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Epic Games' Tim Sweeney on creating believable digital humans
Epic Games stunned everyone a couple of years ago with the realistic digital human character Senua, from the video game Hellblade. And today, the maker of the Unreal Engine game tools showed another astounding demo, dubbed Siren, with even more realistic graphics.
CEO Tim Sweeney said technologies for creating digital humans — from partners such as Cubic Motion and 3Lateral — are racing ahead to the point where we won't be able to tell the real from the artificial in video games and other real-time content.
[...] [Kim Libreri:] The other big thing for us, you may have seen the Microsoft announcements about their new raytracing capabilities in DirectX, DXR. We've partnered with Nvidia, who have the new RTX raytracing system, and we thought about how to show the world what a game could look like in the future once raytracing is added to the core capabilities of a PC, or maybe even a console one day. We teamed up with Nvidia and our friends at LucasFilm, the ILM X-Lab, to make a short film that demonstrates the core capabilities of raytracing in Unreal Engine. It's an experimental piece, but it shows the kind of features we'll add to the engine over the next year or so.
We've added support for what we call textured area lights, which is the same way we would light movies. You can see multiple reflections. You can see on the character, when she's carrying her gun, the reflection of the back of the gun in her chest plate. It's running on an Nvidia DGX-1, which is a four-GPU graphics computer they make. But as you know, hardware gets better every year. Hopefully one day there's a machine that can do this for gamers as well as high-end professionals. It's beginning to blur the line between what a movie looks like and what a game can look like. We think there's an exciting time ahead.
One thing we've been interested in over the years is digital humans. Two years ago we showed Senua, the Hellblade character. To this day, that's pretty much state of the art. But we wanted to see if we could get closer to crossing the uncanny valley. She was great, but you could see that the facial animation wasn't quite there. The details in the skin and the hair—it was still a fair way from crossing the uncanny valley.
Video is available on YouTube: Siren, alone (42s) and Siren Behind The Scenes (52s), and Creating Believable Characters in Unreal Engine (56m31s).
Related: Microsoft Announces Directx 12 Raytracing API
(Score: 4, Funny) by Snospar on Saturday March 24 2018, @06:24PM (16 children)
I know it's the uncanny valley but seriously, what is up with the dead eyes and the teeth? Look at the teeth! Does she gnaw on bones for sustenance?
I need a beer after that.
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(Score: 1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 24 2018, @06:30PM (2 children)
All those pink-haired dykes from Bioware had to go somewhere after their retardation crashed the company.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snospar on Saturday March 24 2018, @07:26PM
So Pink(-haired) Soylent is Bioware people. Yuck, I'll pass thanks.
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @09:40PM
What about the blue-haired ones? I figured we were supposed to be afraid mostly of the blue-haired ones.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 24 2018, @07:59PM (2 children)
Didn't you hear the accent? Classic UK teeth.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snospar on Saturday March 24 2018, @08:35PM
I think you might be on to something... that's an English accent but those look like Scottish teeth to me. No wait, I was wrong, no fillings and no gaps, not Scottish after all.
(Disclaimer: The Scots are known for their sweet tooth, this isn't meant to cause offence. If it does offend you - grow up.)
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Sunday March 25 2018, @02:41AM
I don't get it. They took a real human actress and mapped her 1:1 to a somewhat creepy-looking CGI-ish one. It's like Gus Van Sant's Psycho, but done worse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @09:30PM (6 children)
They spend so much time trying to create something so hideous. Reality is ugly and boring and real people are an abomination. Anime-style stuff is better.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday March 24 2018, @09:43PM (4 children)
You can still use a big, hot GPU for that. Just render the characters kawaii and use the raytracing and other stuff for the background details.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 25 2018, @12:50AM (3 children)
And just how do people get GPU's nowadays? The same way Venezuelans get Filet Mignon?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday March 25 2018, @01:09AM (2 children)
They got the GTX 970 or whatever back when it was decently priced and in stock. Or invent time travel.
Judging from these 1000-series charts, it seems that shit only hit the fan (and stayed there) starting around December:
https://camelcamelcamel.com/search?sq=GTX+970 [camelcamelcamel.com]
So if you had jumped on some Black Friday GPU deal, you could have missed the crypto madness.
Oh, here's a deal I guess: https://slickdeals.net/f/11375679 [slickdeals.net]
If a GTX 1050 is not fast enough for you, then just stick with what you have until the new cryptocash die$ or moves to ASICs.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @06:41PM
"then just stick with what you have until the new cryptocash die$ or moves to ASICs."
or until these stupid sacks of shit learn how to ship GPUs to card manufacturers.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 26 2018, @04:36PM
I've been on the lookout for a decently priced Vega GPU from the moment they were released. Sad fact, normal people couldn't get one, because they were constantly out of stock. When they were in stock it was with a stupidly priced bundle. Now, they're in stock with stupidly high prices. Sure hope my RX480 doesn't decide to give up the ghost in the meantime. Though, I should hopefully be able to get it RMA'd, if that were to happen any time soon.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday March 25 2018, @12:26AM
You should go back downstairs now. You know you're only allowed up for meals and laundry exchange.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Saturday March 24 2018, @09:53PM (1 child)
I think it's the lips during plosive consonants not perking right depending on proceeding vowels/consonants and the cheeks during open vowels.
Nothing really wrong with the eyes as far as I can tell... But my eyesight isn't too good so I just might be missing some details.
I think the sample is a bit biased though since it's a well reversed speech with exaggerated facial movements so in slower scenes we might feel we're missing out on some subtleties like micro-expressions. But that's just speculation.
Overall, pretty good.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by VanessaE on Sunday March 25 2018, @06:35AM
The first thing I noticed was the plastic-looking skin.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday March 25 2018, @05:14AM
Never mind the teeth, why can't they get lip movement to have some resemblance to the simulated speech?
The skin shines, the eyes are utterly fake and the lips look like she's speaking g Russian..
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.