CGI...Are they ever gonna get it right?

So, EVERYBODY was hailing Avatar as the best movie ever. So, finally I went and saw it about a month ago. I have to be honest with you. I sat there and thought, "Ooooo. They are taking military dudes and changing them into large blue cartoon characters." To be more precise, a "Dances with Wolves" cartoon remake. For all it's splendor and all the money spent, I still just saw it as a big fancy cartoon. I did not fall for the "These blue guys actually look totally like they could really exist".. Well...Maybe on the Smurfs. I mean, yes, they ran and moved like like real people more than any movie I've seen before using CGI and yes they had very detailed facial expressions, but it still came off like the two Hulk movies that came out. Ooooo...Look. A big giant green cartoon is destroying the city. Do you think they'll ever be a time when CGI gets so good that they can actually use "Drawn in" characters and you wouldn't know the difference?

Southpark used that dis and did it better.

Anyway, blue CGI people look way better than normal real people, so I wasn't complaining. If anyone wasn't fitting in it was the humans.

still haven't seen that movie.........

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Originally Posted by Raza

Southpark used that dis and did it better.

Anyway, blue CGI people look way better than normal real people, so I wasn't complaining. If anyone wasn't fitting in it was the humans.

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I sure hope they did it alot better. They're actually getting paid big bucks to make funny diatribes about the world in which we live.

As for the blue CGI people, I think the whole point was to make you believe that they could possibly exist. Like they're real. Yes, it's a fantasy. I get that. But so was Star Wars, but when it first came out, it made you believe that possibly in a galaxy, far, far, away, some great epic battle of good vs. evil was going on. This movie just made me see blue cartoon people living in a make believe cartoon world and respecting the planet in which they lived in.

gollum was pretty believable too, but yeah, the fact that there's blue cartoon people in the trailers isn't quite enough to convince me to go to the theater

I think a lot of the problem with CGI in movies today is the lack of weight. Having said that I also think the CGI in Avatar was great when it came to the movement and facial expressions but there were a lot of instances where I felt the natives and other CGI creatures lacked any kind of weight and just kinda moved around like they were floating as hard as they tried blur the line between CGI and reality. I also agree that the human characters looked more out of place in the midst of all the CGI.
I thought they all looked kinda plasticish when put into the actual jungle part of the world.

as we get closer and closer to mimicking photo-realistic beings with CGI, i think that we are still a ways off from fooling ourselves into believing they are real. watching a movie, or whatever other form of medium, still requires a small amount of suspension of disbelief.

when we finally do get close enough to believability, we will have to deal with the so-called "uncanny valley" effect, in which despite the realism of the creations, viewers still feel 'creeped out' by them. we may not be able to tell exactly what it is, but something just feels unnatural and not-quite-right about them. instead of empathy or sympathy, we feel something more akin to revulsion.

The whole point is to push the technology. To try to slowly get better and better, and closer and closer.

There has been a slow improvement in CGI fx since it first started.
Look at the CGI in movies from the 1990's. Pretty crappy.
But stuff in the 2000's has gotten pretty good.
There are occasionally movies that have CGI, but I don't notice it.
In fact, almost every movie you see has CGI. Even dramas.
They might be adding CGI snow, or rain, or replacing a background.

I do this stuff for a living, so I get a little annoyed when people complain about it.
It's not easy to make things look realistic. The computing power is just not there.
You do the best you can with the current software and hardware.

People who complain about it should pick up some software and give it a try.

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Originally Posted by Ajax Knucklebones

I sure hope they did it alot better. They're actually getting paid big bucks to make funny diatribes about the world in which we live.

As for the blue CGI people, I think the whole point was to make you believe that they could possibly exist. Like they're real. Yes, it's a fantasy. I get that. But so was Star Wars, but when it first came out, it made you believe that possibly in a galaxy, far, far, away, some great epic battle of good vs. evil was going on. This movie just made me see blue cartoon people living in a make believe cartoon world and respecting the planet in which they lived in.

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Whereas Star Wars had people on earth, and people in masks also on earth? I like the movies, but compared to avatar the environments where severely lacking imagination for what was supposed to be other planets. And the aliens in masks had zero facial expression - this works for one species as a 'thing', but not for all of them. Finally, they brought Ewoks to the big Tribals vs Imperialist Robots jungle fight. The Na'vi brought psionic dinosaurs.

Hum. But seriously, I suppose it's where your idea of realism is grounded, and maybe how much you like humanity shining through. When I watch Star Wars now it looks like a gigantic staged play to me, with everything clearly within the range of what and where humans can pretend to be with a tank full of gas and a costume. When we're talking extraterrestrials on either count, this counts heavily against believability for me.

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Originally Posted by TheDeathKnight

People who complain about it should pick up some software and give it a try.

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Just because I can't do your job doesn't mean I have to like the results.

I don't have a problem with the limitations of realism in CGI movies... my problem is that they use it as a substitute for realism, and for acting, set design, cinematography and overall plot.

I can appreciate a cartoon. But I don't get a live action flick that is 90% not live. Why not just go Pixar with the other ten percent? I think we could all have done without 20 minutes of generic tough male lead role.

What really pissed me off and pushed believability had nothing to do with the effects. We're 250 light years away, but all of the aliens have biological development and mechanics exactly the same as species on Earth (except that they don't breathe air and rocks defy gravity :confused:). Not only that but the dominant species just happen to have female body types that are attractive to 21st century American male aesthetics. OK, sure guys.

When I was going to school for CGI, one of the first things we were taught was, "If people look at your movie and say 'wow, that CG is really good' then you've done badly. If they look at your movie and don't notice the CGI is there, you've succeeded."

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Originally Posted by Morning Glory

I can appreciate a cartoon. But I don't get a live action flick that is 90% not live. Why not just go Pixar with the other ten percent? I think we could all have done without 20 minutes of generic tough male lead role.

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QFT.

Well, the plot would've been off worse without the distinction, but the start of the movie was just plain dreadful for this reason.

That said, Avatar did some pretty good human roles. I liked the corporate manager dude, and for all my dislike of macho males that chief of security colonel guy was extremely badass. Very good villains that actually represent questionable forces in the real world power structure.

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Originally Posted by Morning Glory

What really pissed me off and pushed believability had nothing to do with the effects. We're 250 light years away, but all of the aliens have biological development and mechanics exactly the same as species on Earth (except that they don't breathe air and rocks defy gravity :confused:). Not only that but the dominant species just happen to have female body types that are attractive to 21st century American male aesthetics. OK, sure guys.

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They breathe oxyen, presumably? There's just other crap in the air that's toxic to people. Stuff burns too well on Pandora for there to be no oxygen.

I thought they did a good job balancing attractive aesthetics with alien-ness. I do want to want to look at them, if they're gonna be on screen for most of a two-and-a-half hour movie, but the body types and facial structures were distinctly non-human. I suppose it's my turn to say that trying to move away from human-ness while retaining/improving personal beauty without losing it to sheer weird is something I do, and that their results were respectable by my standards.

Plus biologically speaking, it's not really that weird that they look like us. The differences make sense with their environment and lower gravity, while the similarities make sense based on their way of life and intelligence. Floating rocks really don't make sense, but they're pretty cool regardless.

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Originally Posted by Morning Glory

I don't have a problem with the limitations of realism in CGI movies... my problem is that they use it as a substitute for realism, and for acting, set design, cinematography and overall plot.

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Well, I can agree with that.
But the decline in plot complexity is due to your fellow Americans.
When movies with compelling, complex, and interesting plots, average people don't like it.
But then the studios put out a movie like "Garfield" and people love it.
Or ID4, 2012, Godzilla, or any movie with tons of FX, but crappy plot and acting.
Those movies with CGI and crappy plots make tons of money.
So the studios are going to keep cranking them out...

I just get annoyed when people rip on the FX not looking real, or not looking perfect,
when I know they have improved incredibly in the last 10 years. So yeah, it's not like
a perfect holodeck with total reality immersion yet. But it's closer now. 3d is getting
off it's feet, and the quality of CGI images are getting closer and closer to reality.

Give it another 10 years, and I am betting it will be hard to tell the difference.

I'm watching this on the weekend, I have a small tv .I 'm curious to see what I think

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Originally Posted by TheDeathKnight

The whole point is to push the technology. To try to slowly get better and better, and closer and closer.

There has been a slow improvement in CGI fx since it first started.
Look at the CGI in movies from the 1990's. Pretty crappy.
But stuff in the 2000's has gotten pretty good.
There are occasionally movies that have CGI, but I don't notice it.
In fact, almost every movie you see has CGI. Even dramas.
They might be adding CGI snow, or rain, or replacing a background.

I do this stuff for a living, so I get a little annoyed when people complain about it.
It's not easy to make things look realistic. The computing power is just not there.
You do the best you can with the current software and hardware.

People who complain about it should pick up some software and give it a try.

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And I totally get where you're coming from, DeathKnight. I'm sure it is extremely hard software and you can only do what you can do with what has been created so far. What I'm saying, is in what I read, it seemed that people were explaining the movie as, "These CGI creatures really felt like they were real". and I've yet to get that from CGI characters...Or this movie. I'm really wondering if they'll come a time where we, as movie goers, really "feel" that. And I'll be honest with you...I actually believed it more in "King Kong" and "Gollum", than this movie. Were there deep, intricate enviroments in which the Na'vi lived? Sure. Very creative..Very colorful...But just not...Well...Just not to me like these enviroments were alive for real. Just more like it was intricate, creative CGI enviroments. Something nice to look at...In the same way a famous painting is nice to look at.

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Originally Posted by Rockwulf

When I was going to school for CGI, one of the first things we were taught was, "If people look at your movie and say 'wow, that CG is really good' then you've done badly. If they look at your movie and don't notice the CGI is there, you've succeeded."

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Exactly!

I think the problem with Avatar is they were creating creatures that were not humans, and were stronger than humans, so the movements they created were not intended to mimic human motion. But since we look at people moving all day long, we know instantly when something is fake, or not moving the way it should. That's the problem when you create fantasy worlds. If you create something we see everyday, like a car, and do it right, you won't be able to know the difference. Take a look at this scene for instance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPmLmRbxNVA

About half of that scene is CGI cars and car crashes.

But I am sure if you had a blue alien running down that freeway, we'd say it looks weird, because it looks out of place, and moves nothing like a human. But there have been plenty of CGI characters in films as well. Look at all the Spider Man movies. Do you think some stuntman actually swung through the city? No. It's an entirely CGI city, and a CGI Spider Man.

beowulf was pretty good....it was actualy a bit into it before I was sure that it wasn't really people..........well, I do have a small tv

I liked Beowulf and mostly for the reason that I didn't like Avatar. The whole time I was thinking "I'm glad that they did this movie animated, because it would have sucked with live actors and everything else in CGI." I kinda thought of it as an R rated Shrek.

I did all the blood in Beowulf.

;)

Sea monster blood, Grendel blood, human blood, dragon blood, head-chomping blood...

Hahaha!

just watched avatar.........I thought it was very well done.