Why it’s so hard to make CGI skin look real
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- Опубліковано 18 січ 2025
- Realistic-looking skin isn’t all that different from realistic-looking skim milk.
In the above video, Vox’s Phil Edwards looks at why realistic CGI skin is so hard for visual effects artists to master. Weta Digital’s Nick Epstein and Luxion’s Henrik Wann Jensen serve as guides to the parameters that separate realistic-looking skin from the waxy, fake-looking CGI of the past: albedo, displacements, subsurface scattering, and dynamic changes.
There’s been extraordinary progress from the cutting-edge CGI characters in 2001’s Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within to 2019’s Alita: Battle Angel. This video shows a bit about how that happened.
Jensen’s website has links to most of his key papers: graphics.ucsd.e...
Weta’s Alita site is here: www.wetafx.co....
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imagine being called the "milk guy" because of how amazing your milk rendering is
femboy
I am the milkman, my milk is delicious
@@StuCupid phychonauts fan spotted
Dr Verghese Kurien is known as the milk man of India .
I am the milk man; my milk is realistic.
I love the fact that this huge technical achievement is best demonstrated by the difference of Shrek 1 and 2
Shrek is always the deciding factor in many cases
Hyper realistic Shrek 5 😳
As it should be
Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life 💚
@@pmathewizard super duper realistic shrek 6
That the simulation we live in break
Some guy in the supermarket: dude why are you shining lasers at our meat
Jensen: _it's for the oscars_
👍
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@@brick8475 what?
@@FelineRaptor-gv4te he said "Welcome to Gboard clipboard, any text that you copy will be saved here. Touch and hold a clip to pin it. Unpinned clips will be deleted after 1 hour. Tap on a clip to paste it in the text box. Use the edit icon to pin, add or delete clips."
@@Jagar_Tharn What he said
Frankly speaking, Alita's skin looks more realistic than zoom record
Haha another Kid With experience from Zoom
@@HarryKaneIsGoated …did we not all just come out of a pandemic??
True😂
@@ExtraRiceCrispy wdym just came out of pandemic? Are we the only country still suffering with the pandemic atm? :kekw:
...it sounded more dramatic than quarantine .-.
this channel is the best at making me interested in things i would have never thought i’d enjoy
This comment is posted every time they upload a video. Come up with something new.
@@glossygloss472 i’ve literally never seen a comment like this
@@clayouse7665 lol me neither
@@glossygloss472 I think, you're the one should
@@glossygloss472 This guy's just malding, it's normal for haters.
"Because skin stretches!" - Niko, The Corridor Crew
LOOK AT THAT NECK
DO THE PORES STRETCH?!
No, it doesn't
_-Albert Einstein_
P O R E S
I was looking for this comment.
I just noticed the uncanny resemblance between Alita and the Sam Samsung Assistant
Right!
I think that was intentional
I thought I was tripping lol but thank the gods it's not just me
@Lami Avrora correction☝️: Alita fans such as myself might be weebs, but not simps; the people into Samsung Sam are cyber simps
woah
Renaissance painters painted faces using layers of translucent paint. One layer was black.
Usually with oil paint, they went with a green layer.
ok 👍
blackface smh
That's so interesting! Is there a video or book where I can learn more about the translucent paint layers?
But it wasn't realistic enough either
I had a friend who was studying 3D since 2001 (he is now a top consultant to Netflix) and he blew my mind explaining subsurface scattering (we were 15 at that time). The technical problems of early VFX were a matter of not only programing but technology... Renders used to take forever back then!
Blinn's law baby, render times stay constant because more efficient rendering techonology means they can render more complex visuals 😎
@@Abeltonne yep folks still turn on and off subsurface scattering in Blender and Maya and so on
renders do still take forever btw, a lot faster but still forever
Being a digital designer I marvel at thinking how powerful the machines they use in film production must be... when working on the pieces in CAD it still takes me hours upon hours to render so one of my whims is to have the money to buy a really powerful computer one day 😅
@@lordofthesticks0 i had to render something for university
im not kidding
it took me the entire day
‘Hey smoothskin don’t act like you have never seen a ghoul’
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes me wish for a nuclear winter...
Give me cause profligate
Pay taxes
@@bsherman8236 you can't make me
Honestly the Final Fantasy movie skin still doesn't look that bad, specially for 2001
Bad? It looked better to me. And no one can see that except me?
@@T.K.P. I think so too, imo had the best animated skin to date, alita doesn´t even come close
@@T.K.P. more aesthetically pleasing perhaps, as foundation etc blocks a lot of the subsurface scattering. So the FF movie looks like heavier makeup. But look at a comparison for a render of someone with big ears, with subsurface scattering turned on and off. It makes a big difference to realism. That realism just doesn’t always look nicer to everybody.
@@kaitlyn__L i know, i know, all rendering is good, but they are changing things differently, so all in all, big data for small changes.
@Shashwat while I agree alita looks better, it isnt because nostalgia. Its because people have opinion.
It's not hard for Mark Zuckerberg
Best. Comment. Ever.
This is golden
💯
true
MAN U KILLED IT
These are essentially no different than an oil painting artist
You have to apply all the blue and red and green shades/tones underneath the “pink” skin tones, simply because those colors do exist underneath us without us really being aware
This is all amazing stuff
“A cookie guy” you can’t do the gingerbread man like that🥲
Do you know the muffin man?
@@Alex-di8ti the muffin man?
Yes, well... She's married to the muffin man.
@@GoTravelShineVlogs The muffin man?!
His name is gingie 😤
I remember Uncharted 4 was so realistic with the visuals and animations that you could see light glowing through Nathan's ear lobes when the sun was shining, it wasn't pre-rendered either but live as you were playing.
yeah because ray tracing gpu didn't exist back days... and it will be lag if they implement it. that's why they just paint it and dont need to simulate.
Same with red dead 2
YEAH
I haven't played it myself but I saw friends play Uncharted some time ago and I vividly remember the light passing through the ears and how excited I was about that detail
I remember everyone oohing and aahing over Nathan’s pants getting darker when he got wet.
Uncharted 4 was a blessing
The whole uncharted saga was able to make the next game in the saga better than the previous
This made me realize that even before Shrek and Toy Story, Jurassic Park was ahead of its time. Just look at that masterpiece….you’ll be dumbfounded at the fact that those dinosaurs still look realistic and better than most recent sequels.
Grt reminder bro.
They were animatronics, not computer generated.
@@Han-pd8rw there was a mix of all technologies. They would hide a cut between practical and animated by panning past a pillar, windshield edging, etc
@@Han-pd8rw I know that…certain parts yes, not everything.
different technology.. but yeah more realistic than sequel
I love how the evolution of this great technology is shown through Shrek 1 and Shrek 2
Amen
Shrek 1 and 2 by far the best of the series
Alita Battle Angel is such an underrated movie and did not receive the credit it should have. Such a brilliant movie!
It really was. One of my favorites!
Yeah, thats also my favorite. Lucky I could watched it in cinema years ago
It was great and deserves a follow up!!!
@@5504berry No, I’d rather not risk it. Most sequels always end up being terrible embarrassments compared to the originals.
@@kaleycooper9111 My fears as well but keep the same cast and director and maybe they can pull it off.
Rosa Salazar's performance in Alita was extremely underrated. Weta did a phenomenal job bringing Alita to the big screen.
Alita is such a great movie and I really appreciate that Vox took the time to showcase this technological marvel together with WETA. I hope we get a sequel!
I can also only recommend the source material. It is really worth the read!
Back in 2001, Spirits Within blew my mind. It was a huge technical achievement back in the day - it almost bankrupted Square. Of course 20 years leads to artistic and technical improvements, but I still believe that FF was a milestone.
It was amazing for sure.
I'll never forget those first teasers that came out for it. The black dude taking his helmet off and saying, "you ok" It looked so dang real at the time.
I thought so too. The only reason that movie failed was because despite the name, it got nothing to do with FF.
10 years from now we’d look back at where we are right now and say the same things we did 10 years before
If we survive the potential change will be mind-boggling.
Same with apple
doubt it. you see it in gaming. you need more and more power for less and less gains in fidelity.
like compare the new venom from 2021 with the old one from 2007. it's not a big jump.
@@biglevian that’s because the old venom came out in 2018 not 2007 💀💀
@@miaomiaou_ I believe they are referring to the venom that was in Spiderman 3..... 💀💀💀
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was so ahead of its time
Cant believe its been 20 years
Visually, it was amazing, the plot was lackluster though. It's unfortunate that the film nearly brought Square to bankruptcy.
This is why Alita wouldn't be viable through a streaming series. There's just too much time and work required to make her face look the way it does. It'd fall apart working under streaming deadlines.
Wouldn't it not really matter? The bulk of the work is making her model to look realistic. After that is done, it becomes a question of cleaning up motion-captured animations. Still a lot of work, but they don't have to literally remake her extremely complex model every time.
@@laerin7931 Once you have the model its more of a rendering time problem. And nowadays TV shows have huge budgets, certain shows like the witcher skipped 3 years and i will be relased this winter
@@collan580 Even rendering probably won't take that long. Hardware constantly gets faster, so even if it takes them a day to render a single episode, it's still worth it. Although I guess animation work will be slowed down by rendering times.
@@laerin7931 High quality raytraced rendering still takes 6+ months especially if you use the latest technologies. And a Season of a TV show is at least 3 times longer than a simple movie. So while its definately possible to make these shows, you need at least 2 years between seasons to make it.
@@collan580 I have no knowledge in the matter but couldn't unreal engine 5 speed things up?
Waiting patiently for Alita part 2. Great film.
Yes me too, but I don't think they have plans for it, but just read a Lord of the rings series comes out next year on Amazon. That will be cool IMO
@@larsstougaard7097 I have concerns about LotR series. They have the budget and it will definitely look great, but from what I've read so far it sounds like they're trying to do Game of Thrones instead of Lord of the Rings. Like with Netflix Witcher series - great fantasy, terrible Witcher adaptation, like they've read the books, got the sequence of events, but didn't understand what it's all about.
Alita 2 is cancelled by Disney.
@@bezrodnyigor okay not happy to hear that and yes Witcher was a horrible mess. Loved the game 🎮
@@akihokokurosaki N O
O. O ooooooooo
To be fair to Spirits Within, it looks like a videogame cut-scene because it essentially is, being made by a videogame studio and all! ;)
Eh yeah but these days video game studios are breaking that kinda of mold, just look at Arcane by Riot.
Alita Battle Angel is such an underrated movie, it deserves more attention both technicality and story wise.
so true its a master piece in every aspect from the adaptation to the execution
buy those blu rays baby!
I say it deserves the most attention for being not just a great live-action adaptation, but also a faithful one! There's so many scenes in the movie that are shot-for-shot straight from the comic!
Still waiting for next movie😅😅
Agreed 100%. And it so closely followed the manga. Someone (can't remember so cannot attribute it) said that Alita was 70% from the manga, 20% from the anime, and 10% new. It was so well done that I really hope that it builds into a series.
Just a note to the editor; The audio clip starting around 0:58 is out of phase and is therefore silent on a mono speaker. I had to switch to stereo to hear it. Check your videos for mono compatibility, it's an accessibility issue!
Edit: Seems like it is fixed now! Maybe it took extra time for youtube to finish processing the video correctly?
Thanks! I didn't even notice I had turned on mono sound in windows since however long it's been!
+
I turned on closed captions
that's what that was! I was listening on stereo speakers but I must have been dead center because my spatial understanding of the audio was very very strange, and I rewound to hear it a few times from different spots in the room.
This might be obvious, but what is the reason for using mono when you have the option to use stereo?
ikr I was so confused why is there no sound coming out of my phone
Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within was the one that kick-started my interest in gaming. The image back then felt super photo-realistic
It's sad that FF Spirit Within still hasn't received the respect it deserves for being staggeringly impressive for its time.
Impressive but the story, pacing and direction was awful
"How do my cheeks look?"
"Isotropic dude, isotropic"
technology has come such a long way, 2001 be looking like mark zuckerberg, and 2021 be looking like real humans
Thanks. I lolled.
The spirits within was animated COMPLETELY BY HAND, I can't believe this movie is not appreciated enough
Still more convenient and less time-consuming than drawing each frame by hand. Impressive feat nevertheless.
that will blow your mind, but 3D animation is still done completely by hand. Thats the reason you can have 50+ animators on one project
So super amazing
as a 3D artist, this video makes me so happy to watch. While i am not a character artist, understanding how light reflects off of any surface is a HUUUUUGGGEEEEE part of understanding materials/textures and how 3D really works.
For organic textures, like skin, light doesn't actually hit the surface of our skin, it slightly shines through the first layer and bounces off of a second layer of our skin. Thus why the rock in the 2nd mummy movies looks so weird.
I love what i do, 3D work is like an endless void of always learning.
But do the pores stretch? :P
I've been expecting you to show up here :D
Wren!!
Love you Wren!
I don't know. But you know who would? Those Corridor guys. ;-)
HEYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you're the best!
1:32 It's nice to see that Corridor Crew are a staple when it comes to the making of VFX
That combo of the “What joy there is in living” line and then having Alita wake up, *chef’s kiss*
So cool! I’ve not seen that movie, but I recently got into CJ graphics about a year ago and it’s really fun to hear all these familiar terms being used!
Great video!
(CG!!! It auto corrected)
Incredible video. 😊
Reminded me of how much I enjoyed Alita.
Seriously when are we gonna get part 2?
after avatar 4
Alita 2 is cancelled by Disney.
Please read the manga, the manga is a million times better
I would have liked the video to go a bit into how the simulate the skin stretching when moving and how the simulate muscles and bones.
“The Milk Guy” had me dead.
I'm a junior motion designer, so I knew most of the stuff, but this video was very well explained to all levels of knowledge, interesting even for professionals. Well done.
I will admit when I was younger, I did think The Polar Express was a live-action movie.
me too and i was like wait this looks real and not real at the same time and i realized it was animated
Me too lol I thought they were real people. Also that other movie Tim Tim or something
I like how the video starts like it’s going to use the final fantasy movie as the base for comparison. But then the entire video basically talks about the Rock as the Scorpion King instead.
I remember watching the behind the scenes of The Lord of the Rings 20 years ago and they explain how they created the first photo realistic digital character: Golum.
The digital artists learned from actual practical effects artists how to create skin by "painting" layers of color and texture and showing veins, etc. It's amazing 🤩
What's even more amazing is that all of this technology can now render realistic faces in realtime. Just look at Unreal Engine's metahumans as an example. It's mind blowing how far we've come.
*VFX Supervisor:* Sir! We've finally figured out how to make realistic milk! How much do you want?
*Shrek 2 Director:* Yes
Welcome back Phil! Great topic as always. Final Fantasy, manga? I always knew you were a man of culture!
You guys should also dive into the animation side of it....This is the next level that is even harder to create. Even with mocap....something in the human mind knows when something isn't real.
The human mind has been trained for so long to know what is a real human...that when you see a CG human...you can tell something is off. Not by the texture of the skin...I know CG will get good enough to produce photo real skin soon...but by how the face moves...the small twitches in the lip or darts of the eye.
Nick Epstein was a visual fx supervisor on children of men, and that movie’s baby scene was so realistic I cried
The fact that i knew what subsurface scattering is straight away because of corridor digital is hilarious!
I was absolutely geeking out watching this video! Loved it! Thank you!
We need Alita Battle Angel - part 2 !!!!!!
YEAH!!!
I love alita battle angel movie,it has an absolutely amazing story,its one of my top 3 favorite movies
It's quite amazing how intelligent these people are.
This guy and the earworm girl are seriously the only things keeping vox afloat. Great work man.
Darkroom
@@Malik-Ibi nah lol
One step at time, one step at the time, progress demand patience and passion
I've never been this early! Just want to use this opportunity to say, I love your Explained series and Vox Darkroom, but my absolute favourite has to be Vox Borders! I've been following Vox since I was in freshman year, and I'll be going into college now. I really wanna be a host and video producer for y'all someday :)
are u american or indian
@@URANUSguys are those the only places?
@@rj-mu7ns i think so who else uses freshmen
@@rj-mu7ns what do u think then
the detail on Thanos is very impressive as well.
When I first watched Final Fantasy, I didn’t even realize it was an animated movie till about halfway through the movie.
Seriously? They wanted you to know it was CG.
Totally agree
@@W3irdWombat I watched it back then
I was obsessed with Avatar when it came out. My mom didn’t even have to have me mention it- she bought me the dvd right after its release.😭❤️
When they were talking about dynamic changes, and were reading the sentences, I noticed one guy was sort of smiling as he said his sentence. I think that's actually a hugely overlooked factor in this presentation. I've seen a lot of video games that have the correct mouth positions when somebody is practising neutral speech, but something such as a slight smile while talking (or any subtle contextually related emotion) is big for conveying realism.
Anything to bring up Alita. I want that sequel after watching it a few months ago.
This video is really cool and explain really well (even if I already knew some of the information, but that is just so cool so cool to see they are appearling here !)
0:30 to be fair, there are games not, and for some time already, with much, much better skin than that. Some techniques to make skin looks more "real" already became standard.
The next frontier is keeping the body shape instead of distorting it like clay. The first one that I remember put this technology to test was Spider Man Miles Morales, but just as a test with some of his uniforms.
Without even watching, this whole video can essentially be boiled down to two words. Subsurface Scattering
Final Fantasy: Kings Glaive, easily mastered this art. I thought I was looking at a real person during certain scenes with the lighting
This actually helped a lot as a 2d artist, it's gonna level up my rendering game
There are two items that have the greatest impact on how vfx appear that are not mentioned in this video. Time and money. Given enough of both anyone can create completely lifelike renders. Unfortunately, studios never want to spend the money and are already pushing for less time. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes that the general public never hears about.
RIP Rhythm and Hues
This is why Encanto is so stunning to look at, also Soul. They both animate skin so beautifully. I'm even amazed about how glazing on pottery is lit in Encanto.
Niko from Corridor Crew: Do the pores stretch? Sub surface scattering?
Don't understand how a sequel for Alita Battle Angel hasn't been greenlit yet
Spirits Within was so good tho it doesn't get enough love
5:10 Pixar is so good at making real looking animation that I actually thought this shot of the spoons was computer generated in something like a Pixar film.
2:13 hit me hard, just bursted out laughing
Bump mapping and blemishes on skin was a game changer. Proof that perfection is weird. Thank you iD
One of the biggest problems to me with Final Fantasy was the awkward stilted body movements. It repeatedly took me out of the movie. It was clear that they did not use any kind of motion capture.
I think what WETA Digital and Andy Serkis were able to do with motion capture for Gollum in Lord of the Rings really changed the game for everyone after that.
The entirety of Alita left me in awe.
One could only imagine how Alita 2 would gonna be like, given the VFX technological advances being made along the way.
It wouldn't be much. Alita looks as good as it gets.
Fun Fact: I bought 3 of the render farm computers used to make Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. They were given to a university after production in Hawaii. Rack mounted Pentium III 550s in Blue Steel cases.
people that watch corridor know they mention this like 1000 times
one thing to keep in mind when we are watching such footage is that what we see is not simply a cg final render, there is compositing involved and color grading. a world of touchup beyond the 3d final render.
Finally Vox back with actually good videos
This just proves that every detail matters
Well for whats worth, really enjoyed Final Fantasy & Alita.😘.
👍 to those artists that worked on both films.
Finally a video that actually covers the question in the title
0:40 ok Alita isn't uncanny valley. But if there was an area between uncanny valley and normal, that'd be where she is.
Nice work Vox, as always.
“The mummy returns scorpion king is played by The Rock. You wouldn’t know it…”
Bro what??! It’s obvious
the biggest problem of Vox is how short this videos are, I could watch your docs for hours!
Yay, somebody is mentioning ALITA, I lu lu lu loved that film!
These people who made alita are truly amazing
1:22 I’m sorry did you just say mango?
Gotta love the Corridor Digital mention and more glad the comment agrees.
Holy molly I totally forgot about the final fantasy movie. It was superb at the time, I'm totally going to rewatch it now.
Looking forward to the same video in 20 years.
"Do the pores stretch?"
-Niko from Corridor
It’s a funny irony that they try to create the most realistic CG human skin while as real humans want their skin to look unrealistically flawless.