> This stuff is improving all the time of course. They have now managed to
> get believable fur and basic water working in CGI. But I've yet to see
> anybody manage really high-quality smoke or flames yet.

Google/YouTube "real time smoke" - there are plenty of implementations 
of the physical fluid equations to produce realistic 3D volume smoke in 
real time on GPUs.  Obviously if you're making a film you are not 
limited to real time, I'd be very surprised if you couldn't make 100% 
believable smoke for a film.

If you want some technical detail:

http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch30.html

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On 07/04/2011 10:37 AM, scott wrote:
>> This stuff is improving all the time of course. They have now managed to
>> get believable fur and basic water working in CGI. But I've yet to see
>> anybody manage really high-quality smoke or flames yet.
>
> Google/YouTube "real time smoke" - there are plenty of implementations
> of the physical fluid equations to produce realistic 3D volume smoke in
> real time on GPUs. Obviously if you're making a film you are not limited
> to real time, I'd be very surprised if you couldn't make 100% believable
> smoke for a film.

Certainly I remember seeing an nVidia demo that renders puffs of smoke 
in a glass tank.

The *motion* of the smoke was very, very convincing. The visual 
appearance of the smoke itself, however, was much less convincing. I'm 
not sure precisely why. Probably because to make it look right, you need 
global illumination, scattering and so forth.

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On 4/6/2011 12:18 PM, nemesis wrote:

>
>
http://files.sharenator.com/steven_segal_emotion_chart_Steven_Seagal_Emotion_Chart-s513x708-65813-580.jpg
>

Wow. He has quite the range!

>
> compare to:
>
> http://www.animationarchive.org/pics/pbanimation19-big.jpg
>
> :)
>

 From my childhood favorite. Love that mouse.

-- 
~Mike

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On 4/5/2011 6:49 PM, Kevin Wampler wrote:

> Heh. On a somewhat related tangent, this is a rather interesting online
> test of the ability to read facial expressions:
> http://glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/Faces/EyesTest.aspx It's impressive how
> accurately most of them could be answered from what is at some level
> such a small amount of information. I'd love to see a computer vision
> algorithm which attempts to answer questions of this form.

That was interesting. I thought for sure I flunked it. I got about an 
average score.

-- 
~Mike

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On 07/04/2011 01:33 PM, Mike Raiford wrote:
> On 4/5/2011 6:49 PM, Kevin Wampler wrote:
>
>> Heh. On a somewhat related tangent, this is a rather interesting online
>> test of the ability to read facial expressions:
>> http://glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/Faces/EyesTest.aspx
>
> That was interesting. I thought for sure I flunked it. I got about an
> average score.

I love the way so many of the images are so damned dark that you can't 
actually see them properly. Grainy too.

Regardless, I got an above average score. :-P

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On 4/6/2011 20:44, Kevin Wampler wrote:
> There's actually two papers, the initial study:

Thanks!  I have way too much stuff to read. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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Mike Raiford escreveu:
> On 4/6/2011 12:18 PM, nemesis wrote:
> 
>>
>>
http://files.sharenator.com/steven_segal_emotion_chart_Steven_Seagal_Emotion_Chart-s513x708-65813-580.jpg

>>
>>
> 
> Wow. He has quite the range!
> 
>>
>> compare to:
>>
>> http://www.animationarchive.org/pics/pbanimation19-big.jpg
>>
>> :)
>>
> 
>  From my childhood favorite. Love that mouse.

who doesn't? :)

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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>> From my childhood favorite. Love that mouse.
>
> who doesn't? :)

I'm going to go out on a limb and say "the 'cartoons are too violent' 
vigelanties"...

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

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> gregjohn <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> >
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663530/did-the-uncanny-valley-kill-disneys-cgi-company
>
>   What I don't understand about these few movies which try to approach
> 100% realism with 100% CGI is why. What's the point? Why not use real
> actors for humans and CGI for others? It's not like it hasn't been done
> before (and quite successfully at that).
>

Um, why povray? Why so many blokes trying to approach 100% realism?

(My answer: You shouldn't! Povray is cooler when put to service to making
unreal, impossible, or stylized things, but in scenes with plausible physics.)

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> On 06/04/2011 02:49 PM, nemesis wrote:
> >>
> >> 2. I see motion capture as the future.
> >

>
> I don't think that cartoons are going away anytime soon. But I think the
> future of trying to look real is in motion capture.
>
> >> It gives you far more expression with far less work.
> >
> > It gives you far *less* expression with less work.
>
> If you animate by hand, then absolutely everything that happens must be
> animated by hand. The result is either extremely expensive or not very
> expressive. The human face, on the other hand, has evolved over billions
> of years and constantly transmits emotion, intentionally or not. And
> actors have spent centuries perfecting the art of emoting. These people
> know what they're doing.
>

Possible citation error above, FWIW.

Rank of expressiveness:

1) Cartoon drawn by master
   COST: medium

2) Pixar animators (cool geeks) coding their own performance in front of a
mirror
   COST: medium-high

3) Real human captured directly on film
   COST: low to super-high

4) Real human with a dozen electrodes glued to his face, in front of a green
screen. Uncool nerd then performs a lot of data massaging and turns it into a
creepy onscreen UV performance.
   COST: Very high

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