Remember Corridor Digital, the Los Angeles-based manufacturing studio that made waves just a few months again with its AI-generated “Rock Paper Scissors” anime video and the staff’s claims that the tech may “democratize” the animation trade? That video wound up pissing off professionals who felt it was successfully simply plagiarism, the AI having been skilled on the work of precise, human animators. Well, they only launched a brand new video that units its sights on “fixing” online game faces, and it’s fathered its personal hotbed of discourse.
On Wednesday, Corridor Digital uploaded a video titled “We Try Putting Photoreal Faces in Video Games.” In it, Corridor co-founder Niko Pueringer claims he and his staff found that, by combining the AI face-morphing tech Insight Face with the favored AI picture generator Stable Diffusion XL, they might “revolutionize how characters are rendered” by primarily grafting an AI-generated filter throughout a personality mannequin’s face so it appears to be like extra photo-realistic.
“Video games are notorious for having crude, mannequin-like human beings. If you’re playing a game, you just have to learn to ignore it or accept it if you want to enjoy the game. In fact, when a video game has human beings that are done well enough that you can emotionally connect with them, that’s considered an industry-wide achievement,” Pueringer stated. “What we are going to show you is, in my opinion, the future of video game graphics. But right now, no one has done it yet. So come along as we combine the world of visual effects and video games to show you what the future might look like.”
What follows is a 17-minute video the place the Corridor crew sits round on a sofa and admires the AI “glow ups” they’ve given to characters like Nathan Drake from Uncharted, Aloy from Horizon: Forbidden West, and Big Boss from Metal Gear Solid, as smoothed-out, face-morphed photos of their visages are in comparison with how they really look of their respective video games. They then proceed to recoil in laughter at how uncanny and impassive a few of their very own creations look in movement. Well, Pueringer did declare their tech would evoke a powerful emotional reference to gamers in the beginning of the video. I suppose full-bellied laughter would match below that description. Like a cat bringing a lifeless rodent to its proprietor’s toes, enable us to current a choice of Corridor Digital’s face-morphed online game characters.
Commander Shepard from Mass Effect
Sarah Morgan from Starfield
Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII Remake
Read More: That ‘AI-Generated’ Anime Is A Slap In The Face To Pro Animators
Right off the bat, Corridor Digital’s suggestion that video games with hyper-realistic-looking characters usually tend to elicit a powerful emotional reference to gamers is wildly false. Elster from the 2022 survival horror sport Signalis, for example, is hardly rendered in excessive element, however she nonetheless prompted one of many strongest emotional connections I’ve had with a online game character in latest reminiscence as I assisted her in her harrowing mission. If something, my want to attain a cheerful ending for her (regardless of hating horror video games) was, partially, a results of how splendidly expressive her low-poly character mannequin manages to be. It’s a infantile argument on Corridor Digital’s half to counsel that online game characters are routinely thought to be compelling to gamers in the event that they possess extra lifelike facial expressions, or, against this, that they’re much less compelling in the event that they don’t.
Much like with Corridor Digital’s AI anime video, professionals and fellow YouTubers alike responded to argue that this video wildly misunderstands what makes the artwork type of video video games so compelling to gamers within the first place.
“Great example of how well strong art direction and intentional design, modeling & texturing decisions hold up over time,” Apex Legends senior character artist Liz Edwards wrote on Twitter. “Thoughtless addition of detail for the sake of detail gives us cheap Halloween costume Snake.”
“I really need everyone at Corridor Digital to cut this out. Just go back to doing pretty good for YouTube compositing. I don’t need you guys to weigh in on either anime or gaming,” Chris Person, from the YouTube channel Highlight Reel, stated. “I’m not joking this video sucks so bad, they’re just flabbergasted by the worst-looking stuff you’ve ever seen.”
“It felt like a fever dream tbh in one breath they’re laughing at bad lip-syncing an actual artist worked on and then losing their minds over a yassified video filter that completely changes the character and performance entirely.” 3D character artist George Crudo wrote.
Unlike with their “Rock Paper Scissors” video, the highest feedback on this one” aren’t going to bat for Corridor Digital’s efforts. Instead, commenters are asking the YouTube channel to return to creating pop culture-themed movies as a substitute of extra AI tech “experiments.”
To Corridor Digital’s credit score, the crew acknowledges that the outcomes of their glorified air-brushing experiment lack the humanistic expressions that the unique digital artists who labored on these video games painstakingly sculpted with facets like the connection between lighting and texturing in thoughts. There are some issues a makeshift AI filter merely can’t account for. Hopefully, the YouTube channel will train extra humility sooner or later by not pumping out one other video evangelizing the supposedly revolutionary potential of AI to do creative and artistic issues that people are already fairly good at.
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