A Photorealistic CGI TV Series Coming Real Soon Now 259
ziggy_zero writes "SoulPix has revealed their project named "SoulFire", a photorealistic computer-generated TV series created entirely with 3ds max. Here's a trailer (it's in German). Looks pretty cool, better than those CGI cartoons I've seen - although definitely not even Final Fantasy quality. Note - apparently the DivX version was encoded using a weird codec that doesn't work on all players, so you might be better off getting the Quicktime version."
How about a CGI Drama (Score:3, Insightful)
slightly offtopic ... (Score:2, Insightful)
To me this seems to be the biggest problem in adopting these new compression techiques for audio/video(ogg vorbis/ DivX etc.)
Re:photorealism (Score:5, Insightful)
Models revolting, although a model hunger strike wouldn't be very fruitful.
Final Fantasy Quality (Score:5, Insightful)
Many fans' primary beef with the FF movie was the thin plot, not the lack of impressive CGI. For a movie, a lot of effort can be invested in minute details etc to render with realism.
For a TV series, I would expect less quality simply because there is less time to rollout, and continuous rollouts as opposed to one big event.
Re:photorealism (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, cgi is great for things like Gollum, dinosaurs and other such stuff. It's also great for stunt doubles, where some things are just too damn dangerous to pull off with a real live human.
Re:photorealism (Score:5, Insightful)
I read this in wired a while back, I believe; and no blinking is not a fault of the CG tech, but rather that of the guys doing this stuff - in better CG things (final fantasy for one - heck even in games they put in blinking characters now), they put in the details.
Btw, FF (movie) seemed weird and creepy but you CAN'T explain what's no "not real" about it - a good example of the "chasm."
And for another example - for anybody who seen the promotional video of Final Fantasy X-2 where there is a comparative track between the real singer doing her song and dance number, and cutting to the CG (Yuna) doing the same, you can see how strangely unreal the CG version is - though looking at CG version alone does not necessarily give you the idea.
interesting, but awkward (Score:4, Insightful)
My question is, why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll stick with real cartoons, thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
DivX 5.03 (Score:3, Insightful)
Accordingly mplayer the trailer was encoded with DivX 5.03, so if it doesn't work for anyone, they probably just need to upgrade DivX to the latest version.
Cost Effective? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:reboot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Final Fantasy Quality (Score:3, Insightful)
I like low tech cartoons (Score:5, Insightful)
It's probably just me but I like the low tech cartoons.
They seem to have more character.
I like the hand drawn style of Betty Boop, the claymation style like Wallace and Gromit, paper cutouts (or Sgi computer simulations of) like South Park, and the puppet animations like the works of George Pal. [scifistation.com]
Re:The details (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, Final Fantasy lost me when they got to the mannequin of Ben Affleck with Alec Baldwin's voice coming out of it. That just made no sense at all.
Re:photorealism (Score:4, Insightful)
rendering vs. modelling (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the lack of realism really came from the redering technologies, but rather the modelling technologies.
Take the comparison between the real-actress and the CGI (Final Fantasy X-2 promotional video) for example, the lighting and such are all perfectly fine; but you can notice how "rigid" and un-natural the CG character's body moves.
I think, personally, that during movement, any fancy rendering effects are lost, but the actual movement themselves are the critical "realism" that needs to be addressed.
For one, human limbs move on a
1) feed-back system, which would be hard to simulate its complexities simply by dragging the block that says "arm" from here to there,
2) the feed-back is also has a lot to do with balance, another thing difficult to simulate properly, with such a complex system as the human body.
Interesting enough, Final Fantasy (the movie) is completely shot with the little humans too; I think it has to do with the fact that we cannot track the positions of the dots perfectly, though.
It should be possible eventually to do a GPS-esq system where the room has "location transponders" and each "dot" on the actor/actress's body would calculate it's location and send it out wirelessly to a computer somewhere nearby. I think after that, we can see some very good reproduction of human motions.
just my arm-chair thoughts after watching CG generated stuff for a long time.
CG? CGI? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wallace and Grommit are more lifelike (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:photorealistic? I think not. (Score:4, Insightful)