超リアルなCGキャラクターEmily

超リアルなCGキャラクターEmilyは新技術を使い，目の周りの皺の出来方まで捉えるこれまでにない微細な表情の変化の表現が可能になっている。またEmilyはこれまで長くに渡って存在していた，人型ロボットやアニメキャラが人間の外観に似れば似るほどリアル感が失せていく現象である「不気味な谷」の障壁を越える最初のアニメーションとして注目される。EmilyはコンピュータゲームのGTAのアニメーションを制作してもいるカリフォルニアのImage Metricsによりアニメーション化されたキャラで，アメリカのソープオペラの女優Emily O'Brienをモデルにしている。これまでの対照的な動きとは違い非対称の動きを重視しており，特に人々に一番リアル感を与える目の動きに制作の重点が置かれている。Emilyは今月のシーグラフSiggraph2008でのデビューが予定されている。

She is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier known as 'uncanny valley' - which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness. [...] "Ninety per cent of the work is convincing people that the eyes are real," Mike Starkenburg, chief operating officer of Image Metrics, said. "The subtlety of the timing of eye movements is a big one. People also have a natural asymmetry - for instance, in the muscles in the side of their face. Those types of imperfections aren't that significant but they are what makes people look real."

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4557935.ece

Her real life counterpart is American actress Emily O'Brien, star of American soap opera The Young and the Restless. Firstly a computer generated replica was made of Emily by the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies who was a partner in the project. The actress then sat inside a sphere of LED lights while she was photographed making 35 different poses. The light patterns allowed the shine of her skin to be captured independently from her main skin tone, with hundreds of measurements taken for each millimetre.

http://www.onlineweblibrary.com/blog/?p=685
http://www.mytopclip.com/play.php?vid=818