Movie quality graphics

I was asked the other day why "none of the graphics of these fan films are movie quality. Is it because the models aren't good enough?"

Well, the truth is...i don't get it either. Revelations might have cost $20k but why aren't it's graphics as good as the movies.

What does ILM have that we don't? (apart from shed loads of money and probably better software)

Talonias

 

Experience. And specialists. Most fanfilm projects are done by very small crews, where each person is responsible for a large portion of the work. In an FX shop like ILM, everyone has their specialty. Modelers, texturers, animators, etc. They're all among the best at what they do. The best modelers + the best texturers + the best animators + the best TD's + the best compositors = movie quality graphics.

With fanfilms, you're lucky if you can get one person who's excellent at one of those fields. Most fanfilm CGI guys tend to have to do a little of everything, and so they don't have the opportunity to become the "best" at anything.

Not to mention the sheer size of the crews. Most fanfilms are made with maybe two or three CGI artists, usually working on their own time.. weekends, evenings, etc. In Hollywood, you've got crews of over a hundred people, and that's their job. A crew of two that takes two weeks to make a fancy CGI shot will equate to maybe twenty man-hours of work. A shot at ILM, done in two weeks, is probably closer to several thousand man-hours. The equivelant time for a fanfilm would be over a year.

That's the difference.

 

very expensive customized software unavailible to the public

 

NO, they use Maya.

 

Actually....they don't use just Maya...ILM employs a wide arrange of software products from Max to Maya to Soft Image. What they do have is a wicked ass staff of programmers that creates all sorts of modifications allowing them to make the programs more customized, and create specialized plugins and simulators.

The artists' that work there too are sheer talented geniuses! Most fanfilmers are people who have a good understanding of 3d applications, but for ILMer's this is their livelihood it's how they make there living. Most fanfilmers are working full time or part time and do these films as a hobby. Believe it or not, $20,000 on a fanfilm still bases it in the "hobby zone" when the movie companies are dumping $150,000,000 on a film that they know will make them 4 to 5 times that amount back.

Later,
Steve

 

The create they're own software, they created they're own "jar-jar" program for ep1 which was used for all the gungans. But they still use certain parts of software, like maybe maya for the bones, or max for texture etc.

 

NO, they use Maya. ... Actually....they don't use just Maya...ILM employs a wide arrange of software products from Max to Maya to Soft Image.

Well ILM is their main commercial animation package, the 3D pipeline is more orless based around and it's used to access many extensions and proprietary software.

they created they're own "jar-jar" program for ep1 which was used for all the gungans. But they still use certain parts of software, like maybe maya for the bones, or max for texture etc.

There is no "Jar Jar" program. I think it was modeled in ISculpt and animated in Softimage and Cari, There was of course other stuff like cloth dynamics (also used for the ears) and rendered in PRMan. For the latest film animation was done mostly in Maya for everything. Maya is also used for a lot for setting up dynamics.

3D Max is mainly used in the digital matte department, separate from the main animation pipeline. Digimatte artists use it with Brazil to create elements for digital matte paintings. Zenviro is being used quite a bit for that as well.

(It's their, not they're by the way)

Experience. And specialists.

very good points. I would also add infrastructure. As wonderful as Revelations is there are limitations. If you have Shane overseeing all post wor it's difficult to dedicate much time to one thing, and not having a dedicated VFX Supe tends to show, mainly because distinct sequences vary in style, look and quality (take the space chase, I believe Shane or someone mentioned it was done almost completely by one guy and plopped in). There's a lot of things that need to go on behind the sces besides the actual creating CG graphics to get more successful endeavors.

 

Max is actually a big part of the pre-production visualization as well. Thanks for picking up the misuse of the word "there" now I can sleep tonight! hahaha

 

Go to discreet.com and check out the Inferno, Smoke, Flint, etc. systems that they have. Under Inferno's Showcase section, it used to have a feature about how it was used for the lightsaber effects and some of the compositing in Episode I. Also, you'd be suprised at how much better most effects look when they're transfered to a TV! I've been doing planet models and lightsaber effects for a long time now, and I stumbled upon that little fact when I plugged my video camera into my computer via firewire, then plugged the camera into the TV using the normal AV outputs, and through Adobe Premiere I sent rendered images to the tv and WOW. Things looked SO much better. Haven't you ever noticed that when you watch DVDs on a normal computer monitor that it looks a little darker? It's the same for rendered images, they'll almost always look much better on a tv. Also a good codec will do more than you think, in my opinion, you can't beat the MPEG codecs that come with Premiere. I'm very critical of my work, and I can honestly say that I had a movie quality "beginning scroll" sequence when I sent it to the TV. It even looked good on my comp, it had that sorta darker DVD feel, and there's something I can't describe about the colors on the scroll from the movies, but it totally recreated that feel.

So, in short you just gotta play around with things. (Oh yeah, I've just about come to the conclusion that you can't get movie quality straight out of a 3D app, 90% of the time, it requires some kinda post work)

 

That is because in most cases television picture quality isn't as "fuzzy" as that in film (unless of course it's digital theater)....As for the colour spectrum think of it this way....A television produces light in three colours directed at the viewer, nothing to interfere with the view. A standard projection theatre requires the light directed at a screen to bounce back at the viewer, with all kinds of particulate floating in the air. The shear size of the screens are in fact the saving grace of film clarity. Make any sense?

Later
Steve

 

Not quite, in reality TV is about the lowest quality display device, both in terms of color gamut and dynamic range. Film has also more resolving power (line pairs per inch) as well. In film you might see the grain on big screens but it's a minor issue. Only the latest HDR monitors (which cost thousands at the moment) are approaching the characteristics of film.

 

lol All I really meant was that my renders took on some of the same visual characteristics that my DVDs did. When I would render out a scroll, on my comp the stars would look dim, the letters would look a little feathered and the colors would be dull (just like the scroll from the movie when played on my comp). When I rendered it from Premiere using the MPEG codec under the DVD settings, it wouldn't change too much, but I noticed the colors took on the same characteristic as the movie scroll. Then when I put it on the TV, suddenly, the stars brightened up, the letters became sharper, and it looked absolutely perfect. The same with my planet renders. It works for me, and thats all I'm saying.

 

Yeah, in reality it is the crappyness (sp?) of the TV that makes it look better. It softens the image a lot. Watch 720x480 on a computer monitor and it looks a little blurry and blocky because we are used to such clarity. I think we just instinctively expect less from a tv.

 

Just to clarify: none of the approximately $20K that Shane Felux spent for Revelations went to the CG team. We got paid the exact same as any other fan film crew ... that is to say, zero. So the budget is really a non-issue.

We came pretty close on a few shots, but we're still not ILM. They have huge render farms; we don't. They have custom scripts and shaders and rendering plug-ins; we don't. They can devote all their working hours to a shot; we couldn't.

 

Hehe. Maybe he didn't pay YOU.

No, it's true. Nothing even went to software. Shane was amazing. Like, for Christmas, he sent us Christmas presents from the ILM store. Awesome stuff like that. THAT'S where the 20,000 went.

It's not really money that has to do with CG quality, it's, in my opinion, an understanding of real world. It's almost entirely lighting. I mean, the model doesn't have to be impressive. You could have a cube with default texturing, but if you light it correctly, it can look 100 percent realistic.

But then again, I could be wrong.

 

Personally, I think we are capable of getting close to "movie quality graphics" But alot of us either doubt our abilities, or we hurry to get something done because we want to see the final result.

 

So you're saying people sacrifice quality for faster rendering time?

I say that because I catch myself doing that! 2gigs of Ram and some models still take 2min per frame!

~Rory

 

haha, yea pretty much. We also tend to rush the animation also, just so we can get the final result cuz our minds are thinking so far ahead.

 

2gigs of Ram and some models still take 2min per frame!

That's nothing. When you start doing shots and environments that take more than an hour to render that's when you should start worrying.

It's not really money that has to do with CG quality,

maybe not completely, but it certainly helps!!! ;-).

 

Considering I can do alot of things for myself for free.... lol money is just the inscentive to work harder, but if your doing your own project you shouldnt need it.

 

I think it has something to do with the framerate. Because most programs will render your scene in 30 fps and the film uses 24.99 fps. So the graphics are too crisp in CG scenes, thus a trained eye instantly recognizing the difference. It also has something to do with the codec, like someone mentioned earlier.


But most of the time it is simply that the crew is not as well organized as LucasFilm. They often have meetings about small aspects like how a fightershould move and such. Plus 100 trained professionals and 35 years of FX experience isn't too bad. Lucasfilm knows that even the smallest factor must be taken into account, and no thing can be simply "fine" and it must be "exceeds expectations three miles". Like in ep 2 with the friendly hug of Obi-Wan and Dex, they had to construct a digital Obi-Wan just for a few seconds of interaction.


So, in conclusion, it is a mix of the right codec, framerate, and experience.

 

DarkRaze posted on 8/7/05 12:06pm

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I think it has something to do with the framerate. Because most programs will render your scene in 30 fps and the film uses 24.99 fps. So the graphics are too crisp in CG scenes, thus a trained eye instantly recognizing the difference. [hr][/blockquote] Actually, most major 3D applications allow you to render things out to whatever framerate you like. I used 3D Studio Max to render out an animation of a ship crashing and varied the speed from 20 fps all the way up to 100 fps for different looks.

Just a note. ;)

 

Some of the fellas at cgtalk.com have made better stuff than the people at ILM...it all comes down to experience.

 

Yea i've watched afew shorts and demo reels from cgtalk and they look really prfesional.