Digital Ira, rendered in real-time on an NVIDIA Titan GPU


In 1970, robotics professor Masahiro Mori coined the phrase "uncanny valley." The core of the hypothesis states that as robots become more human-like in appearance, our emotional response to them grows more positive. That is, until the robot appears just one shade shy of being human; at that point we experience a feeling of uncanniness and even revulsion. You may have experienced this yourself by witnessing Angelina Jolie in "Beowulf" or playing Rockstar and Studio Bondi's 2011 video game L.A. Noire.

Here's an excellent and humorous visual description of the uncanny valley from @Kristen_Maxwell:

One of the steepest challenges for computer animators and game developers is crafting realistic human characters without dropping their audience off the proverbial cliff of the uncanny valley. At the annual GPU Technology Conference this week, NVIDIA demonstrated "Face Works," a technology made possible by their Titan graphics card. It's a technology that may end up shielding our eyes from the uncanny valley forever.

NVIDIA defines Face Works as “advanced real-time character performance.” They're able to take 32GB of facial data (the bump maps, texture maps, lighting, expressions, etc) and compress it down to 400MB in a new way of rendering facial expression. Considering that it takes an 8000-instruction long program to render each pixel on Ira's face, that's quite an achievement.

As you'll see in the video demonstration below, Digital Ira has lifelike traits without dropping off the creepy cliff of the uncanny valley. You can see his pores, imperfections in skin tone, and realistic reflections in the eyes. Also look for the translucence in his ears when they're heavily lit, the furrowing of eyebrows, and facial stubble.

There's even more to pay attention to in terms of lighting. Human skin doesn’t just bounce light; light scatters underneath our skin and moves in many directions. Shadows roll around the curves of the face.

Figure 2: NVIDIA's version of the uncanny valley

Figure 2: NVIDIA's version of the uncanny valley

Incredible as the still shot of Ira is near the top of this article, the illusion is usually shattered when it comes to speech. Tying in vocalization with smoothly transitioned expressions and convincing emotions is no easy feat. But you'll be sufficiently impressed -- the demo actually reminded me of watching Brent Spiner's Data in "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Oh, and the "white guy dancing" impression is classic.

(If you want to skip directly to the Digital Ira demonstration, click here or forward the video to 8:37.)
