>> The scenes were [mostly]
>> real-world scenes filmed with real stereo cameras ...
> 
> Are you sure? I suppose that there was more cg going on than you might have
> noticed. I read a interview with Cameron where he stated that "not one single
> real plant has been used in the film".

I'm talking about a different film.

And yes, there *was* lots of CGI in it. But I'm fairly sure the scene 
with the three people walking through an empty car park talking to each 
other was 100% real. ;-)

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Chambers wrote:

> We're in the dark age of CGI right now.

Oh, I don't know about that. Guys like Pixar still manage to turn out 
films which are not only gorgeous to look at, but actually enjoyable to 
watch.

> Nowadays, anyone can put anything on the screen... so they do.

Well, not *anyone*. I couldn't, for example. :-P

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Chambers wrote:

> > We're in the dark age of CGI right now.

> Oh, I don't know about that. Guys like Pixar still manage to turn out 
> films which are not only gorgeous to look at, but actually enjoyable to 
> watch.

  Could it be that, somewhat ironically, when a movie is CGI-only, the
creators can and do concentrate more on the story itself because they
don't have to be showing off photorealistic CGI (which in a CGI-only
movie is actually more counter-productive than useful)? Maybe the mentality
is more like "CG all in itself does not make a 90-minute movie, so we also
need a story to support it".

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:4b329805@news.povray.org...
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > Chambers wrote:
>
> > > We're in the dark age of CGI right now.
>
> > Oh, I don't know about that. Guys like Pixar still manage to turn out
> > films which are not only gorgeous to look at, but actually enjoyable to
> > watch.
>
>   Could it be that, somewhat ironically, when a movie is CGI-only, the
> creators can and do concentrate more on the story itself because they
> don't have to be showing off photorealistic CGI (which in a CGI-only
> movie is actually more counter-productive than useful)? Maybe the
mentality
> is more like "CG all in itself does not make a 90-minute movie, so we also
> need a story to support it".

Likely. Expanding, those who do CG only movies well mostly have a solid
background in cartoons, so it's not a novelty for them to be dealing with
non-flesh-and-blood characters. And they've learned the importance of story.
Directors from conventional background who have come to rely on actors don't
seem to understand that one dimensional CG characters can not make up for a
bad script the way top notch human character actors sometimes can.

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Chambers wrote:
> Unfortunately, movies like Avatar still stand out enough from the crowd 
> that they can wow audiences despite being rubbish.  I predict that 
> Avatar will be to Cameron's career what the prequel trilogy was to 
> Lucas'... he was given complete freedom, spent years pursuing his vision 
> of perfection, and  ended up turning out a golden turd.
> 
Someone else pontificating on something they haven't seen, based on 
nothing but their own annoyance at other people's prior work. I just saw 
it today.. CG was seamless. And I mean completely seamless. Its 
impossible to tell what, if any, or even if all, was done live, even the 
stuff that its impossible to have been live, with *very few* exceptions, 
and even those are hard to pin down. The story, is very good, as far as 
I am concerned, not some choppy bit of whatever, stitching the effects 
together.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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On Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:56:15 +0200, Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom>  
wrote:

> Chambers wrote:
>> Unfortunately, movies like Avatar still stand out enough from the crowd  
>> that they can wow audiences despite being rubbish.  I predict that  
>> Avatar will be to Cameron's career what the prequel trilogy was to  
>> Lucas'... he was given complete freedom, spent years pursuing his  
>> vision of perfection, and  ended up turning out a golden turd.
>>
> Someone else pontificating on something they haven't seen, based on  
> nothing but their own annoyance at other people's prior work. I just saw  
> it today.. CG was seamless. And I mean completely seamless. Its  
> impossible to tell what, if any, or even if all, was done live, even the  
> stuff that its impossible to have been live, with *very few* exceptions,  
> and even those are hard to pin down. The story, is very good, as far as  
> I am concerned, not some choppy bit of whatever, stitching the effects  
> together.
>

I agree on the CG - as I said it was beautiful. To me the story was just  
OK, but the beautiful scenery made up for all that.

-- 
-Nekar Xenos-
"The spoon is not real"

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On Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:21:58 +0200, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Chambers wrote:
>
>> > We're in the dark age of CGI right now.
>
>> Oh, I don't know about that. Guys like Pixar still manage to turn out
>> films which are not only gorgeous to look at, but actually enjoyable to
>> watch.
>
>   Could it be that, somewhat ironically, when a movie is CGI-only, the
> creators can and do concentrate more on the story itself because they
> don't have to be showing off photorealistic CGI (which in a CGI-only
> movie is actually more counter-productive than useful)? Maybe the  
> mentality
> is more like "CG all in itself does not make a 90-minute movie, so we  
> also
> need a story to support it".
>

I remember in the Making Of Shrek they mentioned that their muscle-system  
provided an extremely realistic method of making figures, so they had to  
change things on the faces to 'cartoonify' it a bit.

-- 
-Nekar Xenos-
"The spoon is not real"

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Warp wrote:

>   Could it be that, somewhat ironically, when a movie is CGI-only, the
> creators can and do concentrate more on the story itself because they
> don't have to be showing off photorealistic CGI (which in a CGI-only
> movie is actually more counter-productive than useful)? Maybe the mentality
> is more like "CG all in itself does not make a 90-minute movie, so we also
> need a story to support it".

Seems plausible to me...

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Chambers <Ben### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

> *When was the last time you were impressed by the FX in a movie?

TRANSFORMERS (the first one, not the sequel--that looked like a bunch of mush,
with too MUCH detail, if that's possible.) But the first one had, to my eyes,
the most stunning integration of CG characters with their environments that I've
yet seen. Not just the lighting of the robots--which alone was quite
amazing--but how the pervasive smoke and explosions were handled. The robots
look like they are there on the set, intermingled with all the mayhem.

About those 3D polarizing glasses: The absolute best film I've even seen with
that process was in Las Vegas(!)--I forget which hotel it was in. :-p  It was
one of those 'fully immersive' ride films, a fantasy environment of some sort,
but projected onto a large dome (kind of like OmniMax, but I don't know if that
was the process used.) ANYWAY, the glasses worked beautifully--and the
interesting thing was, you could turn your head and look all around, and the 3D
effect never diminished, as far as I could tell. (That might have been my
astonishment at the beauty of the film, since I don't see how that's
possible...but that's how I remember it.) Mighty impressive!

Planning on seeing AVATAR today, in 3-D.

Ken

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Kenneth wrote:
> Chambers <Ben### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> 
>> *When was the last time you were impressed by the FX in a movie?
> 
> TRANSFORMERS (the first one, not the sequel--that looked like a bunch of mush,
> with too MUCH detail, if that's possible.) But the first one had, to my eyes,
> the most stunning integration of CG characters with their environments that I've
> yet seen. Not just the lighting of the robots--which alone was quite
> amazing--but how the pervasive smoke and explosions were handled. The robots
> look like they are there on the set, intermingled with all the mayhem.
> 
> About those 3D polarizing glasses: The absolute best film I've even seen with
> that process was in Las Vegas(!)--I forget which hotel it was in. :-p  It was
> one of those 'fully immersive' ride films, a fantasy environment of some sort,
> but projected onto a large dome (kind of like OmniMax, but I don't know if that
> was the process used.) ANYWAY, the glasses worked beautifully--and the
> interesting thing was, you could turn your head and look all around, and the 3D
> effect never diminished, as far as I could tell. (That might have been my
> astonishment at the beauty of the film, since I don't see how that's
> possible...but that's how I remember it.) Mighty impressive!
> 
> Planning on seeing AVATAR today, in 3-D.
> 
> Ken
> 
I really wish they made the things so they gave you some peripheral 
vision, not like eye glasses though. Having the "corner" of your eyes 
always seeing the edge of the glasses, for me, as someone that never 
wears such things, a) distracts from the immersion, and b) prevents 
seeing things on the edges of the scene as well as you might without them.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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