Games Invade Hollywood's Turf!

[Deepak]

Link

Interesting portions.......

Around the world, increasing numbers of would-be movie moguls are utilizing the 3-D graphics engines of games like Quake or Unreal to produce animated movies -- at a fraction of the money spent by studios like Pixar.

Known as machinima ("machine cinema"), the relatively new, no-budget genre has yet to produce a blockbuster of Finding Nemo proportions.

Leading the charge is Epic Games, publisher of the wildly popular Unreal Tournament series. Epic's recently released Unreal Tournament 2003 includes a movie-making tool called Matinee. The company is currently offering $50,000 for the best machinima movie generated in UT2003 in its Make Something Unreal competition.

Will Wright is talking about putting movie-making tools in the next version of The Sims, Maxim's best-selling doll house game, and Sierra Entertainment is promising machinima tools in the upcoming Half-Life 2, a highly anticipated first-person shooter, according to a post by a Valve executive on the HalfLife.net discussion board.

For example, George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic is using the Unreal engine to storyboard Star Wars movies, he said.

 

[jvd]

hey at least now when sony and nvidia announce that thier next products will have movie quality graphics they wont be lieing

 

[Deepak]

Better yet, game engines were fast enough to render scenes in real time. In contrast, the tools used for big-budget animations such as Toy Story or Shrek can consume days to generate a few minutes of footage.

Why do animation movies take days to generate a few minutes of footage? Does it consume so much of computing power?

 

[hey69]

because high quality rendering /raytracing needs ALOT of CPU cycles to calculate lightning , reflections etc etc etc..

you can't compare a scene from lets say final fantasy the spirit within with a 5 minute rolling demo of DOOM for example.

the amount of detail and calculations needed for these kind of animations is insane.. moviestudios have a computer FARM (dozens and dozens of cmputers linked to eachother) as they call it to render those frames.

 

[Deepak]

But that gap is narrowing down quickly, more so with next gen consoles with 1 TFLOPs +. Do you think gradually consoles/PC will get so fast in near future that they will produce ani-movies quality graphics?

 

[jvd]

But that gap is narrowing down quickly, more so with next gen consoles with 1 TFLOPs +. Do you think gradually consoles/PC will get so fast in near future that they will produce ani-movies quality graphics?

not for a long time , the hulk had a 100 layers of textures . Now imagine having to render him and everything else in that movie in realtime. Not that fast. Also don't forget that everytime realtime gets faster so does offline. I doubt the gap will ever close. Mabye in a couple years we will start to see toy story 1 graphics. But thats a far cry from say shrek or even shrek2 which will be coming out next year.

 

[Deepak]

But I am positive about it. Computing power is increasing by leaps and bounds with effectively cost (to consumer) being the same and already the gap between a supercomputer and a high end desktop / a game console is not mind blowing anymore. Desktop CPUs are advancing at an incredible pace and most imp after few year the graphics will be so realistic that there will nothing more realistic....no improvement would be required....they will be perfect.

 

[maskrider]

But I am positive about it. Computing power is increasing by leaps and bounds with effectively cost (to consumer) being the same and already the gap between a supercomputer and a high end desktop / a game console is not mind blowing anymore. Desktop CPUs are advancing at an incredible pace and most imp after few year the graphics will be so realistic that there will nothing more realistic....no improvement would be required....they will be perfect.

Nothing will be perfect, when you think there are enough things modelled today, you will think there should be something more the other day.

There are still an extremely long way to go.

 

[Deepak]

Mask....

Once graphics achieve photo-realism....that there is no difference between a CG movie and a real movie....there will be nothing more left to be achieved....atleast gfx wise. And I think enough computing power (even at desktop level) will be available to do it by maybe 2020 AD.

BTW, does anyone know which movie was difficult (took more time) to render....FF:TSW or Shrek. Which style takes more computing power....realistic (FF:TSW) or Cartoonish (Shrek)???

 

[London Geezer]

But I am positive about it. Computing power is increasing by leaps and bounds with effectively cost (to consumer) being the same and already the gap between a supercomputer and a high end desktop / a game console is not mind blowing anymore. Desktop CPUs are advancing at an incredible pace and most imp after few year the graphics will be so realistic that there will nothing more realistic....no improvement would be required....they will be perfect.

the thing is, u can have a 1TFlop Cell in your PS3 (for example) to produce nice graphics. at the same time offline render farms will have 1000 Cells connected to each other to render the sequel to FF:TSW (erm....... no comment)...
in 10 years we will have PS4 with, say 1Pflop performance... at the same time render farms will have 1000 of those chips rendering the sequel to the sequel to, dont know, Monsters Inc....

u see what i mean? the gap will always be there, although at a certain point there will be a stop to this since u cant get more real than reality (diminishing returns)... and i guess 1000 1Petaflop performance will be a whole lot, enough to render ANYTHING that can be displayed on a cinema screen.

until we get new ways to display graphics of course, at which point i think the race will start again.....

 

[maskrider]

Mask....

Once graphics achieve photo-realism....that there is no difference between a CG movie and a real movie....there will be nothing more left to be achieved....atleast gfx wise. And I think enough computing power (even at desktop level) will be available to do it by maybe 2020 AD.

BTW, does anyone know which movie was difficult (took more time) to render....FF:TSW or Shrek. Which style takes more computing power....realistic (FF:TSW) or Cartoonish (Shrek)???

When it reach near photo-realism on one thing, you may want to add some other stuffs to it, may be add more detail to the model to make it even closer to photo-realism. The desire is always there. When you already got really good, you will want to get something even better. I don't think there will ever be a point to stop.

But the return is certainly diminishing. Especially if you are still sticking with those interlaced TVs. Further effort may be just a waste if common display standard was not upgraded significantly.

 

[PC-Engine]

When you reach photorealism...there's nowhere to go with regards to realistic graphics. The processing power will go into clever AI, physics, etc. With current realtime graphics technology, you can render a very realistic photon mapped scene at about 5 fps.

 

[London Geezer]

everyone seems to take for granted the fact that we will keep seeing things on TV's or monitors in the future......

once we have 3d displays or VERY high resolution displays things will keep progressing... of course it will take AGES to have 3D displays, but i think it will happen, just like we went from black and white to color and HDtv, just like we went from Pong to today's graphics.... i'm sure as hell, if someone told me 15 years ago that i'd be able to play games that look like the best looking ones in this generation, i'd have laughed at them....
just like i'd have laughed if they told me we would have movies that look like FF:TSW....
we are progressing quite impressively don't u guys think?

 

[Deepak]

And the best thing is that I am only 23, so I am have a better position to experiencing these things than many of older souls here...

 

[London Geezer]

And the best thing is that I am only 23, so I am have a better position to experiencing these things than many of older souls here...

i'm 21, still i don't go around saying something that could be interpreted as: "i'll be doing stuff by the time u guys are dead".... know what i mean

 

[hey69]

i'm 27 so? maybe i'm more lucky then you younger ones, to be able to enjoy the old classics at the arcade years and years ago... 8)

yeah imagine the consoles and games we will play in 10 years..



hm,,, i will be an old 37 old guy then... :?

 

[zidane1strife]

When it reach near photo-realism on one thing, you may want to add some other stuffs to it, may be add more detail to the model to make it even closer to photo-realism. The desire is always there. When you already got really good, you will want to get something even better. I don't think there will ever be a point to stop.

But the return is certainly diminishing. Especially if you are still sticking with those interlaced TVs. Further effort may be just a waste if common display standard was not upgraded significantly.

Indeed, ever more complex physics calcs, could very well keep that going into the petas, exas, zettas, yottas AND BEYOND

Let's not forget the matrix esque tech that's to arrive . I want to have a few virtual 100mach ferraris in my virtual garage

 

[V3]

you can render a very realistic photon mapped scene at about 5 fps.

What ? with more than several complex objects (other than basic primitive) and using high photon density ?

If this is true, things are progressing along nicely indeed.

 

[Sonic]

I will be pleased when I can get a character's face on screen that's photorealistic and can accurately render the hundreds of pimples on a face. Then when I zoom in with a magnifying glass I want to see the detail in perfect form.

You see, you can keep going and going with these things.

As things progress I doubt many games will still be using polygons to render complex geometry. It's time for a change.

 

[London Geezer]

I will be pleased when I can get a character's face on screen that's photorealistic and can accurately render the hundreds of pimples on a face. Then when I zoom in with a magnifying glass I want to see the detail in perfect form.

You see, you can keep going and going with these things.

As things progress I doubt many games will still be using polygons to render complex geometry. It's time for a change.

it WILL be time for a change.... future...... polygons will still be used in the next generation and probably the one after...