This video is a demo of the technologies used in a game called Heavy Rain.

hey i'm pretty sure you mean MGS4

@ the guy

They're credited online as working on Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

Welcome to the Uncanny Valley.

Awful. Not Final Fantasy awful, but awful.

Get up to speed this is ooooold news!

What's the point in remapping a performance you already payed an actor to give?

This demo vid was stupid. It should have been revealed that the female face was digital and the rl actor sitting there was a 65 yr old black man.

That would have been impressive.

Like they have it, makes the technology seem redundant. and also stupid.

Pretty cool- I'm curious to see how it would have looked full-res though... crappy YouTube compression can help to hide things sometimes.

I'd figured that she was digital about 1/3 through, mainly because the camera was only on her the whole time. The 3D modeling is impressive, but since the setting and camera angle are exactly the same as the source footage, aren't they just image mapping the video onto a matching 3D model? Kind of like what they did with the talking Marlon Brando head in Superman Returns. Still very cool, but I dunno if it's groundbreaking.

the company is working on Avatar and might also be working on Terminator Salvation....

I think this technology is a good step forward, unlike the regular motion capture method which hasn't got hand and ligament movements looking normal yet...facial movements now seem better with this new technique I'm all for it

This isn't redundant...that's like saying MoCap is a waste of time. Yeah, WHY do it? There's no REAL reason, except to create a completely fabricated set and characters that don't exist. I can't even comprehend why people are saying this sucks, because it doesn't. That's the internet for you.

It looked okay. I'd be real impressed to see it like that in a game. I'd be real unimpressed to see it in a movie. hmmmmmmmmmm

this just goes to show the lengths people will go to not have to deal with actors anymore.

JS

The video on their site is in better quality. http://www.image-metrics.com/node/330

It looks impressive but it's not really there yet in terms of human likeness. The brain is very effective in spotting things that looks fake. I can't really put my finger on it, but she doesn't look 100% human. Too perfect, and there's something in the facial expression that looks strange and not normal.

I think the people who are saying this is redundant think you can only use this to re-create something that someone has already done. I believe they just use that performance as the source for creating the digital version of the actor, which can then be used for other "performances."

Digital perfomances???????

Again redundant. I live in LA and the town is overly saturated with real actors who are more than willing to deliver live performances.

I can undersantd if you're trying to insert a character that doesn't exists ala Gollum in lotr. But if it's just going to mimic a real person who you've already taken the time and budget to tape delivering the dialogue live, what is the point?

like I said, my main point was against this demo. was just not impressive.

there are a couple of things wrong with this video and the reactions of those who have seen it...
1 ) it's a tchnology demo - nothing more.
2 ) it's presented badly - they should have done it as a fake interview with an Image Metrics 'representative'...talking about their technology etc..bla bla bla..then, oh guess what - her face is digital!
3 ) the real magic in all of this is that the performance of an actor can be targeted to a very different face...or 100 different faces...it's very powerful.
4 ) from a purely 'animation' point of view (not texturing, lighting, compositing etc) this is the best that anyone has ever done. period.

i found it interesting.it kind of reminded me how they did 'a scanner darkly' and a couple of those charles schwab commercials..by drawing over a performance to make it somewhat cartoonish looking.who knows..mabye this will eventualy replace mocap just as C.G.I replaced stop motion.

@ marz
it IS mocap...just done differently

It just doesn't look right to me, and I can still tell that it's computer generated. It just doesn't quite move natural enough. It's the eyes I think.

I will admit that it is damn good though. It's only a matter of time now before they perfect it, and you can't tell the difference any more.

As an animator I can tell you that the closer you get to realism in a scene the more difficult it is to make facial animation convincing; the human eye is adept at reading facial movement.

I don't think anyone is looking to replace actors with this technology; I think this demo is simply the most effective way to demonstrate to ANIMATORS/ANIMATION DIRECTORS who may want to implement this product into their pipeline that the results here are amazingly accurate compared to other mocap solutions or having some poor animator torture himself trying to keyframe/mix keyframe mocap something close to that quality. People look at this and shit all over it without thinking about the fact that, as somebody stated, its a fucking tech demo.

The point of animation is never to recreate Helen Hunt's performance in whatever awful Helen Hunt movie or show fake people being interviewed about new mocap tech, the point will always be to expand upon reality and do things that can't be accomplished with actors (i.e Gollum...which would have been pretty creepy had he been Steve Buchemi in makeup or something). The point here was "see how close we're getting to realism with the data this captures?". This tells the artists who may be purchasing/using this tool (who this demo was created for) that they're going to get the closest (and, if accuracy is any indication and depending on how much work this took an animator to get to this point, cleanest) representation of their mocap performance through this system. Not that this shitty Emily character is going to be replacing Helen Hunt anytime soon (not that Helen Hunt hasn't long since withdrawn to under the bridge from wence she came)