The Future of CGI

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what will the future hold for CGI? How do you see it developing?

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 21 May 2004 12:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Well here's hoping it improves drastically 'cos it's fucking crap right now

― Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 21 May 2004 12:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Eddie Murphy voicing a cartoon dog in every new film. Including the heaviest of dramas.

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Friday, 21 May 2004 12:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Chilly Gnu Incubators?

― coco, Friday, 21 May 2004 12:38 (twenty-two years ago)

I maintain that the easiest way to drive yrself mad is to visualise a world where things do not get smaller the further they are away from you. With much current CGI it seems as if this is exactly what the artist wants to do! It all looks so busy and overlapping - consider Jimmy Neutron, or even more extreme, the recent CBBC ad where the kids' heads swell and at one point assume the rôle of Spacehoppers. I can't see how CGI can continue down this route and become even more extreme - people's senses simply won't be able to cope with it. I see it as being in a similar situation as Baroque music. Eventually it all got so complicated that it was no longer good to listen to and musicians could no longer play it.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 21 May 2004 12:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Sounds like bebop

― Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 21 May 2004 12:41 (twenty-two years ago)

http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/

― Be sure to Loop! Loop, Loop, Loop. (ex machina), Friday, 21 May 2004 12:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Dadaismus is saying it's crap right now. I agree up to a point...they can't do photorealism for toffee. But the question is - is this simply because the technology isn't up to the task, or because the artists simply haven't aimed for photorealism? Is it a question of ability or will? I can well understand if someone experimenting with a new artform wants to use it to create something completely new that doesn't resemble what's gone before. I think it copuld well be too early to say for certain whether CGI is simply unsettling coz its new - much as it would have been unsettling for ppl to walk into art galleries and view the work of Impressionists and Cubists when they were used to seeing the more photo-realistic art which preceded it.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 21 May 2004 12:46 (twenty-two years ago)

I look forward to the day when all images are digitally enhanced and I can safely watch telly without ever seeing anyone ugly.

― robster (robster), Friday, 21 May 2004 12:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Well here's hoping it improves drastically 'cos it's fucking crap right now

this is like saying 'music is fucking crap now'

― stevem (blueski), Friday, 21 May 2004 12:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Photorealism gets closer year on year tho I am not really a fan of that style and prefer alternative takes on representation and simulation via CGI, which we see in all kinds of things (games and music videos spring to mind with the work of Shynola and H5 standing out for me). This thread may as well be retitled 'CGi attempting photo-realism, dud or dud?'. It's funny because I think the CGI in the Jurassic Park movies is still phenomenal and the only real problem is when animators try and produce photo-realistic objects and characters that are totally imaginary (e.g. Jar-Jar Binks or whatever) - we have a hard time believing it because of that added factor and the problem of trying to make something we all know isn't or never was real in our universe (unlike dinosaurs) look like it could be. The CGI for The Day After Tomorrow does look a bit 'cheap' as well tho, like no real improvement over Deep Impact tho obv. there's a lot more going on.

― stevem (blueski), Friday, 21 May 2004 12:56 (twenty-two years ago)

hmm, Robster, I think this might make the real world seem decidedly unsettling or, at the very least unsatisfying - you'd have to continue to see ugly people there!

I think the ppl who create CGI who are criticised for not creating realistic images might well counter that this is not what they are aiming to do....they have been given carte blanche to create new worlds without the restirctions placed by models (the type you make not the ones on the catwalk), scenery and costumes. They may say that since a dragon, for example, is a mythical creature, how could you possibly slag off a CGI dragon for not being realistic? The critic may say this is a sophistic response, coz a dragon is still a living thing in the mythical universe, which is a scaly lizard which flies and breathes fire, so the least the CGI artist could do is make its scales look like a real, living lizard's scales and make the flames from its gob resemble real fire.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 21 May 2004 12:57 (twenty-two years ago)

that said Gollum was a real breakthrough and fantastically realised, the use of Andy Serkis being key. But of course it was easier to not criticise Gollum because he was part of a universe we all accepted was not our own.

― stevem (blueski), Friday, 21 May 2004 12:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Mark H i think the problem is they ARE trying to aim for photo-realism too much, and in the past tended to overlook the fact that not everything nature creates is 'perfect' (no human body is entirely symmetrical etc.) but these lessons have been learned and the only thing really impeding satisfactory CGI is budgets.

note that The Hulk was criticised for the CGI and I think again this was because people got too stuck into trying to deal with the concept of The Hulk existing in our universe. I personally did not see it as that relevant that it looked a bit daft/not quite 'real' enough, X Men 2 on the other hand did it superbly.

― stevem (blueski), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:03 (twenty-two years ago)

the only thing really impeding satisfactory CGI is budgets

and time, natch

― stevem (blueski), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Return Of The King had more dubious CGI moments than it's two predecessors and I'm thinking this was due to underscheduling rather than funding problems or lack of ability.

― stevem (blueski), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:05 (twenty-two years ago)

plus it was more ambitious (see also Matrix and Star Wars prequels)

― stevem (blueski), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:05 (twenty-two years ago)

glad to hear the Aliens V Predator film has opted for the 'men in suits' rather than CGI.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:08 (twenty-two years ago)

CGI often seems to be let down more by the realism of the animation physics than the image quality itself. A slightly ropey-looking hulk might have had more impact if he didn't seem so weightless. See also Spiderman

― robster (robster), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:09 (twenty-two years ago)

yes weight and effects like inertia are the hardest to judge. i watch virtual horse racing at work a lot and the running motion is often not quite right but it's more to do with the horses interaction with the ground rather than the actual cycle of their legs which is actually bang on.

― stevem (blueski), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:15 (twenty-two years ago)

funny how the CGI artists and having trouble recapturing the motion of horses, as this was exactly the same problem that painters faced - early paintings and drawings of horses in motion sometimes had the legs splayed which is never a feature of the horse's gait. The problem of how the horse's legs actually moved was eventually solved by an ingenious experiment described here:

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/9657/Muybridge.html

it may be that some "problems" with CGI will never be put right as ppl will just get used to the flaws being there and treat them as a curiosity and occasional conversation piece, like the flickering computer screen and the backward motion of car wheels on film due to differing nos. of cycles per unit time film vs. object being filmed.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:26 (twenty-two years ago)

With all the intricacies of the visual world, and the rigidness of digital media, other than some subtle details, I don't think realistic CGI could really ever be made.

But then again a movie is essential just a flat screen of an array of pixels, and really those pixels can be anything, it's just a matter of the artist knowing enough about the laws of the physical world and how to create the illusion.

― A Nairn (moretap), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:34 (twenty-two years ago)

And the slightest error in the physics of the motion or light stands out a lot to people who spend their whole lives noticing how the real world is.

― A Nairn (moretap), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:35 (twenty-two years ago)

that's fair considering how we pick up on and criticise bad dialogue and characterisation just as much if not more. a shame films with awesome CGI, awesome dialogue and awesome characters are so thin on the ground perhaps.

― stevem (blueski), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:43 (twenty-two years ago)

the rom com will be the last film genre to make widescale use of CGI - a safe assumption?

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:46 (twenty-two years ago)

A rom-com where the leads are gobbled up by a CGI dinosaur would rule.

― robster (robster), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:51 (twenty-two years ago)

well we've just had a rom zom com, so a dino rom com is a possibility. What about:

CD-ROM com?

Buffalo Tom com?

British Telecom-com?

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:52 (twenty-two years ago)

completely commercial comedy comprising communists, combat, combustion & commodes

― robster (robster), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:56 (twenty-two years ago)

I may actually pitch this

― robster (robster), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:57 (twenty-two years ago)

it would actually be set in the USSR in the early eighties as I'm sure the likes of Andropov, Chernenko and Gromyko needed a commode!

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:59 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm not a fan of the photo-realistic thing that they try to do but there are scenes in the Final Fantasy film (and the animatrix clip they did) that i had trouble distinguishing from real life.

new pixar film looks good btw.

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 21 May 2004 15:16 (twenty-two years ago)

for the first minute or so of Last Flight Of The Osiris i assumed it was real footage, which seems daft now i know

― stevem (blueski), Friday, 21 May 2004 15:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Everything stevem has said on this thread is pretty much otm.

― El Diablo Robotico (Nicole), Friday, 21 May 2004 16:03 (twenty-two years ago)

shucks. actually another factor of the horse racing thing is that it's photo-realistic only to a certain extent. they put more details into the horses than the surface they are racing on which is pretty much flat, as in literally FLAT (or so it seems), which is never the case irl obv.

― stevem (blueski), Friday, 21 May 2004 16:10 (twenty-two years ago)

seventeen years pass...

I realize (with this thread as evidence) that fill-in CGI has been greeted with sceptical eyes for quite a long time but it's still amazing to see just how terrible it looks now. I didn't see Attack of the Clones at the time so can't say for sure but the waterfalls in this scene surely didn't look quite so ridiculous in 2002, did they? To some extent, our eyes participated in a certain suspension of belief because it was closer to reality than what artifice we were used to seeing, right? Now it looks closer to the painted backdrops of The Wizard of Oz than reality.

I mean, know George Lucas is particularly bad for this, but Jesus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNSq5wYdwb0

― Alba, Monday, 14 June 2021 17:51 (five years ago)

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