easy to clearly differentiate between life and a video game. Well what happens in 5 years when you literally cannot tell the difference between the two?
As a gamer for over 20 years now I've always enjoyed seeing the graphics get better and better but I wonder if it will someday go too far and make games less enjoyable?

Re:wrong

[d-rock]

Not to be pedantic, but subsurface scattering is the physical phenomenon. Just because he found a fast approximation for it doesn't mean that it's a different technique.

Derek

Perfect Skin

[hoggoth]

It's funny how the phrase "perfect skin" means exact opposites depending on if you are talking about real human beings or digital virtual human beings.
I mean on a real person "perfect skin" means no imperfections, on a digital person "perfect skin" means skin with blemishes and realistic imperfections.

I dunno... just saying is all...

perfect skin, realistic?

[foniksonik]

How many real people have perfect skin? When they can recreate the sallowness of an alcoholic, the dryness of someone with allergies in spring, the haggardness of someone who's been up all night... that will be realism, perfection is an illusion and people will see right through it in the end... we'll just be so impressed in the meanwhile that it will give the developers a few more years to get it right.

Even surgery and bio-chemistry can't produce perfect skin for people... they still need makeup and air-brushing... when did that become realistic anyways?

Re:Games are getting ridiculous

[ConceptJunkie]

Yeah, I've been saying this since the days of the original Amiga. There are good games out there, just look around. My strategy is to buy stuff that's a year or two old. That way I pay about 1/4th the price and can afford to get a stinker or two for every gem I find.

As far as a video game industry crash... it'd probably do the industry a lot of good. Video games are all trying to become Hollywood blockbuster movies: big, dumb and bland.

Re:The sociological implications are stunning...

[sisukapalli1]

Come on... A lot of feelings of inadequacy are due to the traditional media brianwash and advertisement. If you are 5lb+, you are over weight, if you are 5lb-, you are underweight. If you are dark skinned, you need to "revitalize", it you are fair skinned, you need to "get deep texture". Even things like news (especially the war coverage) are very polished, glamorized and very unreal.

Things have gone down the drain quite long ago before the "internet craze took off".

I believe many people know the difference between real world and virtual world (internet, tv, movies, stories, etc.) Some that don't know the difference do not need any special technology to get a glossy image of the world -- existing technology does it already :)

S

Re: Game use

[Jesus IS the Devil]

I disagree. If you can't tell the difference between a picture on a screen vs. someone in real life, then there's something wrong with you.

Yours is the same argument the politians have used on the gaming/movie industry for the longest time. It's pure BS.

Re-render Final Fantasy Movie

[Demian]

Granted, it was a rather cheesy storyline...

But I wonder how much improvement it would make if the Final Fantasy movie was re-rendered with this added algorithm?