The budget on this film was 165 million? Is CGI that expensive? I would think after all these years, it would be much easier/cheaper to put together a CGI movie. I can't imagine any of these actors got more then a few million.
TWITTER @bigdaddy6666
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Just try rotoscoping and motion tracking. After you've spent an entire day on it, and only achieved 3 seconds of footage, you'll understand why CGI is so damn expensive.
shareIt should all be computer generated by now. The cost of CGI is going to drop dramatically in the near future.
shareMate, motion tracking and rotoscoping will always have to be done by human hands. Same with animating digital objects. It's just a fact.
shareIt's not hard to imagine computers taking over a lot of the work, just like they do with large fight scenes. And object libraries are expanding rapidly.
Someday actors will have 3-D models that are easily manipulatable with little human intervention, and someday after that all movies will be 100% CGI with no human actors at all.
Actually, that's not entirely accurate. Google the Lytro camera... it makes every shot a 'greenscreen' shot, by recording Z-depth info and embedding that. It's pretty rad. It allows you to then place your elements on whatever Z-plane depth you wish. No need for roto. Tracking and animation though, perhaps you are right. I don't think any tech will completely remove human input for ALL shots, but I suspect within 10 years, we'll start seeing some that have very little to none.
Just sayin'.
It would certainly be cheaper if movie makers were prepared to accept CG at, say, an early 2000's level of sophistication. The problem is that CG is constantly advancing, but constantly requiring more computational power and larger numbers of artists in order to make good use of those advancements.
Rendering old CG with no apparent improvements would be much faster and cheaper than it was back in the day, but state of the art will almost always be as relatively expensive and time consuming as it ever was.
But it doesn't seem to be getting better. I'm not sure if it's because of HD or higher frame rates or whatever, but a lot of CGI seems more cartoonish than it did back then.
A lot of CGI in Lord of the Rings (Balrog, Mumakil) looks better than most of the CGI in The Hobbit. The new Beauty and the Beast trailer literally looks like Emma Watson in a cartoon.
Oh, it's getting better by the minute.
Today's CGI involves a lot of simulation of fire, water, collisions, breaking, etc... In the past this was not possible in the sheer scale of today and it relied on practical effects. For ex: an explosion would be shot on camera against a green screen, then is cut from the background and composed over the footage. That looks great, because it perfectly real... But today this is simulated - all digital - and they have full control over, can make it look like anything they wish, so for artistic purposes it may look cartoony/stylized a bit to you.
LotR wasn't all CGI, its wonder was in the makeup department. CGI was used mostly in the birds eye views of battles. In scenes where there was close up CGI, like the Balrog battle, its evident how lacking it is today... Gollum does look cartoony as well.
Iron Man movies are great example of modern CGI. The details of the suit are remarkable in the close up scenes it is virtually indistinguishable from real materials.
You're adopted!
That's my point. The technology is better but that does not translate it to looking better on screen. The practical effects look better. I'm yet to see CGI water that doesn't look cartoony. They use digital just because they can, not because they should.
I know Lord of the Rings wasn't all CGI and never said it was. That's part of what makes it look great. At no point in the Balrog battle does it look lacking. The balrog is amazing by today's standards, though that's because it was mostly shadow and didn't have to be as detailed. Gollum looks better in The Hobbit though, yet in Lord of the Rings he still looks better than characters like Azog or Dain do in The Hobbit.
Iron Man suit is fantastic, but there's no organic features like moving eyes or mouths.
Jaime
Not sure if you are a gamer or not, but Half Life 2 was redone in HD and the water looks absolutely amazing. Check it out on youtube. Link here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XINB0c8U7K0
TWITTER @bigdaddy6666
Labor is unionized in the polygon mines.
sharethey had to give 100 million to that boat crew who tracked how far the drill was. then the other 65 million was spent on the actors and craft services.
share