What is So Special About Contemporary CG Faces? Semiotics of MetaHumans

This paper analyses the features of the 2021 software for the creation of ultrarealistic digital characters “MetaHuman Creator” and reflects on the causes of such perceived effect of realism to understand if the faces produced with such software represent an actual novelty from an academic standpoint. Such realism is first of all defined as the result of semio-cognitive processes which trigger interpretative habits specifically related to faces. These habits are then related to the main properties of any realistic face: being face-looking, face-meaning and face-acting. These properties, in turn, are put in relation with our interactions with faces in terms of face detection, face recognition, face reading and face agency. Within this theoretical framework, we relate the characteristics of these artificial faces with such interpretative habits. To do so, we first of all make an examination of the technological features behind both the software and the digital faces it produces. This analysis highlights four main points of interest: the mathematical accuracy, the scanned database, the high level of details and the transformative capacities of these artificial faces. We then relate these characteristics with the cultural and cognitive aspects involved in recognizing and granting meaning to faces. This reveals how metahuman faces differs from previous artificial faces in terms of indexicality, intersubjectivity, informativity and irreducibility. But it also reveals some limits of such effect of reality in terms of intentionality and historical context. This examination consequently brings us to conclude that metahuman faces are qualitatively different from previous artificial faces and, in the light of their potentials and limits, to highlight four main lines of future research based on our findings.