The Rise Of The Avatar and the Deep Fake

As a veteran of way too many zoom conferences, It's perhaps not all that surprising that I would have discovered one of the cooler features of the app - the ability to create an algorithmic green screen that lets you superimpose both static background and videos behind you. The algorithm is not perfect - every so often a shoulder will disappear or hair will suddenly do really weird things, but given that it's basically isolating your outline, ascertaining what's the background and what's you, and then superimposing (or, in the jargon of the SFX industry compositing) the new background over what's left, the effect is pretty damned impressive. There is now a thriving industry of companies that supply specialty green screens that you can set up behind you for a surprisingly inexpensive amount, letting you quite literally put yourself in the middle of the action. For remote roleplaying, especially as the dungeon master, it's hard to beat, but it's also an indication of just how rapidly we are reaching the point where what had once been studio-level graphical effects are now making their way to our desktops. In a previous article, I made the observation that there is typically a gap of about six years between the time that your favorite special effects first appear in Hollywood (or more properly, in the area around Skywalker ranch south of San Jose that's become the mecca of the digital effects industry) and the time that the same special effects make their way to high-end gaming systems.