Just in case you didn't think I was arrogant enough... (clip inside)

durbnpoisn, about the first time view of Ep1. Yes I totally agree!

I can't describe my feelings man it was awesome too see that!
Nothing I've ever seen before.

Something special compared with the old fights from OT

And I had wondered a bit what can lightsabers Really do and not do and so on... qui-gon piercing heavy doors with saber..
wellwell

 

Now I haven't read any of the other posts in this thread so don't beat on me if someone already said it....Now if you want to beat on me just because you hate me...well then that's ok...Anyways...The only thing I dislike about your method is the brightness of the sabers...I think they are just a bit too bright...especially Dooku's...Obi's just needs to be brought down a bit...

 

I think the glows were a little too large because Ryan had to cover up the previous ILM glows!

Also......as I said before.....part II should include one thing.......a Dorkman cyborg!

 

I would like Ryan_W to take his cloning technique a step further, and create a huge army of Ryans versus a huge army of Dorkmans, and just run at each other. That would be the coolest fanfilm ever.

Also, I read somewhere that ILM uses a program called Inferno, that costs $40 000.

And that's my two cents....

 

ILM uses a SYSTEM called Inferno, which consists not only of the compositing software, but also the hardware optimized to run it.

And certain people are going to be pleasantly surprised at what we have already planned for the sequel.

M. Scott

 

A sequel, eh?

As much as I would love to see one, doesn't it make the first one um, less special? It's going to be very difficult to top the first. Well, if anyone can do it, it's you guys! Good luck!

Better pull an ESB!

 

Just a suggestion, when you do the sequel, try to avoid lightly tapping the sabers together. You did this a few times and it destroyed battle at certain points.

 

I'm not sure what parts you're talking about...but uh...it's called a beat attack in fencing, and it's a valid move.

M. Scott

 

Yeah, I never post like this, but uh... (deep breath)

I'm growing more and more amazed at some people's opinions on the episode II sabers. I will tell you the God's honest truth right now. I was in a theater (hopping) to catch the Breathing trailer for the first time and it finally comes up. They get to the shot of Obi-Wan and Anakin running into the hangar. Right there I said alaoud "You gotta be kidding. That must be temporary". It was that noticeably bad looking to me. I don't at all see how anyone with decent vision could watch the sabers and not have a problem with them (in most shots). It was actively distracting for me. Episode I had amazing sabers on the whole. It wasn't distracting because it was well done and the glows looked like a real visual phenomenon. Nobody bitched about those. There was no problem. Why would they do them differently? (because, as was said before, they were trying to create a different effect because of the new nature of the visual media they were using)

I get the feeling a lot of people here are just automatically hailing whatever the sabers look like in Episode II just because it's "canon" as if ILM were infallible and could never produce a mediocre effect. In this instance I think they took a chance and it ended up just not looking as good as they, and we, had hoped.

Ok, ok, so maybe we just have differing opinions on what looks good. That's true, that's fine. I presented my comparison clip to illustrate that I felt that Episode II sabers just don't look like something real at all, and that with my method (designed to make more TPMish sabers that look like an actual bright thing) I could produce a more realistic effect, which has generally been respected as "better".

And I do think they look better. It looks like some of the Episode II glows were generated in Microsoft Paint; They have no appearance of brightness about them, which is what they are supposed to be. Lightsabers. Blades of extremely bright energy giving off colored light. We're not talking about white sticks wrapped in red cellofane. I just don't get why so many people are defending them when they themselves could make a more realistic effect.




(sigh)





OK, so that came off in rant form. I apologize, but I just have to be frank here. This is what I think.

 

Guess well see what they do next time....
On Episode III....

 

I predict it will be a blend between the Episodes I and II looks.

 

Wow Ryan...hopefully thats a load off your back. Now I do agree with you and I'm not trying to protect them in anyway, but I'm just saying that to the average watcher of the movie, it's not noticable. The only reason you can tell so much is...well because your into making sabers a lot.

I really had no clue how to even rotoscope when AOTC came out and I thought they were absolutely fine. Now that I look back on them I do see your point, but the lightsabers aren't the main focus in Star Wars, although they seemed to become one of the favorites.

I do hope we will have something more like yours in EpIII's but right now all we got is EPII's sabers, and I'm betting it will only get better. They will learn from their experiences and make EPIII a "Perfect" movie, that none of us will complain about (Or atleast I hope they will).

ANyway, I'm going to bed....so if none of what I said just made sense it's cuz I'm tired.

 

I dunno. I prefer a "tighter" blade.

But I like pretty much all sabers, except ANH's, which are an abomination and need to be redone for the DVD. I'd gladly sit through ten more years of people whining about SEs and updates and "I want the original 1977 movie" if it meant we could get the ANH lightsabers fixed.

Hey Ryan, wanna get on that?




Rick McCallum loves you!

 

Ryan, even though you're like a Lightsaber FX god, you really need to get off your high horse.

 

i disagree with the last statement.

ryan, you are great with the sabers, i dont think anyone here should try to refute that.

the ilm sabers in ep2 were fine by me when i watched it. when i saw the movies i was not distracted, i enjoyed it, i did not pay that much attention, but now i do realize that they are pretty crappy. I already shared my ideas about what the sabers should idealy look like, which is more like the ones you did in you vs dorkman or the alternate lightsaber duel, although i prefer a sharper less soft edge to it.

I agree with your rant, which is completely fair. I guess since i am really new to this whole rotoscoping sabers thing i accept more, and i know i could not do anything to compare to any decent sabers.

neways, you may not have the same opinions, but cut him some slack

 

The soft edges in RvD are actually due in a number of shots to the compression method, which will cause sharpness of picture to drop across the board.

Also, if you're viewing it on a Mac, the Mac color tables tend to be brighter and cause the sabers to blow out.

Ryan, even though you're like a Lightsaber FX god, you really need to get off your high horse.

You say that as if he's been on about this for a while. Considering between me and him I'm the one who tends to come off the more arrogant, I think he rather deserves a moment of catharsis.

I don't know where everyone who complained about the lightsabers upon seeing the Breathing trailer, but there were a LOT of them. It's kind of funny, because at the time I defended them with the same blind faith in ILM I see here and now.

The fact is, the glows Ryan demonstrated with his new method, though slightly overlarge due to needing to cover the original (which would be in keeping with the ROTJ style of rotoscoping, might I add) looked better AND MORE LIKE THE OTHER FILMS' SABERS than ILM's work in Episode II.

There's nothing high-horse about it. It's a fact of the matter. ILM will do better in Episode III, but the fact is AOTC has probably the second worst saber effects in the entire saga. Ryan was testing a fix.

M. Scott

 

Hmm, I suppose it is true that the average person has a lot less farmiliarity with the look of lightsabers and wouldn't be as critical. I can understand that. I guess it's just when people who know a lot about lightsabers to begin with suddenly admire the look of the Episode II glows, I can't understand it.

 

I always thought ILM used Commotion for the rotoscoping, yes?

 

Yes, but they used their proprietary SABRE compositing system (built off an inferno* architecture) to take the rotoscoped blades and produce the glow on them. And SABRE has never played with digital film (oxymoron) before. Wherein lay the problem.

I'm sure they'll have it sorted by Episode III.

M. Scott

 

Even in theatres 1st showing I was really amazed at that one super-poor Dooku shot where the saber looks like a red blob with a white line in it, aka "the AlamDV look"

Another unrelated thing that annoys me... they shot Anakin and Dooku waving colored flourescent tubes for some shots in the dark. Cool... but you couldn't hit the tubes together, so they got 'em to just wave them over their heads a little. Thats fine, coz it was all closeups and stuff...

...but I assume it was MEANT to look as if they were fighting... right?

Well at least on MY DVD... there is NOT A SINGLE SABER CLASH NOISE during these closeups... makeing it really LOOK as they are just doign what they are doing - standing waving colored sticks randomly over their head.

Anyone agree?

And yes, ILM fouled up on this one big time, anyone not seeing this is blind with ILM-admiration-blindness, which many of us has probably been once or twice in their lives. But the AOTC sabers - dookus in particular - sucked, period.

/Z

 

Sorry, I'm just sick of the CONSTANT saber nitpicking, not just of SW sabers but also fanfilm sabers... "Well see on frame 67, the saber prop was showing. Your rotoscoping sucks." I have even fallen into that same trap but I'm trying to dig out of it. Now obviously I'm not saying there should be NO criticism whatsoever, just that the nitpicking is ridiculous!

 

Frankly I just don't see the big whoop, they jsut look slightly different. By what aesthtics is one better than the other? And wouldn't the ones in film be the "official" looks? I have to agree with foxbatkllr on this one.

And yes, ILM fouled up on this one big time, anyone not seeing this is blind with ILM-admiration-blindness, which many of us has probably been once or twice in their lives. But the AOTC sabers - dookus in particular - sucked, period.

Well you could say that anyone saying this just want to delude themeselves into how great they are and how much superior they are than ILM. Just take Jim Blinn's words, if it looks right it's right, and picking out indivisual frames doesn't count ;-). Why then has never ever someone complained that one energy ball in the Gungan battle of TPM wasn't motion blurred (wouldn't that be a big foulup)?

 

Regarding MasterZap's post about the Anakin and Dooku waving colored flourescent tubes for some shots in the dark bit...

First of all, let me get this out front -- I'm gonna defend this sequence to death because it's my favorite part of AOTC and possibly the best not-related-to-cleavage-exposure visual moment in the whole saga IMHO.

ANYWAY

I'm willing to bet they deliberately left the saber noises out for that, that they liked the raw lightsaber "vreww vreww zzhew" sound...

I also liken those shots to the ESB cave duel slow-mo shots -- we're not neccesarily meant to believe that the duel actually involved Anakin and Dooku swinging the swords around their heads without hitting, just as we're not meant to believe that Luke and Vader actually walked around in slow motion.

There's my opinion, for what it's worth.



Rick McCallum loves you!

 

Like Lucas says, it's a sort of tone poem. It's all emphasizing mood over choreography for that little part.

 

You seem to both (foxbat and malducin) be missing the point:

IT WAS IMMEDIATELY NOTICEABLE.

I wasn't pulled out of the story of EpI because an energy ball wasn't motion blurred. I could live with an unrotoscoped blade. I don't tend to watch anything frame by frame unless I want to know how they did a really awesome effect, and I rarely do it to nitpick.

But IT WAS NOTICEABLE AND DISTRACTING the FIRST TIME at FULL SPEED.

This isn't nitpicking of minutae. This isn't a single off-frame. This is a highly visible effect with a good five minutes minumum of screen time that pulled me entirely out of the story, because I've seen better, especially from ILM.

And it is not just myself, or Ryan, or other people intimately familiar with the lightsaber effect who feel that way. It's not because we "think we can do better."

People who know nothing about how a saber is made and could not care less have asked both Ryan and myself why the sabers looked so terrible in Episode II.

I don't hear anyone defending the ANH sabers with the same fervency you insist on devoting to AOTC, and Lord knows they had a MUCH greater excuse back then.

There was a reason the sabers looked bad. I defend ILM and understand that reason. But that doesn't mean not admitting that the sabers looked bad.

They could be better. Ryan showed us a better version.

M. Scott