Unity’s impressive new ‘Enemies’ short shows off a remarkably realistic digital human

theverge.com:

Unity is releasing an impressive new tech demo called “Enemies” that demonstrates what the popular game development engine can be capable of.

The video opens in an ornate and stunningly realistic room before zooming in on a mysterious woman sitting in front of a chessboard. The woman is rendered in remarkable detail — her hair shifts in subtle ways as she moves her head, her eyes look around the room and then at a chess bishop in a surprisingly natural way, and the final close-up shot of her face looks almost as if it’s one of an actual human being.

“Enemies” builds on the work in Unity’s “The Heretic” videos from 2019 and 2020, which showed off Unity’s efforts to create a realistic digital human, and all the videos demonstrate what teams might be able to do when using Unity to create games and animation. “How do we not only make it easier to create characters — but how do we also make it more accessible?” Unity’s VP of graphics, Natalya Tatarchuk, said in an interview with The Verge. Unity’s focus is to bring “accessibility and ease of creation through [its] tools” to help people create interactive stories more quickly and with less complexity, she said.

The videos also serve as a way to help show how Unity competes with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, which is also widely used in game development and entertainment. In addition to impressive demos, Unity has made some big acquisitions to bolster its offerings, including paying $1.6 billion for The Lord of the Rings VFX maker Weta Digital.