Here’s one for movie buffs - What do Spiderman, King Kong, and the Incredible Hulk have in common? And Avatar for that matter? The answer is that they all feature virtual characters rendered lifelike by cutting-edge facial scanning technology based on light imaging.

LightStage starts with capturing how a subject’s face looks when lit from all possible directions. Then specialized algorithms place the subject in any location or set, real or virtual, to perfectly mimic the colour, texture and radiance of the subject’s skin. For a great video of actress Marissa Sellers undergoing LightStage v5 photography, take a look at this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT2uFlP0MlU

The system was developed by a team led by project leader Paul Debevec at the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) at the University of South Carolina. Now in its tenth incarnation, LightStage is the go-to application for creating photoreal digital characters no matter what the lighting conditions. We wonder what Disney would have made of it all….

Sources:

1. USC Institute for Creative Technologies:
   Light Stages.

2. otoy:
   LightStage.