Chapter 1: Good looks but nothing more.
August 2001.
"Ah, I love working here," said Chuck, as he watched an animation that he and his colleagues had just completed. PixelStar, the company where they worked, was a small outfit that provided hi-tech, custom animation services to the major studios.
There was a knock on the door, and Chuck turned around to see Bill. Bill was one of his clients, from Cobra Pictures. “Come on in,” said Chuck. “I’m just finishing the CompAnimation for that scene that you wanted.” Chuck was sitting in a room packed with sophisticated computer monitors and advanced computers, several millions dollars of equipment. His assistants sat in front of computers, listening to headphones as they hacked away on code.
“Oh great,” said Bill. “Can I take a look?” Bill was directing the new movie “Star Madness,” a movie in which the President took a trip into space.
“Sure!” said Chuck. “Ok, first look at this. This is a real picture of your actor, Tommy Jackson.” An image of Tommy came up on the screen. Tommy was lean and tall, about 6’3’’, with patrician features and steel gray eyes.
“Right,” said Bill.
“We took pictures of Tommy talking, walking, etc.” As Chuck spoke, images came up on the screen on Tommy doing various activities. “To do the computer simulation we use the software developed here, CompAnimations. The empty scene is shown here.”
The screen showed a space station, hanging above Earth. A satellite slowly moved past the station. Then the camera zoomed into the space station, where apparently a catastrophe had occurred. Equipment was floating in space, and electrical cables were sparking in the air. "Next, we add the wireframe model of Tommy," narrated Chuck. A green wireframe model appeared, that was made up of thousands of triangles. The model leaped into the air, tumbling through space. "And finally we cover the wireframe model." The animation stopped as the image of Tommy slowly covered the green wireframe model. Then the motion continued. On the monitor, they could see Tommy floating through a space station- a station that had never existed in reality. Lasers flashed around him. An enemy appeared before him, and Tommy dispatched him with a flying kick. Then Tommy turned to the camera and wiped the sweat off his forehead. "Whew, I thought this was going to be a vacation."
“Amazing,” gasped Bill. “This looks great! I can even see the small details, like the way that he breathes.”
“Thanks”, said Chuck.
“How long did that take you?” asked Bill.
“Well, to set up all the modeling matrices took about a month. But after that, well we can make this program do whatever we would like.”
Bill stroked his chin. "You know how much time that would take to set up that shot in a studio?"
"That's why we earn our money," Chuck replied.
"Yes, you do earn your money...quite a bit of it!" Bill said sardonically. "His voice sounded really good. How did you do that?"
"We licensed some remarkable technology from IBM," Chuck replied. "It allows us to synthesize voices with extraordinary clarity. We bring the actor in for a day, and he reads a list of different words, with different inflections. Then the computer can find his central voice frequency, as well as his voice patterns. Computers used to sound very flat and mechanical. Now it's literally impossible to distinguish a computer from the real person."
“What if I told you, right now, that I’d like to see Tommy sitting in a chair, and say the words ‘Hello, Chuck. This is Tommy’?” Bill asked.
Chuck walked over to one of the programmers, and explained to him the task. The programmer nodded, and hit a few keys. Within a minute, Tommy was sitting on the screen, smiling, and introducing himself. His voice sounded smooth and natural.
“Pretty cool,” said Bill.
“I'm not sure if his lips were moving perfectly. Also, maybe his intonation is a little off,” said Bill.
“As far as the lips, we can try to make that better. The intonation is more complex,” said Chuck. “That’s a matter of intelligence. Our virtual Tommy looks great…but not a lot upstairs.”
“You know,” said Bill, “my girlfriend is working at StarTech.”
“Oh really,” said Chuck. “I’ve read about them. They make the artificial intelligence engines.”
“Yes,” said Bill. “Remarkable work. With the newest computers they are able to make computers that can have intelligent discussions, and seem very human.”
“What are you thinking?” asked Chuck.
“As a promotion for our new movie…I’d like to attach your CompAnimation to an artificial intelligence engine. And then have the virtual Tommy appear on a morning talk show.”
Chuck laughed. “You just provide the intelligence, and we’ll have the animation ready for you…pronto!”