Microsoft's Game Face
KNOW WHAT? says Xin Tong of Microsoft Research Asia. CGI humans in movies and video games look fake. Know what else? They don’t have to. In a paper he presented at an August international computer graphics conference in Vancouver, BC, Tong explained how he and his team have nearly perfected 3D expressions, complete with “dynamic wrinkles and fine-scale facial details.” The team placed some 100 reflective dots on the faces of three actors and filmed them laughing, wincing, and scowling. High-resolution scanners captured the subtleties—such as crinkles around the eyes—that go along with each expression. Tong calls realistic facial expressions the “holy grail” of computer graphics. We’re pretty sure he smiled when he said that.
Published: October 2011
This is the problem with MS. They employ unimaginative people who fail to grasp the basic problems before trying to solve them. Increased motion capture capabilities is such a simplistic concept and does nothing to address the problem of the uncanny valley.