Interview: Paul Debevec, Google

In Steven Spielberg’s movie Ready Player One there’s a shot of actor Ty Sheridan putting on virtual reality (VR) headgear which transitions imperceptibly from real to virtual cameras as the shot moves to an extreme close-up. In Gemini Man, Will Smith’s digital double is among the most realistic yet created for the screen.

Both instances made use of a Light Stage facial scanning system at Google and is just one of a number of breakthrough applications led by Paul Debevec, a senior scientist working in the company’s immersive computing wing.

A pioneer in image-based rendering who directed experimental short The Camponile in 1997 using photorealistic animation techniques adopted by the makers of The Matrix two years later, Debevec was named one of the top 100 innovators in the world aged under 35 by MIT in 2002. He’s been working with Google since 2015 as well as being an adjunct professor at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles.

IBC365 caught up with Debevec at the VIEW Conference for visual effects in Turin where he presented Google’s latest efforts to capture and process light fields for a more realistic sense of presence in VR.

“Filming in 360-degrees only captures one perspective on how different…