SamTherapy posted at 3:49PM Sat, 24 June 2017 - #4308416

Remember the "photo" doing the rounds a few years back? That managed to beat some aspects of the Uncanny Valley in a counterintuitive way, by making an image that looked like a badly lit, amateur photo. Caused a bit of a stir, IIRC.

My biggest gripe with CG in movies is the figures and objects often don't seem to have any - or enough - mass. Over here we had the Walking With Dinosaurs series, and, as I was working in a building full of CG professionals, there were no end of debates, discussions and whatnot about how bad it was. Even someone with the most rudimentary understanding of CG and animation could spot how shoddy it looked.

Then there are the "all done with traditional animation", or "it's all for real" things that get wheeled out now and again. Remember the Honda one someone showed here? Everyone noticed the ball accelerating uphill. Nobody in the production department ever seems to pick up on these things, though.

I have a feeling the Uncanny Valley is something that can be overcome, at least some of the time, but quite often animators and artists make a rudimentary mistake which makes the whole thing roll over.

And there's also the uncanny valley of consumables. I have yet to see CGI food that I would want to eat.

I think one day we'll get across the Uncanny Valley entirely, but I think we're still a few tech levels away from doing so.