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Has CG surpassed traditional special effects yet?

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jett said:
I know you work at ILM and all, but the CG in Iron Man was below their standards. It looks kinda crap in the IM2 trailers to be honest, now that I think about it. Or maybe it's the movie that looks kinda crap.
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People couldn't tell the difference between the real suit and the CG one. That's good enough for my book.

In fact, the CG suit even fooled Favreau and others at the studio. Snow was finally convinced that ILM had succeeded when Favreau called to tell him about a shot that the studio thought looked too fake. “It finally sunk in that they were talking about a shot with the practical suit,” says Snow. “[After that], we started replacing parts bit by bit, and the client started forgetting which were which.”
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In the end, though, was ILM able to convince Favreau to trust computer graphics? The answer, emphatically, is yes. “Jon was very gracious,” says Ben Snow. “He came to ILM and said, ‘It’s no secret that I dislike CG, but I’ve seen what you do and I’m a convert.’”
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gutter_trash said:
no
they look too clean and shiny, not enough grit

I take the miniature models with dirt and rust over the shiny CG armor-alls anyday
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I'm assuming you haven't seen anything with CG in the last decade, or even better the last 5 years...
 
CG in movies have gotten worse overall by the major studios in the last 5 years

heck, when the CG Jurassic Park beats out most of the current CG junk... you know there is a problem
 
a Master Ninja said:
The bulk of the CG in the Star Wars Prequel, Matrix films, and Lord of the Rings has aged terribly.
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The Matrix sequels aged in real-time as you were watching them.

Witness the most unnecessary CG shot of all time:
matrix10.jpg


OF ALL TIME
 
I think backgrounds and general effects tend to fair much better in CG than characters do.
That just may always be true.
 
a Master Ninja said:
The bulk of the CG in the Star Wars Prequel, Matrix films, and Lord of the Rings has aged terribly.
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True. I just got the LOTR on blu-ray and Gollum isn't nearly as impressive as I used to think. Also some scenes where they lift the hobbits up, or you can see their entire body just don't look/move right.
 
matrix7.jpg


This also looked like ass DAY ONE. Amazingly obvious CG. I never understood some of the CG shots in the Matrix sequels, some could've easily been done with the actors.
 
jett said:
I know you work at ILM and all, but the CG in Iron Man was below their standards. It looks kinda crap in the IM2 trailers to be honest, now that I think about it. Or maybe it's the movie that looks kinda crap.
Click to expand...

Iron Man's suit is an achievement in merging CGI with real life actors.
 
Willy105 said:
Iron Man's suit is an achievement in merging CGI with real life actors.
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I guess the suit looked good, but a lot of the time the suspension of disbelief was broken for me in Iron Man. Maybe it has more to do with how Favreau sets up his shots, I don't know.
 
jett said:
This also looked like ass DAY ONE. Amazingly obvious CG. I never understood some of the CG shots in the Matrix sequels, some could've easily been done with the actors.
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It's a great argument for not automatically skyrocketing the budget for sequels of successful movies. The charm of the visuals in the first Matrix was its rawness and its realism. When they had the money to do anything, they just got indulgent or overdid everything.

Same thing with Star Wars. The first three actually look better. Everything looks more used/aged and realistic. The prequels are so sterile.
 
jett said:
matrix7.jpg


This also looked like ass DAY ONE. Amazingly obvious CG. I never understood some of the CG shots in the Matrix sequels, some could've easily been done with the actors.
Click to expand...
It ruined the latter half of the burly brawl, too. The choreography looked great (better than anything in the first film) and then it switched to this bombastic, ugly CG.
 
All I know is I want to watch that shot of Neytiri drinking on bluray. Goddamn that looked real.

But as said before, combination of both is the best option these days. A.I. Teddy <8
 
Let me in said:
Same thing with Star Wars. The first three actually look better. Everything looks more used/aged and realistic. The prequels are so sterile.
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Oh, come on. The green screen matting is blindingly obvious almost whenever they use it. It's as bad as the worst of the CG in the later films.
 
I loved the Henson creature shop modeled Vogons in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

6zvqrr.jpg

nc1q42.jpg


Definitely better this way than with CG, although the Henson company is absolutely the best at doing these things.

But like it was said before, use CG when puppetry and the like just aren't possible to create the vision. When CG is used sparingly, I think it works the best at least at his point of CG development.
 
jett said:
The Matrix sequels aged in real-time as you were watching them.

Witness the most unnecessary CG shot of all time:
matrix10.jpg


OF ALL TIME
Click to expand...

Matrix gets a free pass since Neo is supposed to be inside of a video game world

but yea fuck CG
 
Rktk said:
There's that prequel to The Thing, hope they aren't thinking about any heavy CGI on that one.
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Yep, John Carpenter's The Thing is still my favourite.

5s8z2uq2g_thing1.jpg


CG is awesome but its hard to top this beast.
 
Practical is definitely the way to go for horror, as Horror flicks rarely have the budget for good CG

CG in horror movies pretty much always come out cartoony looking. (I know Drag Me to Hell was supposed to be cartoony, but damn, some of its effects would have been better had they been more practical.)
 
i was making a joke with the second post. i made a mistake in my first.

regardless, cgi to render blobulous non-humanoid aliens is more convincing than trying to make a cgi person, which looks obviously fake as hell. painting a person blue and giving them cat ears and a wig would look more real. practical effects win.
 
Despite the better CG Jabbba in Episode I, it still looked fake then.

1997 Episode IV Jabba was horrendous...almost woulda preferred the guy in the hairy jabba suit instead in the behind the scenes footage
 
i think this question really has to be taken on a case by case basis

Davey Jones is an excellent example of CG being superior to traditional effects

Neo in The Matrix sequels is an excellent example of CG being inferior to traditional effects

CG- in general- is probably better than "traditional effects", usually because CG is often used for effects that can't (realistically) be done traditionally- ie dinosaurs, incredibly car crashes, etc.

the problem/responsibility usually boils down to the director and how intelligent they are with their decisions regarding where and when to use CG.

CG clearly needs to be embraced, and i don't think anyone is actually arguing against that. i think the beef most people have- myself included- is CG being used when it shouldn't be.
 
i've been working in the cg industry for 2 years now, from cartoony 3d to interior perspectives and such but i always prefer to watch 2d animation or stop motion than full cg animation, pixar movies an exemption.

i appreciate the "grunt work" done by animating frame by frame that as i watch such movies (i.e: Coraline, nightmare before christmas, wallace and gromit) i always imagine the work involved in making everything come to life.

i'm not saying that 3d work is easy compared to the above mentioned, especially if its combined with live-action since those also tend to have much work done into them. they just lack a certain charm that traditional stuff achieve.

cg used sparingly is good, but to make it the main point of attraction in a live-action movie.. its getting there but would probably take a while to be accepted by the critics as believable.
 
I love when people try and say LOTR is a benchmark for CGI. That scene where Legolas runs up the back of the troll in Fotr looks like an early gen ps2 game.
 
I always find that too much CG creates a disconnect between actors and a world around them. I agree that CG is better as a secondary, sparingly used tool rather than the main form of special effects.
 
There were just a few scenes where Avatar's CG matched that of practical so fucking well. I'm thinking of the water tank scene in particular where you could have been fooled that the avatar's body was created by Jim Henson or Stan Winston or something.

Anticitizen One said:
I love when people try and say LOTR is a benchmark for CGI. That scene where Legolas runs up the back of the troll in Fotr looks like an early gen ps2 game.
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Gollum and Neytiri are benchmarks for sure. Better performances than their human costars (particularly the latter).
 
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