80 Level Podcast
80 Level Podcast is an episodic show for game developers, digital artists, animators, video game enthusiasts, CGI and VFX specialists. Join us to learn about new workflows, discuss new tools and share your work.
80 Level Podcast
Plask AI at Gamescom 2022: Revolution in Animation - 80 Level Podcast
We've talked with the CEO of Plask AI Junho Lee about changing traditional animation workflows with modern neural network solutions. Plask is an all-in-one browser-based AI motion capture tool and animation editor.
Plask Website: https://plask.ai/
Try Plask for free: https://80lv.pro/plasktrial
Junho Lee is the Founder & CEO of Plask
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/junho-lee-a20419162/
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0:00
gamescom
0:01
hasn't been done for a couple of years
0:03
since covet and this was the first time
0:06
we kind of went
0:07
and met all our friends and tried to
0:09
make new connections at the recently
0:12
opened event
0:13
it was great meeting everybody and it
0:15
was even more exciting to kind of
0:17
explore the show floor
0:19
uh for the first time in two years and
0:22
we've seen a lot of uh returning
0:24
pavilions like there were a lot of
0:26
spaces where you could find you know
0:28
companies from a particular area in
0:31
europe like you know spain or area and
0:34
asia like malaysia
0:35
and some other spaces there were a lot
0:37
of publishers as well uh there were not
0:40
that many big publishers out there but
0:42
it was still interesting to see a lot of
0:45
local european houses kind of providing
0:47
and showing the games they're building
0:49
we haven't seen that many tools and tool
0:52
developers at gamescom seems like this
0:56
is not the kind of event that developers
0:58
of new technology for game production
1:00
usually like to attend and a lot of them
1:04
actually they don't have they do attend
1:06
but they don't have boost there but
1:07
there was one company that we were very
1:10
fortunate to have a little
1:12
time with
1:14
and
1:15
talk about
1:16
the future of video game production and
1:19
the future of animation
1:21
in particular
1:22
this company is plask
1:24
and i'm very happy to present our
1:26
interview with the ceo of this amazing
1:29
new startup
1:30
greetings and welcome to the 80 level
1:32
roundtable podcast in each episode host
1:36
corel tokorev invites video game
1:38
industry leaders to talk about the world
1:40
of game development
1:42
no topic is off limits as long as it
1:45
relates to video game development
1:47
new episodes are in the works so
1:49
remember to follow us or subscribe and
1:51
share with someone you know will also
1:53
enjoy the podcast so
1:57
before we kind of start
2:00
we ask this question a lot to our uh the
2:02
people that we're just talking with
2:04
do you actually play games
2:07
oh that's very um important question so
2:10
yes
2:11
yes but like i'm quite maniac i would
2:14
say because you know um
2:17
i'm not quite sure you know that but in
2:20
korea most of people play either
2:22
starcraft or
2:24
league of legends
2:25
so i'm not kind of the mainstream gamer
2:28
in queen
2:29
society but i like to play the
2:32
civilization or like oh really yeah
2:34
those kind of jump some boring games i
2:36
like those kind of things like this is
2:38
weird but a lot of people
2:41
who are doing business
2:43
in tech
2:44
they're really into civilization oh i
2:47
think yeah i think that's not a
2:49
coincidence yeah yes that's not a
2:51
coincidence like i think mark zuckerberg
2:53
he's into civilization
2:55
the boss of our company he's also a big
2:58
fan of civilization yeah and it seems
3:00
like everyone who's like
3:01
like to manage and figure those things
3:04
out they yeah even playing games
3:06
we'd like to manage but um
3:11
kind of what brought you to gamescom
3:13
this year what are you showcasing at
3:15
this show
3:16
yeah i am i can say that i'm a gamer but
3:20
the game uh the reason coming to
3:22
gamescom is not kind of poor like really
3:24
to enjoy the game industry but
3:27
it's more like the business
3:28
purpose because you know flask have been
3:31
on a great infrastructure for game
3:34
companies and productions and
3:36
we know that we can make the
3:38
productivity of the game industry really
3:41
really improved by
3:42
um
3:44
our service so i think we think it's a
3:47
great opportunity to introduce our tool
3:49
to the industry and show what we're
3:52
doing right now yeah that's i think the
3:54
main purpose
3:56
so tell us a little bit about your
3:58
product what does uh flask do what kind
4:01
of products do you provide
4:03
a little bit about that direction um so
4:05
yeah flask is an ai motion capture
4:08
[Music]
4:09
software we provide uh so you know
4:12
motion capture needs a lot of sensors
4:14
suits studios especially money and time
4:17
and class don't need any of those so it
4:20
is uh it only uses a video in order to
4:22
get a 3d motion data so
4:25
what you have to do is just
4:27
a prepare a video it can be video taken
4:29
from your phone or download it from
4:31
youtube it all works
4:32
so you just can drag and drop the video
4:35
into our tool our tool is a
4:37
browser-based tool and no need for
4:39
installations so you just can drag and
4:40
drop video into the tool and you get the
4:42
3d motion data so
4:44
uh this makes the whole production much
4:47
much easier because you know animating
4:49
became the animation was uh
4:52
the most bottleneck of the production it
4:54
takes a lot of time a lot of effort but
4:57
just by dragging and drop and video and
5:00
getting up motion data is a really big
5:02
thing especially for like
5:04
the 3d games i mean the mmr pitch or
5:06
like big scale games they can save a lot
5:09
of time and money uh by using flask uh
5:12
for making their animation process much
5:14
more efficient
5:15
so
5:16
how does it work usually
5:18
when you think about motion capture like
5:20
you said you need to have a suit there
5:22
has to be cameras around right there has
5:24
to be trackers that are on you and this
5:26
allows for a very accurate
5:28
representation of motion yeah especially
5:31
when you think about
5:32
um you know facial animations or some
5:35
very complex motions when you're right
5:37
involving fingers or some other elements
5:40
those are super important how does
5:43
your technology work like what's the
5:45
secret there how does it know how to
5:48
track the
5:49
you know motion from the image which is
5:51
basically flat as far as in the exact
5:54
video so the previous method the motion
5:56
capture uh uses a optical or like
6:01
electromagnetic sensors in order to get
6:03
the exact position of its joints so you
6:07
would probably see that they put markers
6:09
on their suits so they are using the
6:12
cameras or the sensor setup in order to
6:15
get the position of that marker and
6:18
making it to recover into the motion
6:20
data that's how they used to do uh so
6:23
they are basically using um
6:26
the tracking sensor that's the main
6:28
difference we are using the ai
6:31
or like
6:32
uh computer vision technology to get uh
6:35
motion reconstructed from video so
6:37
it's like a human eye or human brain or
6:39
like human intelligence because
6:42
when we see a video we are not 100 sure
6:45
about the death data or like 100 sure
6:48
about edge of uh the position of each
6:50
joint but we somehow know
6:53
um
6:54
the
6:56
approximated uh position of each data
6:59
while you can see that someone come
7:02
closer to camera
7:05
or like going far from camera it all can
7:07
be reconstructed in human brain so
7:10
that's what ai do ai was trained by
7:13
3d motion data so they were trained to
7:16
estimate the
7:18
30 joints of
7:20
each joint of the person in the video by
7:22
looking at huge data set that's how our
7:25
ai reconstruct 3d motion data from video
7:28
and it allows it to
7:30
by not uh
7:32
getting a 3d depth data or like
7:35
sensor data it somehow
7:37
can get
7:39
reconstructed 3d positions so
7:43
when you think about this technology how
7:45
accurate
7:46
is the
7:47
traction of movement how accurate can
7:49
you go
7:50
so we should talk about uh the prison
7:53
state and how it can go beyond
7:57
so for now we can say that our
8:00
okay quality is like low budget motion
8:03
suits so compared to like high and
8:06
motion call motion capture studios yes
8:09
our motion data is a little bit
8:12
[Music]
8:14
noisy and like
8:15
uh many users are giving feedback that
8:18
the feeds are like
8:20
quite slightly
8:21
those are still we have still those have
8:24
problems but the fun part is that last
8:27
year
8:28
the ai
8:30
quality was like too awful that it isn't
8:33
like serviceable and two years ago
8:36
no one think about
8:38
to make this into service because you
8:40
know it was that terrible
8:42
and you know uh the growth of the ai
8:45
technology is really fast and we
8:47
estimate that most of current uh users
8:50
feedback i mean the fit sliding and
8:52
southern noise problems will be so
8:54
within four and five months and after
8:57
one year later i think uh we can
9:00
approach to the quality of
9:03
middle and uh
9:04
middle class motion capture suit and
9:07
like two or three years later you can go
9:11
like similar level with the high quality
9:13
motion capture studios
9:15
so that's the thing i guess um the
9:17
future of the motion capture should be
9:20
and
9:21
must be the ai motion should capture
9:23
because uh the performance will
9:26
uh finally converge into the high
9:28
quality market and um
9:31
but the
9:32
accessibility or the
9:35
um
9:36
the efficiency the amount gives to the
9:39
production is uncomparable so
9:42
yeah that's what we are estimating about
9:45
the performance
9:47
so
9:48
let's talk a little bit about how it
9:50
works so as far understand you're a
9:51
web-based tool right you upload some
9:53
kind of video there then the ai does its
9:56
magic and it looks at the
9:58
human positions and
10:00
what happens next does your ai also
10:03
create a rig for the character can you
10:06
then kind of export this rig to any
10:08
character that you have in the game and
10:10
kind of end the animation as well right
10:12
so yeah um
10:15
so when you uh drag and drop the video
10:17
tool you get the rotation data of 203
10:21
joints which is exactly same with the
10:23
mixed summary and what we are doing is
10:25
we support an automatic retargeting
10:28
feature so user just can drag and drop
10:30
their custom 3d model to of course issue
10:33
week
10:34
they re-character to our tool and you
10:37
just can re-target the
10:39
ai extracted motion to they can apply
10:42
that to
10:44
their custom 3d characters so no we are
10:46
not um creating a rig for a 3d custom
10:50
character but
10:51
the ai extracting motion can be applied
10:54
to any of your humanoid characters so
10:57
we can say that we have some uh kind of
11:00
comparability so and uh after you apply
11:03
the motion to the
11:05
character you can export it to
11:07
fbx glbbh so you can bring it to other
11:10
tools like unity blender any other tools
11:12
you like right so
11:14
you need a rigged character to kind of
11:17
you utilize the motion that the
11:20
flask extracts from the video and after
11:23
that you can use it as uh
11:25
as much as possible whatever you can
11:27
right what about the
11:29
editing part so
11:31
if i want to create
11:33
like in
11:34
let's take for example like modern
11:36
action games or any kind of games right
11:38
now
11:40
if you've seen like last of us part two
11:42
yeah they did like
11:44
like a billion different animations for
11:47
every kind of movement that the
11:48
character can do and that's why the
11:50
character can open a door
11:52
six
11:53
different ways right or and it's like
11:55
every time you watch it it's like a
11:57
different motion
11:59
it requires a lot of motion capture but
12:01
it also requires a lot of editing
12:03
because you need to cut this motion and
12:05
that motion and so on so basically with
12:08
your data when it's exported can you
12:10
just
12:12
export it to maya i guess and play
12:14
around there and cut it into like
12:16
whatever pieces you want that's really
12:18
good point because
12:19
um actually um our internal
12:22
goal or like internal target is like
12:24
two-way the first one is uh to
12:27
automating the animation industry with
12:30
ai that's the one big part and the next
12:33
big part is collaboration so
12:36
um we are adding more and more uh
12:38
editing features to the tool
12:41
and we choose a browser to be the
12:44
platform uh of our tool uh there are a
12:47
lot of reasons so
12:49
uh as you just told you as you just told
12:52
so
12:53
animating is kind of like the
12:57
work of art you know it is not our just
13:00
a technical job so there should be a lot
13:03
of editing jobs after even if they
13:06
capture a motion from a fancy motion
13:08
capture studio they have to edit the
13:10
motion to make it into the form of art
13:12
so um editing is like the one of the
13:15
essential part when it comes to game
13:17
animations and we want but
13:20
what people are doing right now is quite
13:22
an old way it's like the way just like
13:25
30 years ago and um we think there
13:29
should be about two things two
13:31
innovation should be brought to the
13:33
industry the first one is about the
13:34
collaboration so you know
13:38
figma is a great example to the ui ux
13:41
area they bring a real-time
13:42
collaboration to the ui ux design and
13:45
they make the whole
13:47
stage to the
13:49
browser and it makes a lot of people to
13:51
access uh the project and giving a
13:54
feedback working simultaneously and
13:57
making something into a
13:59
like
14:00
i am actually a a developer before i
14:03
start a
14:04
company and we developers
14:07
uh have some like very good culture i
14:10
would say it's like the like you know
14:12
there's a git top there and there's an
14:13
open source thing and there's
14:16
a collaboration between um total
14:18
strangers those kind of things should be
14:20
brought to the game
14:22
game design animation
14:24
as well i guess so that's why we are
14:27
adding more and more editing feature to
14:29
our browser-based tool and making it
14:30
into a real-time collaboration
14:32
uh or in uh
14:34
yeah i think those what
14:36
those are one of our great targets and
14:38
those kind of editing features that's
14:40
why we are adding more and more editing
14:42
feature to our tool yeah
14:45
so
14:45
i like this um analogy with sigma
14:48
because i think i use figma a lot
14:50
although i'm not a
14:52
designer but i do use it to kind of
14:53
review different forms and
14:56
it seems right that
14:58
kind of like sigma grew from just like a
15:01
ui
15:03
building tool to like more like a
15:05
photoshop kind of tool or like photoshop
15:08
plus coral draw because it's like vector
15:10
stuff and raster stuff and all of it
15:12
combined exactly and it's uh it is very
15:15
approachable so you can download it and
15:18
start playing around in the browser
15:20
basically without having to use
15:22
any other stuff
15:24
that you do with other comparable tools
15:27
um
15:28
like especially the 3d animation thing
15:31
the assets are too heavy and
15:34
the tool itself the maya the 3d max when
15:38
you mis-click the tool and it takes
15:41
on years to open up and yeah i think
15:44
those make the review and feedback
15:46
process really slow and
15:48
i think when it comes to browser it's
15:50
really really
15:52
fast accessible thing so i think it
15:54
would be great if you can bring it to
15:56
the industry
15:58
when i think about
15:59
[Music]
16:00
maya in particular
16:04
the rigs themselves
16:06
they can get pretty complex right right
16:09
and when we think about motion in
16:11
general
16:12
it is like like you said a very
16:14
complicated thing and that's why we also
16:17
run like a little bit of a recruiting
16:19
uh service and we see a lot of demand
16:22
for guys like technical animators or
16:24
animators in general because
16:27
like you said it's like you're sparkling
16:29
life
16:30
into a character certainly given motion
16:32
and making it sure that it moves
16:35
i feel like what you're saying about ai
16:38
could be
16:40
could bring out like the next level to
16:43
animation in general and the fluidity of
16:46
motion the versatility of motion because
16:49
right now everything is basically done
16:51
by hand i mean of course mocap helped a
16:55
lot
16:56
definitely took a lot of
16:58
pressure from animators but it's still a
17:00
lot of things that you need to do
17:03
for yourself or in teams and a lot of
17:05
cleaning like you said a lot of
17:07
you know
17:09
adapting the material and so on
17:11
when
17:13
we have ai a lot of those tasks are
17:15
being done by the machine
17:17
and my question is
17:19
what else do you feel in animation can
17:22
we outsource to computers so we don't
17:25
have to
17:26
think about it like
17:28
i think there is another piece of
17:30
software called the cascader or
17:32
something yeah they're doing a lot of
17:35
that like in that
17:36
it's basically like a keyframe approach
17:39
but aai kind of adds up and helps smooth
17:43
it out or right suggest motion or
17:47
help figure out when the impact is
17:49
happening what's going on with the
17:50
motion and the physics and all that
17:52
stuff
17:53
where do you think it's going to go from
17:55
here
17:56
how is plask kind of
17:58
going to push this ai into the animation
18:02
industry of course animation itself have
18:05
a lot of things to can be um automated
18:08
by ai because
18:10
i think at the end of
18:12
this world
18:13
maybe we can have um some kind of
18:15
animation features like
18:17
just like by using the natural language
18:19
maybe you can uh make a whole animation
18:22
so you are just like being a director so
18:25
like just move
18:26
in this way more or like just do it more
18:29
with a passion this can be be done with
18:32
ai because you know
18:34
similar things are done by the dali too
18:37
recently you know the natural language
18:39
can produce a
18:40
whole
18:41
artworks and
18:43
this can be applied to animations as
18:45
well so
18:46
those things so animation itself can be
18:48
really really
18:50
easy by using those kind of things but
18:52
not only for animation
18:54
so so example did a great job with uh
18:57
automatic rigging uh don't buy the
18:59
uh ai but you know rigging itself is
19:02
actually have much more
19:04
way to go than just mixamo because all
19:07
the deformation things and all the you
19:10
know that's why we have technical
19:12
artists in the game industry so i think
19:15
our next thing after we conquered the
19:17
animation job would be the
19:20
uh rigging thing and after that maybe we
19:22
can work with the building thing there
19:24
are a lot of things can be improved by
19:27
ai so
19:29
i think those kind of automations will
19:31
help
19:32
like i think this can be like youtube
19:35
thing so back then only videos were
19:38
mostly produced by the broadcasting
19:40
uh giants and normal people can make the
19:44
videos and shows but now everyone do
19:46
right
19:47
um i think after those kind of
19:50
animation after reading after modeling
19:53
after all the 3d pipeline productions
19:55
are automated i think really um everyone
19:58
would produce like
20:00
team of 10 make a
20:02
large-scale game and get
20:05
a like
20:06
hundreds millions of revenue i think
20:08
that would be possible after all the
20:12
um
20:13
bothering jobs will be automatically
20:15
automated do you feel like
20:18
uh adoption of ai tools will negatively
20:23
impact you know the workforce do you
20:25
think more people are going to be left
20:26
out of jobs
20:29
yeah that's very important question um
20:31
um no
20:33
because um
20:35
i think this kind of question was like
20:38
repeatedly when there's a new technology
20:41
coming to the industry and everyone uh
20:43
worrying about it replacing their jobs
20:46
but
20:47
what i found out is that
20:49
when
20:51
there is an ai coming to the industry
20:53
and replace the most
20:54
hard or like most repetitive jobs and
20:58
people just
21:00
move to more created jobs
21:02
our
21:03
goal is to
21:04
make every uh
21:06
members in the game team to focus on
21:09
their own creativity that's what we are
21:12
aiming for so like when ai makes the
21:15
whole draft by ai mocap then every
21:19
animators can now um work with the
21:22
sensitive the artistic or like the
21:25
uh craftsmanship thing to their emotions
21:28
and it can make their emotions like more
21:30
creative more sensitive more high
21:33
quality i think those will
21:36
yeah come to the area because you know
21:39
when there's like
21:43
yeah
21:44
so uh
21:45
final question how do we
21:47
uh start playing around with plus do we
21:49
just go online and click the link and
21:51
start working you don't need to
21:53
do you need to pay is there like a trial
21:55
period how does it work
21:57
um yeah you just visit flask.ai after
22:00
you make an account you can start with
22:03
plus right away we have a freemium plan
22:05
so you can have most of the features
22:08
with most of the credit uh most of those
22:10
you can use most of the feature without
22:12
any kind of payment method registration
22:15
but actually we are releasing first paid
22:17
version this weekend and it will have
22:20
some amazing explosive features uh like
22:24
uh previously we only can extract the
22:26
motion from a video with a one person
22:28
inside but uh with a newly coming paid
22:32
version that you can now
22:34
finally extract the motion of multiple
22:36
people in the video each of the motions
22:38
yeah those will be
22:41
will introduce the feature to the paid
22:43
version and there will be much more um
22:46
minor like
22:48
um features which which can make your uh
22:52
production much more effective so
22:54
maybe but the paid version will have the
22:56
free trial as well so you can try it out
22:59
and if you love it you can buy it but
23:02
our
23:03
vision is to provide but
23:05
our short-term vision is to introduce
23:07
the am or capture the industry that's
23:09
the first thing
23:10
more than a monetization so we will
23:12
focus on
23:14
more to provide or provide more ai-based
23:17
mocap without any cost so
23:20
maybe don't have to worry too much
23:23
all right thank you so much for your
23:24
interview
23:26
thanks for enjoying another episode of
23:28
the 80 level roundtable podcast
23:31
check out upcoming episodes on the 80
23:33
level website at 80.lv
23:36
join our career site at 80.lv
23:39
rfp
23:41
and share our podcast with friends and
23:43
on your social networks
23:47
[Music]
