The annual Game Developers Conference is on at the moment, and amongst all of the standard industry talk, folks are showing off some absolutely ridiculous looking graphical power.
We’re already at a stage where graphics in games are getting pretty realistic, but this stuff is honestly beginning to come out on the other side of the Uncanny Valley. Almost.
Epic Games, the folks behind the exceedingly popular title, Fortnite, have been using the Unreal Engine to produce some insanely lifelike graphics. For those who aren’t up on gaming lingo, Unreal Engine is a tool that many developers use to create games.
The most impressive thing to come out of Epic’s presentation was a video featuring what they call a “synthetic human” named Siren, who is based on a performance by Chinese actress, Bingjie Jiang.
In other words, the actress performed the scene in front of a heap of motion capture equipment, and then inserted into Unreal and turned into a 3D rendered video. Check it out below.
Crazy, no? The video teeters a confusing line between fascinating and eerie. Either way you slice it, the technology is a huge leap forward in terms of graphical power.
The company also worked with renowned motion capture actor, Andy Serkis, taking his movements and turning them into some kind of monster fish man. Check it out.
Of course, it’s going to be a while before consumer hardware catches up with the kind of processing power needed to render images like this, but it’s only a matter of time. At the very least, it means CGI in movies will take a huge step up in quality.
The future of gaming is looking awesome, folks. I can’t wait for the Serkis fish man to show up as a boss in a weird Hideo Kojima game.
