Anti-Aliasing in movies?

[kyleb]

It is tricky when the jpeg artefacts on both images corrupt the detail.

However I see more apparent detail in the poster to the right of center, on the 720p native version.

They are JPEGs because that is what HL2 gives by default and what little compression is there didn't matter in the conversation I originally created them for, but I can upload some uncompressed shots if need be. As for the sharpness of what you see in detail in the poster with the native shot; that is what comes from a such a rough approximation of the textures being sampled, and rough approximations are specifically what we work to avoid as much as possible when striving for image quality.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

"CGI for films is usually rendered at about 1.4–6 megapixels. Toy Story, for example, was rendered at 1536 × 922 (1.42MP)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-generated_imagery

Rendering resolutions for CG movies go well higher than 2048x1536, and like Toy Story they often are not rendered with top and bottom gets cut off for the widescreen layout, but rather anamorphically to emphasis the vertical resolution which our eyes are more sensitive to.

Please don't confuse movie VFX and animated CG features. Movie VFX must be rendered at the whole screen because it will be composited together with the live plates. This is also why features are rendered at a lower resolution - they don't have to comp it together with live plates.
IMAX resolution on the other hand is some 4000*4000 pixels big.

By the way, looking at the Wikipedia article, it seems that most technical parts are based only on Toy Story 1's data... which was released sometime in 1995 or so. So one shouldn't base arguments on it.

 

[kyleb]

I'm not talking about movie VFX at all, and Toy Story is sited for the fact that it is a dated example which illustrates the very low end of the range for which CG movies are rendered.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I still don't get why you had to correct me on the 2K figure. Working in the industry shows that this is the prefered resolution for at least 80-90% of the cases, so it's the one that matters and IMAX or lower res stuff is just an exception. Do you disagree?

 

[kyleb]

I'm not contesting anything in respect to the industry you work in. I'm talking about Hollywood movies, and the rendering resolutions of the CG movies they make.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

That's what I'm talking about too. The difference is, I don't get my infos from Wikipedia; I have very close friends working on movies like Superman, Harry Potter, King Kong, Xmen etc.
I really don't want to make it a question of authority - but when I know I'm right, I will not give in.

 

[kyleb]

Now you are talking about VFX instead of CG movies, and I'm "not" getting my info from Wikipedia, that is simply something I came across trying to dig up interviews I have previously read from people who do make Holywood style CG movies talking about multiple thousands of pixels in each direction.