Digital Look-alike

Human image synthesis is technology that can be applied to make believable and even photorealistic renditions of human-likenesses, moving or still. It has effectively existed since the early 2000s. Many films using computer generated imagery have featured synthetic images of human-like characters digitally composited onto the real or other simulated film material. Towards the end of the 2010s deep learning artificial intelligence has been applied to synthesize images and video that look like humans, without need for human assistance, once the training phase has been completed, whereas the old school 7D-route required massive amounts of human work
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Timeline of human image synthesis

* In 1971 Henri Gouraud made the first CG geometry capture and representation of a human face. Modeling was his wife Sylvie Gouraud. The 3D model was a simple wire-frame model and he applied the Gouraud shader he is most known for to produce the first known representation of human-likeness on computer.
* The 1972 short film ''A Computer Animated Hand'' by Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke was the first time that computer-generated imagery was used in film to simulate moving human appearance. The film featured a computer simulated hand and fac
(watch film here)

* The 1976 film ''Futureworld'' reused parts of ''A Computer Animated Hand'' on the big screen.
* The 1983 music video for song Musique Non-Stop by German band Kraftwerk aired in 1986. Created by the artist Rebecca Allen, it features non-realistic looking, but clearly recognizable computer simulations of the band members.
* The 1994 film The Crow was the first film production to make use of digital compositing of a computer simulated representation of a face onto scenes filmed using a body double. Necessity was the muse as the actor Brandon Lee portraying the protagonist was tragically killed accidentally on-stage.
* In 1999 Paul Debevec et al. of USC captured the reflectance field of a human face with their first version of a light stage. They presented their method at the SIGGRAPH 2000

* In 2003 audience debut of photo realistic human-likenesses in the 2003 films ''The Matrix Reloaded'' in the burly brawl sequence where up-to-100 Agent Smiths fight Neo and in ''The Matrix Revolutions'' where at the start of the end showdown Agent Smith's cheekbone gets punched in by Neo leaving the digital look-alike unnaturally unhurt. The Matrix Revolutions bonus DVD documents and depicts the process in some detail and the techniques used, including facial motion capture and limbal motion capture, and projection onto models.
* In 2003 ''The Animatrix: Final Flight of the Osiris'' a state-of-the-art want-to-be human likenesses not quite fooling the watcher made by Square Pictures.
* In 2003 digital likeness of Tobey Maguire was made for movies ''Spider-man 2'' and ''Spider-man 3'' by Sony Pictures Imageworks.

* In 2005 the Face of the Future project was an established.

by the University of St Andrews and Perception Lab, funded by the EPSRC.

The website contains a "Face Transformer", which enables users to transform their face into any ethnicity and age as well as the ability to transform their face into a painting (in the style of either Sandro Botticelli or Amedeo Modigliani). This process is achieved by combining the user's photograph with an average face.
* In 2009 Debevec et al. presented new digital likenesses, made by Image Metrics, this time of actress Emily O'Brien whose reflectance was captured with the USC light stage 5In this TED talk video
at 00:04:59 you can see ''two clips, one with the real Emily shot with a real camera and one with a digital look-alike of Emily, shot with a simulation of a camera – Which is which is difficult to tell''. Bruce Lawmen was scanned using USC light stage 6 in still position and also recorded running there on a treadmill. Many, many digital look-alikes of Bruce are seen running fluently and natural looking at the ending sequence of the TED talk video. Motion looks fairly convincing contrasted to the clunky run in the ''Animatrix: Final Flight of the Osiris'' which was state-of-the-art in 2003 if photorealism was the intention of the animators.
* In 2009 a digital look-alike of a younger Arnold Schwarzenegger was made for the movie ''Terminator Salvation'' though the end result was critiqued as unconvincing. Facial geometry was acquired from a 1984 mold of Schwarzenegger.
* In 2010 Walt Disney Pictures released a sci-fi sequel entitled '' Tron: Legacy'' with a digitally rejuvenated digital look-alike of actor Jeff Bridges playing the antagonist

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