No one escapes the effects of time. Neither do Hollywood actors. So on many occasions special effects have to be used in post-production to rejuvenate the performers. Or even make them older.
This editing process is expensive, takes weeks of work, and the results are sometimes debatable. These techniques have already been seen in The Irishman, by Martin Scorsese, or in numerous Marvel movies such as Ant-Man and the Wasp or Captain Marvel.
At Disney, to which Marvel Studios belongs, they have found a way to rejuvenate or age someone in a short time and save a significant part of the budget. And the results are not shabby thanks to artificial intelligence.
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FRAN
You know where every wrinkle on your face goes
This special effects odyssey may be over thanks to Disney’s new artificial intelligence tool, which they have called FRAN (Face Re-Aging Network). This system is the “first practical, fully automatic, production-ready method” of refitted faces.
“Photorealistic digital rejuvenation of faces on video is becoming more commonplace in the entertainment and advertising world. However, the prevailing 2D painting workflow often requires frame-by-frame manual labor that can take days, even at more skilled artists,” Disney researchers explained.
In order to create FRAN, the developers created a database of randomly generated synthetic faces using a tool called StyleGAN2. Then, they took advantage of today’s aging tools to rejuvenate and age them. They then used the results to teach the AI general principles about how a person’s appearance changes as they age.
In this way, when FRAN receives a head, it can accurately predict which parts of the face need to be altered over time. Later, these changes are superimposed on the original head frame by frame and are perfectly integrated. The result is really good and you don’t notice that the faces have been manipulated at any time: they endure different facial expressions, angles and lighting conditions.
The Disney tool achieves good results, but they may be better according to the company itself
Disney
“FRAN incorporates simple and intuitive mechanisms that give artists localized control and creative freedom to direct and fine-tune the reaging effect, a feature that is very important in real production lines and often overlooked in productions.” related research papers,” Disney explained.
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FRAN
Ages (without gray hair) better than it rejuvenates
But FRAN is not perfect and at Disney they know it. The company has recognized that aging results are more natural than when faces are rejuvenated. On the other hand, gray hair must be incorporated in post-production, since FRAN has not been trained with this data.
As The Verge points out, it’s unclear if Disney will make this technology available to the public. On the other hand, there is still a wide margin to refine the FRAN results. So it’s probably not going to be integrated into the workflow of special effects artists any time soon.
