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The New Force at Lucasfilm
conq writes "BusinessWeek has an interview with the heads of George Lucas' gaming and movie divisions, and discusses with them how they are getting closer and closer to integration. From the article: 'Pre-visualization, which is a big thing that George has been pushing lately. It's a tool that directors would use to quickly mock up the ideas of a story and see what's going to work. It's really like building up a preview of a movie in a video game world. Instead of using static story boards, you can really just get in and create 3D content and camera moves directly. It's the best example of the kind of collaboration we've got going on.'"
They could (if they haven't already) hook up actors with mocap suits or whatever devices needed to translate live actor movements instantly onto the 3D avatars on the virtual stage to really speed things up.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
I hated Episodes I & II and still haven't seen Episode III.
But, look at each still shot. They look good. The characterization sucks. The plot sucks. The dialog sucks. The timing sucks. The motivation sucks. None of it has any logical flow behind it.
But the still pictures are very nice.
Peter Jackson and WETA started using pre-vis before production began on LOTR.
Other firms may have used it even earlier.
I saw that and for a split second I thought I would be seeing more from the old company that brought us Zak McKracken and Maniac Mansion. Some of us still fondly remember the old adventure games.
I'm sick and tired of their recent obsession with 3d, it just doesn't look as good. I would love to see a 2d adventure game from them that would run natively at 1600x1200 and scale down to lower resolutions.
Can anyone honestly look and tell me that this 3d Sam & Max has more artistic style than this 2d Sam & Max??
Or this is better than this?
I'm not opposed to 3d games mind you, lord knows I didn't buy this Nvidia board for running OO.org faster and Grim Fandango was utterly phenomenal. I'd just like to see Lucasfilm games, lucasarts, whatever, spend more time in making a well written, well crafted worlds and games, rather than just "Wow, it's an adventure title, but in 3d!"
I don't think you really understand what goes in to creating a film. For each scene in a film, there are practically an infinite amount of possibilities for the lighting, movement and position of actors, camera placement and angles, and any combination of the above. A storyboard is usually laid out for to get an idea for the general flow of the film. Then, even the best director will usually whittle down the possibilities to a handful or more...for many, many scenes. For each blocking combination, the types of cameras, angles, and general placements have to be reset. Same goes with lighting colors, intensities, angles and placements. Sometimes even the actors' entrances, exits and lines need to be redone to fit the blocking in the scene. The man hours required for all this, for each scene, are immense and therefore, so are the costs. All this, with relatively little action and/or special effects. By using a 3d program where some of this can be "pre-visualized", where actors, cameras, lighting, can be re-adjusted and rough ideas of special effects included, potentially could be a tool to cut down on time, cost, and improve overall quality of a film. I'm not saying that it should be a crutch for bad directors, but that it could be a good tool if used correctly.
Wait Mr. Lucas, you mean you're just now hearing about Machinima? We've been doing it for 10 years now! Well, with Lucas on board maybe the market for niche pre-vis real time 3D tools will kick up finally. All I can say is, open source Lucas, OPEN SOURCE!
-Buddy of DoQ
Maybe you do. I used to be a huge Star Wars geek. I read all the novels, bought the "reference books", absolutely loved the X-Wing games, etc. I quit when Episode I came out. I don't see how you can even compare the quality of the prequels with the incredible stories that other authors have written. Not just Zahn, but nearly every writer has come up with far better material than Lucas. The stories suck. The dialogue sucks, and not just the abysmal Anakin/Padme crap.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Sounds like a toy for mediocre directors.
If you think that Peter Jackson is a mediocre director, sure. The Lord of the Rings included *numerious* pre-visualization shots. If you watched any of the bonus content on the DVD's, you would see some of the pre-vis stuff on the Mines of Moria scenes where the Fellowship is being chased by the Orcs. I think the movie was fabulous, and if pre-vis made the movie any better (which IMHO it did) then let the mediocre directors continue their work.
Visualization has at least two benefits that I think of right off the top of my head.
1. You as the director may be able to visualize what needs to happen, but communicating that to other people can be difficult if you don't have ESP. This allows the artist to communicate an idea to other people via a medium that is easy to conceptualize. Yes, that's what story boards are for (like the article says), but
2. It allows you to build a set without going through the costly motions of actually having to do it. This goes for virtual sets as well. While this method seems a lot more expensive than hiring a graphic artist to draw it in 2D story board cells, 3D permits you to make changes without having to redraw a whole frame, this in turn allows the crew to explore changes and make iterations very quickly. It also makes a good point of reference for those who are responsible for creating CG add-ins to the movie.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Let me give you a good example of the "integration" of the movie and gaming divisions of Lucasfilm. I remmeber when I saw phantom menace there was a half an hour part of the movie that had nothing to do with the rest of the plot or the development of the characters.
... "and why in the world do they spend so much time introducing various racer characters which are obviously completely unrelated to the plot" ... "and why are the big jedi who are supposedly on an important mission waiting for this kid to race around" ... but then the pod race started looking familiar to me... it reminded me of a lame PS1 racing game called wipeout (i think). And then I thought wow ... they have this whole thing in the movie only so that they can sell a lame clone of a PS1 game.
It was the pod race. I kept thinking "why is this in the movie"
Sure enough a day or so after i saw people playing a wipeout clone which features the phantom menace pod race.
I guess this is what they call synergy in the movie business.
I'm worried about a few things that the article discusses. Yes, it sounds exciting that LucasArts and ILM are doing collaborating in the future. What I'm afraid of however, is that in the CG industry, there seems to be a technological 'progression' that trivializes the purpose of the traditional (ie. concept artists, storyboard artists, etc.)
Sullivan discusses that pre-viz is a good and modern solution, but he doesn't mention that pre-viz can also be slower and less fine tuned than the work of a storyboard artist. Illustrators can offer style, better/faster continuity, and the ability to develop an entire shot rather than developing rough 3D-geometry. If it were up to me, I'd keep both around.
So sure, the technology and tools get better, but it doesn't necessarily make a better film.
Disney made that mistake with their cel animation department, and they all got laid off (thank god for Lassater).
Square did it with Final Fantasy and threw away the storyline.
ILM seems to be a very traditional studio in the sense that they follow a typical pipeline for production. I just hope they clearly understand the benefits of keeping these illustrators around.
Lucas is like that kid you knew at college, who had all the best guitars, amps, effects pedals, and recording and mixing equipment, but was still having trouble stringing three chords together.
Still, he's earning more in a second than I do in a month, so he must be doing something right.
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