Gaming and movie leaders might in
the past have put up with CGI faces with that wax-museum look reminding users
that the faces are anything but real, but this is a new day with advanced
technologies that can make faces look very real. Computer generated imagery
(CGI) expertise can perform facial imagery wonders. A team of collaborators
with expertise that includes computational illumination and photography for
graphics have developed a technique to produce CGI faces that look true, down
to the skin cell level. Call it ultra-realistic skin simulation.
Researchers from Imperial College
London and from the University of Southern California are able to make the
virtual face so realistic that the renderings detail it all, pores, blemishes,
wrinkles, bumps, and shadows. They do this through a special lighting system
and camera. They simulate light reflecting off human skin. Each simulated light
source is split into four rays, one that bounces off the epidermis, and three
that penetrate the skin to different depths before being scattered. Using a
special scanner, they took high-resolution images of human skin from
volunteers' cheeks, chins, and foreheads.
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