Nvidia demonstrates potentially revolutionary new face-rendering tech

But is it achievable? And is it better than Quantic Dream's PS4 old man?

News by Robert Purchese Associate Editor

Updated on March 21, 2013

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Graphics behemoth Nvidia has unveiled new face-rendering technology that could revolutionise characters' facial performances in video games, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang declared.

The technology is called Face Works. What it does is condense previously massive amounts of motion-captured performance data into a size small enough that Nvidia's new £800 Titan graphics card can recall it in real-time. (Check out Digital Foundry's Titan review if you haven't already - the card's a beast.)

That motion-captured performance data comes from 156 cameras, arranged around a spherical space, capturing 30 expressions of a person. The smallest the compiled code of these expressions could get previously was 32GB - more than a Blu-ray's worth (25GB). It was far too big to hope to recreate in real-time.

Face Works squashes that to around 300MB. And hey presto, that motion-captured performance can be recalled in real-time.

Huang demonstrated Face Works in video at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference this week.

"This is digital Ira," he said. "Ira is not a recording; Ira is being processed in real-time on a GPU called the Titan."

Skip to 8.30 to meet him.

Immortalising famous people

One application of technology like Face Works could be digitally preserving famous people so that we can continue to interact with them long after they have died.

"Imagine each and every one of us has these scans done," said Nvidia boss Jen-Hsun Huang, "and I frankly think that every important person on Earth ought to have it done. Could you imagine if Lincoln had this done, and we could literally sit there and talk to him and listen to him talk and give that speech in a fidelity like this?"

Or we could use it for conferencing.

"What would it be like if we could use this for tele-presence?" Huang asked. "So instead of conferencing, our words are translated into instructions which would express or animate the avatar on the other end. We could talk to you from just about any angle - you can move around, look around."

Yeah, whatever.

Ira's performance is incredibly exciting. But what does this mean for PC, PlayStation 4 and next Xbox gaming - the obvious implication of all this?

Huang said rendering Ira took around 2 teraflops (2 trillion floating-point operations per second). Nvidia's Titan can handle 4.5 teraflops, but PS4 can only handle 1.84 teraflops and the next Xbox 1.2 teraflops.

As it stands, it's out of reach - but that's running at 60 frames per second in 1080p. At 30 frames per second, the calculations required are halved. With a bit of efficiency-tinkering, it's possible.

Mind you, that's only rendering a face.

Nvidia isn't the only company showing of some dazzling face-rendering tech. Quantic Dream, maker of Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, showed an old man's head at the PlayStation 4 reveal last month.

And, more recently, rumours swirled around a Joakim Mogren interview on GameTrailers TV. There was speculation that Mogren wasn't real but a CGI creation made by Hideo Kojima's new Fox Engine. This could be a ludicrous theory, as many of you below have told me. All will apparently be revealed at GDC next week.

Meanwhile, Nvidia's rival graphics maker AMD is doing next-gen hair simulation.

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