In the virtual human display space of the Digital Kingdom Beijing Studio, Anita Mui lives in the same space with the people in reality, standing on a horizontal plane, stepping and moving a lot to show herself, just like her singing style back then.

Digital Kingdom is an Hollywood independent visual effects studio. In 2016, the Digital Kingdom entered the Chinese market. The classic visual effects in "Titanic", "Rejuvenation", " Number One Player ", "Avengers 3: Infinity War" and "Avengers 4: Endgame" are all controlled by the Digital Kingdom. The well-known screenwriter and director James Cameron is one of the founders.

Xie An is the sixth CEO and executive director of the digital kingdom after Cameron . On January 6, Xie An, who was in Los Angeles, temporarily accepted an interview with the Economic Observer under the original intensive interview and meeting arrangements. In just thirty minutes, he showed his enthusiasm for the future commercialization of virtual people.

"resurrected" Teresa Teng

This is not the first time Xie An "resurrected" Teresa Teng.

In 2012, the Kingdom of Digital contributed a shocking performance at the Coachela Music Festival. They "resurrected" the rap superstar Tupac. At that time, as soon as the videos of Tupac and Snoop Dogg and Dre sang "Hail Mary" and "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted" were launched, the number of views exceeded one million, breaking the YouTube record for the highest single-day click-through rate.

Jay Chou came up with an idea after seeing it. He contacted Deng Changfu , which is Teresa Teng's brother, and told the other party about his bold ideas. At that time, Deng Changfu thought his idea was good, but he did not agree immediately for some considerations. Not long after, Jay Chou's agency found the digital kingdom and began to truly implement it - "resurrect" Teresa Teng.

That was the first week when Xie An just took over as CEO and executive director of Digital Kingdom. The new official took office three times, and Xie An, who was in power at the age of 27, decided to implement this significant expectation.

The one who held the secret of production at that time was the visual effects team of the movie "Rejuvenation". In 2008, the director of "Rejuvenation" David Finch had a special expectation for the starring actor. He hopes that the Brad Pitt, who plays Benjamin Button, and his own appearance characteristics must be online throughout the process. Suppose that changing actors to interpret Benjamin Button of different ages can easily destroy the audience's emotional accumulation of the character. This is a huge challenge for visual effects production.

With the help of the technical solutions provided by Digital Kingdom, the artist designed three head images based on Brad Pitt's appearance, collected about 120 real-person expressions, created thousands of appearance models, and then adjusted them by comparing the similarities and differences between live performances and expression data one by one, such as eye corner changes and mouth pulling... Later, this technology was also reflected in "Thanos" in the "Avengers" series.

Although he has the above experience, Teresa Teng's "resurrection" is still difficult. The reason is that before Teresa Teng, North American artists had never made Asian faces, and in addition, they wanted Teresa Teng and Jay Chou to sing together, the songs she chose was still a song she had never sang before.

is still in charge of the "Rejuvenation" visual effects team, but it does not simply outline the model, but adds artificial intelligence . At that time, programmers and engineers involved in the project would allow machines to watch and deeply learn Teresa Teng's performance videos in large quantities.

In September 2013, Jay Chou's "Magic Family" World Tour Concert, the duet between Jay Chou and Teresa Teng opened their eyes. However, the excitement at that time was limited to the viewing of technology, and the topic of commercialization had not yet been placed in the focus.

The epidemic, artist

1 has been around for ten years, but Teresa Teng has received varying degrees of attention and market feedback. Xie An believes that the big reason is that the times are different backgrounds.

The virtual Teresa Teng is dubbed by Chen Jia //singing. In fact, the Digital Kingdom can use technology to allow virtual Teresa Teng to interact independently and in real time. However, in the duet with Jay Chou in 2013, there was no interaction requirement, so the interactive technology that could be realized at that time was ultimately not presented. This time at Jiangsu Satellite TV’s New Year’s Eve Gala, Digital Kingdom adopted real-time control, that is, more complex actions capture and render in real time, with relatively high time cost.

Ten years later, the term " Universe " which represents the virtual world became popular. More and more virtual people visible to the naked eye and VR practices have made people in real life shake their hearts: it seems that the virtual world is coming?

Xie An said that the epidemic in the past two years has given the boundaries of the space for human activities. If you move within a limited range for a long time, you will inevitably yearn for the virtual world. The charming thing about virtual people is that they can provide rich application imagination.

For a long time, virtual people have been active in the entertainment fields of film, television, music, games, etc., and rarely come out of the screen. In 2017, virtual singer Luo Tianyi held a concert at the Mercedes-Benz Cultural Center in Shanghai with the help of holographic technology. But Luo Tianyi is a fictional cartoon image, not a real person. On October 31, 2021, the first short video released by an Douyin account named "Liu Yexi" immediately triggered the content industry. Liu Yexi looks like a woman dressed in ancient times. She interacts with people in modern outfits in the video and claims to be "catching monsters". But she is still a certain distance from her vivid and lively appearance.

"reality" is no longer a big problem for visual effects companies like Digital Kingdom. With the help of holographic technology, the Digital Kingdom has brought the virtual people in the special effects to reality, meeting the needs of the film industry under the epidemic.

In addition to the original purpose of "resurrection", such as a stand-in for a certain star to complete a difficult action, virtual people are also solving the problem that they cannot appear in Hollywood to film. "Because the tax burden is too heavy, most of the film production is not in Hollywood, and now they are in New Zealand , Ireland, and even in London. However, during the epidemic, even if celebrities have private planes, they still have to be quarantined when they arrive. In the past two years, a large number of virtual people have replaced the filming needs." Xie An said.

All the whole year of 2021, artists frequently burst, endorsement brands were affected, and virtual people seemed to be useful. This is what Xie An’s new goal comes from. In addition to "resurrecting" the dead real person and replica actor, Digital Kingdom no longer only provides production technology, but will create its own virtual human IP in the future.

"The increasing demand is to create an independent virtual person. He will not let his private life affect any distribution of brands, movies, and songs, nor will he have time and space restrictions. He will not grow old, will not betray you, and sign contracts with others. Moreover, he has no international restrictions and can speak any language."

Xie An predicts that it will take about three years to achieve the highly restored texture of Teresa Teng.

integrates education and service industries

Xie An has his own definition of the metaverse, namely "the Internet of this era". He believes that among the many constituent elements, virtual people are the key.

"The Internet, which was born during the Cold War, was able to form a system of today's scale because it has huge social functions.In the future, everyone will have a virtual stand-in in the virtual world, similar to the settings of gamers in "Player No. 1". "

has indeed increased players. On January 6, the virtual person "Li Weike" received the first round of financing, exclusive investment by ByteDance. Before that, no matter which industry, or how much you work, you can hear the voice of virtual people being deployed. The listed companies related to the concept of "virtual people" have also experienced the ups and downs of stock prices and riding on hot topics because of this term. The trend of

is unstoppable. The "Virtual Digital People In-depth Industry Report" predicts that by 2030, the overall market size of my country's virtual digital people will reach 270 billion yuan, and one of the future development directions of the industry will be virtual idolization. What else can virtual people do? Education. "Can you imagine that if Princess Aisha from "Frozen" is teaching children to learn English, would he be so inspired? "Xie An believes that virtual people can make great achievements in the education market in the future. "When we discussed with investment company , we found that many young people are unwilling to practice a pronunciation with others because of their lack of confidence in learning language. But when you are practicing with virtual people, this concern may be reduced. "In addition, Xie An also talked about the widespread application of virtual people in the service industry. Different from pure voice and machines, virtual people's services are close to the real world.

In February 2021, Digital Kingdom completed the acquisition of 19% stake in stake in Asknet Solutions AG ("asknet") through its newly established subsidiary DigitalDomain Capital Partners S.àr.l. ("DDCP") in Luxembourg .

Immediately following the layout of Digital Kingdom in education technology, and its subsidiary DigitalDomain Capital Partners S.àr.l. ("DD-CP") completed the High-light Event Entertainment of entertainment and sports giants. AG ("HLEE") minority equity strategic acquisition.

Digital Kingdom Beijing Studio virtual human display room, virtual human "Xiao Ai" is controlled behind the back by Digital Kingdom staff. When asked, "Can you touch you?" "When Xiao Ai shook his head and refused. This is because there is a holographic projection screen about three meters in the middle that creates a distance between the two types of people, both virtual and real. According to Xie An, this holographic screen may completely disappear in the near future, and virtual people will appear in every part of the real world at any time. What kind of scene will it be?