Meet Emily

1. CheeseDuck
   August 20th, 2008 at 7:51 am

   If they didn't tell me that wasn't real.. Well, yeah.

2. DannyArcher
   August 20th, 2008 at 8:07 am

   you know, in the future when ever there are any suspicious videos, people would go 'Its CGIed', juts like how people would say 'PhotoshopED'

3. Edman
   August 20th, 2008 at 8:24 am

   While the technology is getting better, she still fell hard into the Uncanny Valley. It was something about the eyes and mouth, to me...

4. capella
   August 20th, 2008 at 8:40 am

   hmm, looks really nice, but even if i didnt know it was computer animation, i would still think - something about her is weird. she is either not real, or she had a stroke at some point.
   Humans have an incredible ability to pick out human faces, and note anything that's slightly out of the ordinary.

5. Powell
   August 20th, 2008 at 8:42 am

   Good but not perfect. It wont take long before live actors etc will be obsolete.

6. Roxanne
   August 20th, 2008 at 8:50 am

   Pretty good except for her eyes. They seemed too flat to me.

7. avist
   August 20th, 2008 at 9:20 am

   The thing that I noticed was something odd about her mouth. Her eyes and movements seemed pretty convincing to me, but capella said, there was *something* out of place.

   That doesn't mean it wasn't awesome! At the rate we're going, the kinks will be gone in the next few 'versions' of Emily!

8. Jerse
   August 20th, 2008 at 9:41 am

   That's such a waste of time and money...

   They tape a real actress doing those same exact movements and facial expressions and then they take the video and draw over it with the computer to make it look animated.

   Why not just stick with the original?

9. 6uold
   August 20th, 2008 at 9:54 am

   Yeah, I agree about the mouth and eyes. Also, the physics needs improvement. At one point, her head bobs back and forth a bit, but it's as if it has no mass. The rate of movement was too uniform, i.e., it didn't slow down properly before changing direction.

10. Skipweasel
    August 20th, 2008 at 10:05 am

    Does anyone else think that animations blink wrong? In her case it's too slow, but even some that do it faster don't seem to get the acceleration curve right.

11. Moon
    August 20th, 2008 at 10:08 am

    I'm with Jerse. Does that really count? I was ready to give them full marks, but it's kind of cheating to do it the way they did it.

12. Moon
    August 20th, 2008 at 10:09 am

    That said, anybody named MoonCake is alright by me!

13. Mr. Binky
    August 20th, 2008 at 10:15 am

    I could do this with less than half of the budget, with an actress!

14. atanguay
    August 20th, 2008 at 11:08 am

    Also, they're getting extra 'reality points' because everything surrounding her is real...the hair, the clothes, the way light falls on her body. If you were just to isolate and watch her face, you would see more issues. You're brain 'wants to' believe it since the rest of it is obviously real. I mean, it is impressive, and is quite less creepy than something like say 'The Polar Express'.

    This is also an internet sized video that's been compressed back to creation. If this were HD video, or worse yet on a film screen, I think you would be even more creeped out.

    And the question of 'Why' has always been out there. While it definitely could do wonders for gaming, it seems akin to the building of the atomic bomb in terms of 'the wrong hands'. The wrong hands being resurrecting dead actors and making them do horrible things. I'd hate to think of this being common place enough that the 'people' who make those 'Meet The Spartans' movies could get their hands on it. Talk about a dirty bomb.

15. George
    August 20th, 2008 at 11:30 am

    Actually, at the beginning of the video, it states unequivocally that the video is 'wholly computer generated,' which, in fact, is an outright lie, since only the woman's face is computer generated and the rest of her is real! I'm impressed with what they've accomplished, but that's really fraudulent.

16. vintagek8
    August 20th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

    Wow, Neatorama sure has a lot of Negative Nancy readers! I think this is amazing. How do any of you know that "the rest of her is real" or that they took an actress and animated over her? Why can't we just look at this and think, how cool! i remember when i first saw Toy Story or Shrek or some landmark CGI film and telling my parents that one day we won't need actors anymore. Looks like we're getting closer!

17. Fuzzy Dunlop
    August 20th, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    Um... where do people keep getting the idea that this replaces actors? Who's wearing the performance capture device if not actors?

    This is performance capture, NOT animation.

18. unbedazzled
    August 20th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    Jerse and Fuzzy are correct, motion-capture does not animation make. This is basically an updated version of good old rotoscoping.

    Now animate something completely from scratch and we'll talk. Otherwise this is much ado about nothing.

    And as for everyone who thinks actors / actresses / thespians of all stripes are headed the way of the dodo - show me an engineer who can emote. Let's not confuse bombastic action set-pieces as "acting."

19. erikerikerikerik
    August 20th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

    Ack, the eyes and the mouth are what MAKES someone look real. All the emotions are tied up there. I mean, good job on totally pwning on the nose and chin and whatever else the boring parts of the face are, but there's no way I'd look at that and even for a second think it was real.

20. MoonCake
    August 20th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

    thanks, moon. what can i say-- i like cake, even though it's a lie.

    the eyes were weird, yes. if you're a gamer, this video gives you chills. i don't know where you guys are getting that this was anything but from-scratch animation. regardless of whether they used an actual actress or not, it's still REALLY neato, wouldn't you say? it just presents so much opportunity for future gaming, and ooohhh it's pretty. GTA5 is going to be absolutely breathtaking.

21. Carl
    August 20th, 2008 at 6:15 pm

    It's VERY telling on the extremes of facial emotion. Notice how it never smiles so much the eyes squint - and the ones that should never do? Let's call it the "Mona Lisa Effect". There was a YouTube video floating around a few days ago that had much better facial extremes but they were much more cartoony characters.

    We've come a long way, but we have a long way to go.

    Right now it might be okay for people chatting in the background of a movie scene, like a crowded cafe. They're still essentially mo-capping the body movements, though.

22. DB
    August 20th, 2008 at 6:35 pm

    The eyes do look pretty good, but the sides of her mouth don't move enough. I think the problem is just that there's so much subtelty to the face that it would take a super long time to get it all. And it's always the mouths that bother me the most, it seems.

23. JamesM
    August 20th, 2008 at 6:59 pm

    The tech demo video on their company site is actually funnier and more interesting.

    http://www.image-metrics.com/

    Take a look at that one. For something that is a rendering based on video recordings rather than motion capture... it's actually quite stunning.

    The big giveaways tend to be the lack of frown lines/wrinkles and such, but it's still impressive given the lack of super expensive equipment used in the process.

24. Blaze
    August 21st, 2008 at 9:18 am

    Ummm, vintagek8, they are getting the idea's about how the video was made FROM the video. She plainly states that a live actress was used before the rendering....

    Maybe another look is warranted?

25. Els
    August 21st, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    It's weird that no one's mentioned that she looks like a healthy-weighted Keira Knightley. Heh.

26. jea
    August 21st, 2008 at 10:33 pm

    she looks like natalie portman

27. ted
    August 22nd, 2008 at 8:52 am

    I would have been fooled, but yeah, there were things wrong with the face. The eyes have a vacant look - as if she were high - or maybe a porn star.

    The mouth doesn't quite do what a mouth should do.

    Parts of the video are the distractions - the kind of smoke and mirrors that magicians use to create the illusion. It kind of cheapens what they're trying to do.

    The video at their site was interesting, but it was not as effective - looked more like Shrek movements.

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