Deepfaking a younger Commander Data into "Star Trek: Picard"

[DeepHomage]

I like the Star Trek: Picard series, but I imagined that Jean-Luc Picard would dream of Data as he remembered him from his days on the Enterprise in the Next Generation timeline. Here's the deepfake scene:

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A side by side comparison with the original scene:

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[Atolm]

Okay don't take this the wrong way, but this is really F-ed up. You did an amazing job on this, and the damn series couldn't do this? WTF? You're proof (as many , many others) that there is talent in these forums that the industry never chooses to use. "In house" is code for they don't anyone anything/one new.
Astounding work! I could totally have accepted this, when compared to that.

 

[DeepHomage]

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback.

 

[Atolm]

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback.

np. So how did you do it? I know very little on this kind of stuff.

 

[DeepHomage]

It's made with a deep-learning computer model, from thousands of example images, and then edited into a video again.

 

[DeepHomage]

It's not EB Synth, although I know that EB Synth can be used for de-aging effects. The computer model was trained on thousands of example images of the younger Data (Brent Spiner) from the Star Trek: Next Generation series and Star Trek: Nemesis.

 

[Psion]

It's interesting that this is easily achieved with desktop hardware and software. It's almost convincing, except the eyes don't track right. The model apparently retains the positions of the pupils from the training images and knows nothing about how eyes engage in a conversation; resulting in Data staring in odd directions or his pupils disappearing into a mess when Spiner does his "accessing" bit with his eyes scanning.

Still, I imagine that can be sorted. Possibly by putting greater weight on the original version's pupil orientations. What's the package you used?

Very neat!

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

It's interesting that this is easily achieved with desktop hardware and software. It's almost convincing, except the eyes don't track right. The model apparently retains the positions of the pupils from the training images and knows nothing about how eyes engage in a conversation; resulting in Data staring in odd directions or his pupils disappearing into a mess when Spiner does his "accessing" bit with his eyes scanning.

Still, I imagine that can be sorted. Possibly by putting greater weight on the original version's pupil orientations. What's the package you used?

Very neat!

Agreed that this is incredible work. The same can be said for ship CGI as well. I'm not talking about the cut&paste fleet, but the quality of the CGI on both DSC and PIC.

We have people here that can make a ship look 10x better than what we saw, and now someone that can do a 10x better job of making a young Data.

The squawk is always about cost, but I never bought that as an excuse. I think it's just laziness.

PS: I thought Data's eyes were doing strange things in the last scene. Like the contacts weren't staying in place.

 

[Pauln6]

Very impressive! I think Deepfake works great for these little experiments. Putting a layer of Deepfake over CGI Leia from Rogue One also worked a treat.

I have toyed with using Deepfake to give Janice Rand a slightly bigger part and some more lines in Star Trek TMP but the results I managed to get were nowhere near as awesome as yours.

I'd love to replace some of the background yeomen with Grace in seasons two and three so she retains a presence on the ship. Could even give her a scene in the Tholian Web using stock footage from the Enemy Within and dialogue from Miri.