Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1464279
ANIMATION www.postmagazine.com 22 POST MAR/APR 2022 F or more than 35 years, facial capture technology has been a progressive- ly-useful and sophisticated tool in the filmma er's repertoire. From the earliest days of facial laser scanning in the 1980s to recent advances in performance capture, technology is enabling 3D facial animation that is increasingly indistinguish- able from real life. In some cases, it's clear to the viewer that a digital face is being used, such as when famous actors are scanned for full- CG animated movies or for video games. But often now, facial scanning is used to empower post production wizardry and deliver demanding visual effects without cluing audiences in to the magic behind the moment. And the technology is only getting better and more ubiquitous. Facial capture in movies really started with Cyberware, which developed the ability to scan the face of a completely- static actor in 3D and then use the data for computer-generated graphics. For exam- ple, 1986's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home scanned the likes of William Shatner and the late Leonard Nimoy, and used their digi- tal likenesses in a dazzling dream sequence. That opened the doors for visionary filmma ers to use Cyberware's technolo- gy in ever more demanding ways. James Cameron helped lead the charge in The Abyss, which mapped captured facial animation onto a liquid pseudopod. He then took things to another level in 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day with Robert Patrick's stunning, shapeshifting T-1000 assassin, which eerily swaps between human and liquid metal forms. As the decade went on and Hollywood produced more ambitious blockbust- ers, filmma ers needed more sophisticated facial-capture technology. In came the use of facial markers, which made it possible for creators to capture more nuanced facial movements and translate them onto CG characters. We saw them in films li e The Polar Express and Beowulf, both directed by Robert Zemeckis, as famed actors such as Tom Hanks and Angelina Jolie had their performances captured and translated onto the big screen as fully CGI digital doubles. It was clear at this point that recognizable, big-name actors were driving demand for digi-doubles that looked and moved like their real-life counterparts. In the case of The Matrix Reloaded, Hugo Weaving's iconic Agent Smith was multiplied by the hundreds using digi-doubles that simultaneously attacked and tried to overwhelm the heroic Neo. And in King Kong, mocap legend Andy Serkis donned facial markers along with a bodysuit to create the captivating performance of the titular giant gorilla in Peter Jackson's film Facial capture also began to be used in video games, such as Activision's Apocalypse on the original PlayStation, which captured both the likeness of Bruce Willis and his performance using marker-based motion capture. As video games like Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human became more advanced, they made more expansive use of the captured likenesses of human actors, which were dropped into their immersive 3D worlds. Although they were rudimentary at fir t, head-mounted facial performance capture rigs began to be used in the 2000s to allow simultaneous face and body motion capture of multiple actors. Early head-mounted capture (HMC) solutions used sparse facial markers to capture the movements of an actor's face with only relatively low fidelit . However, later HMC systems were able to surpass the fidelity of acial motion capture that was possible with traditional longer-distance fi ed camera mocap systems. FACIAL TREATMENT From still scans in the '80s to head-mounted photogrammetry rigs today, face scanning and digi-doubles have come a long way BY COLIN URQUHART Author/innovator Urquhart becomes a digital character. New capture tools are enabling 3D facial animation.