“The shark still looks fake.”

With computer-generated films such as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Polar Express, and Beowulf, it’s often been asked if film studios will even need actors in the near future. After the video recently released by 3D animation company, Image Metrics, people are pondering this very question yet again. Have modern digital effects numbered the days of the Screen Actors Guild as we know it? I say it’s doubtful.

I won’t deny that the clip above looks impressive. I’d originally seen it without reading any reference to what it was demonstrating, so I admit that for the first 10 seconds I was fooled before figuring out that the face was a simulation. What tipped me off was how Emily’s eyes appeared to float over her face. And like most life-like CGI that I’ve seen, her lips move as if the edges were pulled by external strings, rather than contracted by the muscles that form them.

My nitpicks aside, CGI may eventually recreate natural movement to the point of near-perfection. However, our human brains may not allow us to accept it as such. There’s a theory known as “The Uncanny Valley” which suggests that the more “real” that an artificial image is made to look, the more our minds will reject it-or be repulsed by it. As you can see from the chart at right, a moving CG image is able to fool us more than a static image, but only up to a certain point when enough visual anomalies distort our ability to believe what we see far beyond an equivalent image that is static. Either way, it can be creepy.

Assuming that everything above is complete psycho-babble, the knowledge that perfect artificial imagery is possible still has one obstacle keeping it from becoming standard practice: Money. Hollywood and the video game industry are all about money. While CGI has been an excellent tool for augmenting an actor’s appearance (like the incredible de-aging job done on X-Men 3), it’s yet to compete with cost-effective, traditional principle photography.

The technology being developed by Image Metrics is little more than an alternative to motion capture; original footage of the real Emily still needs to be shot for the software to imitate. Some people are referring to the process as “digital rotoscoping”. One way or another, the person that’s being digitally rendered will need to be hired, whether it’s for motion capture, voice over, or just likeness rights. Attempting to produce a film “starring” a specific actor without any artistic contribution from that actor would be nothing more than a performance of another person (or that of a digital puppet) who is wearing a mask.

While one day we may all be replaced by robots for laborious tasks (”Dey took ahr jerbs!”), we may yet have a way to go before our culture and art (if you regard video games as such) are so convincingly manufactured. And besides, great games aren’t all about graphics anyway…right?