In the race to produce photorealistic digital humans, Stanford researcher Henrik Wann Jensen believes he's crossed the finish line. Jensen has developed rendering software that mathematically accounts for the way light scatters inside translucent material, such as skin, eyes, and teeth. As a result, he can reproduce supple, lifelike features - something that was impossible with existing photon mapping techniques. Now Jensen is taking his code on the road, lecturing at major digital effects houses like Disney, ILM, Pixar, PDI, and Square. And, in an effort to establish his app as the de facto rendering standard, he's producing a jade sculpture of Buddha on his Pentium III - a formidable challenge, considering the geometric intricacies of the gemstone. If he pulls it off, the next hurdle in bringing believable virtual people to the big screen will be acquiring their SAG cards.
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