DailyDirt: Making Artificial People Look Less Creepy...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If we're going to have armies of robot servants, we probably shouldn't make them look like scary terminator exoskeletons or creepy rubber-skinned mannequins. It's actually not that easy to avoid the uncanny valley, but that difficulty isn't going to prevent folks from trying to create ever more life-like (yet fake) people. Here are just a few links pointing to some cool projects to design our artificial replacements.

• In about ten years, computer-generated images (rendered in real time) might be nearly indistinguishable from live action video. This CGI prediction comes from an employee at Industrial Light & Magic -- but will the uncanny valley really disappear over the next few years? [url]
• Disney Research is working on ways to make robots behave in a more human-like way, and one of the actions they've figured out is a hand-off between a robot and a human. If a robot blindly sticks its arm out and a person has to place an object into a mechanical hand, the interaction feels very unnatural. But if the robot anticipates the hand-off with some trained gestures, the transfer won't be as off-putting. [url]
• Disney is also working on robots that can be 3D printed quickly and operate with just one motor instead of using more complicated mechatronics. The robots are limited to cyclical motions, but it's still quite impressive how natural the movements can be when a few gears are appropriately positioned to generate animated actions. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: animation, cgi, creepy, gesture, graphics, mechanical hand, mechatronics, robot, uncanny valley
Companies: disney, ilm

SOPA Gets Taiwanese News Animation Treatment

from the hitting-the-big-time dept

Want to know when a bit of news has really hit the mainstream? It's when the Taiwanese company Next Media Animation does a computer generated animation of the story. These videos have become a media sensation. Guess what they just took on? Yup, the battle over SOPA, which they animate by showing Hollywood lobbyists seeking to attack the internet, and showing not only how tech companies teamed up to fight this, but that internet users are pushing back. Amusingly, they make use of the imagery from the UC Davis pepper spray incident to show how Hollywood and the government can "knock out" sites under SOPA.

Filed Under: animation, grassroots, news, pipa, protect ip, sopa, taiwan

DailyDirt: You Can't Believe Everything You See

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

We've mentioned some interesting CGI work before, but the field of advanced video processing just continues to be amazing. Big Hollywood budgets won't be necessary if CGI software keeps getting better and better. Here are some cool clips we've seen.

• Fix your shaky home movies with some image stabilization software. A nice benefit from military research to make your kid's first birthday videos watchable without Dramamine. [url]
• Being John Malkovich could be a lot easier than crawling down some dark tunnel. Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich.... [url]
• Disney and Carnegie Mellon researchers are working on software to make animated faces look more realistic. And actors will eventually need to be Andy Serkis. [url]
• This HDR video system merges three simultaneous images to obtain some really cool-looking shots. The software that creates these videos lets the director choose some nice lighting effects. [url]
• To discover more tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: animation, cgi, hdr, john malkovich, siggraph, video
Companies: disney, vreveal

Animated Version Of TSA Naked Scans And Gropings

from the must-see-tv dept

With all the recent stories of questionable TSA searches of people who opt out of both the TSA naked backscatter scanners and a personal groping by a TSA agent, it really was only a matter of time until the famed Taiwanese news animators NMA stepped up with an animated recreation, which I would say... um... takes some poetic licenses with the story -- especially when it comes to the availability of a private search area for the grope. That said, it covers the story of the "don't touch my junk" guy (and shows picketers with a sign saying that), as well as a planned protest of the machines for November 24th, one of the biggest travel days of the year. Among the more amusing bits are a prediction of all naked flights (on which the people all seem way too happy) and terrorists laughing at our new security measures.

Meanwhile, for those of us in the US (I know, I know, don't blame me, blame Viacom), you can watch Stephen Colbert's take on the TSA security mess, involving "x-raying your x-rated parts," along with noting that it appears the company making most of these devices, Rapiscan, hopefully is not pronounced "rape-iscan":

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
TSA Full-Body Scanners - Jeffrey Goldberg
www.colbertnation.com

Filed Under: animation, groping, scans, tsa

South Korean Animators Protest Banksy Simpsons Opening... Which They Animated

from the the-simpsons... dept

You may remember the attention paid recently to the Banksy-created opening of the Simpsons, which (among other things) portrayed animators working under sweatshop-like conditions, to produce the cartoon. We had mentioned it after Fox issued a DMCA takedown on the video, which had been uploaded to Banksy's account. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but that YouTube video is back up: That said, what may be more interesting is this story about how the South Korean animators who did, in fact, animate that opening sequence protested the whole thing, and pushed back until at least some of the sequence was changed. I will admit that my first impression on hearing about it was to think that Banksy confused North Korea with South Korea, and that does appear to be what some others have said as well. While it is true that South Korean animators make less than American animators, it's hardly "sweatshop" conditions. Still, in the end, the animators animated the sequence in question, but are making it known that they don't think the depiction is fair.

Filed Under: animation, banksy, simpsons, south korea