What makes CGI effects in movies so fake in daylight?

[DeadlyNinja]

I mean, the number one reason is that it doesn't match the lighting in the environments. Now I'm not talking about the really crappy B movies with their crappy CGI. I'm talking about the expensive productions. Even really well done shows/movies tend to suffer under certain lighting conditions.


The video there might not be that clear, but during the Stegosaurus/Allosaurus face off, the creatures blend in well enough. The scenes with the babies also worked well. Other scenes like the hunt scene doesn't blend in so well.

What is missing from the lighting that makes CGI look so fake in certain conditions? I know well done CGI at night is pretty flawless. Is it possible that we'll have 100% convincing CGI (provided you put in the effort) in the future?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

That BBC tv show about dinosaurs is nearly ten years old, maybe you should look at stuff that's produced nowadays and re-think your question.

 

[Gerry]

Now Avatar wasn't exactly the greatest movie in the world but it did (to my eyes) boast some of the most realistic CGI I've seen so far. Not the blue aliens, but the standard sci-fi ships/vehicles etc were exceptionally well done. I guess with the amount of money they threw at the movie you'd kind of expect that.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Now Avatar wasn't exactly the greatest movie in the world but it did (to my eyes) boast some of the most realistic CGI I've seen so far. Not the blue aliens, but the standard sci-fi ships/vehicles etc were exceptionally well done. I guess with the amount of money they threw at the movie you'd kind of expect that.

Just FYI, the entire jungle was CGI as well. But that's the kind where you know it's there because they obviously couldn't go to an alien planet to film it.

Same goes for a lot of stuff in the newer Iron Man, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean movies - the creatures and mechs can't be 100% convincing as we still know that they just don't exist.

But there's a LOT of computer generated elements in every kind of movie that most people just won't ever notice. Complete background replacements, stunt doubles, vehicles, special effects... Has anyone spotted the holes in the rotating hotel room scene in Inception, or the part of the exploding ice mountain fortress that was not a miniature?

 

[Panajev2001a]

Now Avatar wasn't exactly the greatest movie in the world but it did (to my eyes) boast some of the most realistic CGI I've seen so far. Not the blue aliens, but the standard sci-fi ships/vehicles etc were exceptionally well done. I guess with the amount of money they threw at the movie you'd kind of expect that.

Looking at the credits, the amount of people and bright minds who worked on it is astounding.

 

[Gerry]

Just FYI, the entire jungle was CGI as well. But that's the kind where you know it's there because they obviously couldn't go to an alien planet to film it.

Oh definitely. As impressive as all the jungle/ Na'vi stuff was, by definition it was clearly CGI because of what it was.

It was there more mundane stuff that impressed me. Stuff like the shuttles landing in the docking bay on the planet - you had to do a double-take to tell yourself it was CGI because it just looked very, very realistic.

 

[Davros]

Not movies but games
A lot of modern games seem to be bathed in a sort of beige light (unreal engine + codemasters 2010 i'm looking at you) as if the devs thought the sun is yellow therefore sunlight must be yellow, drives me mad
(thankfully there are mods to change the light to white for f1 2010)

Example

 

[DeadlyNinja]

That BBC tv show about dinosaurs is nearly ten years old, maybe you should look at stuff that's produced nowadays and re-think your question.

The video clip I posted was just an example, but the last sentence wasn't well thought out. It was late and I wasn't thinking straight. I was actually thinking of how long before it's cheap enough for lower budget shows to also have 100% convincing CGI.

When I ask what's missing, I mean the ones that don't blend well, not whether they blend in well because of how old/new they are. The original Jurassic Park had much better effects than the Men in Black movies for example even though the first was older.

Same goes for a lot of stuff in the newer Iron Man, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean movies - the creatures and mechs can't be 100% convincing as we still know that they just don't exist.

That reminds me. I actually thought Davy Jones was make up and animatronics on his face when in fact it was CGI. I didn't even know until I was watching the Oscar nominations.

Not movies but games
A lot of modern games seem to be bathed in a sort of beige light (unreal engine + codemasters 2010 i'm looking at you) as if the devs thought the sun is yellow therefore sunlight must be yellow, drives me mad
(thankfully there are mods to change the light to white for f1 2010)

Yeah, I call it the piss filter. I hate it. Resident Evil 5 has a vomit filter.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I was actually thinking of how long before it's cheap enough for lower budget shows to also have 100% convincing CGI.

5 to 10 years at least, IMHO. A lot of stuff is still going to be very expensive... No matter how fast the computers are, how good the software is, it will still take a lot of work to paint textures for a creature, build models for set extensions, do the camera matching, put it together in comp... But it did get better, just compare stuff from the '90s with the scenes in Battlestar Galactica (they do have some daytime shots here and there).

When I ask what's missing, I mean the ones that don't blend well, not whether they blend in well because of how old/new they are.

Lighting and shading has improved a lot in the past decade, thanks to faster computers and new, more realistic rendering techniques. These are perhaps the most important elements of integrating CG content into a live action plate and require considerable effort (like taking HDR photographs of the scene and taking detailed notes of everything).

At first it was only about eyeballing it, now it's possible to have a pretty good start thanks to HDR and global illumination and energy conserving shaders. Still takes a lot of effort to get that final 5-10% (the difficulty curve is exponential) and that's where most of the money is spent, on iterations and artist time.

The original Jurassic Park had much better effects than the Men in Black movies for example even though the first was older.

There's just a few years between them and I personally still disagree - the original JP did not stand up to the test of time that well.
A lot of the dinosaurs are animatronic puppets, for example, they've only used CG for full body shots where the camera was distant. There are some horrible problems with almost every CG shot and creature and it just screams out to me. I suggest taking a good look at it today, especially after watching some state of the art movie.

That reminds me. I actually thought Davy Jones was make up and animatronics on his face when in fact it was CGI.

Most people working in CG thought it was make-up for a long, long time, too. It just looked so real in that first trailer.

 

[Davros]

energy conserving shaders.

Whats one of those ?

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Lighting and shading has improved a lot in the past decade, thanks to faster computers and new, more realistic rendering techniques. These are perhaps the most important elements of integrating CG content into a live action plate and require considerable effort (like taking HDR photographs of the scene and taking detailed notes of everything).

So it really is just a matter of lighting, huh? I always thought they had models on set for lighting reference for the CG stuff. I guess not all of them had it.

At first it was only about eyeballing it, now it's possible to have a pretty good start thanks to HDR and global illumination and energy conserving shaders. Still takes a lot of effort to get that final 5-10% (the difficulty curve is exponential) and that's where most of the money is spent, on iterations and artist time.

Does that mean even big budget CG nowadays will employ effects like normal mapping/displacement mapping for extra detail? I know having a ton of polygons still can slow a system down, but I've never seen multi-million dollar machines in action to even know what their real limits are.

There's just a few years between them and I personally still disagree - the original JP did not stand up to the test of time that well.
A lot of the dinosaurs are animatronic puppets, for example, they've only used CG for full body shots where the camera was distant. There are some horrible problems with almost every CG shot and creature and it just screams out to me. I suggest taking a good look at it today, especially after watching some state of the art movie.

I actually rewatched the movie a few weeks ago. They held up well enough in harsh daylight. Much better than the Stegosaurus entrance in the Lost World. The funny thing is that when I was a kid, I actually assumed most of it was puppet with no knowledge of CG. I kept thinking, damn, their 40 foot robot can walk. I didn't even understand CG until the Donkey Kong Country promo video came. Trust me, watch Men in Black or Men in Black 2. The effects at night is inferior to the night shots in JP. The giant roach alien was really fake. MIB2 was just pure ass across the board.JP might not compare to some of the stuff today, but I really think JP held up better than MIB/MIB II. I thought Sandman looked fake in Spiderman 3 as well.

Most people working in CG thought it was make-up for a long, long time, too. It just looked so real in that first trailer.

That's the kind of stuff that doesn't bother me even after finding out it's CG. I didn't see the movie, I just caught the Oscars on TV and when the nomination came up, I knew this movie was going to win. I saw the trailers and thought it was make up effects without giving it a second thought.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Whats one of those ?

The basic rule is that there cannot be more light reflected from any part of the surface then the amount that hits it. Manually tweaking specular highlight parameters and using separate ambient/diffuse and reflection/specular terms can mess things up very quickly.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

So it really is just a matter of lighting, huh? I always thought they had models on set for lighting reference for the CG stuff. I guess not all of them had it.

Again - eyeballing it is not enough, no matter what reference you have. Taking HDR pictures of the environment itself into a cube environment map will capture most of the lighting almost completely and the rest is tweaking the look.

Does that mean even big budget CG nowadays will employ effects like normal mapping/displacement mapping for extra detail?

Yeah, in fact displacement was first used in movie VFX, for a long time now - but I don't see the connection you made here...

I know having a ton of polygons still can slow a system down, but I've never seen multi-million dollar machines in action to even know what their real limits are.

Noone really has access to super fast machines, the days are gone when you had a 386 on your desk and someone had an SGI Octane on his at ILM. Today everyone uses the same Intel systems so
1. workstations have to use the divide and conquer principle to manage the data
2. render farms are built with up to ten thousand CPUs to deal with the processing
Okay maybe it's more energy efficient to use 8-core CPUs in the 2-inch servers, but you get the picture.

 

[Snyder]

That reminds me. I actually thought Davy Jones was make up and animatronics on his face when in fact it was CGI. I didn't even know until I was watching the Oscar nominations.

That was the first thing that came to mind when I started reading this thread. What made it even more impressive for me: When I watched POTC2 a second time - although with the knowledge of CGI Davy Jones and paying close attention to his scenes - for the first time ever my mind didn't make the immediate connection "this is computer generated", i still had the feeling it could have been "real" (i.e. animatronics/prosthetics).
For me still the most impressive use of CGI to this day, by far.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Benjamin Button is another great example, most people just can't tell when they switch from the CG replacement to Brad Pitt in make-up. And almost no-one notices the CG head replacement for Cate Blanchett in the ballet scene.

 

[Otto Dafe]

Does that mean even big budget CG nowadays will employ effects like normal mapping/displacement mapping for extra detail? I know having a ton of polygons still can slow a system down, but I've never seen multi-million dollar machines in action to even know what their real limits are.

Oh yes, almost always, but they are usually generated from crazy high-res geometry. In that sense, it's not so much "extra detail" as it is just an expedient way to render very fine detail.

 

[RejZoR]

Because they aren't doing it inrealtime, that's why. Base models yes, during production, but once everything is set and ready, they kick in ultra high detail objects and filters and set it to do the magic in offline render farms. There is just no way anything can run what we see in movies in realtime at any kind of acceptable framerate. But offline, no problem. Been playing around with raytraced offline renderers blended into animation. It's kinda cool to observe each animation frame to render for 1 minute or so and then jump to a next one and so on. You can get some really intense moving detail but only possible in offline way.