Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/552848
j u ly . a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 c g w 5 1 what works and what doesn't. While there is an interest in overcoming the Uncanny Valley, I also have an interest in why the Uncanny Valley exists at all. The more we understand what makes a digital human work, the better understanding we'll have about ourselves. Who founded the group? There were 14 of us to start. It was a wide-ranging group that included independent artists, scientists from ICT, universi- ty researchers from the UK and Australia, visual effects professionals, and soware developers. The original 14 are: me, Mathieu Aerni, Nick Gaul, Mike Seymour, Paul Debevec, Steve Preeg, Graham Fyffe, Dan Roarty, Jay Busch, Vlado Koylazov, Rusko Ruskov, Lukáš Hajka, Angela Tinwell, and Stephen Parker. Have others since joined DHL? Yes, there are six others since we made our initial announce- ment: Danny Young and Michael McCarthy, both working on hair; Oleg Alexander and Koki Nagano, both from ICT; Jason Huang, who is working with the ICT team and is also from Tesla; and Luc Begins, who works on digital humans. What are the criteria to joining? We always want to know what new members are bringing to the table, whether that's expe- rience, insight, past projects, time, and so forth. We want to know their interests in this proj- ect so we can help them make advances in their own work. Anyone who is interested in joining can contact us at labs@ chaosgroup.com. Meanwhile, all our work and data will be available on Wikihuman.org. We welcome feedback. When we say "digital humans," what are we referring to? We are focusing on faces at the moment, but we may continue to explore other parts in the future. Do you do research collaboratively or individually? We are very collaborative. Updates, ideas, and materials are generally shared in an online depository. We also keep a discussion board going that everyone adds to. What are you doing to achieve your mission? I'll give you one example. Over the years, USC's Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) has used its patented Light Stage equipment (from LightStage, LLC) to conduct high-resolu- tion scans of an actress called Emily. The team's first face scan resulted in Digital Emily seven years ago. Through new advancements and team input, the data for Digi- tal Emily 2 has just been released. This is our first major milestone in the Wikihuman project. The latest round of data is remarkably more detailed than what they were able to produce before, giving artists even more information to grapple with when it comes to subsurface scattering, single scatter maps, microgeometry displacement, and so on for a face. Right now, it can be viewed using [Auto- desk's] Maya 2015 and [Chaos Group's] V-Ray 3.0 for Maya. We also provide an Alembic file and an OSL shader. Since this research is ongoing, we'll release our findings in stag- es, so the community has plenty of time to interact, comment, and contribute. As the data de- velops, so do our action plans, which helps this whole process build on what came before. Why is this topic so important right now? From a CG standpoint, humans have always wanted to depict themselves accurately. This was true of other art forms, and it's true for CG. At this point, it's also a challenge many people would like to put to bed. Artists have been working on it since Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, so there's going to be a certain level of relief when we get over this hump. From a scientific standpoint, figuring out what causes us to see something as 'human' stands to teach us a lot about ourselves and how we work. That's always exciting and could lead to other breakthroughs down the line. Another thought that gets tossed around is that while the effort to turn amazing digital humans into ticket sales is nice, a collective understanding of the mysteries behind the Uncanny Valley is more important. The community prospers when we learn better ways to approach our art. Keeping secrets within DHL RECENTLY RELEASED WORK IN PROGRESS ON DIGITAL EMILY 2. " The MORE WE UNDERSTAND WHAT MAKES A DIGITAL HUMAN WORK, THE BETTER UNDERSTANDING WE'LL HAVE ABOUT OURSELVES."