Face Synthesis Outside The Uncanny Valley
/via https://bit.ly/2KjRUCw Remember Polar Express ? For those who don’t (lucky you!), it was the ChristmasKidFlick™ for 2004, one supposed to impart the Xmas spirit, good cheer, Santa Claus, and all that. Instead, it ended up becoming the living (!) embodiment of the Uncanny Valley , filled with dead-eyed CGI zombie kids, and was — there is no other word for it — creepy . The thing is, humans tend to be very good at identifying and classifying behaviors in others, especially base don facial expressions. That little twitch in your beloved’s lip means that they found your behavior adorable, the almost invisible wrinkle by the left eye — you goofed up real bad. And when the behavior displayed doesn’t match what we expect it to look like (“ huh? why did the eye twitch like that ? ”), it’s like there is a blaring siren saying “ THIS IS ODD WHY IS IT THIS WAY I DON’T GET IT ”. In short, humanoid objects which appear almost, but not e...