There are three components to creating a great life-like 3D character. The first component is making sure the character design itself looks realistic. The second component is the full body animation and seeing how it moves – whether it’s stiff, jerky, ill-timed, or even too smooth like an astronaut on the moon. In working with live action, the character needs to have fluid movement to match that of a live character. The third component is facial animation, which is nearly always the giveaway. The facial performance needs to be strong because we know what faces look like and interact with them every day. It’s easy to comprehend a person’s emotion by looking at their face, but in 3D that must be created. It’s not difficult to land in the ‘uncanny valley’ with the dead flat eyes with a thousand yard stare and lower forehead. But as a VFX community, we’re getting closer to mastering this.

Melika as a fully rendered image in high resolution

Building a 3D character can be done in several ways. The quickest way, and which is now becoming the most acceptable method, is to use 3D scanning. The dimensions that come from a 3D scan are accurate, saving a character artist more time to develop the final look of the model. The overall structure of the body and the look of the skin all need to look like a real person. From the hair to the cyber clothing, every part needs to flow naturally. The real life character and the virtual character need to make a person wonder which is which. It shouldn’t even be a question. All elements on the screen should look real – right out of our world – and not polygons or pixels.

When using a motion capture system to create and capture the movement of a character, the only decision to make is to find a system you feel best serves your needs and your budget. As time goes on the prices will fall as more and more characters are done this way. There are systems on the market if all you need is a simple walk or run, however, in most cases there is a need for custom movement that will go through current pipelines using a standard like Autodesk MotionBuilder. This industry has had some vast improvements over the last years, especially with movies like Avatar and The Lord of the Rings. It was a combination of technology and talent that allowed the Mocap movements to translate so well into the final result.

The last piece is the facial performance capture. If not done correctly, the upper part of the face (dead eyes or a low forehead) could give it all away. It takes time and talent to get this right, not to mention the cost. Now that we’re offering full body motion capture systems and services, our next stop on the road will be facial performance capture. Naturally all this technology blends together to create 3D effects that look entirely real.

Good luck in 2015 to all of you on your search for the best and most cost effective service that meets your delivery times, and gives you the product you need.

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