Realistic Basics Metaverse and digital human
GCC Academy
Learning Goals Can explain metaverse contents and materializing technology Can explain digital human contents and materializing technology
Learning Content Metaverse contents and materializing technology Digital human contents and materializing technology
CEO Jeong Jiwon Career Current board member of T.OZ corp. Former board member of Wysisyg Stutdios corp. General director of Lotte World theme park Taekwon V VR General director of Gyeonggi Contents Agency Gyeonggi VR AR
General director of Jeju National Museum realistic videography General director of Sokcho Museum realistic content creating
Hello, this is Jeong Jiwon in charge of realistic content lectures
What we will learn today is about metaverse and digital human
Recently the word 'metaverse' has been becoming more familiar
but metaverse is seen to develop into a broader concept
The interest recently is more about digital humans
Taking a look into digital human and metaverse on this lecture
I see these as different formats with extended frames
We'll see how these are applied
and the background of it
Metaverse contents and materializing technology
The thing that is most important when talking about metaverse and digital human is
experience without friction
An experience itself not having alien feeling is what metaverse and digital humans,
and the feelings people get in day-to-day life
will be a very important experience
The concept metaverse
I am sure that you might have heard it a lot
Meta means transcendence, and more
and universe means the world and the universe
These two words together make the word metaverse
There was a novel with the concept of metaverse
There's a novel Neal Stephenson wrote in 1992
It is the novel 'Snow Crash'
Here, Neal Stephenson coins the term 'avatar'
and calls the internet-based 3D world that avatars live in, equivalent to the real world's universe,
the virtual world a 'metaverse'
That way, with the word 'metaverse' the concept of metaverse is created in this novel
The most important thing when talking about metaverse is
there must be an avatar that represents me
and there must be a virtual space where that avatar lives
So in fact, the real metaverse world
is when the physical environment that we live in and the virtual environment
is experienced with no alien feeling
That is seen as the process of going to the real metaverse world
Actually, the metaverse until now are
seen as the technological process of early metaverse
And even though metaverse is taking a pause now
I believe that metaverse will realize a more realistic world
and go through the process of showing more realistic characters
And if we say that within this virtual world, real economic actions take place
you will be able to have experiences
that are hard to differentiate the real world and the virtual world
So when these physical real world augmented with virtuals
and when the physical world perfectly aligns with the virtual
I think the metaverse world that we feel will unfold
In 2014, in IEEE,
when talking about metaverse
it was mentioned as a progressed internet that is connected between
sensible virtual world and composed of perpetual 3rd dimension virtual spaces
And in 2020, Jensen Huang of NVIDIA
mentioned that metaverse is coming, which made
metaverse a keyword that a lot of people paid attention to
2022, as you will know
is an era when COVID-19 was existent and also when metaverse
was emphasized
So in a metaverse world, the real and the virtual must interact
and as they evolve, within them, social, economic, cultural actions take place
and through these some kind of value is produced
This would be the real metaverse
When defining metaverse, we can categorize them into 4 types
First is Augmented Reality
Within the physical environment that the user senses in everyday life
a virtual object within it
It would be the augmented reality with the interface between it
Where this augmented reality's characteristic shows is
virtual fitting
Virtual fitting is, using a vertical screen
When you put your body in front of it, scanning your body, you can try clothes on
or others, these would be it
And these days there are also ones for makeup
So using a smartphone, when putting makeup on and choosing which lipstick to put on
Fitting in on the avatar or my face
or see it will also be one
The second type is life logging
Life logging is logging information about a human's body, emotion, experience, and movement
by oneself or on a device
and realizing these on a virtual space
An example would be smart watches
Smart watches log daily life information like steps,
heart rates, or pulse
and checks on my health through these
This life logging type is another type of metaverse
The third type is virtual worlds
Virtual world is, using digital technology
expanding real life's economy, society, and political world,
worlds formed similarly or alternatively
A good example would be Second Life
Second Life is where in a virtual world
avatars interact
and make costumes and sell them
This virtual world best realized is
the movie 'Ready Player One' that I keep mentioning
There, one's character shows up in an avatar form
They can see the avatar character living in there
If you watch this movie once more
you will be able to understand how this virtual world is formed
The fourth type is mirror world
Mirror world is, in a way
similar to the concept of digital twin
So it is realistically recreating the physical world we live in
Recently, in the case of digital twin,
digital twinning a city, or especially a factory
forming an information-wise expanded world by creating more specific virtual information
on top of the physical world
To give an easy example, Google Earth would be one
In recent cases, you can think of digital twin integrated with industries
to understand this type of metaverse
The next we'll take a look is from the book 'What is the Metaverse'
Yi In-hwa wrote this book
Here, he defines what metaverse is
First, there was PC internet era, then there is smartphone era
and he says that there will be a metaverse era
So PC internet era is defined as an era where information is sent
Smartphone era is defined as when information is shared
And metaverse era is defined as virtual residence era
The keywords of information sending era are logging, searching, and contacting
and the keywords of information sharing era are participation, cooperation, and open source
And the keywords of metaverse's virtual residence era
are digital asset, creation, and informationization of intelligence
When first seeing metaverse, we said this a lot
Isn't metaverse a game, an online game or something like that
It in fact was online games that were most mentioned when explaining metaverse
MMORPG were mentioned, but metaverse isn't exactly games
It isn't games, it isn't web business either
Rather, it would be better to understand it as a mixed media where
games' information connection and society's connection is strengthened
So in this book the author says that these artificial intelligence, online games, social softwares
expanding and converging is what creates metaverse
In a way, there are many contents created using generative artificial intelligence
that are based on text or images
or videos
And in media terms there are virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality
Then in terms of social software, there are cloud computing and unstructured data
and use of data and so on
So these all mixed creates
the metaverse world
Now we'll talk about the characteristics of metaverse
When talking about this
a lot of experts have said various stuff
From those, I took that of David Baszucki
What he mentions about the metaverse's characteristics are
first, identity
Identity is, in the metaverse world, the user appears in the form of an avatar
This avatar has its identity and also makes friends with others' avatars
This is what identity is
These days, there's multi- or second-persona that we talk about a lot
Before, if we talked about this concept it might have been weird
but now, the concept of avatar or multi-persona has been familiarized
becoming a concept that does not feel alien
And the second is immersiveness
Immersive
What I consider to me important when talking about metaverse is this immersiveness
The reason why the existing metaverse was turned down by people is
because it was lacking immersiveness in the experience
That is, the experience in the metaverse must have a similar feeling to that in the real world
but that people couldn't feel that similarity
was the limit of the existing metaverses
So since the concept of metaverse and technology is growing now
I think that the immersiveness similar to the real world
will be better created in the future
And the third is Anywhere, being able to move anywhere
instantly would be a characteristic of the metaverse
Fourth characteristic is Economy
A lot of people mention economy when talking about the metaverse
They think that in the metaverse, there must be a currency that is shared in the vitual world
to have no difference from the life
lived in the real life
So the same thing must happen
Economic activities and such must happen in the metaverse as well
to have better immersiveness like in the real life
Next is safety
Safety is
In the idea of the world of metaverse
there will be some space and some environment
And in there, various avatars
avatars representing me lives in that environment
When these things are created, they must not harm each other
This harm could be economic harm, the most important
and there will also be that of personal aspects
It will be very important to have safety gears for these things
The most important thing when explaining metaverse is frictionless experience
It's a concept of low-friction
The reason why I consider this frictionless experience as important after economy and safety is
what you know well among metaverse platforms are
Zepeto and Roblox
The one's who have tried will know but
in Zepeto or Roblox, every time you visit that platform
you had to make new avatars
In the user perspective, having new characters in each platforms might have been fun
but doing these simultaneously had a limit
So the concept of frictionless experience is
in many metaverses there are many avatars created
and that when these are freely connected and moved around, that the effect will be greater
So to give an example, especially economic activities
So in Zepeto or in Roblox, when you are doing economic activity
if these are freely circulated
it is much more useful in the user perpective
and also many people can use if, creating an influx
Next is content
When a new platform or a new concept is created
it is always attempted to keep the interest and develop the technology
making it go forward with continuity
and content is a very important element in doing this
We saw a 3D TV in the previous lecture
3D TV is very important in terms of technology
and it was a technology that has high applicability
but it did not have much content
so it was made for about 10 years but vanished after that
So always, with the development of technology, new media appears
and then what develops this media is the contents
So what contents we can supply becomes an important factor
In metaverse as well, what's most important is these contents
What's also important in metaverse is connection, mobility
These are related to the internet
So now we have 5G, 6G but
especially when experiencing the metaverse, the immersiveness
and doing economic activities and such
the internet needs to be connected very quickly
And especially now, we use AHMD to experience these
but the device itself still is quite heavy
These days with technological development, it has become smaller and ligher
but it still is pretty bulky
So the devices necessary to experience the metaverse,
AHMD or glass or such's downsizing
Reducing the bulkiness will be very important
And interactiveness
It is very important to consider how interactiveness will be assured in the experience of the metaverse
So in a way, there's a method called hand tracking
and then there's eye tracking
Currently when experiencing through AHMD we usually use a controller
In fact, this also diminishes the the convenience in terms of interactiveness
So when these aspects are developed in time
putting on a single pair of very light glasses will be enough to experience new things
and the most important thing is how big and vivid the screen is
Because the existing ones like HoloLens,
augmented reality was best for depicting XR
HoloLens itself also did not have that high of a resolution
So it was cool, but it was a one-time experience
and was not suitable for using it continually
So HoloLens might have came in handy in industry field or education field
but there were limits for normal people to experience
If the concept of metaverse itself were to go towards a more meaningful one
it has to be expanded into a service or experience concept from a production concept
but this will only be possible when new experiences where one can transcend time and space is designed
The most popular among metaverses were including
Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, Zepeto, etc.,
there were very many platforms and games
There were games and social media as well
So this metaverse grasps the largest meaning when reality and
virtual disappears
Digital human contents and materializing technology
The next we'll learn about is digital human
Digital human will be very important when metaverse become materialized
in the aspects or creating very realistic avatars for users
and recently, there were also many images or videos
made with generative artificial intelligence
And the most important basis for these being possible
will be the movie 'Jurassic Park'
When in 1993 Jurassic Park was out
I remember everyone being so surprised while watching it
The dinosaurs moving itself wasn't awkward like the ones that computer graphics showed before
and they were very realistic
so it was a content that was simply unable to not be immersed in it
So actually, just one well made movie
can maximize the value of realistic content greatly
When we talk about digital human
you often think of computer graphic technologies abroad first
but there were digital humans in Korea as well
In 1998, Cyberstar Adam
was the first digital human
So about 200 thousand copies of the album 'Genesis'
and in a way he can be thought of as the
content that became the beginning of virtual influencers
The debut of Cyberstar Adam was very sensational
but hundreds of millions of production cost was needed for a 30 second appearance on shows
and that 30 second appearance would require two months of production
causing an ironic situation
Because at that time, for computer graphic technology to be used,
huge amounts of people and computer graphic devices were needed and expensinve
Also cost of rendering was very high as well
Even so, Cyberstar Adam would be the first instance of a Korean digital human
And then in 2001, there was an animation based on the game
Final Fantasy
and this caught a lot of attention since it was promoted as a movie made using photo reality method
So people watched it hoping it will show different of a graphic from Jurassic Park or ones after that
but were disappointed as the photo reality production was not as good
When I was the audience of that movie
I think that was kind of upsetting
For digital humans, there must be that humans'
language and body language that can be depicted
Before generative artificial intelligence was created
the focus was more on the natural production with human technology and various
computer hardware and computer software
but now with generative artificial intelligence I think that the production will be much better
and even the digital human made with generative artificial intelligence now
do sometimes have some crooked or awkward parts
but from a non-expert's perspective
they are very naturally created these days
So digital human's field has been diversifying recently
if it was limited to games and movies before
now it is used in areas like advertisement, distribution, health care, and production industry
Especially characters like
virtual Youtubers or virtual influencers appearing
with the appearance of Youtubers, digital human has been
being popularized and generalized
And the people who experience this
felt the awkwardness of even the tiniest error with a larger impact before
but now people seem to understand those things more naturally
So what comes up most often when talking about digital human is
the uncanny valley, and this is
a concept that when a fake human's similarity with a real human increases
people feel rapidly increasing uncomfortability
So before, when creating digital human, that was a big issue
but these days that has improved
and the details have been improving to the extend that it has become hard to differentiate real human
and digital human
So what made this possible are
the development of CGI technology and of the equipment for it
Also especially entertainment labels or game production companies
are trying to produce various things with digital human
And what made the production of digital human is also
the appearance of real-time rendering technology
that made possible creating high quality 3D humans
in real time
Also 3D scanning devices also developed a lot
so before, to to 3D scanning, the device itself was very expensive
but now 3D scan is
for example SK Telecom's Jump Studio put
106 cameras in a circle and filmed 60 frames per second
So it has developed to the extend of using volumetric video capture technology
to 3D capture the movement itself
and you can consider that these things became possible
with the development of real-time rendering and hardware technology
And motion capture also developed when creating these movements
Motion capture, before, they used markers on a black suit
and recently with the markerless method, it has developed a lot that now the movement can be
suggested through the images obtained with cameras only
So not only just the appearance of the digital human
but also the movements are very naturally produced
minimizing the uncanny valley
And recently with AI developing through deep learning
the movements also became more natural with image learning
and through deep learning, with the data
faces and movements
were made much more natural through rigging like
face rigging
So these days, the production through generative artificial intelligence
plays a crucial role in creating digital human
There are many platforms for creating digital human as well
Especially this thing called meta human creator is put in an unreal engine
so that everyone can make a digital human called meta human
And Soul Machine made a digital DNA studio
so the users can make digital human themselves
And Deep Brain AI
made an AI studio for companies and creators to quickly produce
digital human videos
So there are various cloud-based digital human creating platforms
making it possible for any non-experts to make digital human
when it was accessible for only few experts before with the advancement of technology
This digital human is being used in influencer marketing or shows as I mentioned before
and ESTsoft also showed an AI anchor
in 2021
And a New Zealander energy company Vector made
a digital human 'Will' for elementary school students
for energy education and consultation
In 2021, Shinhan Bank put a digital bank staff
in an unmanned bank and performed customer service with it
Digital human is also used in production simulation
It is much more effective to have a character explain something to us
compared to when we just watch a video that explains it to us
in learning information
so digital human is used in such simulations
And NVIDIA made a platform called Omniverse
this, in a way, is a metaverse platform
and also a digital twin platform
So this Omniverse platform of NVIDIA makes a virtual factory
They created one that is almost identical to a real factory
and put digital humans in there and watch the workers' workflow
It is used to the extend to see the productivity or efficiency
Where the metaverse and digital human are best used are
simulations using digital twin spaces as their backgrounds
and this is currently actively being used
And using digital human
product design for ergonomic improvement is also actively done
In the case of Mazda, they motion captured a human opening the door and getting off a car
And turning this into a digital human
they did tests in various angles
That way, they used digital human to improve the experience of
using the car door, and getting on and off the car
And when talking about digital human
affective computing and RPA can also be mentioned
Affective computing is, being based on AI system,
where digital human is well incorporated for the interaction of
human and computers
Hyperscale AI is now very general
Those are also used in making digital human a lot
Samsung and LG also used digital human and robots
to provide custom mobility or future home
What I often give as an example of a metaverse is Cyworld
Cyworld can be considered as the beginning of Korean social media
that was out in 1999 to 2019
There was avatars and mini homepages, avatar in a virtual world
So there's avatar that represents me
and through this avatar,
multi-persona started
At the time, there were 32 million users
and Cyworld can be considered the best case of a metaverse because
in the online world, you gift your avatar clothes and other things
and there is also a virtual currency 'Dotori(acorns)'
Saving these, you could buy houses or clothes
and these were created online
So I heard that Cyworld is coming back to service
So if the concept of Cyworld is well connected
I think a better metaverse content will be created
Cyworld, in 2022,
starts to work together with a metaverse platform of Hancom, Psytown
So various services on Cyworld
was made into 3D from the existing 2D Cyworld
and 3D avatar 'Minime' would log into Psyworld
and that is how it is expanding
This is also another most mentioned platform when it comes to metaverse
An Avatar creating application Zepeto of Naver's affiliated company
In Zepeto, a virtual character is created
and the appearance was also customizable
Especially in Zepeto,
many luxury brands made spaces
where people could visit
and have new experiences in there
that enabled them to get closer to Gen Z
Especially, famous singers also performed in this world
For example, the music video of Blackpink and Selena Gomez's collaboration
was released in Zepeto and hit 100 million views
That way, a lot of people entered the Zepeto world
What Zepeto did great was that it worked as a fan platform
and it worked well as a social media where
avatars with various identities could communicate in a virtual world
making it worth calling it a successful metaverse
The second successful metaverse would be Roblox
Roblox is famous among elementary school students
In fact, Roblox's graphic quality is not that high
But although it looks like Lego pieces,
what immerses people into Roblox is
the game itself
The story and the characters,
and the fact that it is possible to make a new world where you can share things with other people
is the differentiating factor of a meta platform and
the existing games that everyone had
It is possible to make games without coding knowledge
and through this, people can also profit off of it
Since it is said that there are about 50 million games made inside the Roblox studio
it can be considered that Roblox was well used as a space for
economic, social, and communicative purposes
Roblox was widely used not only in the US
but also all over the world
and a lot of people are still using it now
When explaining metaverse we talk about economical efficiency
And when mentioning economical efficiency, what is common is NFT
It is a virtual currency using the blockchain technology
When the concept of metaverse was introduced, NFT gained a lot of attention
Now it is less popular but
I am sure that NFT will make its comeback
And famous brands make limited editions using NFT
and making them digital assets
Especially Nike used NFT very well
Areas where digital human was used the most is
Recently the most popular one was one made by SIDUS studios
It was a digital human called Rozy
Rozy also appeared in the advertisement market and gained a lot of popularity
After that, Han Yuah of Smilegate
or Ana of Battleground's Krafton
and Netmarble FNC's affiliated company Metaverse Entertainment's Mave
Many digital human contents were created in the name of
digital human, virtual human, meta human, and virtual influence
There used to be huge amounts of production costs and work force required for making digital human
but with the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, it has become very easy for non-experts to make AI avatar as well
Using ChatGPT, Midjourney, Naver CLOVA Voice, or Studio DID
it is generalized to make generative AI avatars with
faces, scripts, voices, and movements that anyone can create
Expecially with OpenAI releasing Sora, a generative artificial intelligence,
I think that the field of use will expand even further
Today we learned about the metaverse and digital human
We saw that there are four types of metaverse which are augmented reality, life logging, virtual world, and mirror world
Then we talked about digital human and the creating technologies
You can see through these lectures on realistic contents that there are many technologies
I think it will be good to look up the common technologies when going to the field
and especially taking a look into the keywords when acquiring information
Good job on taking this lecture
Summary Metaverse contents and materializing technology Metaverse A world where the virtual and the real interact and evolve and where value is produced with social, economic, and cultural actions taking place
Types of metaverse Augmented reality, life logging, virtual world, mirror world Characteristics of metaverse Identity, immersiveness, anywhere, economy, safety, frictionless experience, contents
Important elements of the metaverse Quick connection to the internet, reduction in volume of devices, interactiveness, expansion of the screen space
Digital human contents and materializing technology Developing factors of digital human Development of CGI technology and special equipment, expert work force Early digital human production and application based on
entertainment labels, movie studios, game studios with enough budget Real-time Rendering 3D Scan Cyworld Avatar that represents me, the start of multi-persona
Able to decorate the virtual space using a virtual currency 'Dotori' Zepeto Naver's affiliated company SNOW's 3D avatar creating application
Roblox A platform where one can enjoy various games using a Lego-like avatar in a 3D virtual world