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Realism
Computer animators often try to animate characters and objects realistically, in the sense that motions are believable or lifelike. This can be accomplished in tandem with, or separately from photorealism, which can apply to any computer generated imagery in general.

Humans & The Uncanny Valley
One of the greatest challenges in computer animation has been creating human characters that look and move with the highest degree of realism. Part of the difficulty in making pleasing, realistic human characters is the uncanny valley, the concept where (up to a point) the human audience tends to have an increasingly negative emotional response as a human replica looks and acts more and more human. Also, some materials that commonly appear in a scene such as cloth, foliage, fluids, and hair have proven more difficult to faithfully recreate and animate than others. Consequently, special software and techniques have been developed to better simulate these specific elements.

Video Games

 * In his review of the 2010 game Heavy Rain, Gabriel Deleon of Geek.com cites the uncanny valley. Referring to the game as an "interactive drama," he writes that it makes "significant steps towards presentation" while also concluding the genre has "a lot of work that needs to be done before the graphics match the experience."
 * The 2011 game L.A. Noire is notable as the first to use MotionScan technology, a method of facial motion capture. Ross Miller of The Verge contrasted one character's performance in the game with a similar scene from television featuring the same actress used in the motion capture, saying of the former that "there's a general consensus that something feels very unnatural from a technical standpoint."  Miller also drew a distinction between L.A. Noire and other games like Fallout 3, noting that "in a game where strong narrative isn't the primary motivator, emphatic characters are much less a priority."
 * Critics praised Beyond: Two Souls, a 2013 title from Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream, for the extensively motion captured performances of notable actors Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. It was also only the second game to be recognized by the Tribeca film festival.
 * Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, especially for Kevin Spacey's performance

Alternatives
Given these challenges, many animated works feature human characters with deliberately nonrealistic, cartoon-like proportions and movements. Other animated works use few if any human characters, instead anthropomorphizing inhuman characters such as animals, fantasy creatures, or normally inanimate objects. The goal of computer animation is not always to emulate live action as closely as possible. For example, animation was used in Nautilus Productions the "Mystery Mardi Gras Shipwreck" documentary to model a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) and the Mardi Gras archaeological site in 4,000 ft of water in the Gulf of Mexico. Computer animation can also be tailored to mimic or substitute for other kinds of animation, such as traditional stop-motion animation (as shown in Flushed Away or The Lego Movie). Some of the long-standing basic principles of animation, like squash & stretch, call for movement that is not strictly realistic, and such principles still see widespread application in computer animation.

Future
In theory, realistic computer animation can reach a point where it is indistinguishable from real action captured on film. When computer animation achieves this level of realism, it may have major repercussions for the film industry.