Source: Global Network
Digital Kingdom Group Co., Ltd. , one of the world's largest virtual reality (VR) experience service providers, announced that its independently developed face capture system Masquerade has recently completed iteration and officially launched the 2.0 version used in games, dramas and commercial advertising fields. This iteration marks that facial capture technology based on the system is sufficient to assist game developers, episodes and commercial creators incorporating movie-level virtual people into next-generation works. At the same time, through this technology that has created the role of "Thanos" for "Avengers 3: Infinity War" and "Avengers 4: Endgame", the actor's performance depth and emotional communication can be presented on any small screen.
Masquerade 2.0: Digital Kingdom releases a new facial capture system to promote next-generation game creation
With the help of machine learning and training data, Masquerade 2.0 has the ability to accurately capture facial details (such as wrinkles, etc.) without restricting the movement of actors; in addition, it effectively compresses the time cost of shaping photo-realistic digital characters and their large number of performances from more than one year to just a few months. Over the past few years, the flexibility and freedom of the system have allowed the Digital Kingdom to build emotional virtual people for high-quality sensory experiences, including the above-mentioned Hollywood movies, live-action speeches delivered by live-action virtual people at TED2019, and the digital reconstruction of Time magazine around Martin Luther King.
Masquerade 2.0 is the most advanced facial capture system at present. After two years of in-depth research and development, this system has achieved extremely subtle facial capture, including exact lip shape changes and periophthalmic movements. With facial data collected by Masquerade 2.0, the Digital Kingdom is given the ability to portray complex facial dynamics, enriching the emotional expression of games, episodes and commercials.
Create a single photo realistic digital character usually takes thousands of hours to animation, and for game works, the data collected in this process is too dense. The birth of Masquerade 2.0 strengthens the mobility of this process, and visual effects artists can add complex facial dynamics to digital characters at every moment, triggering their diverse emotional reactions throughout the process. In the Kingdom of Digital, Masquerade 2.0 has been used to produce next-generation game works, and visual effects artists have successfully completed more than 50 hours of game screens with ten times efficiency.
Darren Hendler, head of the Virtual Human Department of Digital Kingdom, said, "Masquerade 2.0 is not only suitable for film production, but also breaks through the limitations of application scenarios and extends to games and other sensory experiences, becoming a useful tool for portraying digital characters. After recent optimization, the system can present actors' performances one by one, while retaining the details that had to be abandoned in the previous capture process. This completely changed the delivery process of Digital Kingdom and prompted visual effects artists to drive asset turnover more quickly. In the past, 50-hour image segments took 600,000 hours of processing time, and Masquerade 2.0 successfully reduced this proportion by 95%. "
Masquerade 2.0." 2.0: Successfully reduces the cost of time required to create a movie-level digital character by 95%
“Improving internal processes to provide better external services is always the innovative strategy of Digital Kingdom. For filmmakers, building realistic performances led by virtual people is crucial, as is the case for game developers and creators of episodes and streaming content, experimental experiences and commercials.” John, President of Global Visual Effects Business at Digital Kingdom Fragomeni emphasized, "In the face of consumers' growing demand for perfect images, Digital Kingdom is committed to exporting solutions that are of high quality, simple and fast and adaptable to any form of entertainment."
Digital Kingdom CEO and Executive Director Xie An said, "Injecting Hollywood power into the Greater China market is Digital Kingdom's development vision and goal. Following this purpose, the studio established by Digital Kingdom here has gradually formed a production center focusing on creating excellent sensory experiences. The visual effects artists here will work together to work together with their global business bases to further widely use a number of virtual human technologies including Masquerade 2.0 to promote the integration of local works with international standards."
