Is this the future of visual fx and film making?

[John Brennick]

I ask that facetiously, however this is interesting none the less. So many limitations and artists will always be needed. So as a visual fx artist I'm not too concerned (though maybe I should be. The man who is convinced that its sunny every day wakes up without a home when the flood hits...) I'm just posting this as it's interesting none the less. Enjoy!

http://www.thatvideosite.com/v/1111...al-time-removing-the-need-for-post-production

John Brennick

 

[paulherrin]

it only makes sense for post to start leaking its way into production, always nice to see everyone's hard work beginning to take shape

the future of post/vfx intense features (pretty much all of them) is a creative supervisor working alongside the director, dp, writers, etc from the conception. it saves time in production and post (lots of $) plus it gives everyone on set something to interact with (better performances).

 

[Craig Parkes]

Mostly this doesn't really seem to remove any of the artistry from visual effects work. pretty much all of it is stuff that the artist would want automated as much as the producers.

Certainly such infrastructure investment makes sense for a franchise such as star wars - but for most situations good digital matte painting is going to be faster and more effective to incorporate into a film than building the assets and infrastructure required for the above sort of tech.

Approaching the same sort of thing from the other end of the scale and industry is Source Filmmaker: http://www.sourcefilmmaker.com/

I am sure that the 13 year olds making videos on Source Filmmaker will simply grow up to expect to make films from a near infinite supply of pre existing 3D assets, physics engines and settings. They'll start from the point of view that this is how all VFX should be done, rather than having someone invent a specific shot and problem solving only the parameters needed for the audience to see that singular artistic and technical vision.

 

[Mondo Ghulam]

Anything that closes the gap between what you see on a mocap floor and the final render is only going to help everyone involved in the process. It's impossible to tell the absolute quality they are showing in the clip - it looks great as is and not beyond what you'll see in most good game engines today.

Motion capture stages can be pretty stark places. Over the years we got better at providing actors with sense of place and 'audience' (camera view). Lighting and wardrobe has been much harder to transmit and it affects performance / mood of the actors. Good actors can 'set' themselves really well even in spandex! but they need good cues. I see technology like that shown here as a long hoped-for evolution of the virtual shoot. Directors/producers can gain a better sense of what they are going to get in the final plate too which reduces stress and raises confidence.

To make all of that tech work requires a huge amount of development time by skilled vfx artists and techs. To gain parity between real-time look at offline quality, I expect will still require some repurposing of the material I expect.

 

[Patrick Grossien]

This only eliminates the need for animators to some degree. It still doesn't cover animation for certain animals or complex machines. And still the scenery and the characters have to be designed... so to me it seems like an "this is all great" thing. It only moves post closer to production to a certain degree.

 

[Joris van den Berg]

Some of the hardest and longest parts of VFX process is something most people not too familiar with. There are many. But in this case I'm talking loosely about Look-dev. And it's been optimized and improved radically over the years.

Yet the somewhat distorted idea of simply dropping in, let's call them preset-characters, environments and props like choosing from a big library perhaps somewhat similar to what turbosquid offers leads people unfamiliar with the process to false conceptions.

The time in which concept art is adapted to 3d models, sculpted in detail, carefully painted with layers and layers takes a long, long time. If you have had the chance to see some of the presentations MPC London have given on the very rough and bumpy road of coming from a concept to the final asset you will see this new tech is just an other step to get a few things running faster.

There will always be a cg supervisor who will sit down with a director who will change his mind often and try different things.

GPU's are getting better and fast every day, bringing render technology to a point where it is just a matter of time until the RAM will be large enough to hold all the data which can get up to 16GB/Frame (and larger!) on some hollywood pictures.

There are reasons why all big VFX houses employ an array of coders to develope quick fixes. It allows them to actually push shots trough the pipeline in time for their schedules.

Nonetheless this video shows what many artists have dreamed about for years and it is great to see big companies are investing in this technology. I mean they would be stupid not to!

As some earlier posts suggest, this doesn't really take anything away from artists using technology to get a picture done.
However, I still see many people with misconceptions about CGI, who see it as a press-a-button solution. Most of them complaining how bad it looks, asking for animatronics and miniatures to make a come back. I bet most of these people have missed hundreds of shots that were highly cg augmented while being put off by the typical "give-away" shots you still tend to see in movies utilizing cgi. And yeah I do love those 80s animatronic flix too!

And I am sorry if this comes off as somewhat of a rant. I simply hope this narrowminded attitude will wash away just as the discussion is film or digital better will become irrelevant at some point.

Its about artistic decisions, skilled and experienced artists and tech developers just as much as it has always been to any movie maker, director or screenwriter in the past.