Science and Filmmaking

University in the USA were awarded an Oscar. These researchers, led by Steve Marschner, were from the field of Computer Graphics at Stanford. They were part of a growing cohort of computer scientists that has become fundamental to moviemaking. Films have shown that it is possible to use CGI to make actors look younger, older, weaker or stronger than they actually are in a surprisingly realistic manner. At least, it is possible if the altered actors are not filmed too closely. This is because the difficulty of recreating the textures of both skin and fabric means that the effect is less convincing when seen close up. The work of Marschner and his colleagues has greatly improved the accurate and realistic modeling of both skin and fabric. They recognized that one of the difficulties of creating lifelike characters in the computer world is that in CGI the characters’ skin is opaque (two-dimensional) whereas real skin is in fact translucent (three-dimensional), that is to say it is semi-transparent. Marschner and his colleagues received the Oscar for their work in successfully producing a CGI model that simulates translucency; this is when light penetrates skin and then scatters below the skin’s surface before re-emerging. This…