Slashdot Mirror
The Tech behind Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
green pizza writes "In prepairing for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (the FF movie), I found the following articles on the technology behind the picture. Very impressive stuff, I like how they developed their own modeler plugins and render shaders to get even closer to photorealistic humans. What did amaze me, though, was their heavy use of Silicon Graphics systems, as I was under the impression that the movie was developed on Sony GSCube machines. Turns out the movie was modeled and composited on SGI systems and rendered on a huge Linux cluster. SGI's press room has information, as well as fan movie sites, aplenty."
Your box can do it now; it's just that you probably don't have the artistic talent (no offense), and it'd take your box a hundred years to render it all.
But get a few dozen more like yours, and some artists who can cut the mustard, and you too can produce those kind of fantastic graphics. All that hardware and talent will cost you as much as it cost them, of course.
-
No, but then, each game dosen't have anything to do with the next game. Having played the first through to seven (including most non-US imported versions), each is pretty much just an epic tale. Certain names recur (Cid appears in the movie, for instace, as a scientist who flys support above the main characters during the final scenes... he is normally a pilot who flys support), and there are some recurring characters (like the chocobos, who *don't* appear in the movie, nor moogles).
But the recurring motifs in the FF series are there - a small group of people working to save the world. The concept of Gaia is there, and appears to be the same as the Lifestream in 7, and not-Mako energy powers all the devices. The plot has similar ups and downs and the world is at risk. Since this is a science fiction movie, and was possibly scripted around the same time as FF7, it's not surprising to see the resemblance (most FF games are set in pure fantasy settings).
At times (especially when there is good lighting - some of the scenes are dark), the characters and backgrounds look real. And I don't mean "squint your eyes, and it looks real", I mean they look like they were shooting real actors on location. At other times, especially when they talk, or medium range shots, they are clearly CG. But damn fine CG.
Oh, and we decided that the movie stars are Ben Affleck and a Real Doll. It pulls *serious* inspiration from Alien and Aliens, but then, so does quite a bit of Japanese cinema. The main bad guy wears Seifer's jacket (FF8). And Biggs and Wedge don't seem to be in it, nor the prelude (the "harp" music in the games).
All in all, if you like SF or Fantasy or CG or action films, see it. It's worth watching in the theater. It has nothing to do with the games, nor did it ever claim to. FF9 and FF7 and FF1 have nothing to do with each other either. But it's a good flick, and as a bonus, the trailer for Lord of the Rings is on it - which will probably be the next movie you'll have to wait for that is as good as this.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
>>Margins were really great,
:(
and therin lies the problem. SGI's customers were tired of getting royally FUCKED buying overpriced hardware, memory, hard disks, etc etc etc. The performance margins that used to still make SGI attractive are almost eliminated, and all the software that used to be SGI only is now on NT and Linux. (That, and you had to use IRIX. Barf. "Oh we're sorry, our latest patch screwed up X11|NFS|OtherCriticalThing. Please wait till we get our act together").
Don't get me wrong, an Octane2 is a kickass piece of hardware (and HEAVY! Damn - my back!) but for the same price you can buy a dozen x86 boxes. Hard to justify. SGI killed themselves. And the shares I own are only $0.53 today
But the CG in this movie looks absolutely AMAZING. I dont think I have ever seen people rendered so realistically.
:( )
Go check out the "Virtual You" article at the Discover Magazine web site for a still image that is truly photorealistic quality. I've showed the print magazine to people who have had trouble believing that the picture is computer generated, and not a real person. (I submitted the article here, but it was turned down
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Myth #1: GSCube Machines are currently available.
Nope. Sorry. Not until the end of the year, if they're on schedule.
Myth #2: GSCubes are meant as development workstations.
Again, no. The first generation of commercially available GSCube machines are meant as dedicated render machines for SGI Servers. GSCubes aren't meant for the animators, but for the end products. Soon, they'll be staples in big render farms. A generation or two after that, they're slated for real-time fun that previously could only have been accomplished with an SGI Reality2.
I'll respond to this. You can't. And even if you could have, it would be silly.
1. Win2K is not suitable for 'classic' clustering. (No, wussy ass fail-over clusters do not count). However this was a Renderman cluster, so see point 2.
2. The desired software was Renderman. While it does run on NT (and could be made to work, albeit unsupported on 2K) as of the newest rev, its only 73% as fast.. So, in order to do the same work, you'd need 36% more machines, plus the cost of each machine doubles (Renderman runs in half the memory spec as compared to the NT version. Not to mention the fact that they just blew another $300 on a 2K license, or in order to get a supported config, $310 to buy Win2K Professional and downgrade to NT4.).
That was why it was silly. This is why it was impossible.
3. W2K didn't exist. Remember, they've been doing this movie since 1997.
4. Even if Win2K did exist, Renderman only ran on Real Machines, AKA *nixes, at that point.
5. Did you see a mention of x86? I sure didn't. All I saw was SGI. SGI systems can run Linux. SGI systems cannot run 2K.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Someone should put a CG film review generator together, the template can be; "[film x] is a technological masterpiece, however..."
...And this site has Aki porn! (bottom of the page)
Ah, the future is going to be great...
- j
First http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Server/9029 /images4.html is a link to a very large gallery of images from the movie. There is even one of the Aki naked, although I am not sure why it got made in the first place. http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Server/9029 /aki_nude.jpg is the direct link.
I am surprised there were no articles on Shrek and Linux because it was done not only using linux for the rendering but for some of the actual animating, modeling, etc. as well (what with Maya, Houdini, shake, Photorealistic Renderman, BMRT, and Mental Ray running on Linux and all). Pacific Data Images is a big linux convert (as read in Post magazine) and have been using Linux probably more than any other major studio.
I saw Final Fantasy last night at a theatre preview and I can attest that the story is cliche but everyone should go and see it for the animation, which is beautiful, and everything you could hope for. It was the most visually impressive movie I have ever seen.
Sony's new workstation is way too new to be able to get anything done with, that won't happen for a while, assuming anyone is going to end up using it at all.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
What, me worry?
Its cool, no plot spoilers below, this is mostly what I think of the movie and the animation.
I was lucky enough to get into a sneak preview on Monday, and I must say that the graphics are impressive. They are still a little bit away from actually making you forget that you were looking at CGI because the characters do look too stiff, and the skin tones are a bit off, but overall it is damn good.
Animation-wise, they did a very good job on the clothes and the hair. Also, the characters use a 3D holographic interface when interacting with computers, and it looks really cool, especially the one on Aki's wrist in the beginning. However, I was a bit disappointed with the monsters, which were mostly vague outlines. At least as far as I can tell, there is a strong anime influence in the movie, especially in the monsters, which are done in the tentacle style of art.
Also, if you thought about it while watching the movie, you could see how it tied into a quest RPG style video game. Before characters could do stuff, they would have to collect objects or do things. I wouldn't say that the plot is outstanding, but it is defintly more than decent. Oh yeah, I was very much impressed with the soundtrack.
I would definitely say that it is worth 7 bucks to go see. It was fun to pick out all the little details (especially the clothes and hair) and be amazed at how much time a effort went into every little frame
At first I thought it was the models for the characters, but it's the CGI.
Taken from Sci-Fi News.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-|
`Lex - Find Me Here: Text Appeal
Please tell me: is there any cross dressing, breeding of giant golden chickens or riding of said chickens? I thought the games were pretty lame on account of that stuff.
Does the movie have ANYTHING to do with the games besides the name?
Gosh, I thought every individual is supposed to be distinct. But then, how come they all think the same way? Why can't someone who has watched it comes up some more interesting opinion?
And no, I'm not giving you ideas about how to write your opinions.
on Monday. It was *great*. My wife still does not think that it was really all CGI. The story line was good solid action. Go see it support this and we can hope for more good stuff in the future.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
The movie is absolutely spectacular - and while SquareSoft will continue to develop their technology and techniques for games, they may not make another movie without support for this one. Personally, I'd like to see more FF movies. I hope it cleans up at the box office!
Why bother.
There is a decent review at the NY times. From what I've seen and read, it seems like the renderer is there for creating photorealistic humans. That is just beyond cool. However, I get the feeling that the project was somewhat lacking in compute power. While some of the characters look amazing and almost make you think you are watching a real person, some of the shots of seen of more minor characters are weak by comparision. The detail just isn't there. Either the artists didn't take the time to do the model or there were limitations on compute power. Either way, the movie has some weakness, but displays some awesome technology.
Movie Stars Fear Inroads by Upstart Digital Actors
They may look kind of cool, but the cast of ``Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within'' will never work in this town again.
'Final Fantasy' Changes Performer Role
Plus the one mentioned earlier. I haven't seen this much hype in a long time. Then again, did anyone not expect the story to suck in this one? It was intended, from the very begining to be an experiment in computer graphics. Not an experiment in good film making. They don't need to have a good story for this one.
---