Unreal high res shots! (56k --> NO!)

[jvd]

That's not the technique I'm talking about. You're talking about 3D scanning which everyone does yes...hint: Shrek does not use animatronics.

Yes your not being clear .

In willow they made models and used real images for when the girl morphed from one animal to another in the movie . This is what your talking about is it not ? They used the pictures and models along with cgi to make it look realistic .

 

[Dural]

LOTR isn't the most realistic looking CGI to date.

Then what is...? And more importantly how are you going to define what is "real" and what makes it real?

What makes CGI real? When you can watch a movie and not be taken out of it by the CGI. LOTR had moments when it was quite obvious that CGI was being used, Frodo on top of the troll in FOTR and Legolas on the elephant thing in ROTK. Gollum was a great achievment, but again it was obvious he was CGI. Movies like A.I. (the most convincing use of CGI to date), Master and Commander, and Cast Away all use a good amount of CGI but it is never in your face and obvious. Plus Teddy was easily the best CGI character ever.

 

[PC-Engine]

When a movie involves animatronics AND CGI models of those same animatronics, the goal is to have them both look exactly or almost exactly the same, otherwise the suspension of disbelief is lost by the viewer. You basically lose continuity. Using photos of animatronics as reference material for textures etc. allows you to achieve that goal. Also if you have animatronics AND CG in the same scene you would want the CG to look indistinguishable from the animatronics therefore using photos is very helpful.

Gollum was a great achievment, but again it was obvious he was CGI

My thoughts exactly. Some people like to downplay this by bringing up the excuse that since Gollum doesn't really exist in physical form from this planet, no one can really say if it looks real or not. Well to that I say BS! Ever been to Disneyland? Do those people wearing Daffy and Mickey costumes look like CGI? No! They look real. If they were statues they would still look real. If they were animatronics they would still look real.

 

[jvd]

LOTR isn't the most realistic looking CGI to date.

Then what is...? And more importantly how are you going to define what is "real" and what makes it real?

What makes CGI real? When you can watch a movie and not be taken out of it by the CGI. LOTR had moments when it was quite obvious that CGI was being used, Frodo on top of the troll in FOTR and Legolas on the elephant thing in ROTK. Gollum was a great achievment, but again it was obvious he was CGI. Movies like A.I. (the most convincing use of CGI to date), Master and Commander, and Cast Away all use a good amount of CGI but it is never in your face and obvious. Plus Teddy was easily the best CGI character ever.

Right but one is trying to recreate actual worlds. I.e a.i was a future version of our time. We know how humans should look and how cars and houses should look along with new york city even though it was mostly under water. But when it showed something that we've never seen before like the aliens it looked very fake. More so than gollum.

Cast away . It was recreating what ? Islands ? storms ? all things we all have seen and know how it should look. Much easier than making something we've never seen and trying to make us believe it .

That is why what lord of the rings did was much harder and a much bigger achivement .

 

[Dural]

Not aliens, advanced mechas, and they looked and moved quite naturally to me. Teddy's animation and look were perfect in A.I., couldn't tell the animatronic Teddy from the CGI one. Gollum didn't always look or move right to me, check out when he jumps on Frodo in ROTK.

The scene where Tom Hanks is on top of the cliff looking around the island and the plane in the water were both CGI and looked very good. In fact I didn't know the island was CGI until after watching the extras, that is what I think is great CGI.

Yes, I know it was harder and a big achievement, but that doesn't mean it was better.

 

[PC-Engine]

jvd, a statue of an alien that no one has ever seen would still look real. The statue of Abraham Lincoln looks real. You can see that it's a physically real object.

 

[jvd]

jvd, a statue of an alien that no one has ever seen would still look real. The statue of Abraham Lincoln looks real. You know it's a physically real object.

well yes. The statue does look like a real statue . But if i've never seen lincoln before would he look like the real lincoln ?

What does the real gollum look like ?

I know what a realy wooden gallo looks like (That is the right spelling for the ship in master and commander correct ?)

But what exactly does a balrog from lord of the rings look like ?


See what I'm getting at ?

There are things that we know and thus because we know it , it looks more real. Like a cgi tiger would look more realistic than a cgi alien would look like.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Statues, landscaped, buildings, teddybears, dinosaurs... they are all inanimate, limitedly animated, or lacking subtle animation like facial. That's why the dinos, a.i. teddy, Castaway's island, LOTR cgi buildings look 'real'.
Those with more animation, and especially human-like features, expression and speech (like gollum) are harder to make convincing. There's always something in their animation that isn't just right.

 

[McFly]

I think some people here confuse "physicaly real" with "reality". There's a long way to go till we have something that looks and acts exactly like reality, but what we can achive is something where metal looks like metal and plastic like plastic and fur like fur and skin like skin ... I don't care if the animal is looking like an animal that really exists, what I care is if the fur and skin of the animal looks real and the level of detail and acuracy of the animals motion.

Fredi

 

[PC-Engine]

What does the real gollum look like ?

The viewer does not care what a real gollum looks like if it actually existed. What the viewer cares about is whether or not gollum is a real physical object/being that the real live action actors are interacting with. Take out the CG Gollum and replace it with an animatronic

Statues, landscaped, buildings, teddybears, dinosaurs... they are all inanimate, limitedly animated, or lacking subtle animation like facial. That's why the dinos, a.i. teddy, Castaway's island, LOTR cgi buildings look 'real'.
Those with more animation, and especially human-like features, expression and speech (like gollum) are harder to make convincing. There's always something in their animation that isn't just right.

Some of the buildings in LOTR do not look real, because the lighting is not real. I just used statues as one example. The Raptors and T-Rex scenes that I'd mention many posts back look real. They look like real physical animatronics interacting with real objects and actors. Gollum looks like CGI not only because of animation, but because of lighting. The lighting is just "off". It doesn't mesh with the rest of the environment.

 

[Dural]

I agree that it is easier to make something familiar to us look real. The problem with Gollum, and most CGI for that matter, is that they don't always look right when interacting with other CGI. Frodo on the troll, Legolas on the elephant, and Harry Potter on the troll just don't look right.

 

[jvd]

The viewer does not care what a real gollum looks like if it actually existed. What the viewer cares about is whether or not gollum is a real physical object/being that the real live action actors are interacting with. Take out the CG Gollum and replace it with an animatronic

Yes and we will see all the limitations of animatronic which will look less life like than the cg .

The Raptors and T-Rex scenes that I'd mention many posts back look real. They look like real physical animatronics interacting with real objects and actors. Gollum looks like CGI not only because of animation, but because of lighting. The lighting is just "off". It doesn't mesh with the rest of the environment.

I have the lost world in (only one i have on dvd) and this does not look real.

IT looks a ) super imposed ) b ) the movements are very riged c) there is something just wrong with the way they interact with the enviorments .

IF you were to put in machines to do this they too would also look fake and all the other things mentioned.

 

[rabidrabbit]

.... Gollum looks like CGI not only because of animation, but because of lighting. The lighting is just "off". It doesn't mesh with the rest of the environment.

The lighting looks off in much of the LOTR , esp. ROTK
But the Gollum scenes are more complex than anything in JP, wher the lighting in cgi dino scenes is rather simple, the dinos rather inanimate, or the scenes don't last as long as the scenes in LOTR with Gollum.

 

[Dural]

Statues, landscaped, buildings, teddybears, dinosaurs... they are all inanimate, limitedly animated, or lacking subtle animation like facial. That's why the dinos, a.i. teddy, Castaway's island, LOTR cgi buildings look 'real'.
Those with more animation, and especially human-like features, expression and speech (like gollum) are harder to make convincing. There's always something in their animation that isn't just right.

I've never seen a teddy bear walk and the way it was done in A.I looked perfect. Teddy also had a good amount of dialog and facial animation.

 

[rabidrabbit]

I've never seen a teddy bear walk and the way it was done in A.I looked perfect. Teddy also had a good amount of dialog and facial animation.

...if you can call it facial animation . It wasn't very subtle.

 

[PC-Engine]

You're not getting what I'm saying. Animatronics are REAL objects that the actors can touch. They don't look like they're pasted into the environment. Whether they move like a real dinosaur or not is irrelevent. It's a real object and the viewers know it's a real object.

Now the scenes I'm talking about in JP is the scene with the Raptors in the kitchen where one of them rams the steel cubbards/door whatever.

The other real scene is the T-Rex in the rain attacking the Jeep. In both scenes the CG blends into the REAL not CGI environment very well.

But the Gollum scenes are more complex than anything in JP, wher the lighting in cgi dino scenes is rather simple, the dinos rather inanimate, or the scenes don't last as long as the scenes in LOTR with Gollum.

Dude this has been addressed how many times now? More complex does not equal real looking. Put an idiot into a Ferrari and it will automatically win races? An incompetent artist with the most advance CGI tools does not equal realistic art. An idiot with a calculator cannot find the solution to a complex mathematical equation. A mathematician can find the solution with a pencil and paper.

 

[Dural]

Well they were going for the look of a robot bear, and that looked quite convincing.


I just saw Monsters Inc. again recently and Sully is one hell of a great looking CGI creature. His fur was stunning, especially in the scene in the snow.

 

[jvd]

Well they were going for the look of a robot bear, and that looked quite convincing.


I just saw Monsters Inc. again recently and Sully is one hell of a great looking CGI creature. His fur was stunning, especially in the scene in the snow.

I had a walking teddy bear and a talking teddy bear. Both were scary as hell and I didn't watch that movie for those reasons .

You're not getting what I'm saying. Animatronics are REAL objects that the actors can touch. They don't look like they're pasted into the environment. Whether they move like a real dinosaur or not is irrelevent. It's a real object and the viewers know it's a real object.

and thier limited movements and expersions make them look fake .

The only reason the mix of the robot and cgi in the car scene was any good was because it was extremly dark and rainy which was able to hide many things .



But we are very very off topic in this thread now

 

[rabidrabbit]

...

But the Gollum scenes are more complex than anything in JP, wher the lighting in cgi dino scenes is rather simple, the dinos rather inanimate, or the scenes don't last as long as the scenes in LOTR with Gollum.

Dude this has been addressed how many times now? More complex does not equal real looking. Put an idiot into a Ferrari and it will automatically win races? An incompetent artist with the most advance CGI tools does not equal realistic art.

I didn't say more complex equalled 'real' looking, ....dude.
What I meant (and which you didn't get, being too hasty to disagree for the sake of it.... dude), that because the Gollum scenes are more complex, it was more dificult for the (imo very talented) artists to make Gollum blend in with the lighting in those scenes, dude.

 

[PC-Engine]

...

But the Gollum scenes are more complex than anything in JP, wher the lighting in cgi dino scenes is rather simple, the dinos rather inanimate, or the scenes don't last as long as the scenes in LOTR with Gollum.

Dude this has been addressed how many times now? More complex does not equal real looking. Put an idiot into a Ferrari and it will automatically win races? An incompetent artist with the most advance CGI tools does not equal realistic art.

I didn't say more complex equalled 'real' looking, ....dude.
What I meant (and which you didn't get, being too hasty to disagree for the sake of it.... dude), that because the Gollum scenes are more complex, it was more dificult for the (imo very talented) artists to make Gollum blend in with the lighting in those scenes, dude.

According to your silly logic, the most simplistic creatures in LOTR equals the most realistic?

You think a closeup of giant T-Rex interacting with rain and a Jeep is simplistic?

and thier limited movements and expersions make them look fake .

Yeah but Gollum looks fake AND animates fake. Also rain can hide CGI artifacts, but rain also makes it look real. The T-Rex looks wet, the rain bounces off it looks real.