CGI Characters Can Now Be Made And Rendered In Real-Time

Most people think that CGI can only be developed and animated with a specialist CGI artist, or an entire team of them. And they’re not wrong: Every CGI projects are time and resource-intensive, requiring a lot of skills and finesses from the artists.

But with the advancement of technology in this field, this prospect can change in the very near future. Cubic Motion - a company specializing in CGI has unveiled a new technology that can render a completely computer-generated character in real-time via motion capture (MoCap).

The marketing for this new tech was impressive, too. Cubic Motion showcased the tech to an audience filled with executives from key companies within the video game industry by first showing a CGI character reading out a script. Then suddenly, the character turned around and addressed each individual in the audience. Needless to say, it was a spooky experience for quite a lot of people attending.

According to a report, the entire set-up was rather simple. The new motion capturing tech was being used by an actor in a studio, the result was then streamed directly to the large screen. That’s the reason why the CGI character could interact with the audience: It wasn’t a recording, it was a real person talking and acting on screen.

Though a bit dramatic, the demo was a powerful way of showing us just how far technology has developed.

Breaking Down the Fourth Wall

To say that Cubic Motion is the first ever to succeed in making real-time CGI rendering would be a lie. The technology already exists, however, it is only used in extremely high budget Hollywood movies.

Nonetheless, it doesn’t mean that Cubic Motion’s tech is not as sophisticated. In fact, it was even more efficient. Since the new tech uses cameras to keep track of the actor’s facial motions and body gestures, true real-time rendering can be achieved. Current systems while offering a certain degree of real-time tracking, some portions that the systems are unable to transcribe will have to be manually animated by hand the old-fashioned way.

The Future

According to the president of Cubic Motion - Andy Wood - the future is bright with the arrival of such technology. Not only will it be able to help make video game characters even more realistic but also cut down the workload of CGI artists, and better yet, someday, people can even insert their own avatar into games.

But Wood also told the press about a lot of his own debatable ideas such as motivating people to hit the gym and be more athletic so that their avatars in-game can also reflect their fitness level or tutors for kids can be transformed into older versions of children struggling with math. These are all very contentious suggestions. But overall, we can safely say that the tech is a solution to problems we don’t even know exist just yet.