The more lifelike computer characters become, the slimmer the deal.
Epic’s upcoming Unreal Engine enables game developers to create and customize lifelike character models from humans using a software called MetaHuman Creator – which allows developers to refine facial features, complexion and build pre-set body types, clothing , hair and even teeth.
Some may find the preview of MetaHuman Creator appalling, but still the strange valley of parable to real people is worth driving.
With the new Unreal Engine you can create lifelike digital people
Unreal’s sneak video is unlike any other game called ‘Sims 4’, allowing players to customize specific points of a digital face, manipulate cheekbones or lips or shape the nose alter.
You can raise or lower the eyebrows and change the shape of the jaw and the height of the ears. Makeup is there for a reason, and even the length of the lashes is variable. The program also includes a slider bar to manipulate the size and depth of facial wrinkles.
While many of these features are also available on ‘Sims 4’, the Unreal Engine breaks with its twin by enabling cloud-based storage – which means you can build realistic virtual people directly on your browser without the need for independent software ( such as a game disc, or a top-of-the-line computer processor).
Unreal Engine’s new character design pushes the strange valley
Once you’re done, you can run your creation and download it directly into the Unreal Engine desktop application – and see what it looks like. This is because the lifelike creations are ready to animate and work with motion capture in movies, games and a handful of other visual media.
And you do not have to be a game developer to realize how much time it can save.
This new technology is so good at tracking people’s facial movements that it almost slips into the incredible valley – a perceptual phenomenon in which humanoid robots or computer-generated faces look so almost identical to the real thing you feel on the verge of being deeply disturbed through experience.
The coming decade could change the nature of face-based identification
If this sounds like your ideal night out, Unreal Engine has prepared two fully-prepared character samples for prospective MetaHuman Creator users. The full program is still in development, but will appear later this year.
Recent leaps forward in AI and deep-learning technology are to blame for this new realistic face modeling software, but AI also leads to better animation of whole-body movement – so subtle that a character’s lips can make a sentence so compelling speaks as a real-life human.
Along with a recent breakthrough in graphics – enabling developers to build CGI skin (and pores) – you would not be wrong to think that the deep forgeries of the coming decade are the nature of face-based identification for containers can not change.