You may have heard of Ira, the bald guy that keeps popping up in some next-gen tech videos from Nvidia and Activision. The technology has taken a step closer to achieving what would look a lot more like believable artificial characters as game lovers now get to render Digital Ira on their own PC with the requisite hardware.
"Ira represents a big leap forward in capturing and rendering human facial expression in real time, and gives us a glimpse of the realism we can look forward to in our favorite game characters," Nvidia says about its release of an interactive demo of the tech. Users can adjust the settings, lighting and shaders used on Ira's face.
Nvidia says the required hardware should be a GTX 670 or higher, although it can still work on slower and older cards if they're CUDA capable, DirectX 11 devices. Gamers can download the 309MB tech demo directly from NVIDIA.
Nvidia says the tech was developed with a new state-of-the-art method of performance capture using a light stage and not in the traditional style of supergluing mesh of balls to an actor's face.
"This demonstration highlights the state of the art in performance capture. All Ira''s motions were acted out in a "light stage" at the Institute for Creative Technology at USC. The team there headed by Dr. Paul Debevec is able to photographically capture facial geometry, surface detail, and lighting information of an actor without any of the traditional tricks of face markers or special makeup," Nvidia explains. "This light stage data is pulled into NVIDIA''s demo engine, and using FaceWorks rendering technology we witness a realism of human facial rendering never before seen in real time. FaceWorks shading gives Ira lifelike skin, eyes, lips and teeth. Adaptive tessellation keeps the curves of his face perfectly smooth."