Every element of every frame is looked at many times by the lighting TD, compositor, and then the final composite is looked at by a crowd of people once it is looked at on film by the supervisors, directors, and executives so the chance of things not being noticed is slim.
Gelato looks very promising, but with render that is that young and has that many features, the main concern becomes stabilty. I think in a year or two it could become a really great assett.
and Tim Jenison. Notice in Wayne's World 2 that Dana Carvey is wearing a Video Toaster t-shirt towards the end of the movie. Brad Carvey also went on to start Autumn Light which did the CG dragon fly at the begining of Men in Black.
//from Topeka and works in CG because of help from Newtek
Organics? Like all three jurassic parks, all the star wars characters, the hulk, the pirates of the carribean, dragonheart, the animals in jumangi, aliens in men in black, the mummy movies etc.
In the five articles that I have read so far anouncing this, they all say that Weta Workshop will be working on this, but none say that Weta Digital will be. I don't think that the bulk of the visual effects work has been awarded yet. I think that Weta Digital will actually be too busy wth King Kong and Evangelion to do a significant amount of work on this movie.
I would be surprised to find out that you live in Vancouver. I have been to many bars and clubs and there was never any hostility from anyone, not even in neighborhoods of 'lesser quality housing'. It was always very laid back people having a good time.
317 area code is Indianapolis, IN. I just happen to live there. If anyone can come up with some good ideas of ways I can harass them (noting too illegal, please), post them on this thread. I'll track them down and give them hell. Donations are, of course, welcome;)
If you still have a computer with an analog modem you could use a dialer to call them non-stop. When they answer their phone all they would hear is the sound of the computer trying to connect (not too fun). When they hang up hopefully your dialer will be set to re-try... over and over. Analog denial of service!
This is true, I thinking more in the way of animation and modeling. Pixar uses their own renderer, Photorealistic Renderman. http://www.pixar.com/renderman/
Maya is probably quite a bit more elegant for most things than Pixar's software I would imagine. I think that statement is quite uniformed. Pixar has used maya for modeling for quite a while. ILM, Imageworks, Tippet, The Mill, Framestore, Digital Domain, and Weta use maya extensivly. Although none of these companies are actually in Hollywood.
I got the impression that they were going to go after people sharing substantial amounts of files. Now that I think of it, I haven't see any kind of formal attack on people actually getting the music, maybe because its very possible the people own the CD's of the music they are downloading.
It really depends on what resolution the film scan is done at, and the aspect ratio of the movie. 4k res scans of 35mm are less frequent than 2k scans because they are expensive and not always neccesary. A 3D render should never have to render something above the final resolution it will be displayed as.
Also, there is the size factor. Video games generally run at 1024x768 to 1600x1200. Movie quality shots are rendered at many times that resolution, which greatly increases the number of pixels that have to be rendered. Gollum may only be 800 pixels tall on your monitor, but he's probably rendered at least ten times as large; we'll say 10,000x 10,000 for calcualtion simplification.
This is actually not true. Film resolution is around 2048x1556 and everything is rendered the size that it is needed. For the most part, the difference in rendering speed is because hardware is very fast and very efficient, and takes lots of shortcuts. There aren't many textures, they aren't very high resolution, there isn't any raytracing, there are very few lights, no global illumination, no hair rendering, no volumetric rendering, not nearly as many polygons, no particles or cloth simulations, very few deformations, and lighting calculation is done on vertexes and then interpolated instead of on every pixel (this will change with Doom 3 and Half Life 2 which is the real reason they look so much better). Renderman also subdivides everything down to one polygon per pixel to get perfectly smooth sufaces and good displacement. There is also the issue of motion blur, depth of field, and rendering of composites, which also takes a very long time. Anti-aliasing in every step is crucial for any kind of non-realtime CG, but it not as important for games, and that by itself makes a huge huge difference.
He has my eternal vote. I intend to hand write a thank you letter, I think it would be great support if others did the same. Let people know when their work is doing good.
I agree with you on most points, but I think that good, realistic facial animation, while difficult is very obtainable. Gollum's face was completely hand animated, and all the shapes were modeled. It was not motion capture for the facial animation, and there was no skin simulation. Final Fantasy's facial animation was not as good as the look of the film dictated, but I have seen realistic facial animation done very well, just not very often in a realistic setting. I think this will gradually change as more CG movies and animation are released that have a more realistic style to them. I think it is more of an artistic problem, than a technical one.
I don't know about you guys, but I still don't think CGI is ready for the big time.
Fair enough, but just about everyone else does.
In every movie it looks so obvious that there was CGI used that it almost ruins the movie for me
Could you pick out all the CG in every one of the over 1000 VFX shots in Matrix Reloaded or Lord of the Rings? The answer is no, because most instances are seamless, and others are hidden very well if they aren't. You are probably talking about some instances of 3D that looks fake. Many times when visual effects do not look real it is due to budget and time contstraints like everything else.
Even movies from the 80's that used blue screens for everything looked more realistic than today's CGI aided movies,
It is definitly a different look, and I can understand why someone would like one over the other, but saying that 80's blue screen and optical printing is more convincing than film quality compositing and visual effects is pretty rediculous.
CGI just isn't advanced enough yet to be convincing.
It depends on what is being done. Trying to reproduce humans is incredibly difficult. Just because it hasn't been done doesn't mean that it can't. Just it because it can be done doesn't mean it is practical and not just a novelty. To say that CGI in general is not convincing is, quite frankly, bullshit. In just about every movie you go to, you may know where the visual effects lie in one shot, but there are 20 more that you didn't notice, I guarantee it. The movies you watch today are made possible by CGI. Deal with it.
Re:Pixar: Good movies, suck-ass company
on
A Tour of Pixar
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Some of this I feel should be clarified.
Pixar is the Microsoft of the computer graphics world. They have created some good stuff, yes, but they have not given much of anything back and often hurt the field.
They have certainly NOT hurt the field of computer graphics. They have contributed quite a bit of research. They did pioneer the Renderman standard. It was one of the things that helped CG get off the ground back when it was starting to be put in movies, yet even SGI workstations only had 64 Megs of RAM. There are alot of Renderman renderers out there. The Exluna/Entropy thing is more complex because the Larry Gritz worked at Pixar. I feel their Lawsuit against the company was baseless, (entopy was a different kind of renderer) and their suit against him personally was pretty evil, but it had a small twist too it so it wasn't completely cut and dry.
Have you ever seen Pixar release anything like Massive (Weta)? I didn't think so.
Massive is being sold at $70,000. It is not owned by Weta as part of a deal with the creators. It's not really a good comparison. I think that Weta probably will release some of their smaller tools as open source projects once the dust settles and their pipeline solitifies as they even out and become a permanent and major visual effects studio. For now though, other studios have done more, like Rythm and Hues with Film Gimp.
Pixar has been a major catalyst in 3D animation, I think it would be unfair to say so just because they aren't releasing open source tools. And I think that also some top executive is a complete bastard for suing Exluna out of buisness, but that doesn't mean that the company is bad in general.
What makes you think he didn't have any experience just because he was 17? He was probably already pretty skilled, or they would not have hired him.
The question that you have to ask yourself is, if you were in their position, would you hire someone in yours? I can't see any way someone would be able to get a job without producing something (even if unfortunatly sometimes that is a piece of paper saying that you are a CS graduate).
Re:Now if only it had a decent name
on
Ogg Now An RFC
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"Compact Disc is better" "what? We're talking about music, not whatever that is..." "Compact Disc is about music. It's a format, like records or tapes, only better." "Okay, dude, I'm sorry, I just keep missing the first thing you're saying" "It's a Compact Disc, a Cee Dee." "Dude, that is the most retarded name I've ever heard of... let's play some Techmo Bowl on my Nintendo!!!"
Slashdot Mirror
Every element of every frame is looked at many times by the lighting TD, compositor, and then the final composite is looked at by a crowd of people once it is looked at on film by the supervisors, directors, and executives so the chance of things not being noticed is slim.
Gelato looks very promising, but with render that is that young and has that many features, the main concern becomes stabilty. I think in a year or two it could become a really great assett.
And then comes the art direction ....
and Tim Jenison. Notice in Wayne's World 2 that Dana Carvey is wearing a Video Toaster t-shirt towards the end of the movie. Brad Carvey also went on to start Autumn Light which did the CG dragon fly at the begining of Men in Black.
//from Topeka and works in CG because of help from Newtek
Organics? Like all three jurassic parks, all the star wars characters, the hulk, the pirates of the carribean, dragonheart, the animals in jumangi, aliens in men in black, the mummy movies etc.
In the five articles that I have read so far anouncing this, they all say that Weta Workshop will be working on this, but none say that Weta Digital will be. I don't think that the bulk of the visual effects work has been awarded yet. I think that Weta Digital will actually be too busy wth King Kong and Evangelion to do a significant amount of work on this movie.
I would be surprised to find out that you live in Vancouver. I have been to many bars and clubs and there was never any hostility from anyone, not even in neighborhoods of 'lesser quality housing'. It was always very laid back people having a good time.
317 area code is Indianapolis, IN. I just happen to live there. If anyone can come up with some good ideas of ways I can harass them (noting too illegal, please), post them on this thread. I'll track them down and give them hell. Donations are, of course, welcome ;)
... over and over. Analog denial of service!
If you still have a computer with an analog modem you could use a dialer to call them non-stop. When they answer their phone all they would hear is the sound of the computer trying to connect (not too fun). When they hang up hopefully your dialer will be set to re-try
This is true, I thinking more in the way of animation and modeling. Pixar uses their own renderer, Photorealistic Renderman. http://www.pixar.com/renderman/
Exactly, and for the remaining studios relationships are key. Also Esc + Warner Bros. in that list.
Maya is probably quite a bit more elegant for most things than Pixar's software I would imagine. I think that statement is quite uniformed. Pixar has used maya for modeling for quite a while. ILM, Imageworks, Tippet, The Mill, Framestore, Digital Domain, and Weta use maya extensivly. Although none of these companies are actually in Hollywood.
If this were twenty questions I would say you lived in Culver
Good for you, thanks.
I got the impression that they were going to go after people sharing substantial amounts of files. Now that I think of it, I haven't see any kind of formal attack on people actually getting the music, maybe because its very possible the people own the CD's of the music they are downloading.
It really depends on what resolution the film scan is done at, and the aspect ratio of the movie. 4k res scans of 35mm are less frequent than 2k scans because they are expensive and not always neccesary. A 3D render should never have to render something above the final resolution it will be displayed as.
Also, there is the size factor. Video games generally run at 1024x768 to 1600x1200. Movie quality shots are rendered at many times that resolution, which greatly increases the number of pixels that have to be rendered. Gollum may only be 800 pixels tall on your monitor, but he's probably rendered at least ten times as large; we'll say 10,000x 10,000 for calcualtion simplification.
This is actually not true. Film resolution is around 2048x1556 and everything is rendered the size that it is needed. For the most part, the difference in rendering speed is because hardware is very fast and very efficient, and takes lots of shortcuts. There aren't many textures, they aren't very high resolution, there isn't any raytracing, there are very few lights, no global illumination, no hair rendering, no volumetric rendering, not nearly as many polygons, no particles or cloth simulations, very few deformations, and lighting calculation is done on vertexes and then interpolated instead of on every pixel (this will change with Doom 3 and Half Life 2 which is the real reason they look so much better). Renderman also subdivides everything down to one polygon per pixel to get perfectly smooth sufaces and good displacement. There is also the issue of motion blur, depth of field, and rendering of composites, which also takes a very long time. Anti-aliasing in every step is crucial for any kind of non-realtime CG, but it not as important for games, and that by itself makes a huge huge difference.
He has my eternal vote. I intend to hand write a thank you letter, I think it would be great support if others did the same. Let people know when their work is doing good.
Can't it be both? They are obviously both in it with AOL.
I'm in downtown, near sunset beach. Maybe slashdot works better?
I agree with you on most points, but I think that good, realistic facial animation, while difficult is very obtainable. Gollum's face was completely hand animated, and all the shapes were modeled. It was not motion capture for the facial animation, and there was no skin simulation. Final Fantasy's facial animation was not as good as the look of the film dictated, but I have seen realistic facial animation done very well, just not very often in a realistic setting. I think this will gradually change as more CG movies and animation are released that have a more realistic style to them. I think it is more of an artistic problem, than a technical one.
I don't know about you guys, but I still don't think CGI is ready for the big time.
Fair enough, but just about everyone else does.
In every movie it looks so obvious that there was CGI used that it almost ruins the movie for me
Could you pick out all the CG in every one of the over 1000 VFX shots in Matrix Reloaded or Lord of the Rings? The answer is no, because most instances are seamless, and others are hidden very well if they aren't. You are probably talking about some instances of 3D that looks fake. Many times when visual effects do not look real it is due to budget and time contstraints like everything else.
Even movies from the 80's that used blue screens for everything looked more realistic than today's CGI aided movies,
It is definitly a different look, and I can understand why someone would like one over the other, but saying that 80's blue screen and optical printing is more convincing than film quality compositing and visual effects is pretty rediculous.
CGI just isn't advanced enough yet to be convincing.
It depends on what is being done. Trying to reproduce humans is incredibly difficult. Just because it hasn't been done doesn't mean that it can't. Just it because it can be done doesn't mean it is practical and not just a novelty. To say that CGI in general is not convincing is, quite frankly, bullshit. In just about every movie you go to, you may know where the visual effects lie in one shot, but there are 20 more that you didn't notice, I guarantee it. The movies you watch today are made possible by CGI. Deal with it.
Some of this I feel should be clarified.
Pixar is the Microsoft of the computer graphics world. They have created some good stuff, yes, but they have not given much of anything back and often hurt the field.
They have certainly NOT hurt the field of computer graphics. They have contributed quite a bit of research. They did pioneer the Renderman standard. It was one of the things that helped CG get off the ground back when it was starting to be put in movies, yet even SGI workstations only had 64 Megs of RAM. There are alot of Renderman renderers out there. The Exluna/Entropy thing is more complex because the Larry Gritz worked at Pixar. I feel their Lawsuit against the company was baseless, (entopy was a different kind of renderer) and their suit against him personally was pretty evil, but it had a small twist too it so it wasn't completely cut and dry.
Have you ever seen Pixar release anything like Massive (Weta)? I didn't think so.
Massive is being sold at $70,000. It is not owned by Weta as part of a deal with the creators. It's not really a good comparison. I think that Weta probably will release some of their smaller tools as open source projects once the dust settles and their pipeline solitifies as they even out and become a permanent and major visual effects studio. For now though, other studios have done more, like Rythm and Hues with Film Gimp.
Pixar has been a major catalyst in 3D animation, I think it would be unfair to say so just because they aren't releasing open source tools. And I think that also some top executive is a complete bastard for suing Exluna out of buisness, but that doesn't mean that the company is bad in general.
62,000 Service Units
What makes you think he didn't have any experience just because he was 17? He was probably already pretty skilled, or they would not have hired him.
The question that you have to ask yourself is, if you were in their position, would you hire someone in yours? I can't see any way someone would be able to get a job without producing something (even if unfortunatly sometimes that is a piece of paper saying that you are a CS graduate).
"Compact Disc is better"
"what? We're talking about music, not whatever that is..."
"Compact Disc is about music. It's a format, like records or tapes, only better."
"Okay, dude, I'm sorry, I just keep missing the first thing you're saying"
"It's a Compact Disc, a Cee Dee."
"Dude, that is the most retarded name I've ever heard of... let's play some Techmo Bowl on my Nintendo!!!"