3-D camera makes animation look real

PALO ALTO: In a darkened garage here, Steve Perlman is giving digital actors a whole new face. A former Apple Computer engineer who previously co-founded WebTV Networks and the set-top box firm Moxi, Perlman is now putting the finishing touches on Contour, a futuristic camera system that will add photorealistic three-dimensional effects to digital entertainment.

The new system was to be introduced at the Siggraph computer graphics conference in Boston, and effects created with it could start appearing as early as next year.

The system could change the nature of cinematography in several ways, according to leading Hollywood producers and technologists who are planning to use the system. For example, it will make it possible to create compellingly realistic synthetic actors by capturing the facial movements of real actors in much greater detail than is currently possible. David Fincher, who directed the films Fight Club and Panic Room, is planning to use Contour next year when he begins filming The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a movie based on a short story by F Scott Fitzgerald in which Brad Pitt will play a character who ages in reverse. “Instead of grabbing points on a face, you will be able to capture the entire skin,” Fincher said. “You’re going to get all of the enormous detail and the quirks of human expression that you can’t plan for.”
The technology will let filmmakers transform the appearance of actors in the computer, raising the possibility of a new form of digital video in which the viewer can control the point of view — what is being described in Hollywood as “navigable entertainment.”

The Contour system requires actors to cover their faces and clothes with makeup containing phosphorescent powder that is not visible under normal lighting. In a light-sealed room, the actors face two arrays of inexpensive video cameras that are synchronised to simultaneously record their appearance and shape. Scenes are lit by rapidly flashing fluorescent lights, and the cameras capture light from the glowing powder during intervals of darkness that are too short for humans to perceive. The captured images are transmitted to an array of computers that reassemble the three-dimensional shapes of the glowing areas. These can then be manipulated and edited into larger digital scenes using sophisticated software tools like Autodesk’s Maya or Softimage’s Face Robot.

“Steve is really on to something here,” said Ed Ulbrich, vice president of Digital Domain, a Hollywood special-effects company in Venice, California. “The holy grail of digital effects is to be able to create a photorealistic human being.” Until now, realistic digital actors have required significant amounts of computing power, at great expense.

“It’s been used in stunts and big special-effects scenes,” Ulbrich said. “Now you can use it for two actors sitting at a table and talking. You have the ability to tell stories and have close-up scenes that make you laugh and cry.” Perlman’s system is a leap forward for a technology known as motion capture, now widely used in video games and in movies like The Polar Express. Motion capture cuts the costs of computer animation while creating more natural movement. Today’s motion-capture systems work by tracking the locations of hundreds of reflective balls attached to a human actor. This permits the actor’s movements to be sampled by a camera many times per second. But the digital record is limited to movement, and does not include the actual appearance of the actor.

The difference offered by Perlman’s technology is in the detail. Standard motion-capture systems are generally limited in resolution to several hundred points on a human face, while the Contour system can recreate facial images at a resolution of 200,000 pixels. The digital video images produced by the system are startlingly realistic.