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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.
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.
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.
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, 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!
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.