If you look at the digital actors in movies like “Lord of the Rings” or “Pirates of the Caribbean,” they are pasted with markers all over their faces and bodies.

I miss Max Headroom.

–Pcoop on August 21, 2008 at 7:59 AM

I remember how disappointed I was at the time to discover that Max was just Matt Frewer in rubber makeup, not a real digital construct.

Very impressive.

Who knows how far it will go in the next 30 years.

I believe that in 30 years, it will be possible for top end animation software to create people and voices that are indistinguishable from the real thing. 10 years after that, home hobbiests will be doing it.

The era of the Hollywood star is rapidly coming to a close.

Actually one only needs texture shots to build an animated actor. This can be done on a pc with 3D studio max and adobe after effects.

Yeah, but can you fool somebody into thinking it’s a real person? That uncanny valley thing dominigan mentioned. They’re still not there yet, but they’re obviously getting closer.

Jim Treacher on August 20, 2008 at 11:50 PM

Have a look at zbrush, check out the gallery. enjoy

http://www.pixologic.com/home.php

DaveS on August 20, 2008 at 9:42 PM
hadsil on August 20, 2008 at 9:33 PM

Like Jim and Allah said, it isn’t just to recreate a person, which is what they showed at the end of the clip.

Even still though, if all they do is recreate her and use the recreation instead of her, then they don’t have to pay her for acting and only for her voice.

you can hire digital artists to do this for 5 mill and pay a voice actor 100 bucks to read the dialogue?

Do it Conan O’Brian-style, simple green-screenning of a head shot of the actor and somebody else’s mouth moving. Cheesey but cheap.

Liked the ‘Westworld’ reference..

Rise of the voice actors is imminent.

Who needs to pay 20 mill for Tom Cruise to sparkle up a Nazi film with his shiny big teeth when you can hire digital artists to do this for 5 mill and pay a voice actor 100 bucks to read the dialogue?

Mindcrime on August 20, 2008 at 9:31 PM

CG/Cartoon movies are still using real actors for it. But like you can take a dumpy actor and makem look the hawtness. Playboy’s been doing this for years.

- The Cat

P.S. Will make it so much easier to frame someone.

Humans are exquisitely designed to recognize faces, specifically human faces. If it’s not human, if you can’t look in the eye and see a soul there, we’ll reject it. There’s a reason why Pixar spends years perfecting photo-realistic background animations so they can put cartoon humans in front of them. You either allow the human to inject a soul into an animated character through anthropomorphization or you give him a human with a soul; don’t try to split that difference.