Looking Outwards 5: 3D Graphics and faces

3D graphics have come a long way since its inception in the late 1970s, and is prevalent everywhere today. This is most prominently seen in movie and video game industry, where new technological breakthroughs revolutionize the industry every few years. Modern hardware and software allows us to create extremely complex, photo-realistic environments through techniques such as photogrammetry and physically-based-materials. We can even somewhat accurately simulate the physics of the real world to create realistic looking fluid simulations like fire, smoke, and water.

However, despite the extreme amount of detail that can be achieved through our current technology, recreating realistic, believable CG faces remains one of the biggest challenges in the 3D graphics industry. No one can pin-point exactly what it is that makes a computer-generated face uncanny; even if every hair, every pore, every bead of sweat is generated, it will still remain in the uncanny valley.

There have been a few successes when it comes to creating fully computer-generated faces that are distinctly NOT human. The alien race from the 2012 movie Avatar is a great example of how a CG face can achieve a sense of realism and believability. More recently, Marvel’s Thanos has taken the spotlight as being one of the more successful fully-CG characters. However, these aren’t human faces, so they never come across as uncanny.

The most successful CG face that manages to cross the uncanny valley, in my opinion, is the recreation of Sean Young’s character, Rachel, in Bladerunner 2049, courtesy of the English VFX company MPC. The combination of ideal lighting conditions, high quality 3D scans, the painstaking recreation of every muscle on Sean Young’s face, and the amazing performance of body-double Loren Peta resulted in what is probably the most realistic looking CG face in movie history. And of course, a lot of credit goes to the animators that made the subtle facial expressions look absolutely flawless.

Most of MPC’s success was achieved through how the scene was filmed – camera angles, lighting trickery, and so on. The recreation of Sean Young’s character would not have looked nearly as good in any other lighting condition or environment. 3D graphics technology has yet to conquer the challenge that is the human face.