High end 4D Performance Capture and Entrepreneurialism with Colin Urquhart Ep 48

Colin Urquhart is a pioneer in the field of digital doubles and is co-founder and CEO of DI4D. Colin began his career at the Turing Institute in Glasgow, Scotland carrying out research into computer stereo vision, and went on to obtain a PhD from the University of Glasgow in 1996 for his research into stereo photogrammetry. During this time, Colin also developed a strong interest in entrepreneurship and became CTO of a university spin-out company in 2000. When that company failed, Colin returned to the University of Glasgow in 2001 to lead the “Virtual Cloned Human Characters” project, which was aimed at using stereo photogrammetry to create virtual characters with the shape and appearance of real-life people, which have now became known as “digital doubles”.

Colin and co-founder Douglas Green formed DI4D in 2003 to exploit the potential of stereo photogrammetry combined with recently introduced digital stills cameras to create highly realistic digital double characters for video games. DI4D was initially unable to obtain traction in the video games field because of the graphical limitations of the Playstation 2 and Xbox generation of consoles. Colin pivoted the company to providing 3D facial capture solutions for research in fields such as facial surgery and psychology. DI4D had a major breakthrough in video games in 2009, when Electronic Arts began using its solutions to capture the shape and appearance of real-life soccer players to create digital doubles for inclusion in the FIFA video game series.

In 2004, DI4D began development of its ground-breaking 4D capture system, which uses an array of synchronised video cameras to capture the facial movements of an actor in 3D and time. Axis Animation was one of the first companies to use 4D capture to produce the facial animation for the 2011 Announcement Trailer for Techland’s Dead Island video game. Colin relocated from Glasgow to Los Angeles in 2017 to accelerate DI4D’s expansion into the entertainment industry. DI4D’s 4D capture systems have now been used for VFX in movies such as Blade Runner 2049, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Morbius, the Netflix animated series Love, Death, and Robots, and video games such as Quantum Break and Call of Duty Modern Warfare II.

Highlights of the Episode:

0:00 Introduction

0:13 Introduction of guest

1:12 Early inspiration

5:33 Significance of AI

7:11 The best of both worlds

11:02 Virtual clones in a couple of sentences

13:25 Early applications

17:06 Lessons learned from studying entrepreneurship

18:42 Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs

21:06 Developing a market for a new capability

27:05 Risk versus continuing to do something