Graphics behemoth Nvidia has unveiled new face-rendering technology that could revolutionise characters' facial performances in video games, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang declared.

The technology is called Face Works. What it does is condense previously massive amounts of motion-captured performance data into a size small enough that Nvidia's new £800 Titan graphics card can recall it in real-time.

That motion-captured performance data comes from 156 cameras, arranged around a spherical space, capturing 30 expressions of a person. The smallest the compiled code of these expressions could get previously was 32GB - more than a Blu-ray's worth (25GB). It was far too big to hope to recreate in real-time.

Face Works squashes that to around 300MB. And hey presto, that motion-captured performance can be recalled in real-time.

But what does this mean for PC, PlayStation 4 and next Xbox gaming - the obvious implication of all this?

Huang said rendering Ira took around 2 teraflops (2 trillion floating-point operations per second). Nvidia's Titan can handle 4.5 teraflops, but PS4 can only handle 1.84 teraflops and the next Xbox 1.2 teraflops.

As it stands, it's out of reach - but that's running at 60 frames per second in 1080p. At 30 frames per second, the calculations required are halved. With a bit of efficiency-tinkering, it's possible.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-21-nvidia-demonstrates-potentially-revolutionary-new-face-rendering-tech

That looks impressive.

Not really. Why is his left eyebrow so shiny? That's not realistic at all. 

Yep, most impressive indeed xP And its running on technology we have today. Ok, so its still a bit uncanny but god damn I want those graphics in my games

We are getting there, we are getting fucking there.

The ear looks unrealistic. The nose and eyebrow are extra shiny to a point where it's unrealistic. It's not impressive at all. 

Internet people in 2012 - "We've come as far as we can go with in game graphics."

Lol morons.

I think there is still room for improvement yes. I don't like the edges of the head and how they look with the background. The ear, I have seen pretty fucked up ears around, google "cauliflower ear" and see some ears like that. Maybe the ear responds to the person that was picked for the animation. I have issues with the lightning they chose to demonstrate the demo as well.

However, I like the skin and how there are different tones of colors depending on the area of the face and how the light is reflected on the skin surface. The shiny face looks pretty good to me, maybe they could have made it a little, just a little less shiny but that is none-issue. If you look at the old man from Quantic which is very impressive, you can see that his face kind of seems as if covered in powder, white powder, and the light used over the face seems to be like white light, against a black background.

Exciting times ahead, regardless of anything. :D

Fucking great animations.

I'm not super impressed by the model, but that's obviously not the point of the video.