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Can we take a moment to appreciate how good CGI is in live action films these days?

a Master Ninja

a Master Ninja

Member
Dec 11, 2017
4,837
Razgriz-Specter said:
Its weird that I feel like CG has gotten so much better but compositing overall is way less consistent these days.
Civil War had some of the worst I can remember .
Iron Man with his helmet open also looked horrendous in the last 2 Avengers movies and Civil War
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Even in that gif that people were going crazy over the CG time suits, you can see the actor's heads don't quite blend right. Ruffalo's head in the Hulkbuster is no doubt the low point, but even Spider-Man and Ironman had a case of "floaty head" throughout Infinity War and Endgame.
 
Alexandros

Alexandros

Member
Oct 26, 2017
17,815
Good thread OP. For all the complaining and nitpicking we do when CGI is not that great, it really is incredible how far technology has progressed.
 
spookyghost

spookyghost

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,550
CGI today is simply phenomenal and can be used for such amazing things. Period pieces like Mindhunter can create scenes on a scale they simply couldn't have done before CG budgets came down, it actually enhances storytelling.

I think the issue that mega blockbusters like the last Avengers movies have is not one of quality of assets, Thanos and smart Hulk are the absolute peak of modelling and animation, but one of composition. Many different effects companies work on different aspects of a single shot and with tight time constraints involved and things constantly changing all these different parts coming together may not mesh perfectly every time. That's the reason Avatar still holds up I think, It's just Weta and ILM with Cameron having a very specific vision.
 
GungHo

GungHo

Member
Nov 27, 2017
6,137
RustyNails said:
source.gif


Hail to the (scorpion) king
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The part for me that finds this one absolutely fascinating isn't the Ray Harryhausen stop motion effects or the composite artifacts around Fraser, who is clearly just standing up. It's Vosloo overselling it like he's knife fighting in West Side Story.
 
ShutterMunster

ShutterMunster

Art Manager
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
2,460
spookyghost said:
CGI today is simply phenomenal and can be used for such amazing things. Period pieces like Mindhunter can create scenes on a scale they simply couldn't have done before CG budgets came down, it actually enhances storytelling.

I think the issue that mega blockbusters like the last Avengers movies have is not one of quality of assets, Thanos and smart Hulk are the absolute peak of modelling and animation, but one of composition. Many different effects companies work on different aspects of a single shot and with tight time constraints involved and things constantly changing all these different parts coming together may not mesh perfectly every time. That's the reason Avatar still holds up I think, It's just Weta and ILM with Cameron having a very specific vision.
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11 VFX studios worked on AVATAR...
 
orava

orava

Alt Account
Banned
Jun 10, 2019
1,316
Faces, humans, animals and most other living-organisms are still way off.
 
zma1013

zma1013

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,687
The CGI suits in the Marvel movies always bother me and I notice them by the area where the suit and their neck meet. It's never perfectly matched. The recent Spiderman movie has this issue as well.

Also was a big issue in Black Panther. Several scenes where the camera shot from the shoulders up and it's still CG and the neck seam is even more apparent.

Like, I get it when you have some morphing Ironman nanosuit action scene that can't be done practically, but if the actor is just standing there or walking around it should be practical.
 
OP
OP
Crossing Eden

Crossing Eden

Member
Oct 26, 2017
53,393
Jakke_Koala said:
It's ok, but you can still see it's CGI, and it still has a sort of fakeness
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These films tend to have 1000s of shots that contain at least one CG element.

orava said:
Faces, humans, animals and most other living-organisms are still way off.
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Nah.
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A lot of the time we don't even notice that it's a digital double in a shot.
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Schlorgan said:
Is this a thread about appreciating and highlighting good CG in recent movies or about making the same complaints and arguments that are made in every other thread about CG?
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Lol there's always contrarians who are like "No I totally noticed"

There's a trend on the internet where people try to "beat" movies and trying to frame every instance of VFX as completely noticeable is one aspect of it.
 
OP
OP
Crossing Eden

Crossing Eden

Member
Oct 26, 2017
53,393
Z-Beat said:
Even in KH3 he looked pretty good
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TFW CGI in a video game looks worse than a character from a film that came out more than a decade beforehand....

The Pirates world in KH3 looked AMAZING but the fact that no mocap was used was very very obvious. Especially for the shots that weren't 1:1 with the film.
 
Z-Beat

Z-Beat

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
31,853
Crossing Eden said:
TFW CGI in a video game looks worse than a character from a film that came out more than a decade beforehand....

The Pirates world in KH3 looked AMAZING but the fact that no mocap was used was very very obvious. Especially for the shots that weren't 1:1 with the film.
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Well that film DID have a $300 million budget, and a film crew
 
TangFei

TangFei

Banned
Aug 18, 2019
179
In Endgame I immediately noticed the time travel suits were CGI and it couldn't stop bugging me. I think we're pretty much there on a rendering front but animation wise I can always tell cgi apart. I also prefer practical for everything humanly possible so cgi suits in general are gross to me.
 
Ogre

Ogre

Member
Mar 26, 2018
435
A lot of this "Avatar/whatever looks so much better than (insert modern film)" seems to derive less from the actual level of detail and technical advances - which are objectively better - but rather more from filmmaking fundamentals:

Lighting and color grading.

Like, Jurassic Park's T-Rex attack will always look fucking great because Spielberg strategically hid his CG Rex underneath simple lighting, heavy shadows, and rain.

Avatar looks great because Cameron had 30 years of capturing good looking shots with limited technical effects.

But let's be real, Thanos and Snoke and Hulk are ridiculous achievements with levels of detail far beyond anything that was achieved in 2010 or 1993. It's not the fault of the artists that brought them to life that the directors/cinematographers built occasionally unflattering shot compositions.
 
karl's wood

karl's wood

Member
Jan 15, 2019
172
Travo said:
But.....why?
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Long story short. Shits easier. You can edit any car you want onto that frame so they can just film a ton of beauty shots in advance. Sometimes before the car being advertised even exists as a thing you can buy.

There's no excuse for why they do it with food though.

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Has cgi gone too far?
 
Paquete_PT

Paquete_PT

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
5,333
Snoke is horrible. Such a bad example of good cgi. The character feels cartoonish in all the bad ways.
I'm much more impressed by seamless cgi that is used so frequently. The avengers suit example is perfect. No one could tell they were all cgi. David Fincher is a master at this, the vfx videos for Zodiac are incredible
 
chrisPjelly

chrisPjelly

Avenger
Oct 29, 2017
10,496
I think that modern CGI is faaar superior to practical applications in every way EXCEPT movement. It's extremely difficult to "realistically" create accurate muscle and structure movements of otherworldly creatures without any sort of reference, and even with human like beings, you walk a fine line between cartoony/weightless and convincing.
 
Zac Dynamite

Zac Dynamite

Member
Oct 27, 2017
309
War for the Planet of the Apes is still my high water mark. There has never been a CGI character as convincing as Maurice (the orangutan) in any movie. It was a real bummer it did not win the best special effects Oscar that year.
 
BarringGaffner

BarringGaffner

Member
Nov 11, 2017
2,250
As someone who is a supervisor in the VFX industry and worked on a few of the films mentioned... this is a refreshing thread! :p
 
808s & Villainy

808s & Villainy

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
42,700
a Master Ninja said:
Even in that gif that people were going crazy over the CG time suits, you can see the actor's heads don't quite blend right. Ruffalo's head in the Hulkbuster is no doubt the low point, but even Spider-Man and Ironman had a case of "floaty head" throughout Infinity War and Endgame.
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You mean now that you know it's CG you can try and find the blemishes in it

Kaah said:


Yes it does. Visuals are still insane, the close-up especially.
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It looks waaay worse. You're going to be the only person in here who thinks it looks better than the Avenger's examples

Kuroyume said:
Totally disagree

It obviously looks nice than what we had 20 years ago but it still looks like videogame garbage.
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This is an embarrassingly bad take.
 
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ItIsOkBro

ItIsOkBro

Happy New Year!!
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
9,518
the fact that Davy Jones was 2006 solidifies him as the best CG character of all time. Whatever the next best CG character was (I'm not even convinced there has been a better one), it took too long to come out. So when you consider quality given the year, Davy Jones beats everything.
 
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meowdi gras

meowdi gras

Member
Feb 24, 2018
12,666
Kuroyume said:
Totally disagree

It obviously looks nice than what we had 20 years ago but it still looks like videogame garbage. It's used too liberally these days. It's distracting. I saw a video of the final fight from It 2 on youtube and jesus Christ that shit looked stupid.
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Agreed. I guess my eyes are too sharp to be fooled by another than modest, background-type of CG work, because I have a similar reaction.
 
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