×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Forum - View topic
INTEREST: A.I. Program Creates Practically Perfect In-Between Animation


Goto page 1, 2  Next

Note: this is the discussion thread for this article

Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
hissatsu01



Joined: 08 May 2006
Posts: 963
Location: NYC
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 5:00 pm Reply with quote
If by "practically perfect" you mean making it look like flash animation, then I agree.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ultimatehaki



Joined: 27 Oct 2012
Posts: 1090
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 6:18 pm Reply with quote
Not_Nitsugalego wrote:
Fuuuuutuuuuureeee
Fuuuuuutuuuureeee


You're at an eleven and we need you down to a 10.5 at least squidward. Laughing

But seriously, this is a brilliant idea. I was terrified of a possible future of all CGI anime, but if they can get this program off the ground running then the lesser burden on the animators mean we can have higher quality animation for virtually all series and not the crap that anime like clockwork planet is doing right now.

And hopefully more pay for the animators too.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
kiminobokuwa



Joined: 18 Sep 2015
Posts: 547
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 6:40 pm Reply with quote
I think this new CG program is a great idea. It doesn't heavily rely on CG and if it can be done more like this then we would have less burden placed on animators in general and it can also cut costs if it can do all of this. I'm fairly impressed. It needs improvement but hey, it's awesome in my eyes.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
encrypted12345



Joined: 25 Jan 2012
Posts: 715
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 6:42 pm Reply with quote
ultimatehaki wrote:
Not_Nitsugalego wrote:
Fuuuuutuuuuureeee
Fuuuuuutuuuureeee


You're at an eleven and we need you down to a 10.5 at least squidward. Laughing

But seriously, this is a brilliant idea. I was terrified of a possible future of all CGI anime, but if they can get this program off the ground running then the lesser burden on the animators mean we can have higher quality animation for virtually all series and not the crap that anime like clockwork planet is doing right now.

And hopefully more pay for the animators too.


More realistically, anime would be more or less the same quality. They would just need to use less animators who may be paid marginally more with the unfortunate side effect of a lot of animators being fired. Unless the amount of anime made is increased, which seems unlikely because the market is already so saturated.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Kicksville



Joined: 20 Nov 2010
Posts: 1168
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 7:23 pm Reply with quote
So since it "quadrupled the frames", it wouldn't look the way it does now unless the in-between animation from the left side examples already existed, right? In other words, if you cut it down to just the key frames and had the program work, it probably wouldn't create proper motion? I understand this is a proof of concept, but that makes the demonstration a lot less impressive than the title implies.

That said, it's obviously clear what the end goal is. My big worry is the dilution of motion itself in anime (I think a lot of people seriously underestimate what a big difference it makes). But if a tool that does just enough comes to be - which would depend on who is using it, like anything else - it's hard not to see the value in that.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
#861208



Joined: 07 Oct 2016
Posts: 423
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 7:29 pm Reply with quote
For me, the big thing about this is how much easier it would be to make "Indie"/"DIY" anime.

There are a few people on Youtube who have made animated stories completely by themselves, and a lot of them look decent, but still amateur. If this software were to become available, even if it cost thousands of dollars, it would still make it a lot easier to make more professional looking animation by yourself.

Explosion of content, possible further drop in wages, except for the fact that creator-owned animations would probably do merchandising themselves, and keep a larger portion of the profits.

But still. Better for indie producers.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Hoppy800



Joined: 09 Aug 2013
Posts: 3331
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 7:59 pm Reply with quote
RIP Anime industry. The heart and soul of anime was lost by artificial intelligence.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
killjoy_the



Joined: 30 May 2015
Posts: 2457
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 8:10 pm Reply with quote
OK now we just need to combine this with a tool making light novel-ish titles out of random words and we got a great project going.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Mr. sickVisionz



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 2171
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 9:14 pm Reply with quote
I wonder if the glitches could also be used as an example of how much key animators leave to in-betweeners on high speed takes.

Kinda cool on it's own. I think it needs to keep learning and seeing the more stylized way anime can be on high speed/motion cuts. It's version of "off model" looks way worse than it does in hand animation.

Some of it is definitely good enough for broadcast. I could only spot some things when they slowed them down. Often, once I finally finally saw the original glitch, I might notice that something else may be off but that's like 30 seconds of hard staring. Most people don't watch anime like that. Could definitely help to quickly get a TV edit done with a better version for home release.

AI will probably figure it out over time. If enough animators are fed into this, it may be able to understand what the anime style enough to generate characters and key frames on it's own.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
v1cious



Joined: 31 Dec 2002
Posts: 6199
Location: Houston, TX
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 9:17 pm Reply with quote
Oh dear... I'm sure this will end well.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
rtil



Joined: 22 May 2005
Posts: 93
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 9:17 pm Reply with quote
it is not even close to perfect but it could be practical in limited situations with subtle movements. in these examples the mistakes it made would have to be corrected and thus would barely save any time if any at all.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
TheAncientOne



Joined: 06 Oct 2010
Posts: 1868
Location: USA (mid-south)
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 9:48 pm Reply with quote
These are the early steps to the near future I've predicted before: That in-between animation (which is most likely to be farmed out anyway, sometimes to other countries) would be handled by AI, cutting costs.

The bright side of this is there is little reason a well developed AI program couldn't handle more frames more rapidly than a human, eventually leading to more detailed and/or fluid animation. While the latter could be achieved on a low budget, the former would still require high quality key frames.

The future I envision isn't something that will happen tomorrow, but I would be somewhat surprised if it hasn't arrived within the next 10 years.


The far more ambitious end result of having a program that it a true AI animator than can be given the same input (character art references, storyboards, direction) and turn out animation on its own might even happen in my lifetime.

For those claiming anime requires artistry, keep in mind that virtually every anime you watch these days is completed by a team of people that are bound to maintaining a visual style, and thus much of that end of the work is skill (which can be learned) rather than creative artistry.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
H. Guderian



Joined: 29 Jan 2014
Posts: 1255
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 10:06 pm Reply with quote
While inbetweening is a horrible job, it IS the entry level position. Unless you have plenty of spare time to web-animate, drop your dreams of making great Sakuga as a job.

Once we hand anime production over to the machines, it'll lose much of the magic. i'd rather sit under the old kotatsu with friends and decry the shitty inbetweening or off model keyframes of yesteryear than make psuedo-anime. Just wait, eventually they'll figure out how to have the AI do keyframes. They can ink, color, tween, hell CG took away creativity too. That'll be the end.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Kicksville



Joined: 20 Nov 2010
Posts: 1168
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 10:30 pm Reply with quote
The potential - emphasis on potential - upside to this is the end of exploitative dead end work practices that abuse the people who care to make it through. Buuut...
TheAncientOne wrote:
The far more ambitious end result of having a program that it a true AI animator than can be given the same input (character art references, storyboards, direction) and turn out animation on its own might even happen in my lifetime.

For those claiming anime requires artistry, keep in mind that virtually every anime you watch these days is completed by a team of people that are bound to maintaining a visual style, and thus much of that end of the work is skill (which can be learned) rather than creative artistry.

I have to be honest with you, this take absolutely drives me up a wall. The idea of being able to feed a machine Cool Anime Ideas and have it spit out Great and Cool Anime is nice and everything, but like...to go and try to counter argue against "anime requires artistry" in support of that? Like, the look and feel different anime take on are thanks to only a few people, the animation part doesn't matter? It's mere labor and nothing more? "It's all the same anyway, so nothing will be lost when Super Computer GORN takes over"?

Staying on model is not the same as "the way things move". It is not arbitrary. It's fine if you think it's all similar enough that it'll be OK if everything moves the same way thanks to a machine, but the way anime looks, and different anime look, has a lot to do with the way they MOVE, which is different from a small tweened Flash cartoon and CGI and even Disney cartoons, and to say that doesn't require artistry is preposterous.

I understand the appeal of something like this, but do we really have to poo-poo the idea of animation itself as an art form in praise of it?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
DerekL1963
Subscriber



Joined: 14 Jan 2015
Posts: 1112
Location: Puget Sound
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 11:08 pm Reply with quote
TheAncientOne wrote:
For those claiming anime requires artistry, keep in mind that virtually every anime you watch these days is completed by a team of people that are bound to maintaining a visual style, and thus much of that end of the work is skill (which can be learned) rather than creative artistry.


The folks at the bottom of the food chain may only be "skilled technicians" even today, but that does not invalidate the claim that anime requires artistry.

You still need creative artistry to establish the visual style the rest of the team is bound to. And that's setting aside the creative artistry required for the storyboards the visual style is applied to. And the creative artistry required to create the scenario the storyboards are created from.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page 1, 2  Next
Page 1 of 2

 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group