Have you ever seen SF-movie? SF-movie needs something to visualize the science fiction, and that medium is a computer graphic. The early generation of computer graphic was rendered only by hand and we couldn’t easily say that was computer graphic. However, after a few years, the new generation of computer graphic appeared; The Star Wars. It showed a fantastic graphic on that period and this made a great sensation. It came out in 1977 and we are now living in 2018. For a long time, the scientific technology and information technology have been improved. Let’s see today’s computer graphic and the future of computer graphics.

▲ The movie, Star Wars that used a new computer graphic technology on that time

Nowadays many movies use computer graphic during editing process and we cannot distinguish which one is real or not. There are 3 main computer graphic technologies they use in common; chromakey, point tracking, and motion capturing. First, chromakey is the oldest but most important thing in computer graphic. You may have seen the green screen in the booth of the weather forecast. They erase the green screen and put another video clip there. That is chromakey. Most of the movie using CGI, which means computer graphic use, can reduce the money and time. By using this, we can take various shots safely, but we cannot express the movement of the camera because chromakey is the technology only erasing the color. If we just put another video, two clips move differently and audiences cannot feel that two clips are at the same space. Thus, we use camera tracking to express the movement of camera. And then, we can see black point with chromakey background and by tracking that point, we can put another clip with following the movement of the camera. Then we can put character wherever we want. Nevertheless, we cannot make someone not exist, so we use motion capture. You may have seen the actor with a lot of dots on body. That is the key of motion capture. The dots move with the subtle muscles and if we import the computer graphic character with the same muscle movement, we can make the character that doesn’t exist. However, there are some drawbacks in this technology. We cannot use chromakey when we have same color of clothes, make up, and so on because the color was also removed if it has same color. In addition, we cannot use the point tracking when it covered with something. Lastly we need too much time to dot on actors' body and we need more dots to render the subtle character. And we cannot easily find the actor to act because it’s too arduous.

▲ the scene which is being shoot using chromakey technology

Now, there are some cutting-edge technologies we can see in the movie. The first technology is computer graphic life creation. It doesn’t need to capture the movement of the dots but just make the living things in the computer. That computer graphic engineer makes the character with computer graphic bones, muscles and flesh and appoints the movement to each muscle with deep learning technology. Though, it cannot easily make the expression of the face. Thus, there is another technology to express. The AI realizes the part of the face and can make the same face of a real person by analyzing. Google has already made this technology and was given a congratulatory message of the president, Obama and made the world surprised.

▲ the Korean movie that used cutting-edge computer graphic technology

There are more computer graphic technologies coming out and in the immediate future, we can see computer graphic world which is more realistic than real. Though, many people worry about the moment that people cannot distinguish the real and fake. A highly difficult problem will appear and we cannot believe the real. I think in the same way with them but I also think that technologies can make the world better. When we use this technology in a good way, we can experience the happiest future with great visual.

April 14th, by 최진호