BOOTING UP VIRTUAL STARS; COMPUTER-GENERATED ACTORS SOON READY FOR THEIR CLOSE-UPS.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

Soon, very soon maybe, Marlene Dietrich will slink across the screen again, and W.C. Fields will crack his misanthropic jokes at trade shows. And a stoic Abe Lincoln could be explaining the Civil War to museumgoers or cavorting in a sitcom.

No, this isn't Buddhist reincarnation come to the entertainment world. And it's not another clever use of recycled film-clip cutouts, like those of John Wayne and Fred Astaire in recent beer and vacuum cleaner commercials.

It's new computer technology that soon should be good enough to resurrect the dead with lifelike three-dimensional re-creations convincing enough for computer screens, television, games, museum exhibits, trade shows, even movies.

``We're approaching (an image good enough for) a medium close-up for a big theater screen of a virtual character where you couldn't tell it was computerized,'' said Steve Sherer, CEO of Sherer Digital Animation, whose recent works include a digital Humphrey Bogart and a virtual Lincoln that reminds of nothing so much as the well-known audio-animatronic figure at Disneyland's exhibition devoted to America's 16th president.

``I think we're right on the edge of being able to show it,'' Sherer said. ``Within the year, we'll see that.''

Already, an interactive W.C. Fields character has been shown off recently at a New York licensing show and at a Universal City conference on digital humans.

``It's OK, but it's not 100 percent,'' said Sandra Kay Helsel, the conference's director and U.S. editor of VR News. ``There's still a gap.''

Ready to work

But the gap is shrinking, quickly, Helsel said. And as it does, people are now seriously considering how to apply the virtual technology to the real world.

``What we're saying now is, how do we use this?'' Helsel said.

One possibility: the Michael Keaton movie ``Multiplicity'' gone slightly mad, as big stars use ``digital clones'' to be two places at once, experts said. A good example would be if Michael Jordan wanted to appear at a trade show in Los Angeles while the NBA playoffs were running in Chicago. With digital technology, he could ``appear'' at the show while coming off a pick for a big three-point shot.

Yet another possibility, said Greg Panos of the Performance Animation Society, is that the technology will ultimately create a new class of faceless yet famous performers, like the anonymous Fields impersonator.

Panos said they will be as ``famous as the digital character they play. They might be very big, but they can go shopping without being accosted. There will be a whole new class of digital actors who will become as famous as real actors.''

The digital Fields can interact with an audience and moderator, cracking jokes, looking at individual questioners and twirling a cigar.

The character is controlled by a Fields impersonator working from behind a screen, Oz-like, with motion-capture sensors attached to his face that send commands to a computer directing the on-screen character, said Jeffrey Lotman, CEO of Virtual Celebrity Productions.

``The part that's a little sad is when you're not going to be able to tell the difference,'' said Lotman. ``But we can create a Mikey (of Life cereal fame) that would never grow up, a Mr. Whipple (of Charmin tissue ads) that would never die, and most importantly, there would be new performances of our classic performers.''

Peter Riva, who runs an intellectual property brokerage, would like to include Dietrich, his grandmother, in that list of perpetual performers.

``Nobody in this room has any different relationship with Marlene Dietrich now than they did 10 years ago,'' said Riva. ``For all intents and purposes, she's still alive.''

Eventually, Riva said, she would be virtually alive, too.

He wants to boil down a Berlin archive - containing truckloads of his grandmother's papers, films, still photos and audio recordings - into a ``digital playbook'' for the computerized artificial intelligence that would govern a virtual Dietrich performing in new movies.

Don't ask 'em to think

But true artificial intelligence, sought for decades by researchers, remains far in the future, several experts said.

``We're way far away from a digital computer that can think and interact with people on its own,'' Sherer said.

In the nearer term, however, characters like the Fields one - combining high-quality animation technology with motion-capture technology - will allow celebrities to create a more enduring image of themselves, Lotman said. They'll be able to perform decades past their prime, or even their life, Lotman said.

Richard Masur, president of the Screen Actors Guild, said the technology shouldn't threaten his group's members, and it may even expand their work.

``The only thing I quarrel with is that there will be characters created that will replace humans,'' Masur said. ``It isn't going to happen, or it may, but isn't going to be successful. People go to movies to see people they can make contact with.''

Don't be so sure about that connection thing, however. At another recent conference at the American Film Institute in Los Feliz, software gurus were showing clips of an idoru, the Japanese word for a virtual idol.

Kyoko Date, the idoru's name, was created for an advertising agency in Japan and has become hugely popular there, said Garry Hare, president of Oz Interactive Inc., whose program animates Kyoko Date to perform on the Internet, television and elsewhere.

Kyoko Date is hugely popular in Japan, even selling several hit songs under her/its name, Hare said. She/It gets 200 marriage proposals a week.

Something of a similar phenomenon is occurring in the United States with Lara Croft, the animated star of two Tomb Raider computer games that now is being used in a feature film.

Famous names doomed?

But those characters are different from virtual celebrities, which Masur said are unlikely to succeed.

``Bless your heart, but I think you're doomed to mediocrity,'' Masur said to researchers. ``I don't believe there's going to be a lot of Marlene Dietrichs in the future, because what made her memorable was ineffable. The fact is, when actors work, all kinds of things are taking place, accidents happen.''

And sometimes, even when an actor has little talent, ``they're absolutely riveting,'' Masur said.

``Is it possible, under the 100 monkeys theory, that you could create a character that's riveting?'' Masur said. ``It's possible. In the short term, it probably would be interesting. But in terms of carrying a film, I don't think so. Human performers bring things to performances. You will have cut out a rich source of collaboration.''

Hare agreed with Masur, even though his company is busy trying to create compelling virtual characters.

``The idea of bringing W.C. Fields back to life, I don't know,'' Hare said. ``You do it once or twice, then who cares? If you're doing an animated film, do an animated film.''

Real stars have an important place in film, Hare said, and not just for their performance.

``You want real stars so they can go out and bang the drum and promote a movie,'' Hare said. Resurrecting long-dead stars isn't ``a compelling use of the technology. A lot of times we use technology because we can, not because we should.''

Helsel, an anthropologist, said too much emphasis is being put on technology, and not enough on the social-science implications of virtual humans.

``They haven't gotten into the soul, but can you?'' Helsel asked. ``They'll never be able to get the soul into these characters.''

Nonetheless, many current celebrities are having their faces and figures scanned into computers in anticipation of a virtual career, said Steve Williams, an Oscar-nominated special effects supervisor for films such as ``Spawn,'' ``The Mask'' and ``Jurassic Park.''

``One thing I kept hearing was synthetic actors would never happen, it's not right,'' said Williams. ``But it seems to me even saying that implies that it will exist. Synthetic humans are inevitable. I think it's a shame in a way, but it will happen.''

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Photo: (1--Cover--Color) BODY DOUBLES

Will digital technology make celebrity immortality a virtual certainty?

(2) Sherer Digital Animation's virtual characters include Abraham Lincoln and Humphrey Bogart.