Next week — with my friends at Ziva Dynamics — we’ll be introducing the virtualization of human anatomy at Siggraph 2016 in Anaheim. I fully expect it to be one of the more interesting weeks of the year/decade/all of them.
Whenever I see remarkable innovation, I often think back to some of my earliest exposure to new technology, and to computing. Circa 1982 or ’83. I’m not sure I could yet link my handwriting. I was, however, doing a decent job colouring inside the lines.
Some of the early computers — our first one had 16K of RAM and weighed a good 20 lbs — didn’t have any “lines” per se. Massive constraints — technically — but no limit on what you could make, as long as it could be imagined and translated to [primitive] code. I still have pixels burned into my retina from being far too close to the CRT screen smashing keys on that thing. And with a combination of BASIC and very rough machine language computing, you could do some fun things, as long as you built it all from the ground up.
Fast-forward 30-some years. Everything software has become virtualized. Apps and websites can be built in an afternoon. You can click-and-drag your way to architecting software more complex than national defense technology. And this same shift is happening in hardware as well. The idea of software defined networking is at the forefront of internet infrastructure innovation — the basic premise being how to remove our dependancy on specific hardware “things” on a network and improve efficiency, flexibility, and scalability by virtualizing the “smarts” to the “cloud”.
I’m running out of quotation marks.
Next up? Humans, naturally. Advances in technology in the fields of entertainment and sciences have achieved remarkable digital and interactive versions of humans, animals, and even creatures out of the far reaches of our imagination. Most of these achievements have come from evolutionary technological advancements over decades, by teams solving very complex problems. We’ve progressed from sprite graphics to relatively flat animation sequences and then 3D models running on motion-captured data within real-time engines. Magic often comes to life on the “silver screen” through very complex and time-intensive frame-by-frame digital design. The sense of realism in our digital experiences keeps getting better.
Yet the anatomical form has far more nuance in its movement, behaviour, and reaction to its environment than could ever be fully imagined in pre-ordained animated sequences. And that is what struck me when I first met the team at Ziva Dynamics. Coming from decades of experience in computer simulation and unrivalled VFX experience on the biggest of titles — Avatar, The Hobbit, and Planet of the Apes to name a few — the experts at Ziva have created a combination of authoring, intelligence, and rendering technology that recreates exceptionally realistic anatomically-correct movement, again from the “ground up”.
ZIVA technology combines the underlying physics and logic of bones, muscles, and tissue, with an understanding of 3D space and natural movement, to allow ultra-realistic beings to interact and perform. The possible applications are nearly unlimited — film, gaming, VR, and simulations. We’ll be demonstrating Ziva’s innovation with a remarkable interactive-human VR experience at Siggraph.
The team has embraced the challenge of re-architecting digital anatomy in the same way that so many disruptive leaps in technology have been achieved before — revolutionary more so than evolutionary. Perhaps more impressive — in parallel to tackling such a glorious challenge — are ZIVA’s industry insights into how to make new technology fit contemporary production techniques and development pipelines. This product is already commercial, and is already being used by some of the best entertainment and interactive businesses in the world, including Sony Pictures, ScanLine, and Epic Games.
Personally, having the opportunity to collaborate with Ziva is truly inspiring and energizing. Often new technologies and new software concepts can quickly seem quite derivative or as something less-than-unique. Ziva is polar opposite — getting familiar with the vision of the business and [some of] the guts of the technology nearly requires one to do a hard-reset on how you think about digital design. The learning curve has been steep and beyond interesting. And next week should take it to another level.
Virtually yours,
Michael
