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The correct timestamp of the CGI is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAn_oiZwUXA&t=3761s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAn_oiZwUXA&t=3761s. It's only ~14

The correct timestamp of the CGI is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAn_oiZwUXA&t=3761s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAn_oiZwUXA&t=3761s. It's only ~14 seconds of CGI. And it's a pretty weak showing. The stiff animation and bad lip sync immediately gives it away to me. And the fact that the CGI Huang is shown ~15 times smaller than the real one is very damning. > It's not clear exactly which part of the keynote speech features CGI Huang (which is what makes the replica so impressive), but if you jump to this part of the presentation you can see Huang magically disappear and his kitchen explode into multiple different 3D models. So how much was Vice paid for this article?

jstanley 5y ago
I was going to comment something like "yeah, yeah, everyone's an expert, it's easy to say you can spot the CGI once you've been told it's there", but then I looked at the video and... wow, that really is a pretty weak showing!
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  If you follow the 'VFX artists react' series on YouTube you learn what give CGI humans away pretty easily. Getting CGI humans right is very difficult and few VFX houses, with decades of experience, get it right even with post processing, let alone doing it in real time. CGI Jensen looks like he came out of a 2009 videogame. Nvidia may have the tech but you can tell it lacks the artistic supervision of a proper VFX house so the end result looks like something their engineers put together in a last minute crunch (which is probably what happened).
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    I don't think you have to watch anything to learn what gives CGI humans away. I don't think anyone has actually managed a truly convincing one yet. This is the closest I've seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrHXA2cSpNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrHXA2cSpNU
    - codetrotter 5y ago
      The coolest thing about that video is how good it is, but the second coolest thing about that video is the fact that Lucasfilm recently decided to hire the guy that made it. https://www.cnet.com/news/lucasfilm-hires-deepfake-youtuber-who-fixed-luke-skywalker-in-the-mandalorian/ https://www.cnet.com/news/lucasfilm-hires-deepfake-youtuber-...
    - ubercore 5y ago
      I feel like Deepfakes really count as CGI human though. At least not in the sense being thrown around by Nvidia here
      - IshKebab 5y ago
        nVidia used deep fakes for this.
    - pkroll 5y ago
      Rachel's appearance in Blade Runner 2049 was shockingly good to me. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDx3WwWR6y4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDx3WwWR6y4) On the other hand, I though Tarkin looked pretty good in Rogue One, and for some people he's a corpse. I don't think the uncanny valley is as consistent among people as folks here are suggesting.
      - IshKebab 5y ago
        Yeah I thought Tarkin was not convincing (though still really impressive, especially for the time). I totally forgot about Blade Runner - I agree that was really good - better than Star Wars.
  - sumedh 5y ago
    > If you follow the 'VFX artists react' series on YouTube They should have given the work to those VFX guys, Corridor crew would have done something much better in just couple of days.
  - krisoft 5y ago
    > If you follow the 'VFX artists react' series on YouTube you learn what give CGI humans away pretty easily. For those who don’t want to watch all of it (even though it is quite excelent) the points I remember are: - subsurface scattering of skin - do the pores stretch? (As the face is moving) - movement, especially movement of the upper lip as the character speaks
    - techrat 5y ago
      In the case of the nVidia presentation, it's quite obvious from the video where it's CGI Ceo: Awkward standing position, stiff arms and fairly inarticulate fingers. He looks fairly suspended, as if there's nothing to convey weight/physics in his movements... however brief.
  - christophilus 5y ago
    I can't think of a time when I've been fooled by CGI (though, of course, I wouldn't be aware of being fooled if I was, so it's a catch-22). I really hate when movies throw in a CGI character expecting it to come off as real. It pulls you out of the movie in a way that normal over-the-top action CGI doesn't. I remember watching the recent Star Wars movies and being jerked out of the flow by CGI Princess Leah and some other characters (whoever the villainous old man was in that movie). I'd be interested to see any videos of CGI faces that can fool experts.
    - Aeolos 5y ago
      I get your point, but "I can't think of a time when I've been fooled by CGI" is a tautology: you remember = you weren't fooled. If you had been fooled, chances are you wouldn't remember. There are videos from CGI artists, e.g. Corridor Crew, that break down really good CGI, which is almost entirely invisible to the non-expert eye. That is in fact the best kind of CGI: the one that enhances reality so seamlessly that it's almost impossible to pick apart. Quite entertaining and informative videos.
      - jtbayly 5y ago
        There are plenty of possibilities to be fooled and then find out later. At which point you would remember later.
        jfk13 5y ago
        Although if you're fooled, and find out later, I think there's a strong human tendency to re-write the internal narrative.... "Really, I could kind of tell all along." In which case it's not so clear how you'd "remember" things later.
        refulgentis 5y ago
        You laid out how: if you don't re-write your internal narrative You're right that theres a possibility that someone is fooled and never finds out, and another possibility that someone is fooled, finds out later, and claims they never thought it was real. However, it is very clear that it's possible to be fooled and find out later.
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    > so the end result looks like something their engineers put together in a last minute crunch (which is probably what happened) They actually say that’s what happened in the video on it.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure that's SOP for Nvidia conference demos. Was in a breakout after the main Jensen presentation and the engineer was talking about how they were fiddling with K8s to get the demo to work right, the night before. And this was the money demo in the middle of the presentation. On the other hand... I actually kind of like a company that half-asses demos. It suggests they're spending their time on more important things.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    > CGI Jensen looks like he came out of a 2009 videogame. Nvidia may have the tech but you can tell it lacks the artistic supervision of a proper VFX hous That's part of the point. If computer software alone can replicate state of the art human effort from 12 years ago, that's what they're showing off. It's not "look how great this rendering is", it's "look how good the AI that made this is".
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  Yep, this. I've seen more convincing Thunderbirds puppets :)
- geoduck14 5y ago
  I jumped around a bit, and I'd say the video looks like a zoom call with poor internet. The portion that was "cg" wasn't too different that conference calls I've been on where the signal is messed up.
elaus 5y ago
After watching the whole making of I also was pretty disappointed of the final result. Each individual part in the making of was pretty solid so I had high expectations. I guess it was the tight deadline (only a few weeks I think?) that didn't leave them any time to polish the final result.
IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
> So how much was Vice paid for this article? For journalists, something like that is quite an accusation, and it really doesn’t help anyone to thoughtlessly make it. Maybe they are stupid, or just have different ideas of what’s newsworthy, or it was a slow news day…whatever. But all of those come down to a difference of opinion, not a statement of fact made without evidence. “Assume good faith” is in the guidelines here. And while it isn’t explicitly extended to the articles themselves, the reason for including it do extend to other interactions. Mindless cynicism leads to the sort of corrosive distrust that’s eating away at civil societies everywhere.
- beeboop 5y ago
  sponsored content and "native ads" happen all the time in news outlets and channels. not saying this is an example of it - though it's possible since it looks and reads exactly like a native ad would
- liaukovv 5y ago
  Modern journalism as a whole forfeited it's good faith credit quite some time ago, kinda like crypto scammers.
- captainredbeard 5y ago
  > Mindless cynicism leads to the sort of corrosive distrust that’s eating away at civil societies everywhere. ...repeated breaking of trust by institutions has earned that. It is unfortunate and it does eat away at our civil society. The solution is to fix the broken institutions and re-gain trust, not to blindly follow them like livestock!
TroisM 5y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAn_oiZwUXA&t=3742s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAn_oiZwUXA&t=3742s
Agentlien 5y ago
That looks like when a typical tv show does a "video game" episode and one of the regular cast members gets a character meant to look like them, but in video game form. It does not look like it was meant to seem human.
binkHN 5y ago
Thanks for the direct link; I thought it was pretty horrible. At this level, if you're going to take the time to show how awesome your stuff is, maybe partner with a talented team to do it on the level of Disney/Pixar.
causi 5y ago
I wonder why the clothing animation is so terrible. Low-budget CGI clothes always slide and float all over the place as if they're frictionless.
geoduck14 5y ago
>> It's not clear exactly which part of the keynote speech features CGI Huang (which is what makes the replica so impressive), I think what Vice ment to say was "this video was SO boring, we were multitasting on our phone and didn't see anything out the ordinary from the corner of our eyes."

jstanley 5y ago

I was going to comment something like "yeah, yeah, everyone's an expert, it's easy to say you can spot the CGI once you've been told it's there", but then I looked at the video and... wow, that really is a pretty weak showing!

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
If you follow the 'VFX artists react' series on YouTube you learn what give CGI humans away pretty easily. Getting CGI humans right is very difficult and few VFX houses, with decades of experience, get it right even with post processing, let alone doing it in real time. CGI Jensen looks like he came out of a 2009 videogame. Nvidia may have the tech but you can tell it lacks the artistic supervision of a proper VFX house so the end result looks like something their engineers put together in a last minute crunch (which is probably what happened).
- IshKebab 5y ago
  I don't think you have to watch anything to learn what gives CGI humans away. I don't think anyone has actually managed a truly convincing one yet. This is the closest I've seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrHXA2cSpNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrHXA2cSpNU
  - codetrotter 5y ago
    The coolest thing about that video is how good it is, but the second coolest thing about that video is the fact that Lucasfilm recently decided to hire the guy that made it. https://www.cnet.com/news/lucasfilm-hires-deepfake-youtuber-who-fixed-luke-skywalker-in-the-mandalorian/ https://www.cnet.com/news/lucasfilm-hires-deepfake-youtuber-...
  - ubercore 5y ago
    I feel like Deepfakes really count as CGI human though. At least not in the sense being thrown around by Nvidia here
    - IshKebab 5y ago
      nVidia used deep fakes for this.
  - pkroll 5y ago
    Rachel's appearance in Blade Runner 2049 was shockingly good to me. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDx3WwWR6y4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDx3WwWR6y4) On the other hand, I though Tarkin looked pretty good in Rogue One, and for some people he's a corpse. I don't think the uncanny valley is as consistent among people as folks here are suggesting.
    - IshKebab 5y ago
      Yeah I thought Tarkin was not convincing (though still really impressive, especially for the time). I totally forgot about Blade Runner - I agree that was really good - better than Star Wars.
- sumedh 5y ago
  > If you follow the 'VFX artists react' series on YouTube They should have given the work to those VFX guys, Corridor crew would have done something much better in just couple of days.
- krisoft 5y ago
  > If you follow the 'VFX artists react' series on YouTube you learn what give CGI humans away pretty easily. For those who don’t want to watch all of it (even though it is quite excelent) the points I remember are: - subsurface scattering of skin - do the pores stretch? (As the face is moving) - movement, especially movement of the upper lip as the character speaks
  - techrat 5y ago
    In the case of the nVidia presentation, it's quite obvious from the video where it's CGI Ceo: Awkward standing position, stiff arms and fairly inarticulate fingers. He looks fairly suspended, as if there's nothing to convey weight/physics in his movements... however brief.
- christophilus 5y ago
  I can't think of a time when I've been fooled by CGI (though, of course, I wouldn't be aware of being fooled if I was, so it's a catch-22). I really hate when movies throw in a CGI character expecting it to come off as real. It pulls you out of the movie in a way that normal over-the-top action CGI doesn't. I remember watching the recent Star Wars movies and being jerked out of the flow by CGI Princess Leah and some other characters (whoever the villainous old man was in that movie). I'd be interested to see any videos of CGI faces that can fool experts.
  - Aeolos 5y ago
    I get your point, but "I can't think of a time when I've been fooled by CGI" is a tautology: you remember = you weren't fooled. If you had been fooled, chances are you wouldn't remember. There are videos from CGI artists, e.g. Corridor Crew, that break down really good CGI, which is almost entirely invisible to the non-expert eye. That is in fact the best kind of CGI: the one that enhances reality so seamlessly that it's almost impossible to pick apart. Quite entertaining and informative videos.
    - jtbayly 5y ago
      There are plenty of possibilities to be fooled and then find out later. At which point you would remember later.
      - jfk13 5y ago
        Although if you're fooled, and find out later, I think there's a strong human tendency to re-write the internal narrative.... "Really, I could kind of tell all along." In which case it's not so clear how you'd "remember" things later.
        refulgentis 5y ago
        You laid out how: if you don't re-write your internal narrative You're right that theres a possibility that someone is fooled and never finds out, and another possibility that someone is fooled, finds out later, and claims they never thought it was real. However, it is very clear that it's possible to be fooled and find out later.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  > so the end result looks like something their engineers put together in a last minute crunch (which is probably what happened) They actually say that’s what happened in the video on it.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure that's SOP for Nvidia conference demos. Was in a breakout after the main Jensen presentation and the engineer was talking about how they were fiddling with K8s to get the demo to work right, the night before. And this was the money demo in the middle of the presentation. On the other hand... I actually kind of like a company that half-asses demos. It suggests they're spending their time on more important things.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > CGI Jensen looks like he came out of a 2009 videogame. Nvidia may have the tech but you can tell it lacks the artistic supervision of a proper VFX hous That's part of the point. If computer software alone can replicate state of the art human effort from 12 years ago, that's what they're showing off. It's not "look how great this rendering is", it's "look how good the AI that made this is".
tailspin2019 5y ago
Yep, this. I've seen more convincing Thunderbirds puppets :)
geoduck14 5y ago
I jumped around a bit, and I'd say the video looks like a zoom call with poor internet. The portion that was "cg" wasn't too different that conference calls I've been on where the signal is messed up.

elaus 5y ago

After watching the whole making of I also was pretty disappointed of the final result. Each individual part in the making of was pretty solid so I had high expectations. I guess it was the tight deadline (only a few weeks I think?) that didn't leave them any time to polish the final result.

IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago

> So how much was Vice paid for this article? For journalists, something like that is quite an accusation, and it really doesn’t help anyone to thoughtlessly make it. Maybe they are stupid, or just have different ideas of what’s newsworthy, or it was a slow news day…whatever. But all of those come down to a difference of opinion, not a statement of fact made without evidence. “Assume good faith” is in the guidelines here. And while it isn’t explicitly extended to the articles themselves, the reason for including it do extend to other interactions. Mindless cynicism leads to the sort of corrosive distrust that’s eating away at civil societies everywhere.

beeboop 5y ago
sponsored content and "native ads" happen all the time in news outlets and channels. not saying this is an example of it - though it's possible since it looks and reads exactly like a native ad would
liaukovv 5y ago
Modern journalism as a whole forfeited it's good faith credit quite some time ago, kinda like crypto scammers.
captainredbeard 5y ago
> Mindless cynicism leads to the sort of corrosive distrust that’s eating away at civil societies everywhere. ...repeated breaking of trust by institutions has earned that. It is unfortunate and it does eat away at our civil society. The solution is to fix the broken institutions and re-gain trust, not to blindly follow them like livestock!

TroisM 5y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAn_oiZwUXA&t=3742s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAn_oiZwUXA&t=3742s

Agentlien 5y ago

That looks like when a typical tv show does a "video game" episode and one of the regular cast members gets a character meant to look like them, but in video game form. It does not look like it was meant to seem human.

binkHN 5y ago

Thanks for the direct link; I thought it was pretty horrible. At this level, if you're going to take the time to show how awesome your stuff is, maybe partner with a talented team to do it on the level of Disney/Pixar.

causi 5y ago

I wonder why the clothing animation is so terrible. Low-budget CGI clothes always slide and float all over the place as if they're frictionless.

geoduck14 5y ago

>> It's not clear exactly which part of the keynote speech features CGI Huang (which is what makes the replica so impressive), I think what Vice ment to say was "this video was SO boring, we were multitasting on our phone and didn't see anything out the ordinary from the corner of our eyes."