The Hobbit films, previously to be directed by Guillermo del Toro and now to be directed by Peter Jackson again.

There are dwarves and elves and shit in both Django Unchained and Skyfall.

i don't believe it.

You have to put on your special glasses to see them. I will be happy to sell you the glasses at a discount.

>the 48fps showings are only in regular 3d - not 2d, not IMAX 3D

Don't know about regular 2D, but the IMAX 3D showing I saw was def 48fps and visibly so (UK). Recognise this might vary from "territory to territory" though, and dependent on the whims of the cinema chain.

you guys don't understand,
i love dwarves and elves and shit.

otmx100000000

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2013/01/16/a-hobbit-is-chubby-but-is-he-off-balance/

Between this and Life of Pi, I'm finding myself finally sold ont he whole CGI aesthetic, after so many years. It feels like computer images in movies have been warming up until now and that directors are only just hitting their stride and using things like CGI/3D to its best potential.

― besides Sunny Real Estate (dog latin), Tuesday, January 15, 2013 4:19 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm of the complete opposite view - think I talked about this upthread, but the improvements in digital tech (from dvd 480p to bluray 1080p to, what, 4k?) has made it so that it's easier than ever to see the CGI sheen on the CGI sequences, it's awful, bring back miniature models and trick photography, return of the jedi had better efx than the hobbit

(saw this in HFR though)

otoh I really do admire films like this for being so balls-in-your-face fake, not apologetic at all about it, watch this amerrrrrica you're gonna give me your money anyway

I do want to see this in HFR cos it does sound like a very different experience. Not sure i want to spend another $18 on a movie ticket though. No wonder i have little problem w pirating movies.

I just realized that bumping up the resolution and framerate probably also severely increases render time on CGI sequences. Maybe the endless search for higher-def entertainment will at some point make CGI too expensive to use liberally and people will go back to camera tricks.

youre not gonna see hfr in a pirated copy dude

balls-in-your-face fake

http://www.indiewire.com/static/dims4/INDIEWIRE/7814202/4102462740/thumbnail/325x227%3E/http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/f7/098930485a11e2a90122000a1d0930/file/hobbit-goblin-king.jpg

http://www.expo21xx.com/sensor/18990_st3_high_speed_cameras/default.htm

Here's a digital camera that records 60fps and it's less than $100

http://www.dhgate.com/p-ff808081365d15450136761e60460de8.html?utm_source=GMC&utm_medium=Adwords&utm_campaign=shinystore88&utm_term=135461819&f=bm|135461819||GMC|Adwords||shinystore88|QL||&gclid=COqPw_jN7bQCFQsGnQod_xYANQ

I just realized that bumping up the resolution and framerate probably also severely increases render time on CGI sequences. Maybe the endless search for higher-def entertainment will at some point make CGI too expensive to use liberally and people will go back to camera tricks.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, January 16, 2013 11:10 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

processor time is cheap

and, sadly, so are VFX artists

I saw the movie first in regular IMAX 3D, and I remember thinking that the effects looked surprisingly shoddy. There was an immediate difference with the 48fps version. The CGI looked a lot better--not real, but definitely smoother and more integrated into the action.

The problem with the HFR, though, is that it makes the human actorslook goofy, sped-up and out of sync with the computer-animated characters. So you're just reversing the usual situation where the CGI stands out against the live action.

It's not the processor so much as the extra detail that needs to be added, but then stupid humans with their veins and pores aren't faring much better.

Yeah but even if you just render a sphere in space there is a huge difference in processing time between doing it 480p and doing it 4k or whatever master resolution they render it to.

Surely most of the detail is just in using higher and higher resolution textures, and normal mapping or whatever.

when you compare a frame in 1080p to a frame in 480p I think the 1080p is 4x the area of the 480p frame? like, it's not insignificant. and when you go from 1080p to 4k or w/e, the growth is not linear.

processor time is cheap

― (panda) (gun) (wrapped gift) (silby), Thursday, January 17, 2013 12:59 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and, sadly, so are VFX artists

Do you have links or articles on this? I'm genuinely curious about the economics of CGI work in modern films. I'm under the (possibly misguided) impression that it's a big part of the film's budget. Maybe processing power is getting cheaper but you have modelers, texture people, animators, lighting specialists, camera operators, etc. working solely in the 3D realm, basically it's like having a whole secondary film crew. Plus you have programmers coming up with proprietary render software or whatever.

It's sort of a shame that all 'making of the VFX' documentaries you see are basically a shot of a guy modelling/animating/texturing a character and that's pretty much it.

http://youtu.be/MnQLjZSX7xM

Into the midst of this CGI dissection I'll just toss in my comment that, as soon as I heard the book had been divided into 3 films I immediately lost all interest in the project.

http://youtu.be/MnQLjZSX7xM

― Gollum: "Hot, Ready and Smeagol!" (Phil D.), Thursday, January 17, 2013 1:11 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

that virtual nyc they created still trips me up. and all they did was plop in some weird orb textures on some crudely modeled buildings

I took a CGI class in college and it is infinitely fascinating to me. It's like taking the God-like powers of SimCity and extending it to pretty much an entire virtual universe.

well Moore's law is still going strong, so compute time will continue to get exponentially cheaper faster than frames will get exponentially larger. And from what I can tell from the animators and VFX artists I listen in on, it's a field where there are a lot of graduates willing to work under not-great conditions to stay in the industry. Have heard about lots of jobs where FX artists are hired as independent contractors (no benefits! no job security!) but (illegally) not treated as them, i.e. given instructions on when to show up to the office, what to work on, etc. So that's what I mean by cheap. Obviously once you start throwing 200 artists and technical directors at something you start running into big money but the cost of VFX isn't going to start making studios think twice when they're looking to make a guaranteed billion-dollar three-dee spectacular.

Also independent VFX houses fall all over themselves bidding on client work, and bid out contracts at rates that barely cover their own expenses, then go out of business.

tbh though I think positive reactions to work like Del Toro's in recent years (along with the Star Wars prequels) has helped fuel a Nerd Backlash against overuse of CG/VFX, and generally improved the quality bar for VFX in live-action films. Cf. this VFX reel for Black Swan (spoilers):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n71sjmd-bM

heh I was under the impression that moore's law was slowing down? I guess GHz has been pretty constant but new architectures lead to better improvements

Moore's law properly so-called tracks the density of transistors on a silicon substrate, not clock speed.

I bet new technologies like distributed cloud GPU stuff will balance that out anyways.

i don't know if you can simply throw more processing power at it. i get the sense you would just end up getting more detailed and fluid fakeness.

well I was initially responding to the claim that the expense of CGI would somehow increase beyond the point where studios would pay for it. Whether or not it looks fake is an aesthetic question, no?

i'd say it's more neuropsychology than aesthetics, but maybe hobbit budget can't pay for university profs to consult.

there was something really clever in the production notes for the BBC hitchhiker's guide to galaxy series where someone said to have the makeup on Zaphod's real head look fake so that the prosthetic head doesn't look so bad by comparison. what if extra pancake makeup could save $$$$$$ on the hobbit?

That wasn't really a prediction i necessarily think is going to happen, more like a what-if scenario i invented on the spot.

I don't keep up w advances in CGI like i used to, but it seems like super-sharp detail and fluidity and all sorts of other problems are being worked out. More light passes and more detailed models and textures, sure, but things like motion blur, camera distortion, field of depth, etc. there are plenty of optical issues that are coming closer to how we really see the world and more importantly the ways in which cameras have traditionally captured that experience.

Perhaps in 10 or 20 years everyone will get the "Let's have 10,000 orcs all fighting each other w the camera swooping down hundreds of feet in a few seconds capturing this ridiculous spectacle" out of our system and we'll begin to see less "look what we can do!" extravaganza and more effectively telling a story/conveying emotion. This is why "Jurassic Park" still looks so great even nowadays.

Maybe processing power is getting cheaper but you have modelers, texture people, animators, lighting specialists, camera operators, etc. working solely in the 3D realm, basically it's like having a whole secondary film crew.

I've worked in video games as an artist for a long time. I specifically remember the technology shift between the Nintendo 64 and Playstation 2. The polygon budget for modeling anything increased ten-fold. It became not a matter of what could be modeled, but how long it would take. More realism and detail = more man hours needed to create that content. Where rendering is concerned, it's easy to chain computers into render farms to speed that process.

That's awesome! I've been playing through "Sleeping Dogs" and it blows my mind that it can render those rainy outdoor scenes in real-time.

i'd say it's more neuropsychology than aesthetics, but maybe hobbit budget can't pay for university profs to consult.

― Philip Nunez, Thursday, January 17, 2013 10:30 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yah fundamentally the problem is no one really knows what reality is really like not even college professors

btw i kinda liked this way more fun than those humorless lotr

I really wanted to see this but we were too broke to afford it (lol NYC ticket prices) until 5 days ago. I immediately checked showtimes and hey ho it is gone from here. It was still playing a couple of weeks ago...

It's out on video next week.

Yall that pay to see this type of shit yall are the problem yall know that right

^^^

Watched a little bit of the 24 fps 3d version yesterday and it looked pretty nice

it had a cliff hanger AND a tree hanger

and the tree was hanging off the cliff

i wont spoil it for you but they all die

Pls let that cover crew also

everyone in the world died