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CGI About to Boom In Hollywood
FortKnox writes "Because of the success of "Monsters Inc" and "Shrek", many major hollywood studios are scrambling getting on the CGI bandwagon. Looks like we're about to get smothered by CGI movies left and right. For those that like to tinker with CG, it might be a good time to go jobhunting..." Several upcoming movies mentioned. Some ven
look like they might have potential ;)
I hope that they have a better animation than that of the cave troll in the Lord of the Rings.
It's movements were disapointing. (But most of the rest was ok)
When can we expect Rob's Duckpins or Hamster Havoc to be adapted into feature length releases?
ven with potential
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Don't forget that Shrek (and both Toy Story movies for that matter) was a great movie because it had a good script! If you just put out the same crap (*cough* FF *cough*), it will not be successful.
1. Write a good script
2. Make it with good actors (LOTR) or CGI.
3. Make money.
It is really pretty simple.
Good! The best part about CGI are the bloopers and outtakes. Funny!
Oh, that's sarcasm btw.
_______
2B1ASK1
I certainly hope that the producers of these wonder-CGI flicks understand that the reason that movies like "Shrek" and "Monsters, Inc." did well is that they had funny and original plots; the fact that they were digitally rendered was simply an added bonus.
Don't get me wrong; I'd like to see more CG films, but I don't really want that all-familliar Hollywood trend of copying an idea to death.
I predict that there will be a few good flicks out of this rush, and a whole bunch of lousy, plotless, kindergarten-quality films about wombats and potatoes.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
I had no idea that GD and GIFgraph were used to make Shrek!
I just hope they realize that the success of "Shrek" had nothing to do with the fact that it was CGI, and that merely using CGI will not necessarily guarantee them the success of "Shrek."
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
There is already computer generated pornography. There are also popular communities like renderotica around.
This is very bad !
Real actors often act as projection surfaces for the phantasies of people like Natalie Portman. I doubt that CG actors will do the same, at least they are really artificial.
Also actors act as role model for little children making them bright, healthy and law-abiding citizens.
Without real live actor these will be gone. The only role models for little children will be the other people they see on news on TV - politicians and terrorists.
Would you like George "Duyba" Bush, Tony Blair or even Osama bin Laden to be a role model for your children ?
So all these CG movies are really very bad and might lead to reduction of morale in the free modern western civilization.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
I still live action actors, so maybe a combination (Roger Rabbit, Cool World, etc.) of CG and live action is on the horizon.
Sapere Aude - Homer
Is an Anime-style cartoon from Sav! The World productions, which is french. (So anime-inspired that it's even got a JPop soundtrack) It's entirely CG, although it's flat-shaded so that it looks like traditional cel animation, albeit with spectacular eeffects and attention to detail. It looks neat, but will cost about $300,000 per episode to produce.
You can see an Mpeg format trailer here:
http://www.savtheworld.com/
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Duplicate on Geekizoid.
How shameful!
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Of course, as ususal many studios will slap together formulaic, crummy projects driven by the idea that CGI means a movie on the cheap (no locations! no actors!). They'll tank, and some burned studios will think twice before the next one. And even if the product is decent - I watched "Osmosis Jones" on video this weekend and enjoyed it quite a bit - it may pan because there are no sure things in entertainment.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
MORE CLONES!!
MORE SEQUELS!!!
MORE PIXELS!!!!
HIGHER BUDGETS!!!!
MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE!!!!!
One. ONE decent memorable character. ONE good storyline that wasn't licensed from a book. (Notice where the REALLY good movies come from?) ONE skillful use of setting, or non-canned music, or silence, or symbolism, or metaphor.
All the money in Hollywood, and NONE OF THESE THINGS can be produced, apparently.
But they can spend NINE FIGURES on CG!! Oh, sure. No problem.
Funny. The game industry is trying desperately to be Hollywood, and Hollywood is trying frantically to be the game industry.
Maybe instead of the THX thing, they'll put up a sign that says:
"The audience is yawning"
Isn't anybody using CG for a non-cartoon/non-fantasy film? I haven't seen FF, but I hear that some of it's scenes are pretty hard to distinguish from a "real" movie, but are there any projects in the works that are attempting to have the look of a "film" and not a cartoon?
Movies like Shrek and Final Fantasy (especially Final Fantasy) have done a lot to show what total CG movies can be, but movies like Lord of the Rings and (to a lesser extent, IMHO) Star Wars: Episode One have shown how the effective use of CG can not only compliment human acting, it can bring the immersion and suspension of disbelief to another level.
:)
I don't think anyone is going to dispute that the scenery and cinematography in Lord of the Rings was fantastic. Granted, the perspective (swooping high above in many cases) allows for loss of detail in such a way that you fool the eyes of the audience in a lot of cases, but the close-up scenes have become finely detailed as well, showing that the possibilities for effectively integrating CG in a live action scene are greater than in previous years.
I agree that a bumper crop of CG movies are coming, but here's another trend to watch out for: actors that do especially well with blue-screens and acting with things/people that aren't really there.
Oh, and just a side note...I think all this effective CG stuff is going to really hurt the traditional latex/foam rubber movie monster special effects industry. In years past, things like the cave troll in LotR would have been done with a guy in a suit, or hydraulics or such. But, it probably wouldn't have seemed as fluid or expressive, so, eh no loss, right?
My sigs always suck.
Will the end of the movie feature Astroboy lying to the computer as he files his report just so he can have some fun with the audience? Or will this be fleshed out to reveal a deeper mistrust between superior, smarter AI entities and their more mundane, inferior counterparts in the information sector?
ian.
ian
Just take a look at South Park. It proves that technical perfection or visual quality have nothing to do with good or bad entertainment. South Park's visual appearance is total crap,
Did the writer slip into Swedish Chef mode for a sec?
If you post it, they will read.
Does it mean a lot to have a 'name' when it is just a voice? Not really, there are plenty of other lower profile (and cheaper) actors who can do the voices.
The current star system is getting a little bit out of order and this could provide an excellent antidote.
Unfortunately, I guess this will go the say of modern SFX. Wow, great, it looks good, lets have lots of it! Whoops, shame about the plot, direction and acting. Those good films like Shrek came about because some people (i.e., Dreamworks in this case) did a lot of work. Pixar are good too, but let us hope that the industry does not become led by the idea of turning out CGI dross.
See my journal, I write things there
a friend of a friend of a friend works for the company producing this:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/ice_age/
it looks funny as hell..
It's based on Games Workshop's Warhammer 40K universe, and looks like it has to possibility to be exciting (atleast to people who follow the hobby) Check out the Exile films site for some neat preview animations and renderings.
Good special effects is not a problem. Pixels are not a problem either. If you think there's tons of bad movies coming out right now, look back through the years.
Bad movies have always been with us.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
1. Write any script.
2. Get any "big name" actor to be in your movie.
3. Make money.
Simpler, isn't it?
There was a good frontline recently, claiming that most of the big studios rarely consider the script as an important part of the process of making a movie - sad but true. The actors, tie ins, marketing, branding, etc are all much more important factors.
take your sig and shove it
Durring the summer I remember reading in Discovery magazine (the date is foggy but the issue was mainly about Prozac) that computer generated actors should be in full force by the following year. It was a good read and they even went as far as to say that we won't be able to tell who's the animated actor.
Would you like George "Duyba" Bush, Tony Blair or even Osama bin Laden to be a role model for your children ?
No, yes, and no, respectively.
I'd like to think that the recent adoption of CG in films has more to do with the requirements of epic storytelling, rather than just using the "next big thing" for it's own sake.
Without CG, FotR would not have been possible.
Without CG, Shrek WOULD have been possible - it would have been a "traditional" animated feature, and would not have garnered the acclaim it did.
Don't get me wrong - I loved the characters, plot, and "atmosphere" of Shrek - I just think too much was made of the technology aspect of the production.
But I digress - what concerns me is that I predict we will now see a string of movies with token CG, just because they can!
On the flip side - with so many existing studios moving to Linux tools, there almost has to be a positive spin-off for the Open Source community in terms of better and more polished CG tools.
Prisoner #655321
Please make Ender.
Ender's game that is.
Probably one of the FEW novels that really NEED CGI in order to get it done (try finding a few hundred kids, who can act, and stay young enough for the sequels).
Too bad OSC allowed the screenplay to get ruined.
"I think CGI is starting to phase out traditional animation," Swallow said. "But I think that is very much because of a generational divide. For a generation that is used to seeing these kind of digital images in video games, this is what they start to expect."
Hmmm... Apparently these guys are talking about Dizney and Dizney alone. The animation houses in Japan have done a great deal to convert over to digital CG production without sacrificing the look of traditional animation.
Take a good, close look at 'Love Hina', 'Excel Saga', or any newer anime and notice that the cels have all been 'painted' in Photoshop. On some of the closeup shots, you can make out typical Photoshop resizing residue and common filter effects.
CG may be killing the fatiguing process of 'pencil-paint-photograph', but not traditional animation.
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I want a tomb raider movie thats cg !!!!! oooooooo yeeaaahhh! ^_^
I didn't know people were making movies about Common Gateway Interface....looks like it's time to get those perl skills up to snuff. I want on that bandwagon too!
It's quite surprising to read this now. I mean, weren't they saying the same thing back when Toy Story first came out? Shrek and Monsters Inc are not trend setters or anything, they just followed the path of their previous hits.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
CGI is a tool that allows you to make scenes impossible to do with conventional models.
People like interesting epic stories that stimulate their imagination... go figure...
This was probably said already, but I wanted to repeat it.. we've been spoiled with good CGI lately.. I really hope we're not in line for a truck load of crap.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Each time someone makes something cool in the industry, you get a dozen ripoff movies that suck. When will they learn we want something original?
I was sick of all those static web pages and mailto forms on movie websites.
sulli
RTFJ.
I'm curious who's going to make more hair move then Final Fantasy. After all, that is the ultimate effect I've seen so far.
The movie mentioned in the article by Fathom Studios has a website with previews and access to the message boards used by the production team. It's a nice chance to see what goes on behind the scenes of a computer animated film while it is actually happening.
http://www.delgo.com
Movies that require alot of CG means bad directors. If you cannot get your point across without CG, you need more schooling. Movies that require an explosion, and use CG? For safety reasons I can understand but fire is safe now w/ the current pyrotechnics. Cause an actor is scared? BAH. To remove cables? That is great. No reason to endanger(sp) actors like old flicks and small cables. CG in movies is a cop out imho, you can enhance stuff it is okay, where to draw the line? If it cannot or should not be done in real life, use CG. In "Oh brother where art thou" they used a CG cow to get hit by a car, THAT WAS COOL but should not be done in life...poor cow [but i love steak]. As for CG in movies such as Scooby Doo? That is lame, to create a character to run w/ live people always always always always looks bad. Name one movie where it did not?
Many CG studios have gone through some rounds of lay offs the last year. .. another studio making a feature length CG movie is Big Idea doing an adaptation of Jonah. (Got to throw a plug in somewhere ;)
And Shrek was not that good of movie. The script was so-so and the character movemnt was only believable on the donkey... and sometimes Shrek.
Monsters, Inc on the otherhand did an excellent job. Pixar does a good job of making things look right.
Also
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
... for the simple reason that one or two flops of $100 million CG movies will force the companies to go back to 'normal' films.
Shrek blew monkeys. Sure, the CGI was good, but the script really wasn't original or remarkable. I found the characters down-right annoying. Toy Story 2 was much better. However, the thing is, it doesn't have to be good, just appealing to the masses. The masses apparently have a collective intellect of an 8-year old who really likes fart jokes. So much the better with cool animation.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Come on guys.. You do this on porpoise, don't you?
Ewe purpose philly make spilling mist cakes to git
sum won to cum int a boat bed proof reeding..
Eww half two!!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
What exactly does CGI mean in this context? I was always under the impression that the "I" stood for "Insert" or "Image," while the "C" stood for "Computer" and the "G" for "Graphic(s)" or "Generated."
I've been leaving off the "I" entirely lately because adding an "I" at the end not only sounds stupid, but is also confusing at times when also considering the cgi-bin.
The cgi-bin is not a repository for CG films.
here's another trend to watch out for: actors that do especially well with blue-screens
So instead of going on strike, virtual actors are going to BSOD the computers?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Google has bork bork .
Gee do ya think Shrek is going to save the Princess and fall in love with her? Gosh what a surprise. It had some cutesy side jokes, and Cameron Diaz's avatar was certainly a render-o-babe, but that was about it. Diaz's reading was terrible, and Mike Myers talking in a Scottish accent is funny only if you know that he is actually Canadian (although that accent was actually his own idea I gather and a late change in the movie). I can picture some film execs watching this and cracking up each time Myers says "Donkey!" and Eddie Murphy does his thing. But they are only meta-funny, not actually funny. Just the fact that you think of the characters by their human voicers as opposed to their CG selves shows one of the problems.
- adam
/-------/| /....../| /-------/| || | |SCO|| |UNIX|| |5.1|/ ||/ +-------/ asdf uasduifhas diufhas difuahs difunasdiuvas ndfiuasdnfiausndf iasudnf asiudnf aisudfna sidufn asiduf nasiudfnas idufn asud
solution, a perl script:
/\ \;/g;
#!/usr/bin/perl
print '<TT>', "\n";
while (<>)
{
chomp($_);
$_ =~ s/\s+$//;
print '<DIV>';
$_ =~ s/\
print $_;
print '</DIV>', "\n";
}
print '</TT>', "\n";
print '<BR>\n';
exit
What software is standard for CGI? I use FormZ for 3d modeling now, but its really a CAD program.
I wouldn't say that yet, some of the LOTR stuff looked suspiciously close to stuff from Braindead, a truly excellent rubber and latex splatter film. I wouldn't be suprised if it brings on a whole new wave of films that use *more* FX because the director knows anything is possible.
And I still find that CGI spaceship models do not have the same impact or feel as a well done model. I say they will compliment each other's strengths.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
yeeeeeeeeeeehaw! Shatai can post again!
I'm not stashing karma, I just keep it for a rainy day!
What the article fails to mention is that PDI and Pixar both have been working toward these CG animated films for 20 years; the article makes it sound like Dreamworks was able to make their first animated film very quickly and easily -- it could only do so because they bought Pacific Data Images who had been laying the foundations for these films beginning in 1980 (disclaimer -- I was at PDI from 1983 'til 1995).
Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar, has been trying to make animated films since the mid-70's, starting at the University of Utah, then going to the New York Institute of Technology's Computer Graphics Lab, then to Lucasfilm; whose computer division was spun off to become Pixar.
The film that did seem to happen amazingly fast was Jimmy Neutron; Boy Genius. While Pixar and PDI have used proprietary, in-house systems to do their animation; DNA used pretty much off-the-shelf software (although today's commercial software is very customizable, so the line is blurrier than you might think at first glance). DNA was able to make the jump from hand-drawn 2D animation to a 3D feature very quickly indeed. And while the characters are goofy and the rendering is not (even attempting to be) photoreal -- it is still amazing to me that a small group of people actually can pull off an animated film in a reasonable amount of time.
Jimmy Neutron will not be the box-office smash that Shrek or Monsters are; but it is the more revolutionary film.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
"In years past, things like the cave troll in LotR would have been done with a guy in a suit, or hydraulics or such."
How soon they forget Ray Harryhausen. In years past he would have done the cave troll and it would have looked..... about like it did in LOTR. That thing had a definite Golden Eye of Sinbad vibe to it.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Just a thought I had.
Anyone who has the FF DVD will notice that one of the special features on it were some post production "photos" of Aki in a swim suit. grrfff.
It was at that point in time that I realised that realistic (i.e. not manga style) CG porn is just around the corner. Just think of the possibilities, XXX movies with real clear, vivid close ups, near-real vitual-reality interactive pr()n movies, build your on pr()n fantasy DVD's
the list goes on....
"[in Hollywood] when you did well you didn't get to do better, you only get to do more" (Tommy Lee Jones quoting Robert Mitchem).
So, when are we going to see the first animation completely (100%) done by computer? 10, 20 years from now?
What? Toy Story was the first? No... the voices were those of actors. We need computer generated voices and sound effects to win this award.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
Disney laid off nearly a third of its animators and cut the pay of much of the rest. Dreamworks/PDI had layoffs. Didn't FOX/Bluth close down their studio? Very little recruiting and parties at the 2001 World Animation Convention & SIGGRAPH this year. Forty resumes for every job offer on the SIGGRAPH employment board. Five years ago if you knew how to use SoftImage or Alias you were guaranteed a cushy job. Hope success turns things around.
no, yes, no got a +2 and this got a +1
Anybody remember what happened after "The Lion King" came out? A bunch of studios decided that they should get a piece of the bazillion dollars that Disney made from it. What happened to those studios' feature animation departments? They're gone--all of them.
It's all about story, story, story. It's always about story, story, story.
A bunch of studios are going to put out CG movies. There is only so much talent to go around but they'll put them out anyway. Most will bomb and most of the studios will go away.
Again.
CG is a tool to tell a story. Traditional animation is a tool to tell a story. Live action is...you get the picture.
I just wish Michael Eisner and Roy Disney would hurry up and clean house at Disney so they could get back to telling good stories again.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I see Ice Age (completely computer) and Peter Pan II (mixed computer and art) have been announced.
Pixar and Dreamworks/PDI are taking a rest after immense successes in 2001. Both are working on animal movies for 2003. What else is in the works?
CGI: (n) Common Gateway Interface. Used primarily as a means of getting and responding to user input via a Web interface.
CG graphics: (n) Computer Generated images. Typically used to describe animations created completely through computers, as opposed to images created through photography or traditional cel animation.
SGI graphics: (n) Refers specifically to those CG graphics created on SGI workstations.
Pick the right term and use it. Thanks!
Nathan
The last part of CGI that depends strongly on humans are the voices. When will they be computer generated?
I hope this will help SGI turnaround their company. I know a lot of the intense CGI stuff is being farmed out to linux boxes for rendering, but massive stuff like this is still where SGI really rocks. They're hardware is so damn cool, I'd love to see them come back in style (and see their stock rise above a dollar!)
From the first time I saw tron that CGI was not just a passing fad. Tron should win an award in groundbreaking CGI. It paved the path for the future.
You're fucking out of your mind! Let me remind you what profession Tom Cruise, Kristy Alley, and John Travolta are: actors. Let me remind you what religion they practice: $cientology. And let me remind you that very few actors even rise to the position of being admirable (Sir Alec Guiness, James Earl Jones, Harrison Ford, just to name a few).
There have been many stories about computer animation switching to Linux boxes because of cost savings and availability. I wonder if the adoption of Linux is helping the industry and in turn will this growth help Linux. Either way here are some Computer Animation\Linux articles to read:
Linux Goes Hollywood
Linux Goes To The Movies
Linux takes Hollywood by storm
Maya ported to Red Hat
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I would like Hollywood--especially Disney--to learn that it is pointless to throw big names on the marquis unless they are also great voice talents. Claire Daines just about did in Princess Mononoke. Lord knows she's not hard to look at, but Ye Gods!: "I'm, like a wolf? And I, like, hate all humans?"
For my money, John Dimaggio, who does Bender on Futurama, and had credits in Monsters Inc. among many others, is absolutely brilliant: these guys should have mile-long limousines in the new digital Hollywood, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were them.
Of course I think the animator should get a credit next to the character, so I'm obviously a dangerous lunatic.
In a french film, Amelie, there's probably the most subtle, yet effective CGI I've seen in years. Too often, IMHO, CGI is gaudy or simply overused to generate eye-candy. In a few years people will be so accustomed to CGI that, like the introductions of Sound and Color, it'll have to survive on more than just novelty or eye-candy appeal. If you get a chance, see Amelie and note how effective a little CGI can be, particularly the bed table creatures. ;)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's also important to note that just because you build it, all the talent in the CGI industry won't necessarily come.
There's a huge amount of talent and expertise amassed at studios like Pixar, PDI, and ILM. Buying shitloads of computers and throwing a huge budget at some artists and programmers won't always result in a visual masterpiece (let alone the necessity of a good script).
...wait until they start using servlets!
Breakfast served all day!
I'll toss out Final Fantasy, not because the CGI was bad (actually excellent), but because the story was simplistic and predictable (about on par with Mario Brothers, the movie
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Deep Canvas in Disney's "Tarzan"
What if you could paint a painting, then have the brushstrokes themselves come alive and move around? Rather than texture mapping, where the end result of the painting process is wrapped onto a surface, Deep Canvas animates the events that make up a painting: the brushstrokes themselves.
Almost all "traditional" cel animations have a substantial digital component these days. Entire TV productions are being done in Flash!
Incidentally, it may be me (I'm a CGI trench soldier), but this entire article and sebsequent commentary seems very quaint and at least four years late. CGI has been booming in Hollywood for a long time, and this year's crop seems to fit the smooth progression of quality and quantity.
Now everybody go see Jimmy Neutron! Lots of great geek humor.
They should try using mod_perl or tomcat to avoid spawning off a system process for every request...
A choice of masters is not freedom
So do other animated movies/cartoons have complex plots?
Bugs Life: Did you think that he wouldn't save the day?
Disney movies (Alladin, Little Mermaid, etc.): Did you think that he/she would not get the girl/guy in the end?
Roadrunner Cartoons: Did you really think the coyote would get him this time?
Animated Movies/Cartoons are generally focused on a very young audience and thus have really simple plots. However a plot can be easy to understand and still be good at the same time; it's just hard to do. One reason that Shrek did pretty well was that it had some humor that was adult focused so parents would be interested in the movie as well as their kids.
-- Find the Truth...
so, wshi, whadda ya think about cg kiddie p()rn?
Turn off javascript, or you'll get that #%(*@# x10 popunder ad.
just two nitpicks from the article:
... i can't imagine a modern remake is going to be worth seeing.
1) computer animated films were referred to as a 'genre'. i hope that doesn't turn out to be the case.
2) sony's doing astro boy? it was bad enough as the old-school animated show
both have on more than one occasion used CGI as the acronym in question. the web interface meaning would be completely unknown to them probably.
When you have lots of hits, you'd be better off using a module built into your server.
Now they can just pay you a fat check, scan your image and voice once and use it in as many films as they like. Anyone want to take bets on how long it will be before they bring out a modern movie with John Wayne plaing the starring role? It's possible, even easy. After all, they did it with Brandon Lee in The Crow, but that was because they had no other choice. How long before that becomes an accepted way of making a film?
I'd give it 10 years at most before we see mainstream pictures using dead actors. That could go to a really bad place... corporations and movie studios with licenses to particular actors' digital counterparts, licensing of their digital avatars, patents on the technology... we could see a very real mess develop... after all, precedent of a sort is already set with currently existing animated characters (Mickey Mouse, Aki Ross, Jar Jar Binks, Gollum, etc.) and if those rules were applied to living actors I expect people would not be pleased...
Some of you will say that computer actors will never be as good as the real thing. You'd be wrong of course... not to say it would be easy, but 99% as good as the real thing is close enough for 99% of the people. Readers on this site in particular should know exactly what CGI technology is capable of, and it's definitely not out of reach. Better start thinking about it now, if we see it happening perhaps we can do something to prevent it from going down the wrong road.
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
The masses apparently have a collective intellect of an 8-year old who really likes fart jokes. So much the better with cool animation.
You obviously haven't heard of South Park.
CG, plus tools for manipulating voices, plus the internet, eventually will mean that one person can produce and distribute a movie on their own with about as much effort as it takes to write a book and publish it on the internet today.
If that is so, than CG is what everyone means, right? Or, should I have read the article or something?
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
There are a couple of things which cheap x86 PC's cant supply such as reliability, large interprocessor bandwith and very highly parallel SMP/NUMA setups etc. Unfortunately for SGI that matters dick all for rendering, which is suited incredibly well network farms with relatively low internode bandwith with nodes with the best price/performance ratio. It doesnt matter if a computer can render a frame 5 times faster if it costs 10 times as much.
Also actors act as role model for little children making them bright, healthy and law-abiding citizens.
... cocaine... hee-hee-ho-ho-*gasp* (*klunk*)
:-)
Robert Downey Jr.
Would someone please mod the parent as "funny", like the author must've intended?
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
See how many of the same reactions there is?
:) ) and like I said before, they see only numbers. It's obvious that hollywood has a kool-aid receipe to make movies and bring in cash. The 3D CGI movies got in only because it was a continuation of the 2D art, so it blended in without causing too much noise. It fitted well and Hollywood noticed it generated quite an amount of cash. That's good in a way, that means we'll still se quality content like Pixar's and Dreamwork's, but the downside is we'll probably start seeing a LOT of crap in the next years in that field as well.
The main problem with hollywood is they are running a buisness. Some people in "the company" are brilliant, but the others (majority) are just seeing and "understanding" the numbers.
Pixar's been around for quite a while, Disney's been around forever in the realm of 2D animation. If you look at both entities, what made them a success is the mix of mastering their art (2d, 3d) AND the storyline. Obvious you might say? well for us, yes, but think "marketting guy" (no no!!! I don't mean like "what would I do if I had unlimited spending money and a ferrari"
Hollywood sees something that makes money, and they use use use and abuse it until it runs dry and people puke when they see that again. Instead of "risking" new material or storylines. How about a movie that doesn't end well? How about a movie where the good guy gets killed in the middle and you see the movie from the bad guy's perspective until the end (something bad/good happens to him?), How about an ecological catastrophe that CAN'T be avoided and resulting on the mass destruction of the human being with stuff like pollution/asteroids/younameit, instead of having some crap about one guy that defeats nature?
Yes it might flop, depending, again, on the story and more importantly, how it's told. But I don't think I'd see anyone SERIOUSLY pissed and boycotting hollywood because of a different ending. Of course there's always alternative movies from other countries or independant films if you want something special, but usually only hollywood has the cashflow to push effects in a film to give it that extra "magic".
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Most CG studios already use Linux. There was an article here on /. a while back about it. Maya is available for Linux. Most CG studios also make their own software, usually for Linux. Rendering is done on hundreds or thousands of Linux render servers.
A solution to the problem with music today
...who started thinking of "CGI scripts", in the sense of perl/PHP/etc server-side stuff? Or was it just me? :-\
________________________________________________
suwain_2
BWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!
(wipes away tear)
You really kill me, Rob. "About to", hehe!! ^_^
Ooh! Here's the next joke you should post as a story, to make me smile:
"US 'about to' sacrifice neccessary freedoms to catch 'terrorists'"
Or how about:
"Enron 'about to' go bankrupt."
Keep the silliness coming! ^_^
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I thought about that after writing my initial post, but decided that E1 was a little bit of everything. They had CG and real characters in both completely real and completely CG environments. E1 was unique in that respect. I was thinking of real people in a CG environment with CG characters. Kind of an optimal medium in many respects.
Sapere Aude - Homer
Here's my more practical question: What industry or industries will benefit from an increased use of CGI characters? If you know this, and you know it well, you can make some really good investments right now. The market is down, especially for technology, so it seems like a good time to strike. Sure technology stocks and technology investors are fickle, but if you have the money to make a few informed bets, you might just make yourself some money.
What do you think? What companies can capitalize on this trend?
(Note: People on Slashdot should ask these kinds of questions more often. Business questions would benefit many people here.)
How to Download YouTube Videos
Good grief.
Every time I think I've seen everything demented on the net, something new pops up.
I mean, WHY? There's plenty of this stuff for real, and easily available.
Ah well...
I agree with Final Fantasy: The spirit that made you sleepy...One of the most boring stories I have seen. Just goes to show that great graphics can not save a badly written movie...
One of the most workable plays is "Our Town" by
Thornton Wilder. It's scenery is composed of
a ladder and a few chairs. The story, Plot,
characters, philosophy/poetry and acting is what
does the trick. I'm waiting for the movie where
all the actors do their thing in front of the blue screen, and they don't bother filling in the blue with anything.
"The most interesting thing in a virtual world is another person" - Jaron Lanier
I can just imagine the pitch session:
Producer: Ok, we can do Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak has agreed to supervise an army of sensitive consumptive artists to hand paint every cel. It'll be beautiful, and about 10 minutes long, but it'll be a shoe-in to win Best Animated Short.
Studio Exec: No way. Its gotta be feature length CGI or nothing! I can't put out a family film that isn't CGI! Not after Shrek!
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
Jeez, Hollywood is slow. Most of the world moved onto jsp, php or mod_perl years ago...
In the triple pack they put on sale a few months ago. The third DVD contained a shitload of extras, including badly rendered sequences, misplaced artifacts, etc.
And while on the subject of contrived bloopers, I'm really not pleased with the "release the movie now, release the bloopers in 4 weeks" strategy that certain studios have adapted. Like I'm gonna sit through Monsters twice. It's cute, but in the end it's just another buddy picture. Like Lethal Weapon or Rush Hour.
It'll just be like every other fad - it'll fail dismally, with a few things in the genre succeeding due to other influences.
Look at the Final Fantasy movie. It failed. It crashed and burned, horribly. Why?
Plot.
Now, most movies have see-through plots, but when they get too pathetic, the average movie-goer can usually tell.
I really don't see this as replacing real life actors anytime soon, either. While Shrek might be a nice animated movie.. Well, I don't think an animated 'Enemy at the Gates' or 'Saving Private Ryan' would've had quite the same effect as a live-action one.
I just have to say that I have gotten off to Aki from Final Fantasy more than once. What a hot peice of CGI, I tell you!
:) I'll be the first in line for some real time CG porn.
So, once actors go all digital, and the guys form Cepstral get computer generated voices down pat (almost, Geoff
If this is demoralizing, too bad. It's gonna happen anyway. Tenticle monsters or not.
What Thagg didn't mention (yet I am positive he/she knows) is that not only was Jimmy Neutron made with an off the shelf package, it was made with a very inexpensive ($2500) one called Lightwave 3D. That, and an $800 plugin called Messiah were the backbone of the entire movie. It was bound to happen eventually and proves that if a large group of people got together who were talented enough, and had enough money to live off of for a year or two, the first "basement" movie could be produced. I see this as a step closer to that dream.
I guess I should mention that Final Fantasy was made mostly with Maya and Photorealistic renderman, (two programs that can be purchased) but it really isn't in the same league as Jimmy Neutron.
P.S.
All hail Edwin Catmull!
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
HEY!!!
I'm not having no-one bad-mouth the Mario Brothers Movie!
Simplistic? Sure!
predictable? ALSO True!
But then again, who actually expects the Coyote to really CATCH the Road Runner???
Sorry. I may be slightly infantile, or have a warped sense of humor, but I laughed my ass off at that flick, and it's a highly prized treasure to find it showing on TBS on a lazy Sunday morning...
Sig currently under construction. Mind the gap....
"Clearly, there is less traditional .... but eventually something will come along and swing the pendulum back in that direction."
Yeah...and next year everyone will be releaseing their films in black and white with no sound.....ok..there has been some black and white films made in recent times..but most are art house and fringe...my guess that "traditional" animation will go to the fringe as well...on wards and upwards...we may not always learn from our mistakes...but we sure know how to make things look prettier.
Aside from all that. . , I came out of that film feeling really unsettled, and to be honest, I'm still not entirely sure why. Might have been the, "Being Short is Not Socially Acceptable," message. Or the black guy playing the side-kick comedy relief just like it was the 20's all over again. . .
Trivia Time! The word, "Moke," (also from the 20's), means both "Donkey" and "Nigger" --Look it up! --Of course, I don't know if that's at all relevant, but it hit me in the face like a cold bucket of water the instant Eddy Murphy's donkey character opened his mouth to speak.
Didn't we just go through a version of this same shit with the Phantom Menace?
And then, there was that bizarre 'beauty myth with a twist' thing which should have felt enlightened but which made my skin crawl in really weird ways.
I'm still trying to work through the psychology of that whole thing. I certainly hope the creators were just morons and didn't actually know what they were doing!
Anyway, I must ask: Why does everybody like this film? Any jack-ass company with a 'Beowolf Cluster' can 'ReBoot' and make a poorly animated computer generated movie these days. While it had some good gags, the overall writing was full of bad timing, bad story logic, and fucked up messages.
Honestly? Am I being over-sensitive? Am I really the only one who noticed any of this shit?
I'm off to see "Monsters Inc.", shortly. I hope that one doesn't suck too, or I'll know for certain that I no longer fit in the human race. . .
-Fantastic Lad
Not to troll, Slight Editorial Note... Missed the E in even...
;)
>>Some ven look like they might have potential
Many of the scenes in Tron that look like CGI, those that involve both live actors and effects, are actually hand-painted cel animation. Most of that glowing-line stuff is not CGI at all.
If you expect anything of "Quality" to come out of Hollywood, it'll take a few years. So my predictions are that it'll be a few years before we see this influx of CGI movies...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
"Reboot" was the first all-CG TV show, and it was produced by about 30 people doing one episode per week. That's an incredible level of productivity for CG work. When that level of output can be sustained at what we now consider theatrical quality, the CG revolution will really happen.
I know some pro animators who are looking forward to that. They'd like to head a small team and do their own projects, rather than being a small cog in a huge project outsourced to ten animation houses.
Just as with "live" movies, Hollywood is flooded with thousands of talented hopefuls hoping to make the scene. Everyone wants to be in the movie business because it's cool. Studios know this, and take full advantage of it. You may be paid well when you work, but making a career of this is next to impossible- unless you're a world class visual artist, with world class computer skills too. Most people aren't. Even those that are have a hard time staying employed. I know a bunch of them. The upside is that it's cheaper to live in LA than Sili Valley, and if you're skilled enough to do CGI, you're skilled enough to make a living between CGI jobs, doing small office networks and stuff. Hey, it beats waiting tables! This is important, because there are plenty of talented people in LA with trust funds, and that's who you'll be competing with!
Could you provide a citation for the claim that Jimmy Neutron was done in lightwave?
BTW, when they say that FF:TSW was done in Maya and PRMan, they usually don't mention that fact that while the two can be used off the self, those two programs are a great framework for developing your own 3D pipeline. You can modify almost every part of either program to meet your needs, and the reports are that for FF:TSW they put in many, many man years of addition programming.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
I could, but I am not going to. Thanks for trolling.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
The ending of Mario Brothers was absolutely indicative of the regard the studio/producers held the subject. When the king turns back into a man from a pile of sludge he says "Hey, I'm back" and that's it. A horrible quick ending with imagination a 1st grader could have come up with. If Leonard Maltin gave it 1 star then he's generous. Granted it didn't use much in the way of CGI, but is the sort of writing we can expect when someone tries to drag too many bad actors and big names into an ill-conceived product. I've only felt totally gypped after a few movies and MB was one of them. The storyline for FF was about on par with stock saturday morning cartoon shows of the late 70's and early 80s (when all the good Bugs Bunny cartoons were lobotomized by nazis and became incomprehensible.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well, yeah, provided the system of intellectual property law doesn't interfere with it too much. The legal regime that the big studios are making will eventually make it nearly impossible for any form of major creative production to move ahead without a large, skilled, and well paid legal department, which raises the bar quite a bit...
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
"CGI: This stands for Computer Graphic Imagery"
;)
Masso, Terrence (1999) CG 101: A Computer Graphics Industry Reference. New Riders Publishing. p 144
fsking slashdope knowitalls. sheesh
if i wanted to get into CGI (computer generated images), what software do the pros use?
firstly the quality of CGI is currently crap..well.. unless you like seeing things that were OBVIOUSLY done with computer, in an otherwise non-computer-animated movie.. (think LOTR)
secondly.. anyone else see final fantasy? bahah.
the screenshots were good, but the movie itself? NO way, bad quality once again.
There is not enought power to make 100% realystic movies. Final F wasa limit for modern 100 Selicon Graphic machines working in cluster. LOTR wasn't 100% CGI. I had effects yeas but there was no leaving moving creatures except Sauron himself and some orks clones based on real people and their motions. There a way too many moving particles and triangles on human body to make it look 100% real. Final F had a really bad plot and script. They should based it on on one of the games. Hey I recomend FF 8. It'was ready for movie since the beginging! Nice romantic story. Monster INc and etc. are just some cheap ass movie producer doesn't wanna spend much money to make real cartoon so he turn his fat ass toward computers. Hey why we should pay team of 100 people when we can do it with 10 people and fat ass selicon graphic machine. Toy story.. Monster Inc. It's a sacrilege!!!. It's horrable, it's the worst crime against kids!!!! And plz don't tell me about high tech super ass fat state of the art software that will bring entertaintment to our theatres for young generation...." NOTHING HAS CHANGED SINCE SEGA's VITRUAL FIGHTER.!!! . The only good graphics so far are from SquareSoft. and Final F movie. (again I'm talking only about graphical side). FF is not 100% real but I think it's the best so far in graphics.
Just a little wishful thinking, eh Rob? Still trying to get "Duckpins" and "Hampster Havoc" out to the public? Sorry, you'll have to do better than this....
What's in a Sig?
Since when did handheld appliances make movies?
Yes, production companies have been getting on the CG bandwagon (like for the last decade, folks) but right now there are a lot of jobless folks in the industry--people with years of professional modelling/animation/compositing experience.
In six months, this, like the tech industry in general, may be a happier place, but they're hurting right now, too.
-db
you can come over and fuck my sister.
I find it funny that someone brought up that Disney and traditional animation are being supplanted by CG.
Disney for sometime has been anything but "traditional". Remeber, Disney invented rotoscoping and several other techniques that they converted over to computers years ago. Really if you can't see flashing lines ala 101 Dalmations (the original) you can be sure that it was made on a computer.. I think everything from Litte Mermade foward was basically made with computer assistance.
BTW: Beauty and the Beast used actual cell-shaded 3d animation for the ballroom dance scene, as backdrops in "cartoon" animation are generally static, or panning, you can tell this a 3d scene with 2d cell characters pasted in.
If you can find the Robbie Williams Passion movie (sorry no URL) it is a great example of 3d allowing cell-like animation to have vastly more expansive landscapes (among other things), and still look like a 'toon.
Hmm. Found it.
i cl e_no=898&page=3
http://mag.awn.com/index.php3?ltype=pageone&art
The whole article is kinda interesting.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
As a matter of fact, "The Rescuers Down Under" (1990) was Disney's first "computer-generated" movie in the sense that every cel was painted on computer, instead of by hand. Movies like "The Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast" have also used CGI characters (wildebeasts and dancing spoons) that look very much like hand-drawn animations.
What the article means, of course, is using fully 3D-rendered CGI with textures and shadows that would be nearly impossible to create using traditional animation. The distance between digital painting and 3D modelling is absolutely night and day.
I thought this site was for techies. I'm a techie. To me CGI stands for "Common Gateway Interface". Clearly it means something competely different in this context. Isn't somebody going to tell us what?
Okay. I think I understand this statement. You're saying that this film makes a much stronger statement because it's not trying to be photorealistic. It's saying that CGI -- even CGI that doesn't look real -- is acceptable.
However, this film is a kiddy film. It doesn't contain anything that would engage adults like Monsters or Shrek. Isn't that like a step in the wrong direction then? Isn't that like saying unrealistic GCI is okay -- as long as it's for kids. Isn't that the problem animation in general has been having (at least in the west) since the very beginning? Haven't we been trying to fight the opinion that animated films just for the kids?
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
it seems to me that if open source projects like linux or apache can succeed nicely, why not an open movie?
have a script and allow people to write bits of the animation for it. download the source, render away and suddenly you have a good movie.