Artificial intelligence in digital visual effects

• Main Author: Ong, Victor
• Other Authors: Benjamin Seide
• Format: Thesis-Master by Research
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Visual arts and music::Film; Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Computing methodologies::Artificial intelligence
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/151632
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Visual effects (VFX) are today’s special effects in films brought about by digitisation. Due to the increased accessible number of tools and technologies available the creation, manipulation and illusion of such effects continuously develop in photorealism and believability. Visual effects have been used to create imaginative and realistic characters, or even replace actors and backgrounds using techniques that result in an almost seamless integration that appear as if shot with the live-action elements. Looking to the future, Artificial Intelligence (AI) development is growing. These deep learning systems can greatly assist if not, replace existing visual effects industry processes. The automation of rotoscoping in the case of Rotobot allows the reduction of industry-wide straightforward but laborious processes. Deep Video Portraits, also commonly known as deepfakes, will allow AI to process the facial movements data from a source actor to move facial features of a still portrait image of a target actor with realistic results. This dissertation investigates the possibilities when AI applications can be used in the field of visual effects - How will laborious or complex tasks be done differently to ease production time and improve efficiency or cost-effectiveness, leading to the outlook that most of the established visual effects workflows could eventually be replaced. Does having accessible AI technology in the future mean anyone outside of the visual effects profession can create high-quality film effects? It is this exploration that asks the question: How will the visual effects industry change with AI?