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Graphics Software

Turn Real Life Into A Cartoon 302

Saige writes "Ever wanted to see yourself in a cartoon? Before now, there were means to turn a single image into something cartoon-like, but some folks at Microsoft Research have come up with a method to turn a video into an animated cartoon. It's not up to doing it fully automated, as you have to hand-mark various parts of the video every 10 to 15 frames, but the video of the results is quite impressive."
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Turn Real Life Into A Cartoon

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:58PM (#9955279)
    "quite impressive" and Microsoft and not in a negative way on Slashdot.

    That's it, good night folks, I've seen it all.

    • by zsau ( 266209 ) <.ten.srehpargotraceht. .ta. .todhsals.> on Friday August 13, 2004 @03:06AM (#9956540) Homepage Journal
      ... Microsoft researchers do some decent research. Not all Slashdotters are anti-Microsoft just because they can be; a lot of us don't actually like their business practices or their released software or similar.
      • Exactly. We just don't like their business practice of treating their customers as cartioon characters to be manipulated. As for their released software, this one will probably get you rooted if you scan in a video with someone in the background holding a peice of paper with the word "virus" printed on it.

        -
    • Waking Life? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TrentL ( 761772 )
      This isn't that impressive in 2004. If anyone has seen Richard Linklater's Waking Life [imdb.com], they did this kind of thing in 2001.
      • Re:Waking Life? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Evangelion ( 2145 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @08:31AM (#9957856) Homepage

        That's called Rotoscoping, and it's been around since before the original Lord of the Rings movie by Ralph Bakashi (1978).

        That's not what the article was about, really, if you read it. Rotoscoping is modifying each frame individually, in a manner similar to how you do a cartoon.

        If you RTFA (fat chance, I know), the article addresses this: "In addition, current techniques to turn videos into cartoons are very labor intensive; the artist has to render each frame by hand. And it still doesn't solve the 'jumping' problem.".

  • by BrynM ( 217883 ) * on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:58PM (#9955281) Homepage Journal
    Opps...

    "However, even the 300 frame video of the girl swinging on the money bars only needs a keyframe every 10 or 15 frames."

    I just hope they don't make it part of Wordart or something.

    • Yeah, and being from Microsoft, this has the potential to be the first cartoon I've ever seen crash. Cue up the BSOD and Own3ed catoonz jokes here.

      --
      The only place to look for deals: http://www.dealsites.net/livedeals.html [dealsites.net]
      • Re:Freudian Slip (Score:5, Informative)

        by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:07PM (#9955334) Homepage
        Cue up the BSOD...

        Still running Windows ME, I take it... For as much as a bloated whale Win2k and XP are, BSOD is history.

        • Re:Freudian Slip (Score:3, Insightful)

          by mobiGeek ( 201274 )
          BSOD is history.
          That is (Score: +5 Slap-stick Humour), right?

          I have only had three "blue screens" on my wife's XP box, but the number of times that it spontaneously reboots (especially when using not-so-quick-switch)... it is mindboggling.

          • Re:Freudian Slip (Score:5, Informative)

            by martinX ( 672498 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:31PM (#9955463)
            To counter your anecdote with mine, my work-inflicted PC running XP is very stable and I run all sorts of non-standard stuff on it. Occasional programs crap out (how the hell can a 'Save as...' dialogue box be 'Not Responding', when it's owner app has been quit???), but even iMovie4 has quit under OS X 10.3.

            To summarise:
            hated '95 - buggy and unstable.
            Tolerate XP - stable.
            Always love my Mac. Just because.
          • Re:Freudian Slip (Score:3, Interesting)

            by reezle ( 239894 )
            I just saw about 15 of them trying to install a D-link USB wireless card (USB) on a W2K box. If not the BSOD, then it was spontaneous reboots. Finally pulled a different one out of my pocket, and it's associated driver. (got tired of uninstall, clean cached drivers, reload software, detect hardware, BLUE-SCREEN on boot)

            Then there's my home machine that runs 2K.
            It's fine unless I plug a USB camera, Web-Cam, Scanner, or basically anything USB except a card reader into it. Heaven forbid I swap memory stic
          • the auto-reboot is windows XP catching the Blue Screen and rebooting, there is a way to disable it.
            • Actually, the reboot is considered a feature. If it major crashes, it will reboot to restart all your services again. I personally leave it like that for that purpose.

              My problem isn't BSOD, but I do notice that Windows will restart Explorer (blinking desktop, everything disappears, then reappears) all the time.

              That said, I finally got the video file downloaded from the article, and it IS pretty darn cool, although it will be a while before we see any actual product that does this.
          • Re:Freudian Slip (Score:5, Informative)

            by wviperw ( 706068 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:42PM (#9955523) Homepage Journal
            As another poster mentioned, spontaneous rebooting is due to a 'feature' in Windows XP whereby the computer reboots rather than showing the proper BSOD.

            To turn this 'feature' off, do the following:

            1. Go to System Properties.
            2. Go to the Advanced tab and click on the Settings button in the Startup and Recovery section.
            3. Uncheck Automatically Restart.
            • "As another poster mentioned, spontaneous rebooting is due to a 'feature' in Windows XP whereby the computer reboots rather than showing the proper BSOD."

              Some dude used this little detail to try to tell me my computer was secretly unstable. Like I wouldn't notice that all my apps etc are closed. Moron.
          • I see your personal-anecdote-cum-evidence, and raise you a my xp has only ever crashed due to lousy on-board ac97 sound and copious heat put out via my gf4, and I'm running all sorts of wild shit and games.
          • Re:Freudian Slip (Score:3, Insightful)

            by NanoGator ( 522640 )
            "That is (Score: +5 Slap-stick Humour), right?"

            For some yes, for a lot of others, no. If XP or 2k ever caused me to lose a multi-day-long-render, you bet ur ass I'd toss it without a second thought.
          • Re:Freudian Slip (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Skuld-Chan ( 302449 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @01:19AM (#9956210)
            I have only had three "blue screens" on my wife's XP box, but the number of times that it spontaneously reboots (especially when using not-so-quick-switch)... it is mindboggling.

            Speaking as someone who works on windows machines all day doing tech support for end users (on verticle market database frontends) I can honestly 90% of all bluescreens are caused by hardware problems or buggy device drivers.

            I've had buggy device drivers kernel panic my linux box too - so its not just a windows thing.

            I honestly can't remember the last time either my work pc (which runs Windows 2000) or my home pc which runs XP bluescreened.
        • BSOD's in Windows 2000 are not unheard of, particularly with third-party Bluetooth drivers (I speak from experience).
          • Um, then don't use them.

            Any Joe Programmer can hack together a device driver that can crash your system.

            Only use WHQL certified drivers and you won't see STOP crashes.
            • Re:Freudian Slip (Score:5, Interesting)

              by Twilight1 ( 17879 ) <pda@procyon.com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:49PM (#9955555)

              Only use WHQL certified drivers and you won't see STOP crashes.

              While there is some truth to this, if you do this you will end up running very old (and sometimes quite buggy) video drivers. I haven't seen any recent video drivers that are WHQL certified. At least, not nVidia drivers. I suspect this is the same case with ATI as well. Probably not as much so for run-of-the-mill 2D cards.

              While I've always loved to joke about how Windows blue screens at the drop of the hat, I have to say that XP has been relatively stable, both at work and at home.

              The only time I've had my XP box regularly bluescreen was when I was using a quad-head configuration (two dual-head nVidia cards, one AGP, the other PCI) and booting into Linux. If I did a warm reboot from Linux into Windows, it would bluescreen every time. Power off the system, and it would boot up fine. I suspect someone was making some incorrect assumptions the state of video RAM when initializing the drivers.

              -Twilight1

              • It's stable if you have the task manager. But on the locked down workstations in the computer lab, IE freezes them solid all the time. All that's required is a logout-login, but try telling that to the person that just lost all their data. (I do try, and then I get yelled at. I like working in the mac labs...)
              • I haven't seen any recent video drivers that are WHQL certified. At least, not nVidia drivers.

                Eh? The 61.76 drivers from nvidia are whql-certified. In fact, all released (non-beta) nvidia drivers are whql-certified. Perhaps you're thinking of ATI? I wouldn't know about that.

                But I challenge you to point to a non-beta nvidia driver release in the last 3 years that wasn't whql certified.
              • Re:Freudian Slip (Score:4, Informative)

                by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @03:56AM (#9956687)
                No recent NVIDIA WHQL drivers?

                http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_61.76.html

                Released July 20, 2004. Not the very latest driver, but it is definately "recent". Hell, it's less then 30 days old.

                Or how about ATI?

                http://www2.ati.com/drivers/Catalyst_46_Release_ No tes.html

                Released June 9, 2004. Also not the latest (the latest is 4.7) but not exactly old.

                So, there are indeed recent WHQL 3D drivers for both ATI and NVIDIA cards. Moreover, their new drivers are usually as good as the WHQL drivers.

          • Shouldn't that be BTOD (Blue Tooth Of Death) then? Or Blue Teeth?
        • BSOD is history

          Technically, but that's just because they changed it to a delightful shade of indigo. Now it's a DSOISOD.
        • BSOD is history.

          Didn't you mean "BSD is history?"

          *rimshot*
        • ...because they made the computer reboot before it could show up. And if you're clever or lucky enough to avoid that, you'll see that they changed the colour to black! (at least that is what I observed)

          Shoulda changed it to another colour though because the BSOD acronym still fits...oh well.

          The new and improved B(lack)SOD includes brand new, even more vague and useless error messages too! Yay! At least they are MUCH less common than in Win9x/Me or NT.

          Anyways, I saw the sample animation...looks way coo
  • by wviperw ( 706068 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:01PM (#9955297) Homepage Journal
    I always knew Microsoft was a Mickey Mouse corporation.
  • Pixar envy (Score:5, Funny)

    by paiute ( 550198 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:01PM (#9955302)
    Bill's kid comes home crying. Seems his little schoolchum's dad Steve has a hip movie studio that makes way cool animated features. Why can't you do that, Dad? I want an animation studio! I want it right now! So Daddy Bill picks up the phone and commands that Megacorp also begin work on animation. Unfortunately, Megacorp's work ends up looking a lot like old Clutch Cargo episodes. Bill's kid cries himself to sleep.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:02PM (#9955304)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • real life? (Score:2, Funny)

    by sgtron ( 35704 )
    My real life is like a cartoon already. A badly drawn cartoon.. but a cartoon none the less.
  • by Cranston Snord ( 314056 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:02PM (#9955309) Homepage
    Similar to Waking Life [imdb.com], one of my all-time favorite movies. On the dvd, there's a 20 minute segment explaining the technology behind it...very labor intensive, as every curve ultimately still had to be hand-done.
  • sounds cool, but... (Score:5, Informative)

    by blisspix ( 463180 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:03PM (#9955318)
    I'd prefer to attempt rotoscope [3drender.com]. The results are amazing. Best example is probably Waking Life [imdb.com]

    I tinker occasionally with animation and despite all the technology we have today, if you are a 2D/cel animator it's still an extremly slow process. But fun.

  • I'll be most impressed when they have a Cartoon Physics [remarque.org] Engine.
  • by WhatAmIDoingHere ( 742870 ) <sexwithanimals@gmail.com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:06PM (#9955327) Homepage
    Didn't we already this [imdb.com] back in 1994?
  • by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:07PM (#9955332) Journal
    I used to work at a place where some sort of technique was applied to turn the work environment into a Dilbert episode.
  • Seems simple enough (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:09PM (#9955342) Homepage
    If you're running at a good clip per second, that's several frames per second that you're giving it animation information. As the microsoft researcher says, it's interpolating between keyframes, smoothing for trajectory. It's probably also taking averages of color inbetween the frames, and running it through a natural media highlight algorithim. Think those oldfangled "morph" programs mixed with a photoshop filter.

    It should be doing some edge detection for the inbetween frames, but it probably isn't. I hate to say this, but this is a simple application of known and existing technologies. Nifty for the guys that made it, but not exactly groundbreaking.

    • "I hate to say this, but this is a simple application of known and existing technologies."

      I hate to say this, but I seriously doubt that you read a one page synopsis and have 100% accurately reverse engineered the system they are using.

      "...not exactly groundbreaking."

      So, you'll have the OSS knockoff written in no time then, right?

    • by mabinogi ( 74033 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @12:09AM (#9955949) Homepage
      > I hate to say this, but this is a simple application of known and existing technologies. Nifty for the guys that made it, but not exactly groundbreaking.

      Why does everything have to be groundbreaking?
      Sometimes the most important developments are the ones that simply involve someone taking the time to put two and two together.

      "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants"
      If it's good enough for Newton, why not these guys?
      • If it isn't groundbreaking then it's tweaks and adaptation. There is nothing exciting about tweaks and adaptation. Admittedly, when I first read the article, I wrote it off because I've heard of something like this being done before. In fact there's was an animated movie produced in similar fashion. Maybe not the same exact method was used but it did convert a live action movie into animated movie. I think the movie was called Alive. Also, I believe Volkswagen has had commercials produced in similar fashion
    • It should be doing some edge detection for the inbetween frames, but it probably isn't.
      They claim it is.
  • 1: Artistic ability
    2: Camera ability


    That said, I'd be interested in giving this a shot for various projects.
  • I'm just drawn that way.
  • Great. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by huchida ( 764848 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:10PM (#9955353)
    My first thought-- oh, great. Put me out of work.

    But then I came to my senses. Of course this kind of thing would never replace traditional animation. After all, you'd still have to have actors enact the scenes to be animated, the backgrounds would have to be set up or altered, etc. Setting up a shoot of a scene to be animated could end up being more of a PITA than just animating it to begin with. Though the end result could be a cool rotoscope/Waking Life effect, it's not a "cheat" to get an animated feature without the tedious work of animating.
    • It might be a good product to help create a live story-board, but it will never take over animation because animation is all about style. The real world will probably never translate into any current animation style ... it's so subjective.
  • by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:11PM (#9955357)
    Wait, I dont get it...

    SP2 and its funky TCP/IP stack BAD
    MS Research Cartoon Videos GOOD

    Am I on the right slashdot? I just read an article about how SCO is good and everyone loves them. Whats next, slashdotters start Reading TFAs? I'm so confused, all this talk about lana swinging on the monkey bars, wheres the cowboyneal option when I need it.

    I'll just pretend that MS bought this from another company and is going to integrate it into longhorn in order to keep the competition out, yeah thats it, back to writing it M$ for me.

    Breathe in... Breathe out...
  • Oh.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by FractalPenguin ( 804175 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:14PM (#9955374)
    • Re:Oh.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by stubear ( 130454 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @11:24PM (#9955726)
      Did you happen to read the article or did you automatically go into anti-Microsoft asshole mode? If you RTFA you'd see the name Michael Cohen mentioned. What's that you say? You don't recognize that name? Perhaps if you had read the link you provided you'd see these two bits of information:

      "I am also working with Michael Cohen at Microsoft Research on some graphics topics."

      and further down the page there's this:

      "Video Tooning

      Summary: We build a system for transforming an input video into a highly abstracted, spatio-temporally coherent cartoon with a range of styles. We also go a little bit further to do a free-form deformation on Tooning results for exaggeration.

      Jue Wang, Yingqing Xu, Heung-Yeung Shum and Michael Cohen. Video Tooning. ACM Trans. on Graphics (Proc. of SIGGAPH2004). (pdf) (demo video, low resolution version at 10M)

      Jue Wang, Yingqing Xu and Michael Cohen. Free-form Video Tooning Deformation. Poster on SCA2004. (pdf)"


      Yes, this guy was working on the project. However, it was part of a team effort of which Microsoft Research (or at least Michael Cohen on behalf of Microsoft Research) was a part. You might also notice that Jue Wang has worked on other projects of which Microsoft Research was a part. Perhaps he's collaborating with Microsoft Research?
      • by bedouin ( 248624 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @12:10AM (#9955952)
        So basically MS is taking credit for work largely done by three Asian graduate students? Kind of like three Ph.D. students at Harvard finding a cure for AIDS, and then Harvard claiming it's their discovery.

        Cohen's colleagues get zero name recognition in the MS article. Kind of awkward don't you think? It comes off as if the other workers' contributions are insignificant.

        The parent is still very informative. We wouldn't have even known about the other contributors if it weren't for him.

        And anyone who has worked under a big-name advisor on a project knows they have a tendency to take credit for more than they actually did, especially when foreign students are involved.
  • Real Life [slashdot.org] is already a comic?
  • Full circle? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 4minus0 ( 325645 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:20PM (#9955408)

    Isn't it interesting how throughout the last several years we've been researching and coding like hell to take cartoon(ish) characters and make them look as realistic as possible? Look at the work that went into transforming an artist's sketches of Dr. Aki Ross et al into the very real looking characters of Final Fantasy.

    Now we're researching and coding like hell to go back the other way.

    I'm sure there's a Microsoft joke in there somewhere :)

  • by hsa ( 598343 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:25PM (#9955435)

    Anybody remember this guy?

    This is one of the pioneers in computer graphics for a long time. You should remember him for his radiosity papers:

    Cohen, M. F. and Greenberg, D. P., "The Hemi-Cube: A Radiosity Solution for Complex Environments", Computer Graphics, vol. 19, no. 3, pp 31-40, 1985.

    Cohen, M. F., Chen, S. E., Wallace, J. R., and Greenberg, D. P., "A Progressive Refinement Approach to Fast Radiosity Image Generation", Computer Graphics, vol. 22, no. 4, pp 75-84, 1988.

    And his book [amazon.com].

    He even received SIGGRAPH award [microsoft.com] for his work

  • I thought Greg Dean [reallifecomics.com] was getting his own TV series.
  • by foxtrot ( 14140 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:29PM (#9955452)
    Real Life [reallifecomics.com] is already a cartoon!
  • by syousef ( 465911 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:30PM (#9955456) Journal
    Just a thought. I've played with Photoshop/Paintshop Pro and various standard filters can turn individual photos into an artistic rendering eg. Brushstrokes or Charcoal drawing. What's to stop someone from writing software that will extract each image from a video, apply the filter and then re-encode to video? Has this already been done elsewhere?

    As an aside I love the effect on pets using the charcoal filters drawing filters. The fur translates surprisingly well.
    • If you read the fine article :) they say that a technique like this tends to produce a rather jittery, jumpy effect where backgrounds aren't sufficiently similar, and the noise on them moves around way too much to be aesthetically pleasing.
  • Family Tree (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mhollis ( 727905 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:50PM (#9955563) Journal

    Some time ago, Microsoft purchased a company called SoftImage. [softimage.com] Turned out to be a good investment in 3D development and film compositing with a product called the DS.

    Meanwhile, in Tewksbury, the Avid Media Composer which ran only on the Apple Macintosh platform was ported to Windows when Microsoft made some investments in Avid. About that time Apple (unwisely) discontinued their six PCI-Slot Macintosh. [lowendmac.com].

    When Avid noted that their product was dead-ended because its code basis assumed a raster that was limited to NTSC and PAL television format, they purchased SoftImage's DS [avid.com] in order to be able to easily produce software that will do film and high definition video.

    Microsoft doesn't make investments for nothing. I believe I can do something very close to what Microsoft is doing for Mini-DV video on any format of video or film with the Avid DS -- though for a lot more money (something like $120K USD). I would not be surprised if they got the technology from that very old investment.

    As a creative person though, I have to say I don't like the fact that the DS-Nitris will probably never run on a Macintosh. We have problems with ours that are related mostly to two issues: Operator screw-ups (expected) and Microsoft Windows XP Professional limitations, many of which do not exist in Apple's current versions of Unix.

  • He spent millions painting on top of film when he did the animated Lord of the Rings in the early 80's (remember kids?), which was half-rotoscoped, half bizzare drug trip. But it was better than Cool World.

    Anyhow, this is exactly what Ralph needs -- a way to film actors, and then make it sorta' look like a cartoon. I see it now, "American Pop 2"... oy.

    Still, I spent a summer tracing from Super-8 onto paper and my results were less than spectacular, although my test film did get me some work back in the da
  • Microsoft used to have "Comic Chat" which turned IRC into comic strips. It's been put to good use by our friends at Jerkcity [jerkcity.com]
  • Now i have to put up with DIGITAL cosplayers, "hey look, i edited myself to look like some anime character" i'm going to LOVE this....
  • I can't wait to see how many people abuse this whenever (if ever) it's integrated into Microsoft's lame Movie Maker program. Prepare knock-offs of Ah-Ha's "Take on Me" video in 3, 2, 1 . . .

    And you know some obnoxious dad who films every moment of his kid's life will just love this. Prepare to be bored whenever your friend of family member sends you his oh-not-so interesting home movies saturated with this, and other effects (sometimes better is less, okay?)

    That said, it looks kind of cool, though I sus
  • If you guys dig this, you may also get in to NPRQuake [wisc.edu] which takes quake 1, and turns it in to sketch art. It works on the shareware Q1 client, and doesn't require the amount of user intervention that this MS project does.

    Still, it is an interesting concept.. and as I understand, the playstation2 is a huge seller. I had no idea there was such a market for this stuff. [eyetoy.com]
  • by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @12:34AM (#9956044) Journal
    ... that all porn can potentially be converted to hentai?

  • It ain't all that (Score:3, Interesting)

    by epepke ( 462220 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @02:05AM (#9956344)
    Although the MS Research work is interesting and pretty good, it was only one of several papers this year that described techniques that could produce similar effects. Good quality work in this area has been going on since the 1997 paper by Litwinowicz, and the techniques have been used in industry.

    I hate Microsoft products as much as the next guy, but MS research does do a lot of good work. However, it's usually in collaboration with research universities, as in this year's papers by Agarwala et. al. and Wang et. al. So it's not as if these papers just magically emerged from the bowels of MS.

    Also, the two biggest names in CG, Blinn and Kajiya, have published jack by comparison since they went to MS. Blinn isn't even followed by an entorage of groupies any more.
  • Got it.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mseeger ( 40923 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @02:41AM (#9956447)
    Ever wanted to see yourself in a cartoon?

    Not again, thanks! I already found it here [dilbert.com].

    Regards, Martin

  • Next up (Score:3, Funny)

    by g0bshiTe ( 596213 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @07:33AM (#9957435)
    Homemade Hentai anime.

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