[Norm Lenhart]

The tech is there but with movies it’s a cost/benefit ratio.

Take “lydia’ above. The 3d Model is dead on. It’s the details of the textures/mapping that would be the issue.

Her textures are 4000x4000 pixels because to go higher rez would take a lot of memory and CPU to render at 30 FPS video framerate. And she still looks pretty good.

If you jack up the texture resolution, thats all it takes. The lighting render tricks like subsurface scatter and the rest are all there now. the hardware is there now. But time is money. If Hollywood isn’t making it real yet it’s a cost thing. But it CAN be done if the animator/artist has the skill.

[zeugma]

We'll have to agree to disagree on this. I've never seen a CGI face that looks real. The real test is to have a series of side-by-side shots of various 'characters' and have human beings determine which is 'real' and which are 'fake'. I just don't think they are there yet, except for distant shots, where you can't really see details.

For anything else, yeah, there is no way to tell. Bodies, clothes, fixtures and whatnot are up to par, but I do not believe faces are. However, it's extremely rare that you can be fooled when you see a CGI character walking, or just generally moving around. Generally, the movements are too smooth to be real.