It’s been a sidenote in science fiction books for decades, especially in Jack McDevitt’s “Hutch” series of books: the ability for a computer to generate, in real-time, a movie that is acted out completely with 3D avatars composed of the people watching the movies. Their faces, their bodies, their voices.

After seeing James Cameron’s “AVATAR” I definitely have been thinking more of the future of real avatar movies, movies where I’d watch myself as the star or supporting character battling out wars in future times, dressed up in wild west outfits, flipping and punching the enemy in a James Bond-like action thriller.  Is that future close?

There are 3 requirements we’ll need before it’s possible to replace a Hollywood actor with a 3d avatar of ourselves:

1. Fast, real-time 3D rendering engines to take a pre-set script and display it on a TV or computer screen,
2. 3D scanning to take the face and body of a viewer and create a 3D-mapped model to incorporate,
3. Voice software to record speech and create a realistic text-to-speech model.

For the first category, we already have reasonable 3D rendering engines that back up the Sony Playstation 3 and the Microsoft X-Box 360.  While their renders aren’t lifelike (AVATAR the movie required hundreds of computers rendering over literally thousands of hours to create the resolution and realism), they are coming closer to reality every day.  The next versions of both platforms will be even better, incorporating more realistic lighting (which is key for rendering human skin) and be able to handle an order of magnitude more objects that can be manipulated and moved in real-time.  When a movie is created by a director, the director will tell the movie where to put every character, every hand, every finger, every bullet.  The 3D engine will display that data in real time, casting shadows and reflections and all of the millions of interactions of every surface and texture and angle.  We’re almost there.

For item #2, the 3D scanner, we’re getting closer with new software.  Late last year, PhysOrg.com showed an amazing demo on how they are able to actually scan a 3D object using a simple webcam, rotating it and capturing all parts of it.  The days are close when you’ll be able to look at a webcam, move your face, maybe say a few specific sentences to capture your voice, and produce a few emotions on your face (fear, sadness, happiness) so the webcam can capture you in 3D and produce a model skeleton for a 3D avatar that movie rendering software will incorporate.  We’re not far.

For the last item, capturing your voice and using it as a backend for rendering text from a movie in your voice, there are already solutions that are coming together nicely.  ModelTalker.com is working on a software package for people who lost their voices due to disease or accidents.  Another company, VoiceForge.com, has created an impressive marketing application that produces text-to-speech in a variety of voices that are incredible with their inflections, emotional variance, and cadence.

Those are the 3 items that are needed to actually render a movie with 3D avatars.  The last missing part is the story writers and directors.  The vast majority of script writers in Hollywood are horrible, only a few of them make it to the big screen.  But there are thousands of people who write decent scripts but just don’t have the power and connections to get them even looked at.

Still, we’re closing in an a miraculous time in terms of content creation.  In the music industry, the advent of Apple’s GarageBand combined with vocal-correction software is turning average people into musicians that can compete with the best professionals.  I guess it’s not a great time to be a huge rock star with the scourge of easy distribution online battling the monopolistic distribution houses of yesteryear.  The same is probably true of the movie industry, and I’m sure they’re scared out of their shorts.

Imagine the day you can go online and pick a movie that was written and directed by a kid in western Europe, with no professional filmmaking education.  You’ll be able to download the movie from an iTunes or Netflix type site directly to your video game system or movie making box plugged into your TV.  If your friends come over, the can download their 3d avatars and voices from a central repository, or bring them on a USB memory stick.  You pick which character you want to play using your avatar, and the system will render the movie in real time, with professional actors’ avatars or your own.

It won’t kill professional actors, who are gorgeous, well trained to act with the best emotions and timing, but it will also introduce an amazing new level of entertainment for parties or just lounging around at home.  With just a little push towards faster and better rendering systems in our video game boxes, more detailed 3D capture from our webcams, and the ability to read a few dozen paragraphs of text to train our computers to talk like us, the day will come where you really will be part of the movies.

Maybe it’s time to learn how to write a film script.

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