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Shrek 2 How-To
mblase writes "Animation World Magazine has an article online about some of the technical hurdles Dreamworks Animation had to overcome in making "Shrek 2". With November's "The Incredibles" being Pixar's first movie to feature an all-human (er, superhuman) cast of characters, it's interesting to watch how these two studios push each other to the limits of computer animation."
I think Pixar is far superior to Dreamworks when it comes to fully animated movies. Dreamworks seems to be much better at special effects and environmentals. I think the two might be better off merging than competing in different areas.
I don't know where anyone gets off comparing Shrek's animation to other movies, especially Pixar movies
I'm not sure why you feel that way. I saw Shrek myself the other day and was quite impressed with the quality and detail of the animation. As far as I could remember, it exceeded the first in quality.
The textures are very basic and the facial expressions lack subtlety
What on earth are you talking about? Shrek wasn't going for subtlety anyway, but the facial expressions were quite well done. Same goes for the textures.
Shrek just looks like it was a half-assed effort.
120-odd million dollars worth of tickets disagree with you.
While others may agree or disagree with your analysis of the technical feats of Shrek and Shrek 2, if you're going to the movie just for the graphics, then you're really missing out.
The two movies are huge hits not because of their graphics (although it doesn't hurt) but because of their stories.
People in general value good stories much more than good graphics. The same can be applied to the gaming industry -- while games with amazing graphics may sell well initially, they will only last until the next eye candy comes out a few weeks later. Games with solid gameplay will continue to be played for years (see Counter Strike for an example).
Plus, they must have been doing something right with the graphics -- I've never heard an entire audience simultaneously sigh "Awwwww" because of a cartoon before (if you've seen the movie you know what I'm talking about).
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
Animation is not necessarily at its greatest when it is the most like the real world. Yes, Pixar did quite well with the modeling hair in the wind, etc., but that doesn't necessarily make for a better animated movie. It has to be a good mix of realism and fantasy.
Dreamworks and Pixar have both done very well with their CG movies, but they both have different styles and both have their own animation engines. They deserve a pat on the back for all their hard work.
As an animation major (and a slashdotting girl) I enjoy almost all "cartoons" but I don't think the final product of CG should be ultimate realism. I like the direction Dreamworks and Pixar are taking - I call it "realism with style". If we wanted ultimate realism we could just film people, but it's the style, characters and the ability of the viewer to suspend belief that makes an animation special.
Dreamworks and Pixar have both done excellent animations - if they're trying to be competitive I think it's all the better for us - we get twice as many good films. All I can say is that both of these companies are much better at creating sequels than Disney is.
Now. Consider the fact that you have millions of dollars at your disposal, some absolutely brilliant CG engineers, and a very clear set of needs and goals. Would you rather take an existing renderer, analyze it, tweak it, adapt it, hunt down bugs, et cetera--or would you rather simply build a system from the ground up? After all, you're going to need to be able to tweak things throughout, and if something goes wrong with the software, you could save days of debugging by using an internally-built system...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
The original Shrek lacked one piece of animation which really would have helped the animation's "reality".
I don't know if they've learnt since then, but real people (and ogres, I presume) BREATHE. Their rib-cages move, even when they're just standing there talking.
The trouble with "realistic" animation is that we're all going to expect it to be that real in the future. As the technology improves, so will our expectations grow.
j
They re-wrote an entire renderer? Granted, Shrek is still behind some of Pixar's work but i've got to ask... Why not use some of the other renderer tools out there?
Because PDI is a mostly propietary place. They wrote their own renderer years before there was anything commercially available. As such they have an R&D team continually updating their infrastructure. Interestingly enough I saw a couple of PDI guys at the SIGGRAPH photon mapping course by Henrik Wann Jensen a few years ago in San Antonio.
The upside is you don't have to wait for a commercial vendor to get those new features. They control their own destiny rendering wise. Witness for example how long it took Pixar to make Depp Shadow maps available in PRMan (something like 2 years) even though they had published a SIGGRAPH paper and were using it internally (for Monsters Inc.). Some clients were a bit upset about that.
Dan Wexler used to write their renderer (he is now at Nvidia with Larry Gritz and those crazy Entropy guys). He has some interesting statistics on the first film:
Renderfarm Statistics
Shrek Rendering Statistics
Alrighty, I admit it -- I went to Shrek 2 for the story and experience...not because I wanted to gawk at purtty graphics. Isn't that what movies are about?
Let's face it, I saw Titanic, all the Jurassic Park movies, the Matrix sequels, and the Star Wars prequels for the effects. Not expecting a story...just give me the oohs and aahs and wows and I'll concede the plot. With Shrek, the animation was secondary to the writing. I mean even Banderas made for a good cat!
Just making a point that pretty isn't always the best thing to have. If nothing else, the moral and plot of both Shrek movies tells us that.
Ok, there are a level were animation could be so worse that you note the bad animation instead of the movie itself, and a level when is so good that you lose track of the movie and watch the animation (i.e. when Donkey now as a horse moves its head and you notice the hair animation).
But the middle point, where what you are actually watching the movie and don't letting the animation distract you because is too bad or too good, should be the best approach (er, unless is desired to go at least once more to see the movie to watch the animation or certain effects more in detail, of course)
To be fair I find these sort of comments amusing. It's almost like saying Tex Avery cartoons are dull because they look dated and crude compared to todays more complex cartoons and anime. After all 3D animated movies are also stylized visions, just like their 2D counterparts of yesteryear.
Granted they've only ever done 2 minute long CG intros for their games, but Blizzards animation quality is almost unparraleled when it comes to game cinematics. If they ever got together and made an epic braveheart/gladiator style movie, entirely CG I think they could easily rival Pixar or Dreamworks. Not to mention bring the field to a more mature audience (even though everyone at college i know has seen shrek 2, monsters inc, finding nemo, etc.
Of course, that's just my own personal dream...
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
PDI/DreamWorks vs Pixar, Ford vs Chevy, Pepsi vs Coke. Come on guys, understand that these are companies that make products with the intention you will buy them. That "customer faithfulness" rings silly in my mind, given that after all, we are the consumers and in general have little interest on the well being of those companies.
For the record, the cg industry is a small one, and there's a lot of coming and going of people. I've been at PDI for more than seven years, and thus know tons of people working here who used to be at Pixar, and tons of people at Pixar who worked here and are my friends, and the same could be said about any of the other major cg companies. There's no inherent difference between the talent of people in one place or the other.
j
In a film, however, there's usually a director, an art director and a visual effects supervisor telling you to please move that splash a bit to the right, and make it happen three frames later. Oh, and sometimes there's also a story that those people are trying to tell, and your water sim is one of the tools they are using, so the *need* that kind of control.
Then there's rendering. Is there any foam? Splashes? Do things around the water get wet? Can you make that foam not *darker*, but *less bright* please? (this is a real comment I got during dailies in Shrek 2).
So, simulating water is easy. Simulating water making it do what you want, and rendering it so it looks the way you want it to look is extremely hard.
j
I went to the film to see the story. In the first few minutes I was amazed to see how much they've come along in the animation. The rain and water scenes where incredible. There was a bit of flash in there, where you can tell a toss of hair, etc was done just to play with animating it, but overall the animation was spectacular. Story wise, I found that it wasn't a good as the first movie, but entertaining enough with some good laughs along the way. What I think the discussion of Pixar vs. Dreamworks misses on is just looking at how much they both improve from film to film. In just a few years they've development new ways to animate the films that make the previous ones seem almost silly. For a techinical discussion, I think it would be more interesting to look at what they have done to improve the animation than whose is better. There is nothing like a good competition to keep this moving too. Shrek 2 shows that Dreamworks is keeping up and making sure to push Pixar. I wonder what we'll get to see when Shrek 3 or the next Pixar after incredibles comes out. Remember, this are animated movies. Realism isn't the goal, hell, Shrek stars an Ogre, a talking Donkey, Cat, and Gingerbread Man amoung others.
I disagree. I think the stories from Dreamworks and Pixar have all been excellent. I have Shrek on DVD and have seen it enough to have made it a worthwhile purchase. My kids love it, and like Pixar movies, I think they will like it for different reasons as they grow older.
The one problem I have with Shrek 2 are all the parodies. I thought they were hillarious, but they will date the movie in a few years. Still, I and my whole family thoroughly enjoyed it.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Well, I think there's going to be a Pixar vs. DreamWorks debate raging for a long time. I've seen all of Pixar's movies and most of the DreamWorks flicks that were computer animated, including Shrek I and II. I tend to try to stay out of these types of debates but I do have some opinions on this one.
First off, I've felt that DreamWorks has been unfairly riding Pixar's coattails for a long time now.
They find out about Bug's Life, they release Antz.
They find out about Monsters Inc., they release Shrek.
They find out about Finding Nemo, they start work on Shark Tale.
(I would expect the announcement of a super hero flick really soon now.)
It always came across to me as being a dirty practice meant to intentionally cause confusion in the marketplace and get people to see their movies thinking there was a connection to the Pixar films.
Secondly, I feel DreamWorks' stories are lacking - particularly when it comes to Shrek I and II. To me, watching Shrek was like watching the best of Saturday Night Live. There were lots of short parody bits, many targetting Disney movies or traditional fairy tales - most targetting current pop culture. I think that between these bits and the modern pop music, these movies are not going to stand the test of time well. In my mind, they were well worth the ticket price at the theatre but I wouldn't dream of purchasing them on DVD.
As for the quality of the animation, I think anybody would be hard pressed to say that Shrek I and II weren't extremely well done. They were certainly cinema quality productions. I still think Pixar does it better though. There's something about the movement of the characters in Pixar movies that is more emotionally expressive and natural looking. It's just a tad more polished and artistic than the DreamWorks stuff.
Well, it would be very easy to provide you with that, and very hard for you to prove that I didn't actually render it ;)
No Comment.
It would also be cool if Ferrari gave away free cars, and everyone had all the food to eat that they wanted... free of charge! And everyone was given a MOON PONY!!!
Oh, yes, what a wonderful world that would be!
I felt that Shrek 2 wasn't as good as the 1st one, in script, and in style. Never mind about animation, that's not very important.
Many things in Shrek 2 have the potential to be great, but the ideas weren't fully realised. I loved how the environment in the original shrek brought the world of story books and fantasy stories alive. In Shrek 2, the only thing that captured my imagination was the fairy god mom's factory. Everything else is not as detailed / well developed as I would like.
I gave up on Dreamworks' animation after viewing Antz vs. Bug's Life. Two totally different attitudes towards what cartoons should be. DW has always been a Pixar wannabee. Small Soldiers vs. Toy Story. Shrek vs. Monsters, Inc. Instead of playing to the "child" in everyone, they feel it's necessary to insert "adult" asides to keep the parents amused.
Slight topic drift: If you've seen the extra making-of material on the LotR extended disks vs. the new Star Wars, I think it reflects a bit on this. You can feel the love behind Jackson's film; Lucus just comes off as a PHB.
Yes, it's true. This man has no dick.
o There is only a finite amount of food available at any one time.
o A computer program however, is infinitely replicable by the magic device known as a computer.
Personally, I'm waiting for the world where everyone can recognise the difference between the physical and the ephemeral and didn't resort to dumb analogies to further their ridiculous agenda.