First of all, the Japanese people are awesome. Second of all, I’m against the idea of putting myself in a video game because I don’t want to spend an hour being a bad-ass warrior and then stop playing and get back to my non-bad-ass life. Third, “The Polar Express” the movie freaked me the hell out.
See what I’m getting at here? No? Lemme connect the dots. MotionPortrait Inc. has developed technology that allows them to create a 3D avatar of a person based on nothing more than scanning a single photograph into the system. Checking out this site will show you the creepy results.
It’s pretty impressive, given that it’s based on a simple frontal shot of a face. Will inclusion of photorealistic characters in a game improve the experience? I don’t think so. Either the models will be so realistic they’ll be distracting, or you’re going to be so immersed in playing the game that you won’t even care. As far as expressiveness, there’s always something missing above the level of the mouth. There are hundreds of tiny facial movements that never get included, and their absence makes all the difference. So it’s not a matter of graphical fidelity; it’s a matter of animation. Someday we’ll climb out of the Uncanny Valley, but until that day expect to see more of this kind of thing.
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