Have a Look at This New Skin Microstructure Deformation Technique!

Even though the games that we play right now are incredibly more realistic than they were a few years ago, there’s definitely room for improvement, especially when it comes to creating humanoid faces. Fortunately, new technologies have emerged that will soon help game developers create ultra-realistic characters that will completely change the way we see games forever. During the SIGGRAPH 2015 event, the USC Institute for Creative Technologies and Imperial College London presented a brand new technique for “synthesizing the effects of skin microstructure deformation by anisotropically convolving a high resolution displacement map to match normal distribution changes in measured skin samples.”

In more simple terms, if this new technique manages to find its way into the hands of developers during the following years, we’re looking at a potential game-changer for the industry. In the videos below, you’ll surely notice the incredible amount of detail present on the model’s face, as a simple zoom-in reveals skin pores and various imperfections. The videos show both real-time renders achieved using GPU shaders as well as offline renders.  Obviously, there are still quite a few more things to iron out, but I have to admit that I’ve never seen a more realistic rendering of a human face before, not to mention the incredibly realistic skin stretching.

Thank you TweakTown for providing us with this information.