The future of computer games and animated films is not in spaceships or dragons or laser death rays, but rather in the mysteries of the human heart. What makes a relationship really work? What is the magic within human bonds of friendship, sexual chemistry, the intuitive understanding of why somebody has just told you the exact opposite of what they meant, and yet communicated to you the deeper truth beneath? We are moved by great performances, either live or animated, by the expression of the inner thoughts and emotions of the characters by the talent of the actor or animator.
Much of the 3D animation and gaming industry will soon be shifting to a new way to create and animate 3D characters. Rather than being required to animate a character separately for each motion sequence (via hand animation or motion capture), animators will be able to interact with software authoring tools that will let them train an Autonomous Digital Actor (ADA) how to employ various styles of movement, body language, techniques for conveying specific emotions, best acting choices, and other general performance skills.
For example, Maxis’ SPORE is just a precursor of much more exciting things to come. The real frontier is neither virtual stunt people nor alien creatures, although those are both incredibly cool, but rather the procedural expression of ordinary people and behaviour, in a way that really makes you care about character development. That‘s the point at which games will break out of a kind of cultural ghetto and really explode on the scene as a powerful new kind of literature for the twenty first century.
Directing digital actors
“Actor Machine is pioneering the field of ADA by developing technologies that allow the creation and directing of emotive digital actors that can be used in linear animation (film/pre-visualization), games, virtual worlds, simulations or live (real time) performances,” says Gerry Seidman, CEO, Actor Machine. “Using Actor Machine Technology, animators takes on the role of an acting coach. In fact, Acting Coach is the name of the Actor Machine software product used to train digital actors.”
Once properly trained, an ADA will be able to take direction interactively from a non-animator, to play many different scenes while effectively conveying changing nuances of mood, personality and intention. This separates the highly specialised skills of an animator from the higher level planning of how an actor performs a scene (by a human director or game AI)
“On the simplest level, a character controlled by the Actor Machine Engine can be directed to walk across a room,” says Seidman. “The director has access to a many types of ‘emotional dials’ that they might choose to use, for example they could turn up or down how tired, sad, happy or arrogant (or combinations) a character is. Similarly the director can control the level and type of emotional relationships in a scene between the characters such as their respective mutual interested, fear or sexual tension.”
Of course these emotive moods and relationships will change over time in a scene to reflect the ‘inner thoughts’ of the characters. These directions would affect the body language, glancing, hand gestures, facial expressions or other appropriate ‘natural’ expressions of the direction. How the character expresses these emotions are based on how the digital actor was trained to act. Unlike blended animation, all motion is procedurally generated so you wouldn’t ever get the ‘sameness’ of motion typical in current games and virtual worlds that breaks the audience’s belief that the character is ‘alive’.
“Directors will become accustomed to working with troupes of ADAs that can interactively play scenes together,” says Seidman. “These digital actors will be able to follow stage directions and sight lines, manipulate props, and effectively express the shifting relationships between characters in the scene.”
Emotionally blocked movement
Actor Machine’s technology is based on the visionary work done by Ken Perlin. “I have known Ken for over 20 years and we’ve informally worked together over the years,” says Seidman. “We first began talking about emotive digital actors over ten years ago. In 2004 we began work on building the core technology based on Ken’s brilliant inventions on digital actors for commercial use.”
One of the simplest uses of immediate value of this technology is the ability to generate path planning and emotively blocked movement. This can be used in linear animation tools or games. “Our actors know how to stop/start, turn, walk on uneven (or even dynamically moving) terrain as well as up/down stairs, sit down/stand up, etc,” says Ken Perlin, chief technology advisor, Actor Machine. “Because this is all procedurally simulated, there is never any skating or floating. This blocking can be done along with emotional curves that would shade the movement. With the addition of ‘intent’ queues (such as interests or inter-character relationships), the paths, sight lines, and body language would be integrated into the movement. Any animator could take advantage of this immediately, especially for crowds or non-hero character animation. With this in mind, in addition to our core runtime engine, we have been developing Maya plug-ins for just this kind of use.”
Actor Machine has gotten strong interest in its technology from game companies, film and animation studios keen to use it in directable storyboarding, and companies developing original webisodic video content. “In discussions with these companies, besides their general excitement about the creative opportunities from our technology, they are very optimistic of the positive impact our technology will have both on production and scheduling,” says Perlin. “They clearly see that they will be able to free their animators from time consuming and tedious tasks, allowing them to focus more on artistically interesting/skilled aspects of their animation talent.”
Actor Machine have carefully been developing its technology so that it can be deployed as libraries in XNA/C#, C/C++ (Windows .dll or Mac/Linux .so), or Java, enabling it to easily be integrated into any deployment platform whether to the desktop, gamebox, or even cell phone.
Truly believable characters
“The impact will be nothing less than a fundamental rethinking of the nature of interactive entertainment, and of visual literature in general,” says Perlin. “Seriously, once they understand its potential, they will embrace it, and will recognise it as a tool for the enhancement of their own creative powers. The process will be analogous to the curve of acceptance by actors and director of the technology of cinema a century ago. Truly thoughtful interactive characters, believably acted, scripted to reveal mysteries of the human heart would change everything. That would be the beginning of an interactive literature. I think the limits of the technology now are mainly limits of belief, of the will to invest in this direction and to build the proper creative tools. Tools need to be created that allow good story tellers, acting coaches, directors, to infuse interactive software with their particular talent. I would focus on building those tools, roughly the equivalent of the Noise-based procedural texture, to allow those kinds of talents to be brought in, to add their magic into the content.”
It is expected that there is going to be a huge explosive growth in the games industry, beyond anything we have seen, as soon as game creators become truly effective in reaching out of the current limited psychological space, and really embrace the larger possibilities of non-linear narrative, character driven situations, willing suspension of disbelief, virtual lives that people truly become invested in and care about. “The way people have cared about Rhett and Scarlett, Rick and Ilsa, Elizabeth and Darcy, Holden Caulfield,” adds Perlin. “That‘s when the field is going to blow wide open.”
Pricing is TBD.
