Computer-Generated
Models, Actors, Singers, Dancers, and Comedians
Suppose you are a screenwriter who
has just written a new scene. You push a button and your computer creates
a set and a cast, who perform your scene with color, motion, synchronized
speech, and sound effects!
Imagine you have just written
some training for an industrial safety class. At the click of a mouse,
your computer generates actors who present and demonstrate the procedure!
Now imagine you are bored with the
choices on television, so you turn on your computer and click a few selections. Your computer
instantly creates characters who act out a "soap
opera" with plot twists and situations you have chosen only moments
earlier!
Film makers and broadcasters
have pursued computer-generated performers for years. George Lucas and James
Cameron are among the pioneer users of CGI (Computer Generated Images).
The high cost of CGI has
stemmed from the labor and skill-intensive way it has been produced. It has
lacked an efficient, high-level language in which to animate
"performers." Languages are on the way, so the cost is coming down!
Photo-realistic, computer-generated "performers on demand" are right around the corner. One
company claims it will soon be able to produce photo-realistic 3-D computer
animation from motion capture in real time!
Computer-generated news anchors,
weather persons, comedians, actors, singers, dancers, and stunt people are about
to become a
huge part of education, commerce, and entertainment. Computer-made drama, music, and comedy will be a
mega- industry!
By converging existing technologies,
computer-generated personalities will also be able to hold natural-language conversations with you on any topic
you wish!
(Read
our companion article on A.I., or Artificial Intelligence, here.)
You may have recently seen or
heard news articles about Ananova, billed
as "The world's first virtual news anchor." You can see Ananova
deliver the daily news by clicking on her name. Ananova
is very good! However, the first virtual news anchors were actually
on "1KTV" as described below:
Visit the website www.1ktv.com!
Their product, "1KTV," streams news, weather, sports, and
entertainment to your computer, where the content is performed by
computer-generated images on your screen! The data stream is in a
specially tagged and encrypted form of prose text, a very efficient data format.
Streaming data in prose, then
"performing" it at the receiving end, is a complex technology but an
elegantly simple concept.
After all, written text is naturally "compressed," as every parent
knows who has ever "performed" a bedtime story. The 1KTV people
have taken one of the oldest client models, local intelligence receiving a
thin data channel, to its logical and inspired extreme.
It is local intelligence using
a thin data channel when a Broadway production company transforms a paper stack of sheet music and script into
hours of great
entertainment.
In the case of 1KTV and V-Star, the
"Broadway production company" occupies space on your hard drive.
With the "script" streaming in at only 1K, the production company can
perform gaplessly and indefinitely! And, the incremental cost of an
additional performance is nearly zero!
The telephone companies, the
airlines, and the radio-broadcast arm of the National Weather Service already use synthesized voice talent in place of humans: can television be far behind?
How entertaining it will be when
this new technology is highly implemented! We only hope that the 1KTV
people, V-Star, and the artificial intelligence people
find each other quickly, because the synergy between their two technologies will
multiply the financial value of both.
If Neil Simon had been born a
century later, he would have pushed a button and tested his plays with CGI
actors as he wrote each scene!
Just imagine: tireless CGI actors
performing screenplays, then singing a few songs for encores, and spontaneously chatting with you after the show!
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