Vertex 2018: The Future Of Digital Humans

Rob Redman, co-host of Vertex, shares his thoughts on the emerging theme of the day

Vertex 2018 was an event that covered many areas, from workshops and seminars to being the place to visit if you wanted some guidance on taking the next step in your career. However, a theme emerged during the day that has sparked some discussion, including during our panel towards the end of the day, and that was digital humans.

Many of the projects that we see, either as part of the visual effects community or simply as consumers watching TV or film, are filled with characters, fantastical or otherwise, and many of these are digitally produced. If you are thinking about an orc or a humanoid of some type, the discussion tends to fall to how engaging that character was, how well it was put together and whether the performance was a believable or entertaining one. If you start to introduce human characters a whole new world of ethics, rights and more comes into play. That’s just for starters, because of course, there is the issue of dealing with the likeness of acting talent that may have not been able to be on location, either through scheduling, or due to the actor having passed away.