Disney has revealed his biggest secret, at least the one that keeps his actors forever young in movies. And, of course, his recipe for success is based on a sophisticated AI program now coming to light that is helping home production cut down on post-production processes. Do we have the future or the present cinema?
Disney, with its various franchises, has tried everything in technology. The most famous of these is related to CGI technology. Mainly in Marvel, which we’ve already seen with an unreliable result in She Hulk, but also in Star Wars, this novelty even managed to revive characters who died before they could finish some of the House’s titles. However, this is a long and expensive process; so much so that in an attempt to save on productions, these groups have become the main victims of haste and inspections. That’s why, Disney needs better methods to ensure the survival of all of its sagas.. Artificial intelligence may be the final solution. Especially when they stretch over years. And while years don’t pass for fiction characters, they do for the actors who play them. And that, with sagas so long in time, is a problem.
We were able to check Ant-Man and the Wasp from Marvel: you could see a very young version of Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas. Now, with a new movie on the way Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum Mania we will probably have another death of rejuvenated characters. After this, many designers erase one by one the wrinkles on the faces of the characters.
To avoid all this, Disney Reasearch Studios is working on a tool that can help all of these creators, and which we may very well see in one of the home titles soon. If only to save the design and post-production team from a lot of work that can become monotonous. Of course, This is formulated using artificial intelligence, which has been tested for two years.. And while it can be used to make actors look younger, it can also be used to make them look older if needed for different takes.
The key to this Disney-tested AI system is that it can adapt to moving images. And be, in fact, completely convincing and photorealistic. Eliminate the feeling of quality loss between frame transition phases. When training neural networks of technology, something significant for cinema was also taken into account. Actors usually do not look directly at the camera, which makes the position of the face far from ideal in terms of proportions. To do this, they explain, a database was created with millions of faces created using artificial intelligence systems and random creation. All, too, with alternating positions.
Later, with the help of the tools of this program known as Fran, they grew old and rejuvenated. It was a trial and error phase with non-human elements. make artificial intelligence learn as much as possible. To then attribute it to actors or real people.
Why do they look more realistic than other attempts at artificial intelligence? The model does not age the entire face of the character, but studies which elements can be affected by age, based on the structure of the face. When an image is detected, the AI creates an additional layer that is superimposed on top of the original. When moved, the layer moves with the actor; if it changes the rictus, there will also be a modification of the wrinkles. It also means that the actor’s real personality is not lost without feeling too artificial on the big screen.
