In recent years, advancement in dedicated graphics processing hardware has allowed entertainment content to also take a leap in visual quality. Speaking specifically of video games, it is clear that those who bet on “realistic” graphics are refining their results as time goes by. A category that has evolved greatly is facial animation , and Unreal Engine has a lot to do with it.
Last February, Epic Games announced MetaHuman , an ultra-realistic character editor that aims to revolutionize the entertainment industry — not just video games. The first technical demonstration was enough to surprise everyone with the potential of the tool. However, Epic isn't the only one interested in taking advantage of Unreal Engine 5 when it comes to character realism.
Ziva Dynamics , a company based in Vancouver, Canada, is surprising the entire industry with ZRT Face Trainer, a facial animation technology whose level of realism is impressive. To such a degree that it becomes difficult to distinguish a real face from a completely virtual one . The tool, which works in conjunction with Unreal Engine 5, has just entered beta and you can see its performance in the following video:
Incredible, right? In addition to taking advantage of the Unreal Engine, ZRT Face Trainer uses machine learning algorithms to create ultra-realistic facial models and animations based on real faces. But beyond the intervention of artificial intelligence, the technology also relies on a robust library of scanned data. In total, according to Ziva Dynamics on its website, this library weighs 15 TB and offers up to 72,000 faces and facial poses.
A tool to enhance Unreal Engine
Although Ziva points out that the ZRT Face Trainer is still an experimental technology, launching a beta is a key step to see the light of day in the near future. Obviously, the feedback from the animators and developers will be crucial to improve their performance, which for now is already outstanding .
If you work in the sector and are interested in trying it, you can request access from the following link. Although the demo shown was created using Unreal Engine, ZRT Face Trainer will not be exclusive to the Epic Games graphics engine .
