The growth of simulation animation has cut down on the number of acting roles in Hollywood. If it weren't for dubbed voices the future would indeed be very bleak. The use of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) began with Toy Story (I guess #1) in 1995. This was the first movie COMPLETELY made by computer. Special effects had been using CGI for decades. Actually the first use of CGI was in the SciFi movie Westworld in 1973. The best of the CGI special effects came in Jurasic Park(1993) with those extra real looking dinosaurs terrorising real people on the screen seamlessly.
All the CGI was made possible by more powerful computers and in particular more powerful graphic processors used with those computers. The big CGI shops (Pixar for example) use banks of computers (computers tied together in a tight network) called a render farm in their graphic design. Thus the graphic load is spread out over many computers and not just one. The recent SHREK series, Toy Story series, Up and Finding Nemo are great CGI films that the characters in the films generate just as much emotions in their audience as real actors.
So when will the job of imperfect human actor end? Already you can have a virtual sales person for your business web site. No need to hire an actor, just go to the virtual actor site and pick out who (whom???) you like and type in their script. No mistakes to worry about and they are all cosmetically perfect. Finding perfect simulated actors for your next script can't be far behind. If my son or daughter announced they were thinking about being an actor, I might ask them if they wouldn't rather be a blacksmith or buggy whip salesman....
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