Emily is a truly monumental achievement, recreating every nuance of human facial expression, even though what you’re actually looking at is the face of a digital actor. Created through a partnership with USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), the team’s primary objective was to create a completely convincing, animated computer-generated face, and I think they succeeded.

Using ICT’s special scanning system that can capture facial details down to the individual pore, the face of actress Emily O’Brien was transformed into a digital representation of herself, which could then be entirely machine-manipulated. A special spherical lighting rig captured O’Brien in 35 reference facial poses using a pair of high resolution digital cameras. The facial maps were then converted into 3D data using Image Metrics’ proprietary markerless motion capture technology.

Image Metrics then generated a new animation sequence and precisely superimposed it onto the live actress’ head. As you can see from the video below, you’d be really hard-pressed to tell the difference between digital Emily and real-world Emily.

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Amazing, no? Be sure to check out some of Image Metrics’ other CGI projects, which include work on Grand Theft Auto IV, Devil May Cry 4, and a most excellent Gnarls Barkley video featuring a anthropomorphic singing heart.

By using a high-speed video projector, a spinning platform with a holographic diffuser and special decoding hardware, the display can crank out up to 5,000 real-time images per second. Once the display spins up to speed, it creates a fully 3D image that you can walk all the way around.

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While I’m not sure that you’d want to get hit by this thing when it’s zipping around at full speed, the end result is pretty spectacular. As a matter of fact, the technology was the recipient of this SIGGRAPH’s Best Emerging Technology award for 2007.

[CGSociety via Geekologie]