Avid Tech Develops Face Robot

When the PS2 was first announced in 1999, most of us remember seeing demonstrations of the PS2™s astonishing (at the time) graphic capabilities. Among those demos were video loops showing the power of the emotion engine in which game characters showed realistic, life-like facial expressions. What happened? The promise of game characters coming to life with the emotion engine technology seemed an empty promise as few games, if any, incorporated this feature. However, the promise may still yet be fulfilled with the announcement by Avid Technologies™ new Face Robot. Avid describes their new software as, “the industry™s first software application dedicated to the creation of believable facial animation for high-end film, post and games productions. This new program will be able to interface with all mainstream 3D graphics programs. Michael Isner, lead of the Face Robot development team said, The main objective behind developing Face Robot is to maximize the life-like appearance of a face while minimizing the difficulty of getting there. By working closely with top animators in the industry, we [have] delivered a tool that is dedicated to enhancing the artistic approach to a 3D workflow. While the news of Avid™s new Face Robot may not seem too earthshaking, it may be the link to the movie industry™s eventual crossover to pure digital film content. Industry watchers have predicted that films in the future will be totally produced in the digital realm ” the settings, people, backdrops, everything. The movie set would be within the cases of computers. The possibility of resurrecting old film stars and having them star in present day movie scenarios would take nothing more than digitizing the person™s physical features, voice, and very importantly, the facial mannerisms. In any event, the realism of video games and digital effects continues to expand, and that’s good news for all of us.