Do it dude, they're totally worth it.him over there said:
That particular clip was from 2nd GIG (series 2), but both series are totally worth getting.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
Go buy it now.
Is Modern CGI Unambitious?
- Thread starter Soviet Heavy
- Start date
That particular clip was from 2nd GIG (series 2), but both series are totally worth getting.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
Go buy it now.
Not to derail my own thread for too long, but apart from SAC, has anyone seen GITS 2 Innocence? I saw the original film, but never the sequel. Is it any good?Daystar Clarion said:
It's not bad.Soviet Heavy said:
Visually, it's stunning, a lot of well implemented effects and such.
Story feels kinda weak though, and there's a serious lack of Major going on.
Yeah, and he has a sweet Blood houndSoviet Heavy said:
It's worth watching, but it's not as good as the first film or the series.
I felt like it was trying to be too philosophical.
I think you should take a peek at what they did in the Lord of the Rings, because I think Peter Jackson did an immaculate job of blending practical effects and props with CGI effects and blending them to be virtually indistinguishable. There's a reason those movies got so many oscars--all aspects of their prop, design, and post-production teams did incredible jobs.Soviet Heavy said:
For example, animating and compositing digital horses into shots of live horses to fill out the crowds and have horses doing things which would be impossible to duplicate with real horses (such as a horse and rider falling in the middle of a stampede).
And their miniatures, for which they won multiple oscars. Basically a miniature of the set is built, then the rest of the scene (sky, lighting, actors, etc) were digitally inserted to complete the shot.
Granted these movies are about a decade old now, but the sheer amount of craftsmanship both digital and physical is absolutely astounding. There's a reason these movies put Weta Digital on the map.
Yes there are films that use CGI incorrectly, but those aren't the films you see winning oscars for digital effects. As with any tool in a creator's toolbox, there is a time and a place for everything. Just because a tool is used incorrectly it doesn't mean the tool is inherently flawed. A tool is only as good as the user. So what we have here is not an issue with CGI itself, but rather the way those who have access to it are using it.
So please, to the rest of the people in this thread, let's not go into a bunch of fanwanking on how one is and will always be so much better than the other. Both physical and digital effects can do things we still haven't figured out they can do yet, and both can be used both correctly and incorrectly. If you want to blame anybody for a perceived lapse in special effects quality, blame the people who are using it.
Those Starcraft comparisons show the difference perfectly. This has been nagging me for awhile but I couldn't think of why modern CGI is kind of lacking, but you illustrated it perfectly.Soviet Heavy said:
In the first Starcraft video notice that there are a lot of really dynamic "camera" shots. Watch a David Fyncher movie (Fight Club or Alien 3 come to mind) and you'll see what I mean - lot's of special effects, but they're there out of necessity and the camera work acts like they're a natural part of the scenery. And when the aliens pop out, they're creepy and obscured in shadows. Most CGI today would look better, but it would have a super-detailed monster step into full view, then roar at the camera "impressively". Unfortunately that takes away all the tension and believability of the situation. In Starcraft 1 they had detailed character models for the time, but had the balls to stick them in a dark space station that only lets you see half the action, and let the camerawork set the mood.
Same reason Advent Children didn't work for me. Beautiful graphics, richly rendered environments, but because the animators had total freedom they made every scene so batshit crazy that nothing ended up having any real weight.
But that is only 1 game intro yet how many have been released in the last few years? I think this is what OP was getting at and honestly after looking at many games, he has a point that although cgi is great, no one uses it because devs are fucking lazy nowadays.rhizhim said:
specifically with the starcraft example, i think you have somewhat of a point but not much of one. the older one is certainly more charming, (to me, natch) like a retarded ewok tripping over it's own feet but the second is a lot more visually appealing.
As for special effects in general . . . i'm not entirely sure, do you mean just cgi or everything?
As for special effects in general . . . i'm not entirely sure, do you mean just cgi or everything?
Yeah but Nolan's crazy. They actually flipped the goddamn truck in The Dark Knight.Hollyday said:
There was a time when if a director wanted a truck flipped they all flipped a damn truck. Nowadays most would just do it in CGI because it's faster, easier, safer, and they can slap the shot together after the fact. It would also probably look like complete ass because the integration would be poor, or the truck wouldn't be animated properly and our subconscious would be silently trying to tell us that that's not how physics works.Sexy Devil said:
Needless to say I have a lot more respect for the directors who use CGI to enhance traditional effects than to outright replace them. A good rule of thumb Hollywood should really be following is to ask the question of whether or not a scene can be shot with real actors, sets and special effects. If it can then you probably should. If not, do what you can with the former, and spend the time adding in what you can't film with CGI and do it right. Unfortunately CGI has gotten so cheap these days that most won't just use it where it is most beneficial, and will almost never run up the budget making sure it's any better than barely passable.
I never got this attitude. Why would it suck? How do you know that? Why are people stuck with the "better in my days" attitude with everything? An example I like to use for these situations is ironman. The ironman suit is almost entierly cgi, with robert downey jr sometimes only wearing the helmet, or the arms. I saw a documentary about Industrial Light and Magic, the effects company that made the suit.teknoarcanist said:
They said that they showed the director a split screen with the real suit on one side, and the cgi one on the other side. They didn't tell him which was which, and let him decide. He thought that the real one looked fake.
It's things like this that make me think that people really can't tell what's real or not just by looking at it. Just by looking at something in a movie and going "it's fake, I can tell" does not make you an expert, and your points are in most cases probably wrong.
It doesn't help the whole "Practical Vs. CGI" Situation when you consider that it is at this moment SUBSTANTIALLY cheaper to pay 20-30 guys to make an acceptable-for-the-big-screen T-Rex in CG than to get all the electronics, raw materials; makeup artists, electricians, and all the other people that would be required to be there on a set with an animatronic T Rex. Not to mention having to keep the whole mess from breaking after pouring gallons of mineral water on it. Yes, the people who worked on the original Jurassic Park push the limits of what effects can do, it's just that doing the same types of practical effects with the level of technology we have would cost a buttload more than if they just did it in CG. If Avatar was remade shot for shot, frame for frame, but was done as much as possible with practical effects, it would cost at least half a billion dollars more.
Practical effects can still have a place, Guillermo Del Toro movies have proven that a dozen times. it's just that he also knows when you gotta do something in CG, despite what you might think would look better. I don't think that CGI is evil, or even lazy (most of the time), it's just that with everything being done virtually now, it's so much easier to create a world as seen in the minds eye. How else do you think that Dreamworks can crank out 2-3 movies A YEAR, with at least one of them being a brand new IP. But the ease with which you can go from concept to finished product also makes it harder to consider all of the options when making something. The only real limitations are what the producer says you cant do, and even then, sometimes it's not all that much. The few times that the envelope was seriously pushed were the few times that it cost a brag-worthily large sum of money to make a mostly, if not entirely, computer generated film. Now when I say that it's easier to make a CG film, I understand that it still takes a grueling amount of time and effort to make a movie that will hopefully make it's money back at the box office. I simply meant that compared to say a traditionally animated film or some of the older big budget live action movies, it doesn't take nearly as much time. As I understand it, it currently takes around a year and a half to two years of turn around between coming up with the Idea for a CGI movie (I'm using Dreamworks as an example here because for what they usually lack in Pixar quality is made up for in sheer quantity) which is close to the turn around time between most Harry Potter movies.
The only real problems I have with CG is that I don't see it on the realistic side of the uncanny valley as much as wish it would, especially now that we have the technology to do so. (stuff like Spirits Within tried really hard, but didn't quite get there) And I also hate it when directors like Bay or his contemporaries use it to compensate for their lack of attention to detail. I imagine that the one of the best things that a CG artist can hope to have asked of them is to make something that looks really cool. The only problem with that is that lots of directors tend to want cool stuff in their movie, not to have a cool movie.
I think this conversation has happened more than a few times. "This shot looks kind of boring. Hey, special effects guy, can you make something that looks cool so we can make this shot more interesting?" "Sure thing so long as I get my check at the end of the week." "I'll Double it if you make it the greatest thing you've ever done, but it's got to be done in 2 weeks or your fired."
Practical effects can still have a place, Guillermo Del Toro movies have proven that a dozen times. it's just that he also knows when you gotta do something in CG, despite what you might think would look better. I don't think that CGI is evil, or even lazy (most of the time), it's just that with everything being done virtually now, it's so much easier to create a world as seen in the minds eye. How else do you think that Dreamworks can crank out 2-3 movies A YEAR, with at least one of them being a brand new IP. But the ease with which you can go from concept to finished product also makes it harder to consider all of the options when making something. The only real limitations are what the producer says you cant do, and even then, sometimes it's not all that much. The few times that the envelope was seriously pushed were the few times that it cost a brag-worthily large sum of money to make a mostly, if not entirely, computer generated film. Now when I say that it's easier to make a CG film, I understand that it still takes a grueling amount of time and effort to make a movie that will hopefully make it's money back at the box office. I simply meant that compared to say a traditionally animated film or some of the older big budget live action movies, it doesn't take nearly as much time. As I understand it, it currently takes around a year and a half to two years of turn around between coming up with the Idea for a CGI movie (I'm using Dreamworks as an example here because for what they usually lack in Pixar quality is made up for in sheer quantity) which is close to the turn around time between most Harry Potter movies.
The only real problems I have with CG is that I don't see it on the realistic side of the uncanny valley as much as wish it would, especially now that we have the technology to do so. (stuff like Spirits Within tried really hard, but didn't quite get there) And I also hate it when directors like Bay or his contemporaries use it to compensate for their lack of attention to detail. I imagine that the one of the best things that a CG artist can hope to have asked of them is to make something that looks really cool. The only problem with that is that lots of directors tend to want cool stuff in their movie, not to have a cool movie.
I think this conversation has happened more than a few times. "This shot looks kind of boring. Hey, special effects guy, can you make something that looks cool so we can make this shot more interesting?" "Sure thing so long as I get my check at the end of the week." "I'll Double it if you make it the greatest thing you've ever done, but it's got to be done in 2 weeks or your fired."
CGI is a burgeoning medium that we've had only for a few decades. Its incredible how far we've come, really.
Still, early CGI faced many limitations, and a bright mind can make use of limitations to push their creative work further.
One of the things that made animatronics and pre-CGI effects effective is the same reason old CGI has the "charm" the OP is referring to: you gotta get it just right for it to be believable at all.
Absolute freedom to tackle any visual representation is hard to come to terms with, and is only made worse when you have to develop a whole new aesthetic to go along with it. This doesn't necessarily make new CGI worse, as there's a lot more freedom, but its certainly going to be different from its predecessors.
That being said, I really wish people would stop giving CGI such a hard time. Its a new medium, and for all the people complaining about "traditional animation is sooo much better" or "They should have used real CGI, this is so lazy and looks terrible!" just stop for a moment. Please.
When someone uses CGI instead of what you think they should have used, blame them, don't just go insulting the medium. I find it a bit cruel to go hounding a form of art that's not even 50 years old.
Still, early CGI faced many limitations, and a bright mind can make use of limitations to push their creative work further.
One of the things that made animatronics and pre-CGI effects effective is the same reason old CGI has the "charm" the OP is referring to: you gotta get it just right for it to be believable at all.
Absolute freedom to tackle any visual representation is hard to come to terms with, and is only made worse when you have to develop a whole new aesthetic to go along with it. This doesn't necessarily make new CGI worse, as there's a lot more freedom, but its certainly going to be different from its predecessors.
That being said, I really wish people would stop giving CGI such a hard time. Its a new medium, and for all the people complaining about "traditional animation is sooo much better" or "They should have used real CGI, this is so lazy and looks terrible!" just stop for a moment. Please.
When someone uses CGI instead of what you think they should have used, blame them, don't just go insulting the medium. I find it a bit cruel to go hounding a form of art that's not even 50 years old.
I'm confused. I don't see you guys actually harping on better visuals of a decade ago but more of how CGI or practical effects or used.
That I'll agree on. Because of the accessible use of CGI, we now have different shots that directors want to use. For instance, a shot that describes how a mechanical object works. It used to be maybe 2 secs of shot on how something works. Now? It can be 3 to 4 secs, even more. But now, you've broken the flow of the shots. These humps, really does a number. It's that cool factor that the director thinks is what you're wanting and some do want this, but we're not used to that and just want the shot to get done.
Also the mentality of, "this shot is expensive, lets make this worth it." I can see this is a hard habit to break. You were thinking of a shot of a plane flying through the air and you tell everyone about this. Everyone knows the cost and now alters the shot so that they know it was well worth the money.
CGI from the 90's were to only do what we couldn't do. It was added into the movie. The movies of those days were great also and a dash of CGI was great. But than we went overboard, we now know that CGI is just a call away to an arthouse. I guess it IS a crutch but not quite what you would expect.
That I'll agree on. Because of the accessible use of CGI, we now have different shots that directors want to use. For instance, a shot that describes how a mechanical object works. It used to be maybe 2 secs of shot on how something works. Now? It can be 3 to 4 secs, even more. But now, you've broken the flow of the shots. These humps, really does a number. It's that cool factor that the director thinks is what you're wanting and some do want this, but we're not used to that and just want the shot to get done.
Also the mentality of, "this shot is expensive, lets make this worth it." I can see this is a hard habit to break. You were thinking of a shot of a plane flying through the air and you tell everyone about this. Everyone knows the cost and now alters the shot so that they know it was well worth the money.
CGI from the 90's were to only do what we couldn't do. It was added into the movie. The movies of those days were great also and a dash of CGI was great. But than we went overboard, we now know that CGI is just a call away to an arthouse. I guess it IS a crutch but not quite what you would expect.
Well the Iron Man suit is a little different, as it requires a high level of movement and fidelity. If you did that with a real prop, you'd get something like Nolan's batman suit, where the actor can hardly move, and it wouldn't look right.IamQ said:
But when you have something that doesn't need to achieve perfect visual realism, whether that's because it's a troll, an alligator in a frothing bog and low light, or what have you, and doesn't require a lot of fine movement, I think effects make-up and/or animatronics can look a great deal better. They have a heft and a weight to them that CGI has a hard time matching. Your mind buys them more as "real" because...well, they are. Go watch Lord of the Rings and tell me those orcs would be greatly improved if they were high-end CGI, rather than effects make-up with CGI supplementing it. Go watch Hellboy and tell me he'd be better as a CG stand-in with Ron Perlman just providing the voice.