Super-detailed CGI human skin could finally cross the uncanny valley, bring realistic faces to games and movies

Computer technology has grown ever more advanced in recent decades, but we reached an impasse a while back where technology collided with biology in an unexpected way. Trying to create digital versions of human faces usually resulted in something bizarre or downright disturbing. The phenomenon, known as the uncanny valley, is still vexing for the movie and game industries. However, a team led by Abhijeet Ghosh and Paul Debevec of the University of Southern California (USC) has developed a method to make artificial faces even more real, perhaps crossing the uncanny valley. It turns out the answers were only skin-deep.

The human brain is precisely tuned to understand what a face is supposed to look like. These subtle cues are deeply ingrained and when we find them missing, the response is often viscerally negative. It can be as simple as muscles around the eyes contracting oddly, or the way lips part during speech. Science is getting closer to nailing down the mechanical processes, but the USC team is tackling the most challenging aspect — skin.

It turns out modeling the reflection of light on skin is extremely complicated because skin itself is extremely complicated. It’s a patchwork of bumps, pores, blemishes, and tiny wrinkles that creep in as you approach middle age. When these details are missing, digital skin doesn’t look real and we venture into uncanny valley territory no matter how accurate the movements are. The technique being developed at USC more accurately simulates skin in a few ways, the first has to do with the lighting.

Each simulated light source is split into four rays — one that bounces off the epidermis, and three others that penetrate the skin to different depths before being scattered. The result is a more natural sheen with realistic shadows.

To make this technology really work, the team also cranked up the level of detail for CGI skin. Using a special scanner, Ghosh and Debevec took extremely high resolution images of human skin from volunteers’ cheeks, chins, and foreheads. Each pixel in the images contained an area only 10 micrometers across (that’s 0.00001 meters, by the way). At this level of detail, a single skin cell is only three pixels wide on average.

The scans were used to generate incredibly detailed 3D renders of skin. When combined with the new simulated lighting, the results are incredibly impressive. The CGI network of pores and bumps make the faces look almost real as the artificial light plays across them.

There has been intense interest from game developers and Hollywood as this project has proceeded. The CGI blockbuster Avatar used a rudimentary version of the USC technology to make the film’s blue-skinned aliens more realistic. Activision and Nvidia have been collaborating with USC in hopes of developing a software package that can generate photorealistic faces on consumer hardware like game consoles and PCs. The day might be fast approaching that your in-game avatar looks completely real in every way that matters.

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It’s dead, Jim! Sprint iDEN has finally been shut down

At 12:01am US/EDT yesterday, Sprint turned off the iDEN network nationally. With the iDEN network shut down, the next step for Sprint is to reuse the iDEN spectrum for 3G/4G services.

Sprint’s shutdown of iDEN service ends the eight-year period of Sprint owning and running Nextel’s iDEN network in the United States. The period began with mismanagement, culture clashes between Nextel and Sprint, and divestitures of international operations that helped iDEN grow in the Americas. It was complicated by Sprint’s work to determine its 3G upgrade path (which it wound up choosing CDMA2000 1X EvDO) and its efforts to consolidate and get out of the DSL business (which became Embarq, now part of CenturyLink).

By the end of 2010, Sprint’s reputation was in tatters, and it vowed to deliver on its promises of shutting down iDEN and using the spectrum for 3G and 4G service. Now, it can begin the fulfill that promise through its Network Vision program.

With the iDEN network being turned off, Sprint is now free to fully utilize the ESMR 800 spectrum for CDMA 1X and LTE service, which it gained approval for last year. Consequently, Sprint will become the third national operator with the ability to offer widespread rural 4G service. In most of Sprint’s current footprint, Sprint will be able to offer CDMA 1X and 5MHz LTE.

However, there are some complications with that. Because the United States is bordered by Canada and Mexico, Sprint has to be careful about interference Mike by Telus at the Canadian border and Nextel Mexico at the Mexican border.

Some of the direct border areas (like at the Great Lakes and Northwest Washington) will not permit more than CDMA 1X and 1.4MHz LTE to operate there. For the time being, I suspect these areas will only have CDMA 1X, since they are urban areas where Sprint’s PCS G block covers them with LTE quite well. Other border areas (like the Southwest border, stretching from California to Texas) will permit CDMA 1X and 3MHz LTE.

Borders are not the only problem areas, though. Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia are limited to 3MHz LTE because the ESMR band is further divided between Sprint and SouthernLinc (owned by Southern Company, an electric power utility company). SouthernLinc recently began offering 3G service through an indirect wholesale agreement with T-Mobile, and it is expected that it will transition iDEN to LTE in the future, though no plans have been announced yet.

Regardless of these issues, Sprint has been quietly working to prepare for the activation of CDMA 1X and LTE on ESMR. Virtually every Sprint subscriber using a phone released by Sprint in the last three years will support at least CDMA 1X on ESMR. New devices supporting LTE on ESMR are coming in a few months.

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Super-detailed CGI human skin could finally cross the uncanny valley, bring realistic faces to games and movies

Computer technology has grown ever more advanced in recent decades, but we reached an impasse a while back where technology collided with biology in an unexpected way. Trying to create digital versions of human faces usually resulted in something bizarre or downright disturbing. The phenomenon, known as the uncanny valley, is still vexing for the movie and game industries. However, a team led by Abhijeet Ghosh and Paul Debevec of the University of Southern California (USC) has developed a method to make artificial faces even more real, perhaps crossing the uncanny valley. It turns out the answers were only skin-deep.

The human brain is precisely tuned to understand what a face is supposed to look like. These subtle cues are deeply ingrained and when we find them missing, the response is often viscerally negative. It can be as simple as muscles around the eyes contracting oddly, or the way lips part during speech. Science is getting closer to nailing down the mechanical processes, but the USC team is tackling the most challenging aspect — skin.

It turns out modeling the reflection of light on skin is extremely complicated because skin itself is extremely complicated. It’s a patchwork of bumps, pores, blemishes, and tiny wrinkles that creep in as you approach middle age. When these details are missing, digital skin doesn’t look real and we venture into uncanny valley territory no matter how accurate the movements are. The technique being developed at USC more accurately simulates skin in a few ways, the first has to do with the lighting.

Each simulated light source is split into four rays — one that bounces off the epidermis, and three others that penetrate the skin to different depths before being scattered. The result is a more natural sheen with realistic shadows.

To make this technology really work, the team also cranked up the level of detail for CGI skin. Using a special scanner, Ghosh and Debevec took extremely high resolution images of human skin from volunteers’ cheeks, chins, and foreheads. Each pixel in the images contained an area only 10 micrometers across (that’s 0.00001 meters, by the way). At this level of detail, a single skin cell is only three pixels wide on average.

The scans were used to generate incredibly detailed 3D renders of skin. When combined with the new simulated lighting, the results are incredibly impressive. The CGI network of pores and bumps make the faces look almost real as the artificial light plays across them.

There has been intense interest from game developers and Hollywood as this project has proceeded. The CGI blockbuster Avatar used a rudimentary version of the USC technology to make the film’s blue-skinned aliens more realistic. Activision and Nvidia have been collaborating with USC in hopes of developing a software package that can generate photorealistic faces on consumer hardware like game consoles and PCs. The day might be fast approaching that your in-game avatar looks completely real in every way that matters.

View the original article here