CGI verse models

[Chris Millar]

It's been years for me since I saw a weapon fire at full auto (blanks of course), or a squib go off under shirt. Does anybody do those anymore?

gawd, do I have shout it:

LIVE PRODUCTIONS

 

:blink:

 

think of an audience as lots of cameras if it helps.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Chris Millar

[George Ebersole]

gawd, do I have shout it:

LIVE PRODUCTIONS

 

:blink:

 

think of an audience as lots of cameras if it helps.

Do you know somebody who works there? Are they hiring? Details dude :)

[Chris Millar]

I'm talking about theatre in general.

 

I'm not sure if San Fran is a big theatre town ?

 

 

 

 

But I'm NZ/Aus based and Walking with Dinosaurs/King Kong/How to Train Your Dragin Live Aus based (wont hire out of country unless it can prove the person is unique)

 

 

[dan kessler]

You're in NZ, didn't realize that.

Guess that means that Weta is your main

source of CG work.

 

My comments were primarily in reference to LA,

but apply to the U.S. in general.

 

If you're in Canada or India or China,

there are lots more opportunities.

[Chris Millar]

You're in NZ, didn't realize that.

Guess that means that Weta is your main

source of CG work.

I use maya for it's user interface and kinematics, it never renders anything but .txt files ;)

 

But yes, weta is the place in this part of the world - for CG heavy features that is, there are myriad smaller places dealing in advertising and so on.

 

 

[George Ebersole]

*shrug*

 

Well, back to the old drawing board... or camera dolly. :angry:

[Chris Millar]

shrugs beget shrugs...

[George Ebersole]

shrugs beget shrugs...

Yeah, I suppose.

 

Back on topic, I saw the new trailer for "Red Tails", and the CGI airplanes look like CGI airplanes. At least they do in the trailer.

 

Anyone with a comment?

[K Borowski]

The CGI Faces look like CGI Faces too. Looks like Lucas is still shooting with the F900 they used to shoot the 2nd "Star Wars. . ."

 

 

Love the content, but what's the use of seeing it in theatres? Optimized for my 1080P TV I might as well stay home, or visit the torrents to support "free speech."

[George Ebersole]

The CGI Faces look like CGI Faces too. Looks like Lucas is still shooting with the F900 they used to shoot the 2nd "Star Wars. . ."

 

 

Love the content, but what's the use of seeing it in theatres? Optimized for my 1080P TV I might as well stay home, or visit the torrents to support "free speech."

The whole thing was CGI?

[Chris Millar]

The whole thing was CGI?

 

The faces in the planes I'm guessing.

[Will Paguntalan]

Simply because I'm an unemployed former Stage Manager, AD, SFX assistant etc., and I like to name drop just to show I'm not a pathetic loser on this BBS by mining other peoples' past glories, even though I am :), I worked for the guys who did the following;

 

 

Would CGI have made this better?

 

I had the opportunity to see the original Star Wars (new hope) projected on a big screen.The Models worked. I have a theory, that unconsciously your mind gets "cues" from a physical 3d object moving in perspective. 3d animation is a simulation and may not be able to cover EVERY cue necessary to convince the mind that its real. That why for the most part: CGI is glorious photo-accurate movie matte painting. but its missing that thing,elusive "I am here" that even a cheap,badly focused model has. for example: "The Right Stuff"

 

-The one time I was fooled was the P-40/Zero work on "Pearl Harbor"

[Will Paguntalan]

It's interesting how the artefacts of film acquisition now have a bearing on how real anything other than film acquisition appears to the viewer...

 

I remember getting a friend who was learning Maya years ago to show me the camera settings panel - it was woefully blunt and even contradictory in its nature.

 

By now you'd think someone with a bit of time and cash could have come up with a good simulator for film shutters, CMOS rolling shutters, latitude/soft & hard clipping effects, lens effects like flare, iris patterns etc...

 

Cinemascope lens breathing effects anyone ?

 

I know many of these effects happen in post with grading and compositing - but why not try for a 'in CG camera' solution - modelled on the real world.

 

Does such a product exist ?

 

Lightwave 3d has a plethora of new cinema-related features(always had a filmic renderer):

will simulate many lenses from a drop down list, irradiance falloff, super-customizable flares. technically you could make your own glass "shape" and shoot the scene thru it! Its a stiff learning curve -but its pretty incredible and with the new agressive software dev team...Remember: Avatar was first simulated properly on LW.

[George Ebersole]

I had the opportunity to see the original Star Wars (new hope) projected on a big screen.The Models worked. I have a theory, that unconsciously your mind gets "cues" from a physical 3d object moving in perspective. 3d animation is a simulation and may not be able to cover EVERY cue necessary to convince the mind that its real. That why for the most part: CGI is glorious photo-accurate movie matte painting. but its missing that thing,elusive "I am here" that even a cheap,badly focused model has. for example: "The Right Stuff"

 

-The one time I was fooled was the P-40/Zero work on "Pearl Harbor"

Yeah, the Right Stuff was really cheap on the SFX, but they worked outstandingly well. Some of it you can attribute to shakey cam stuff (jittering the rig to simulate reaching mach one), but they also did something smart that few SFX artist every do (or did back in the day), and is shoot outdoors in natural sun.

 

I just don't know why more SFX shots aren't (or weren't) done that way.

[Chris Millar]

Lightwave 3d has a plethora of new cinema-related features(always had a filmic renderer):

will simulate many lenses from a drop down list, irradiance falloff, super-customizable flares. technically you could make your own glass "shape" and shoot the scene thru it! Its a stiff learning curve -but its pretty incredible and with the new agressive software dev team...Remember: Avatar was first simulated properly on LW.

 

 

Filmic renderers have always been terrible - so much so they are almost a unique effect in their own right - but I guess I'd admit that if you were to ask me after I had watched something that I thought was film if I'd consider it may have been a film effect, I'd say yeh, by now someone should be able to do it convincingly, without too much effort in post (where it's usually done I thought, especially when it comes to composites).

 

Not so sure about the super-customizable element you refer to - I'd be more interested in something that tried as hard as it could to simulate lens effects to the extent of the artefacts being problematic as they often are in the real world, forcing I'd hope the same solutions that we have come to learn in the real world - which, the visual outcome of is one of these cues you're talking about...

[KH Martin]

Yeah, the Right Stuff was really cheap on the SFX, but they worked outstandingly well. Some of it you can attribute to shakey cam stuff (jittering the rig to simulate reaching mach one), but they also did something smart that few SFX artist every do (or did back in the day), and is shoot outdoors in natural sun.

 

I just don't know why more SFX shots aren't (or weren't) done that way.

 

I remember on the old LOST IN SPACE series there was a shot of the saucer sailing down over a mountain before it crashed out of frame, and it was daylight and gorgeous.

 

Back in the Super-8 days, I actually shot some spaceship stuff in daylight. Had to angle a big foamcore starfield so that it tilted forward from straight up, and so it was with the sun behind it to illuminate the pinholes. Had a pole going through it horizontally to the ship, so the ship itself masked the support (most of the time!) Underexposing a couple stops kept the starfield looking good and made the shadows really black, and it really looked very right in terms of superhigh key with almost no fill (I had a bunch of dyed black sheets on the ground and taped around the shooting area to eat up the bounce light, so the light seemed to only come from a single direction.)

 

Took forever to set up each shot, and had to have guys pulling the support pole and it was a huge hassle, but the results looked great, and all in-camera!

 

I was seriously inspired by RIGHT STUFF and RUNNING MAN in terms of miniatueres (all done by the same outfit, USFX/Colossal Pictures) ... there were some shots of sleds in a tunnel in RUNNING MAN that looked a billion times better than any of the similar CG stuff in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH's tube sequence.

Edited January 23, 2012 by KH Martin

[Brian Drysdale]

Here are some radio controlled model Stukas mixing it with some Spitfires in "The Battle of Britain". A couple of the model shots of crashing aircraft in the film are a bit iffy, however, the ones into the sea look like the real thing (not in this extract). The air to air collision was an accident during the filming.

 

[Darrell Ayer]

Lightwave 3d has a plethora of new cinema-related features(always had a filmic renderer):

will simulate many lenses from a drop down list, irradiance falloff, super-customizable flares. technically you could make your own glass "shape" and shoot the scene thru it! Its a stiff learning curve -but its pretty incredible and with the new agressive software dev team...Remember: Avatar was first simulated properly on LW.

 

I was actually stating something less customizable, so you can get a CG "happy accident" much in the same way that Himpstamatic creates a simulation of those effect from Polaroid photos. It would also get it so you can go, "put the 21mm on there." I think there is too much anticeptic in CG. I'm sure the Flare generation is profound now adays though.

[Chris Millar]

I was actually stating something less customizable, so you can get a CG "happy accident"

 

agree

[George Ebersole]

Here are some radio controlled model Stukas mixing it with some Spitfires in "The Battle of Britain". A couple of the model shots of crashing aircraft in the film are a bit iffy, however, the ones into the sea look like the real thing (not in this extract). The air to air collision was an accident during the filming.

 

Models work.

[George Ebersole]

Well, I just saw "Red Tails".

 

Huh.

 

CGI warbirds still look like CGI. The cockpit sequences were live action. I'm not sure how someone could mistake those for CGI.

[Chris Millar]

I'm not sure how someone could mistake those for CGI.

Outside perspective looking in...

[dan kessler]

Models inhabit the real world, whereas everything cg

is a mathematical simulation. That's always harder

to pull off. Not that it can't be done, because there's

plenty of cg work that no one ever realized was cg.

 

IMO, 90% of the cg look is due to over-lighting.

After investing all that work in modeling and shading,

it's as if they can't bear the thought of any of it

falling into the shadows. They want to make sure

you see it!

 

Plus, too often cg fx goes so far over the top that

it gives itself away purely on the fact that it

couldn't be done any other way. It's really a

question of discipline.

 

Don't get me started; I'm a guy who will take the

1933 King Kong over the 2005 King Kong every time.

Edited January 26, 2012 by dan kessler

[George Ebersole]

Models inhabit the real world, whereas everything cg

is a mathematical simulation. That's always harder

to pull off. Not that it can't be done, because there's

plenty of cg work that no one ever realized was cg.

 

IMO, 90% of the cg look is due to over-lighting.

After investing all that work in modeling and shading,

it's as if they can't bear the thought of any of it

falling into the shadows. They want to make sure

you see it!

 

Plus, too often cg fx goes so far over the top that

it gives itself away purely on the fact that it

couldn't be done any other way. It's really a

question of discipline.

 

Don't get me started; I'm a guy who will take the

1933 King Kong over the 2005 King Kong every time.

Hey Dan

 

I thought the lighting was too diffuse. The whole film had a kind of ethereal or unreality look to it, and I think that only added to the iffy CGI work with the planes.

[George Ebersole]

Outside perspective looking in...

Ah, understood.