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The Tech behind Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within 227

Posted by Hemos from the good-links dept.
green pizza writes "In prepairing for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (the FF movie), I found the following articles on the technology behind the picture. Very impressive stuff, I like how they developed their own modeler plugins and render shaders to get even closer to photorealistic humans. What did amaze me, though, was their heavy use of Silicon Graphics systems, as I was under the impression that the movie was developed on Sony GSCube machines. Turns out the movie was modeled and composited on SGI systems and rendered on a huge Linux cluster. SGI's press room has information, as well as fan movie sites, aplenty."
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The Tech behind Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within More

The Tech behind Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

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  • Re:I saw a preview... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Imagine what they could have done if they had used W2K clusters instead of some silly Linux clusters...

    In that case, they still wouldn't be finished.

  • Re:That's great and all... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Try http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/cst-ftr-rog1 1.html

  • Re:GSCube Clearup... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No, no, no. GSCube is for VISUALIZATION only at this point. Plus it has been essentially cancelled. Also, the idea that it's "cheaper" that several machines is crap. It requires an SGI Onyx 3 host, which, coupled with the INSANELY HIGH price of the box itself makes the total price of a single node simply stratospheric. Software rendering (non-real-time stuff) is one of the most easily parallelizable compute intensivce processes currently undertaken. The huge amount of work in rendering final output for film and such arrises because there are a huge number of frames to process, each which take a reasonably long time. There is essentially no significant frame-to-frame data dependency, and nearly no intra-frame dependency, so you get perfect linear speedup by rendering single frames on each of groups of machines, and near-linear speedup by tiling frames into sub-frames which are then distributed to separate machines. The GSCube is NOT designed for anything but real-time graphics. In fact, it would generally SUCK at rendering with the generality and extreme filtering and oversampling necessary for a good film renderer (there is a REASON software rendering is universally used for such final output -- it is infinitely flexible and allows infinite sampling levels, only constrained by performance issues with the render host). If you can get very decent per-frame performance today on a 1.4ghz Athlon with a gig of DDR, which costs perhaps $1200 to build including an expensive small rack case, WHY would you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a single Onyx 3/GSCube pair when you could get, perhaps, 384 Athlon nodes for the same price? You wouldn't. We don't. No on in the film industry does. Plus, GSCube could not do software-style rendering worth a damn. It's hard enough to get it to do the visualization stuff it's designed for (its own designer admits that their architecture for parallelization is so abnormal that it nearly makes his own team cry just trying to get marginal use of it). Architecturally, it simply WOULDN'T BE GOOD at film-style rendering, even if it weren't mind bogglingly expensive and extremely hard to program to.

  • Tech vs. Other costs? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    $140M and 4 years is what I've heard for the complete project. Most of that time and money can't have gone to hardware or rendering time, can it? Anyone have a breakdown on costs?

    I ask because the non-technical costs are likely to still be the big hurdles films like FF in the future. Until they can automate the labor-intensive tasks, it's not likely to get that much cheaper of faster.

    Judging by their location, the budget for floor space alone must be significant. 2+ floors(?) of prime Honolulu office space for machinery! Is there a reason the machine farm couldn't be located in BFE?

  • Nice film credits (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    On the fan site [tripod.com], they have some interesting film credits:

    The talent is as follows:

    Alec Baldwin
    Ming Na Wen (ER and "Chun-Li" in Streetfighter)
    James Woods (John Carpenter's Vampires)
    Donald Sutherland (Outbreak)
    Peri Gilpen ("Ros Doyle" on Frasier)
    Ving Rhames (Mission: Impossible 1 and 2)
    Steve Buscemi (Armageddon)

    Oooooooh, that James Woods! And the Donald Sutherland from Outbreak! I also heard Ving Rhames and Steve Buscemi might have done a few other films as well....

    It reminded me of the South Park 'Cripple Fight' episode WRT Steven Spielberg credits:

    The rally has also caught the attention of old scouts members, like Steven Spielberg director of such films as 'Always' and '1941'.
  • Yes, people tryed to register the name and abuse it so it had to be protected some how :)

    ---

  • On [SC]id (Score:2)

    by oGMo ( 379 )

    Actually, it was "Sid" in this movie, for some odd reason.

    And in fact, Cid was in FF1... he's the guy that tells you something like "If I had a floater, I could make anything fly" or whatever. (I believe a few other characters in that particular town point you in his direction, and the graphic used is nearly identical to the graphic used in FF3... and I mean the real FF3, NES version, not FF6, for the snes.)

    Anyway, just an odd tidbit.

    Actually the presence of Cid has always been neat, one of the defining factors of a Final Fantasy, IMO. In fact, it's my theory that all of the Final Fantasies are merely dreams of someone "real", who appears in the role of Cid. But that's just my crazy speculation. ;-)

  • For instance, he totally thrashed Gladiator, saying it was horrid, etc
    I don't suppose you care the the plot is totally ridiculous?

    Perhaps you should read some Roman history. Stragner things than the plot of Gladiator happened in the Empire's history.

  • If you were the (probably male) artist, wouldn't it be much for interesting to work on an anatomically correct model than one that's not? At least in the game industry, every 3D game I've worked on has had anatomically correct models at one point or another.

  • I can certainly see why they made it. They were trying to create as realistic a human as possible. But since we live in such a sexually repressed country (US), people will of course get out of control over things like this. Owell. Someday we'll learn to lighten up.

  • I think that Pixar's animation is as good or better than what I've seen from FF in commercials and previews, but Pixar isn't trying for reality or photorealist...Toy Story and Bug's Life were done stylisticly different because that was the feeling they were going for.
  • You can't really call Final Fantasy a "video game based" movie, since the storyline of this movie was created _for_ this movie - it doesn't really share anything with the Final Fantasy games other than some basic premises about general story arc. No common characters, locales, or anything else of the sort.
    _____

    Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
    Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
  • Oh come on... The Wizard is a classic!

    Fear my low SlashID! (bidding starts at $500)
  • Yes, he was forced to trademark it a while back because the publisher to some linux books tried to trademark it and then sue all the distribution makers for usage rights. Linus proved prior usage and trademarked it (with explicit permission given to anyone for free use) to keep someone else from doing that.
  • I'm not sure if you are joking, but of course the frame rate is frozen at 24 fps because that is the rate the film projectors in the movie theatres go at. So they had no choice.

    It should be obvious that the cg can, in theory, look just as good as real images at 24fps.

    The incredible frame rates being done by game hardware is attempting to make up for the lack of motion blur. The fact that we are able to tolerate 24fps indicates that 80fps (or whatever is standard now) is totally unnecessary, if other work was done to improve the images.

    I attribute the slowness to some inexperienced character animators. Possibly also they previewed stuff at 30fps on video (but that sounds like a really stupid mistake for such an expensive production). They certainly had motion blur.

  • Don't blame "hardware" for the budget. To the average geek who buys a computer it may seem that hardware is the only expense. But for this it is people's salaries that far outweigh other things. Office space rental may also outweigh the hardware cost. The distributor probably paid 10 times more for advertising than the "hardware" cost, as well.

    This means that they did not use Linux just to save money. It also explains why they are willing to spend money on SGI equipment that was already dated when they got it, and quite expensive compared to home machines.

  • Moving images with motion blur look vastly better than ones without. Usually the detail is much clearer, in your example the image with motion blur would allow you to follow one of those background characters with your eye and actually you would think you saw it rather clearly. Without motion blur your eye would usually register the several seperated images of the character and not match up the details, and certainly not see it "move".

    Grain is also a huge help, though it is not clear why. Originally it was done to make the images match the live action, but it is added to all-cg like FF and Toy Story. Apparently your eye filters out the grain and the fact that this filter is "turned on" causes your brain to also filter out lots of other CGI artifacts and make everything look more solid.

    Live action has also had to live with the depth of focus problem for a long time. In fact in live action you cannot make all the distances be in focus at once. I think the trick is to get you to look at the object that is in focus, if your eye wanders to the out-of-focus background then the director is not doing their job.

  • the girl looks very fake. The guy looks very real.

    There is less on the girl, why the hell does she look like she was painted?

    Was the artist a woman ;-)
  • tomb raider....At least I hope and pray to God that it can't :)
  • Now, instead of being cute, a good actor needs to have good acting skills, and an in-depth knowledge of the tools. Actors and animators will merge into one profession, where you are cast to render and animate a particular character that you specialize in.

    That's what people thought would happen with radio, but it only happened in the lower end of the profession.

    On the high end, the best voice talents work with top engineers, and each is a specialist in his piece of the pie.

    I think that's more likely to be the model that will come of this; a voice actor will become associated with an animator, and they'll work together.

    -
  • Is there a reason the machine farm couldn't be located in BFE?

    Only one, and it's not insurmountable; bandwidth costs an arm, a leg, and your left nut in BFE.

    -
  • Your box can do it now; it's just that you probably don't have the artistic talent (no offense), and it'd take your box a hundred years to render it all.

    But get a few dozen more like yours, and some artists who can cut the mustard, and you too can produce those kind of fantastic graphics. All that hardware and talent will cost you as much as it cost them, of course.

    -
  • I was under the impression the GSCube is fairly new. If I remember right, the movie was initiallty started back on the rendering process back in 1997, at some really slow rate of a few frames a day. From there they added newer and more machine to help speed up the process to get a shorter render time.
  • If they could only write scripts half as good
    as they can do the CGI, then we might get somewhere.
    This was a hollow story, as are most video game based movies.

  • Just for the record, I write these things so that in ten years, we won't have to have that "Oh, that wasn't obvious at all!"-disussion. (just kidding)

    In the future actors will live on for ever, as they can be digitally recreated. That isn't a new thought of course. At first this may require special 'recording' sessions to capture their motion and such things, but I forsee a future where for instance the voice of anyone can be modelled with such accuracy that 80% or more of the population cannot discern original from copy. So instead of "You copied my movie!" it will be "You copied my voice!".

    Next thing we know, there'll be copyrights on voice and speech-patterns, trademarked ways to utter certain syllables, etc. There'll be courtbattles over who owns $famous_actor's voice-patterns after he/she's long dead. Corporations will rush in to try and grab exclusive rights to classic actors. There'll be "voice rape"-laws, and a whole lot of retro-things there in the beginning of the revolution.

    ...Then maybe we'll all go up in a big bang. That'd be neat.

  • Does the movie have ANYTHING to do with the games besides the name?

    No, but then, each game dosen't have anything to do with the next game. Having played the first through to seven (including most non-US imported versions), each is pretty much just an epic tale. Certain names recur (Cid appears in the movie, for instace, as a scientist who flys support above the main characters during the final scenes... he is normally a pilot who flys support), and there are some recurring characters (like the chocobos, who *don't* appear in the movie, nor moogles).

    But the recurring motifs in the FF series are there - a small group of people working to save the world. The concept of Gaia is there, and appears to be the same as the Lifestream in 7, and not-Mako energy powers all the devices. The plot has similar ups and downs and the world is at risk. Since this is a science fiction movie, and was possibly scripted around the same time as FF7, it's not surprising to see the resemblance (most FF games are set in pure fantasy settings).

    At times (especially when there is good lighting - some of the scenes are dark), the characters and backgrounds look real. And I don't mean "squint your eyes, and it looks real", I mean they look like they were shooting real actors on location. At other times, especially when they talk, or medium range shots, they are clearly CG. But damn fine CG.

    Oh, and we decided that the movie stars are Ben Affleck and a Real Doll. It pulls *serious* inspiration from Alien and Aliens, but then, so does quite a bit of Japanese cinema. The main bad guy wears Seifer's jacket (FF8). And Biggs and Wedge don't seem to be in it, nor the prelude (the "harp" music in the games).

    All in all, if you like SF or Fantasy or CG or action films, see it. It's worth watching in the theater. It has nothing to do with the games, nor did it ever claim to. FF9 and FF7 and FF1 have nothing to do with each other either. But it's a good flick, and as a bonus, the trailer for Lord of the Rings is on it - which will probably be the next movie you'll have to wait for that is as good as this.

    --
    Evan

  • I WAS hoping for a Chocobo cameo, but I was disappointed. Guess they didn't think us round-eyes were ready for photorealistic big-screen chocobo racing. Too bad. : )

    Seeing it on an IMAX screen with God's own sound system was, to say the least, a moving experience. I do wish that they had a 70mm print available. Then we could REALLY pick nits about the textures! : )
  • Thematically, yes. Interconnectedness of life, cooperation overcoming conflict, collecting objects from around the world to Save The Universe...your big Final Fantasy themes are there.

    Me, I loved all the FF games I've played. The movie was phenomenal, too, but I liked it for different reasons.

    On another front, the vehicle design in FF was the best I've seen since the original Star Wars. Some really really neat stuff indeed. Hope Bandai makes cool, toddler-choking toys with lots of missiles that shoot off for poking eyes out.
  • You're right, the render might not be high enough resolution to look good on cinematic 70mm.

    Yup, I'm clear on how IMAX's format is quite different from the 5 perf 70mm. However, anymore it's hard to find big screens that don't have IMAX projectors in 'em. The good news is that the sound systems in those theatres are usually pretty phenomenal...that's the real reason I went to that theater.

    It was funny to watch a movie on the screen in "letterbox" mode, though. : )
  • Direct link to the aki_nude.jpg doesn't work. That picture is at the bottom of the page at the first link.

    --
  • I finally saw Gladiator on DVD recently. I thought it was o-kay. Not great.

    There were other movies that could/should have been nominated in its place.

    I'm not saying Gladiator was a bad movie, it just wasn't all that special, closer to mediocre personally.
  • According to the press release, we're talking about 40 Octanes and 4 Origin 200s. That's interesting, but it's not a very large number; I doubt that it makes Square the "world's largest consumer of SGI machines" as one of the fan sites claims. If so, then perhaps that explains why, as I write this, SGI's stock price is at 53 cents.
  • From the press release: "...167 Silicon Graphics® Octane® visual workstations and other SGI systems were used to create the film."

    That statement cleverly lumps together all SGI systems including anything from Onyx2 (high 6 figures), Octane (mid 5 figures) to perhaps SGI1100 Linux systems (low 4 figures). Without knowing the breakdown, it's hard to even guess at the order of magnitude of the investment here.

  • I thought this movie was pretty good. I don't know what bad plot everyone was talking about. I thought the plot was quite nicely laid out and played out. Somewhat typical perhaps -- one person to save the earth, bad guy trying to ruin everything, etc. etc. What amazed me was how drawn in to the characters and story I was. I really wanted Aki to save the earth and felt genuinely moved when some of the characters died. Although it was amazingly lifelike, it did still seem like a CGI movie, but it drew me in more than any other CGI movie I've seen so far. Even if they don't look real upon close examination, the characters sure did seem real because of the depth of character development and the plot.
    http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declara tion/declaration.html
  • >>I would say that Industrial Light and
    >>Magic is probably one of the world's largest
    >>SGI companies,

    True, but they (like PIXAR, and some of the other high profile houses), pay very little for their SGI hardware in exchange for SGI getting bragging rights.

  • Re:It's too bad SGI can't get their shit together. (Score:3)

    by furiousgeorge ( 30912 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @01:08PM (#91251)
    >>Margins were really great,

    and therin lies the problem. SGI's customers were tired of getting royally FUCKED buying overpriced hardware, memory, hard disks, etc etc etc. The performance margins that used to still make SGI attractive are almost eliminated, and all the software that used to be SGI only is now on NT and Linux. (That, and you had to use IRIX. Barf. "Oh we're sorry, our latest patch screwed up X11|NFS|OtherCriticalThing. Please wait till we get our act together").

    Don't get me wrong, an Octane2 is a kickass piece of hardware (and HEAVY! Damn - my back!) but for the same price you can buy a dozen x86 boxes. Hard to justify. SGI killed themselves. And the shares I own are only $0.53 today :(
  • And you -trust- that magazine? Try reading it fully sometime, and you'll see how much ... crap ... is really in it... *shrug*
  • Why use GSCube's for rendering ? Why will they be better than a cluster of PCs ? Just off hand I would have thought that the limited memory and
    odd architecture of the PS2 would have made things difficult.
  • Yeah, OK. I see the point. But this thing is going to be at least $20K, if it actually comes out. But, think that in about a year when it comes out $20K should buy you 8-10 dual P4 or Athlons with 512MB each. These would presumably also be much easier to handle. Also, you can get software to actually render renderman files. I dunno, I can't help thinking that the GSCube may be a bit of a white elephant. But it would be cool for rides and stuff, then again - with WireGL around and graphics rendering farms based on VRJuggler is this even worth it ?
  • My favorite line from the NYT review:

    "Final Fantasy" is the first film with human leads played by nonactors, if you don't count "Pearl Harbor."

    Couldn't help laughing at that one.
    --
  • But the CG in this movie looks absolutely AMAZING. I dont think I have ever seen people rendered so realistically.

    Go check out the "Virtual You" article at the Discover Magazine [discover.com] web site for a still image that is truly photorealistic quality. I've showed the print magazine to people who have had trouble believing that the picture is computer generated, and not a real person. (I submitted the article here, but it was turned down :( )
    ---
  • The big issue here is that CG rendering techniques are mostly geared to producing footage the viewer expects to see - that is, footage captured by a camera and printed to video/film.

    Camera and rendering models are all about simulating a camera. Since all camera exhibit motion blur - their shutters stay open for a finite amount of time, during which an object may conceivably move, it is necessary to 'fake' this to properly simulate a camera.

    Same with depth-of-field. All cameras with conventional lenses have a finite range in which they can capture images with high precision. Simulating this effect is key to the idea of simulating a camera.

    As soon as you move away from the idea of simulating a camera, youre stuck with the vexing question of 'what am i simulating?' Whose viewpoint is your computer model applied to?

    The big problem with images lacking depth of field is that your eyes can focus on the entire image, since it is presented at a single 'depth' - a flat plane perpendicular to your line of sight. you can happily focus on every element in the image without adjusting your eyes, and so the illusion of depth - typically as it relates to the subject of the image, is lost.

    Images are not presented for their own sake - an image is a composite presentation containing as many visual cues as necessary to draw your attention to the subject of the image. You can surely imagine numerous devices to alter the composition of an image, but in order to successfully convey a message, the viewer must be able to pick up on and use these devices to decipher your message.

    These devices are defined not by any hard-and-fast physical model, but by convention - collectively, we have seen so much film that it seems natural that an image projected with grain looks 'real', and an image projected without it does not look 'real'.

    However, many realtime computer games are good examples of what can be achieved without motion blur and depth-of-field effects. High framerates all but eliminate 'strobing' - traditionally dealt with by motion blur, and everything is in stark focus, regardless of it's distance. This is 'useful', allowing you to aim accurately at objects a great distance away, but sacrifices 'realism' and 'atmosphere' - you won't be winning any awards for cinematography with a Quake demo.

    It may be interesting to read some case studies of people who have received head injuries etc. which have effected the way they see things - some see only objects in motion, others can only see objects in primarily horizontal or vertical configurations. These people see the world using a fundamentally different model than the majority.

    It would be interesting to work on producing images that would only be fully appreciated by people who did not, or could not view the image as it would appear to 'normal' individuals.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Comment removed (Score:5)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:56AM (#91265)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • GSCube Clearup... (Score:5)

    by ijx ( 66809 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:57AM (#91268)
    Myth #1: GSCube Machines are currently available.
    Nope. Sorry. Not until the end of the year, if they're on schedule.

    Myth #2: GSCubes are meant as development workstations.
    Again, no. The first generation of commercially available GSCube machines are meant as dedicated render machines for SGI Servers. GSCubes aren't meant for the animators, but for the end products. Soon, they'll be staples in big render farms. A generation or two after that, they're slated for real-time fun that previously could only have been accomplished with an SGI Reality2.

  • Re:I saw a preview... (Score:5)

    by technos ( 73414 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @11:16AM (#91273) Homepage Journal
    I'll respond to this. You can't. And even if you could have, it would be silly.

    1. Win2K is not suitable for 'classic' clustering. (No, wussy ass fail-over clusters do not count). However this was a Renderman cluster, so see point 2.
    2. The desired software was Renderman. While it does run on NT (and could be made to work, albeit unsupported on 2K) as of the newest rev, its only 73% as fast.. So, in order to do the same work, you'd need 36% more machines, plus the cost of each machine doubles (Renderman runs in half the memory spec as compared to the NT version. Not to mention the fact that they just blew another $300 on a 2K license, or in order to get a supported config, $310 to buy Win2K Professional and downgrade to NT4.).

    That was why it was silly. This is why it was impossible.

    3. W2K didn't exist. Remember, they've been doing this movie since 1997.
    4. Even if Win2K did exist, Renderman only ran on Real Machines, AKA *nixes, at that point.
    5. Did you see a mention of x86? I sure didn't. All I saw was SGI. SGI systems can run Linux. SGI systems cannot run 2K.

  • That's great and all... (Score:4)

    by szcx ( 81006 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:54AM (#91277)
    But kickass technology is worthless without quality and content. Going by every review I've seen, they are the things in which Final Fantasy is sorely lacking in.

    Someone should put a CG film review generator together, the template can be; "[film x] is a technological masterpiece, however..."

  • Actually, I'm expecting this kind of tech to increase the opportunities for the right kind of actors - when the technology becomes such that they can link motion capture to these virtual "puppets", then actors & actresses will no longer be constrained by their bodies to play certain parts - they will be allowed to play whatever part they can adapt their speech & body language to.

    Not only that, but they should be able to play those parts remotely, and in virtual environments, so people can be actors/actresses w/o ever leaving their basement, and they don't have to worry about the "casting couch" situations :-)

  • the girl looks very fake.

    So you're saying that she looks like every other Hollywood actress?

    - j

  • ...And this site [geocities.com] has Aki porn! (bottom of the page)

    Ah, the future is going to be great...

    - j

  • The SGI press release says that they used Maya for animation and Renderman for rendering. How about lighting and texture design? Does anyone know what packages they used there?
  • I'm going to see it tonight. I'm hoping that this is the first great video game movie ever. After the mega flops of the likes of Wing Commander (how did they fuck that up with a movie script plot already written?) and Tomb Raider (how could they not have copied Indy?) I'm really thinking this could be the one. CG or not doesn't matter, so much as that someone gets the idea of a game as a story, and the story as a movie, rather than the idea of movie as garbage.

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."
  • 5. Did you see a mention of x86? I sure didn't. All I saw was SGI. SGI systems can run Linux. SGI systems cannot run 2K.

    Well, some [sgi.com] SGI systems run Windows 2000. And as far as I know, Linux doesn't run on much of the high-end (IRIX) machines SGI offers. It runs with limited framebuffer support on older Indy machines (and probably Challenge series stuff), and Indigo2 machines with serial console support only. Check here [sgi.com] for the info. The page is over a year old, but owning an SGI myself, I haven't heard any different.
  • It's obviously a fake! They slapped Aki's head onto someone else's body. Aki would *never* pose nude!

  • Here's something that's been annoying me slightly recently. No matter how much Ben Affleck charges for a planes-and-boats flick, the average actor isn't as expensive as one generated by teams of monkeys on octanes.

    ALso, they can never compete in terms of 'realness.' You can't get much realer than a real thing.

    SO there's no good reason to 'replace actors' the way so many people seem to think. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Every animator would love to be able to build the perfect human, but it's simply not cost effective, and it's just not the same.


  • Well... just because it is technically possible, doesn't necessarily mean that it is more economical (dollars and time) than sticking people in front of a camera, or that there are more skilled animators than there are skilled actors, or that celebrity of Real Live Humans(TM) doesn't have tremendous benefits.

    This is very cool, and this sort of thing has a strong future, but using it to replace actors is like solving a problem that doesn't exist...

  • Well, it would be interesting if background "extras" and even small-part characters were CGI. Very hard to say how the economics will turn out, but I still think a talented animator would be paid way more than an average actor. Until AI advances to a point where an average (or, potentially, nonexistent) animator can create a life-like character, I don't know if it will be much more than a novelty. I could be wrong, but if I am there will be WAY cooler applications of such a system than movie-making. :-)
  • The only things seperating "Final Fantasy" and "Reboot" are money and rendering technology. Sure, rendering gets progressively cheaper, but the sheer manpower required to emulate reality has not decreased and will not for the near future, as far as I can tell. One animator may cost less than one human actor, but you need an army of animators just to create one realistic CGI actor.

    You act as if indistinguishable CGI humans are just around the corner, waiting for technology to catch up. But that last bit of realism, the 1% difference between "Final Fantasy" and reality that the human eye catches instinctively, is the hardest part. You can throw all the technology you want at it, but you can't just tell a computer to make a human and expect it to come out well. They're tools. Someone has to operate them, and do it well.

    With "Final Fantasy", we're seeing what animators can do with loads of money and nearly no restrictions on technology. But it's obviously not enough. "Virtually indistinguishable" Sun's press release calls it. Are those super-fast SGI machines really the stumbling block?

    --
  • I remember reading somewhere that Square has already Apologized (in the Japanese meaning of the word) to stockholders, and has promised that Square will never make another movie again.
  • I think you, and a lot of people that responded to you are forgetting, that many shots were motion captured, in which case, straight human character animatiors are out of the equation and mimes are in. Yep, mimes, as seen in Hideaway which was a movie to make early use of motion capture, and likewise mimes.
  • Non-realtime rendering typically makes no use of 3D acceleration. I say typically because sometimes non-realtime, high quality openGL previews are made. But for stuff like this, not a chance, I wouldn't be surprised if the computers they used didn't even have video cards in the first place, and did a boot-from-LAN type thing.

  • A few things (Score:5)

    by donglekey ( 124433 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @11:06AM (#91318) Homepage
    First http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Server/9029 /images4.html [geocities.com] is a link to a very large gallery of images from the movie. There is even one of the Aki naked, although I am not sure why it got made in the first place. http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Server/9029 /aki_nude.jpg [geocities.com] is the direct link.

    I am surprised there were no articles on Shrek and Linux because it was done not only using linux for the rendering but for some of the actual animating, modeling, etc. as well (what with Maya, Houdini, shake, Photorealistic Renderman, BMRT, and Mental Ray running on Linux and all). Pacific Data Images is a big linux convert (as read in Post magazine) and have been using Linux probably more than any other major studio.

    I saw Final Fantasy last night at a theatre preview and I can attest that the story is cliche but everyone should go and see it for the animation, which is beautiful, and everything you could hope for. It was the most visually impressive movie I have ever seen.

    Sony's new workstation is way too new to be able to get anything done with, that won't happen for a while, assuming anyone is going to end up using it at all.
  • I would concur that there was definitely a lack of compute power there. The part to watch for is when Grey salutes the general - the action just isn't crisp, and essentially you can see nine or so hands as he performs his salute :)

    The overall feeling I get from the movie is that the framerate is just too low -- too low to handle the fast motion that would make the movie look much more realistic. As you watch the movie, you'll notice that the slow framerate necessitated all of the action to be just a little slower than would be natural.

  • The technology behind Aki is so advanced, she even made the cover [comingsoon.net] of Maxim Online!check the link for the pinup (rated PG)

    how's THAT for a final Fantasy :)

  • amazing CGI (Score:5)

    by BiggestPOS ( 139071 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:50AM (#91326) Homepage
    At this rate, actors like myself will be out of work right about the time I decide to retire, I hope :) Now, instead of being cute, a good actor needs to have good acting skills, and an in-depth knowledge of the tools. Actors and animators will merge into one profession, where you are cast to render and animate a particular character that you specialize in.

  • Here [discover.com] is the article. The CG is amazing.


    Refrag

  • I saw it on Monday (Score:5)

    by el_munkie ( 145510 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:56AM (#91329)
    Its cool, no plot spoilers below, this is mostly what I think of the movie and the animation.

    I was lucky enough to get into a sneak preview on Monday, and I must say that the graphics are impressive. They are still a little bit away from actually making you forget that you were looking at CGI because the characters do look too stiff, and the skin tones are a bit off, but overall it is damn good.

    Animation-wise, they did a very good job on the clothes and the hair. Also, the characters use a 3D holographic interface when interacting with computers, and it looks really cool, especially the one on Aki's wrist in the beginning. However, I was a bit disappointed with the monsters, which were mostly vague outlines. At least as far as I can tell, there is a strong anime influence in the movie, especially in the monsters, which are done in the tentacle style of art.

    Also, if you thought about it while watching the movie, you could see how it tied into a quest RPG style video game. Before characters could do stuff, they would have to collect objects or do things. I wouldn't say that the plot is outstanding, but it is defintly more than decent. Oh yeah, I was very much impressed with the soundtrack.

    I would definitely say that it is worth 7 bucks to go see. It was fun to pick out all the little details (especially the clothes and hair) and be amazed at how much time a effort went into every little frame
  • Here's a neat swimsuit pic of Aki [darkhorizons.com], and for the ladies, here's one of Gray [darkhorizons.com].

    At first I thought it was the models for the characters, but it's the CGI.

    Taken from Sci-Fi News [bureau42.com].
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-|

  • Please tell me: is there any cross dressing, breeding of giant golden chickens or riding of said chickens? I thought the games were pretty lame on account of that stuff.

    Does the movie have ANYTHING to do with the games besides the name?

    I don't know... those are pretty much the reasons why I *liked* the games. I mean, come on. Chocobos just rule.

  • Go check out the "Virtual You" article at the Discover Magazine web site for a still image that is truly photorealistic quality.

    I can't seem to find this article -- Is it in the current issue on magazine stands? They purposely keep the website one month behind to encourage subscriptions (smart, IMO).

  • I always thought it was interesting how most of Pixar's "competition" actually uses Pixar software in the process of rendering their movies.... though I can understand the popularity of Renderman, it's very tuned and highly extendable through a clean plugin/shader architecture.
    http://www.pixar.com/products/rende rman/products/
  • According to the press release, we're talking about 40 Octanes and 4 Origin 200s.

    Those were the inital machines used in 1997/1998 for the FF movie. Over time they added more Octanes, and even several Origin 2000 (now "SGI 2000") and Onyx2 systems to the mix. From what I understand, SS has more SGI systems throughout the entire company than Industrial Light and Magic has, an unfair compairison, as ILM only works on movies, they don't make 3D grames (where most of SS's SGIs are put to use for mockups and modeling).

    SGI's stockprice is in the toilet because they really haven't updated their hardware in over 3 years nor have adjusted their pricing or sales channels. The Origin/Onyx 3000 can scale to 512 CPUs through a cable-based backplaneless design with gobs of thruput (716.0 GB/sec) but that doesn't mean a thing with the InfiniteReality3 graphics virtually unchanged since the original InfiniteReality in 1995 and CPU modules selling for about $75,000 each. SGI is it's own worst enemy.
  • I would say that Industrial Light and Magic is probably one of the world's largest SGI companies, if not the largest. Two years ago they had around 900 employees (many traditional artists and programmers) but still I think they even do their rendering on SGI's although they might be starting to switch now.

    ILM has always used a wide variety of systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux, and even Amiga in projects as recently as two years ago). But the bulk of their work continues to be on the SGI MIPS/IRIX platform (modeled on Octane2 workstations, previewed on Onyx2/Onyx3000, rendered on Origin2000/Origin3000, final compositing and editing on Onyx again). ILM was recently featured on TechTV's "FreshGear" and was showing off their renderfarm, essentially 1150 MIPS R12000 and R14000 CPUs spread across 4 different Origin systems. They have they money to stick with SGI and do get the rewards of using SGI's nice hardware (such as 512 CPUs per single origin... easier to maintain, etc). They also, of course, get generous discounts from SGI.

    AFAIK, SGI's largest customer in terms of sheer CPUs and bandwidth is the NSA (the USA's National Security Agency).
  • (That, and you had to use IRIX. Barf. "Oh we're sorry, our latest patch screwed up X11|NFS|OtherCriticalThing. Please wait till we get our act together").

    IRIX patch dependancy hell in the past wasn't fun, in fact it was a complete pain in the ass. (Though about equal to my experiences with XFree86 in the months following the release of the nVidia TNT2 and geFORCE 256). However, SGI did rectify the situation in May 1998 with the release of IRIX 6.5. Among other things, 6.5 brough about a new update system, a quarterly 6.5.x overlay that updates any version of 6.5 to the latest version. Any problems needing immediate fixes between updates could be applied with a patch, but were overridden and replaced come the next quarterly update. 6.5.0 - 6.5.2 had some issues, but it's been smooth sailing since then. Most of my machines are running the latest, 6.5.12. All has been great. Simple updates every 3 months, no patches to worry about, and the guarantee of a stable update (SGI tends to stay about 5 months ahead of their customers by testing future releases on all of their internal machines first). The folks with a fetish for large version numbers don't like the fact that "SGI is still at 6.5" but the rest of us that like our machines to just work and realize that each new 6.5.x release contains updates and new features couldn't be more happy. SGI even updates http://freeware.sgi.com along the same timeline. Slick.

    Of course there are always those that hate IRIX with a passion, but each to his own. GNOME and KDE are availalbe at the freeware site. CDE is available free for the asking (ask your SGI rep for the no-charge "CDE 5.0" CD). IRIX security is a bitch if you're not familar with the initial setup. Keep your SGIs behind a firewall or learn the steps to lock down an IRIX box (it takes 8 minutes).

  • Re:A few things (Score:3)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @11:42AM (#91341) Homepage
    Pacific Data Images is very quickly becoming a Linux shop (as is Pixar... though Pixar plans to stick with Sun/UltraSPARC for rendering). From what I understand, PDI used several hundred SGI Origin 200 (the 3U/4U rackmount model) running IRIX as well as seveal hundred HP boxes running linux to render Shrek. After the movie was completed, they sold their SGI Origins and replaced them with even newer x86/Linux boxes. Most of the modeling for Shrek was done with SGI Octane and SGI Octane2 workstations and the final compositing was done with Onyx2 machines. Though as you pointed out, they did experiment with Linux for some scenes and for a great deal of the rendering. According to an Alias|Wavefront press release (an SGI-owned company), PDI is replacing half of their Octanes with SGI and HP x86 Linux workstations.
  • Can anyone produce a video rendered first with out blur and possibly grain, then the same thing with blur and grain? I'm well aware that people see motion with blur, but is it critical the camera capture it that way? I love seeing video without blur because I can take in EVERYTHING. I want to see a car peel around a corner and as startled people on the sidewalk jump backwards, catch thier expressions. When they're blury because the camera is focused on the car, I can't do that.

    Another related question; can CG be rendered with a faked focus field and still look believable? When I look out at a mountian and see trees in the foreground, my eyes can only focus on the back or foreground. With CG, the focus can be faked so I can see both clearly. Can this be done when the goal is photo-realism and still look believable to the audience? It won't have the same effect people are used to, but that's their problem.

    I see film as an inhibitor to the future of movies. People are set in their expectations of what a movie should look like. CG has the opportunity to buck this trend and show people a vision not constrained by the camera, but by the imagination and budget of the creators.

  • holy freaking crap.

    Holodeck, here we come.

    'nuff said

  • Re:I saw a preview... (Score:3)

    by IronChef ( 164482 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @11:50AM (#91349)

    Please tell me: is there any cross dressing, breeding of giant golden chickens or riding of said chickens? I thought the games were pretty lame on account of that stuff.

    Does the movie have ANYTHING to do with the games besides the name?

  • syndrome of information sharing (Score:3)

    by 2Bits ( 167227 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @12:23PM (#91351)
    Has anyone noticed the Syndrome of Information Sharing(TM) here? Every preview and opinion are the same: nice graphic, bad story, blah blah blah.

    Gosh, I thought every individual is supposed to be distinct. But then, how come they all think the same way? Why can't someone who has watched it comes up some more interesting opinion?

    And no, I'm not giving you ideas about how to write your opinions.

  • I saw a preview... (Score:3)

    by SquadBoy ( 167263 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:36AM (#91353) Homepage Journal
    on Monday. It was *great*. My wife still does not think that it was really all CGI. The story line was good solid action. Go see it support this and we can hope for more good stuff in the future.
  • I was at the movies the other day, and to say the least, this movie has me captivated.

    Let me clarify, I am not, have not, and never will be a Final Fantasy game player/addict. It just isnt my kind of game. But the CG in this movie looks absolutely AMAZING. I dont think I have ever seen people rendered so realistically.

    That said, I guess the question on all our minds is .... when can my boxen do that?!?!

    ---
  • Yummy goodies from Discover.com:

    WireFrame Mockup Here [discover.com]
    Chromed Mockup Here [discover.com]
    Rendered version Here [discover.com]
    Aki Hand here [discover.com]



    ---

  • [1] [Post about how great CG is]
    [2] Reply to [1] [Check out this face]
    [3] Message to [2] [Where is said face]
    [1] Reply to [2] [Here are the pictures he sent me to that you cannot find]

    Where exactly in that is the karma whoring? Aside from the fact that karma is just karma (Read: who cares); There is a karma cap [slashdot.org]. This stops you from going higher. Note posts [slashdot.org] at 2 without moderation up. This is an indicator that the poster has at least a karma of 40 [slashdot.org]. The cap is at 50.

    If I was whoring... why would I bother if I already have status that is the very reason that drives most people whore?
    [Just a little something for you to chew on in your (karma-[less|low]? [slashdot.org]) ignorance]

    Generally speaking, the only people who care about karma are those who do not have it

    ---

  • I don't know about the picture of Gray, but Aki's swimsuit picture, as linked there, is a terribly bad scan. My cousin gave me a poster with that picture on the front and (sparse) details about the rendering process on the back. In real life, the picture of Aki is very realistic. You can pick out individual freckles and hairs. Her pores are even slightly whitened and raised -- as if she was slightly cold and goose-pimply during the photoshoot.

    As further evidence of the bad scan claim, look at the Maxim logo in the upper left. The background has really bad jpeg artifacts. But what can you expect scaling a 3' or so poster into a 26K jpeg?

  • At least according to the NY Times. [nytimes.com] (I haven't seen it yet.)
  • It's normal in CGI movies and modern games to spend the most computing power and time detailing the main characters. Lara Croft got at least twice as many polygons as any other character in the "Tomb Raider" games, for instance, and if you look at "Shrek" again you'll see that the characters with the "bit parts" are much stiffer and less detailed than the main characters. This is for two reasons: one, the main characters are required to perform more actions, express more expressions, and be seen close up far more often than anyone else; and two, they have a lot to do in as little time possible. Of course the computing power was there to make every stray character as detailed as the main ones, but the time wasn't. The computing power was no doubt awesome to anyone working on it, but even Sony has to face the limitations of physics.
  • Though Pixar is the pioneer of computer animation,
    the essence of our business is to create compelling
    stories and memorable characters. It is chiseled in
    stone at our studios that no amount of technology
    can turn a bad story into a good one.
    -- From Pixar's Web site [pixar.com]. And they've held it up, too. I wait eagerly for the day when Pixar turns out animation as good as FF's.
  • Yeah, they did go over budget, but the announcement that they weren't going to make another movie didn't really have much to do with that information. According to most sources, they simply produced this film to show off their tech, and will put forward any future film concepts (should the film do well enough to warrant any) to Sony/Columbia or other producers, and take on more of an oversight job
  • Actually, if you look I think you'll have difficulty locating an Alec Baldwin vehicle (or any Baldwin for that matter) up to high bar set by Armegeddon, Outbreak, and MI:2. Oh wait, I seem to have forgotten Bio-Dome starring Stephan Baldwin.
  • In real life, the picture of Aki is very realistic.

    How is shrinking the image/a bad scan going to make it look less realistic ? If anything, it should make it MORE realistic by obscuring any flaws. Certainly the unnatural skin tone is going to look better the more and more you shrink the image. And who cares if you can see "individual freckles and hairs"...most people are going to be looking at the poster at distance where such details would be invisble.

    Mea culpa. I forgot, this is Slashdot, and a lot of people here are going to be looking at it real close up, most probably with tissues in hand.

  • ...about how they did the motion capture and other things related to the film here [honoluluadvertiser.com]
    Interesting, no?
  • http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/ 7/10/3436/23896 [kuro5hin.org]
    In short, the story sucks but the anim is cool.
  • Yeah, I was thinking about this recently, after having gone to see Shrek (great film, btw :-). Although the non-human characters were superbly rendered, the "human" characters weren't quite there yet. There was something missing from the manner & expression that you can only get (at the moment) from flesh & blood.

    However, things are improving in this respect, and i'm sure one day they will be able to render every minitatue of human expression. The place where the computerised-film industry is still completely lacking is the Voice.

    I think (voice) actors will have a job for a while, at least untill they manage to progress computers past talking in Stephen Hawking mode.

  • It is currently vastly more expensive to render a character than hire some actor (NOT A-list though...). However, very few films have been produced in this way. Surely this is very pioneering stuff. I really dont know how much this stuff will cost in 10 years? 20 years? 50 years? I do however believe that costs will come down - once the road is a little more worn in.

  • Amazing!! But, It Ran Over Budget (Score:3)

    by Lethyos ( 408045 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:52AM (#91408) Journal
    I've been informed that SquareSoft promised its investors it would never do another movie. Appearantly, to finish the project, SS had to supliment their existing budget by nearly two-fold. Basically, it took a LOT longer and a lot more hardware to make than originally anticipated.

    The movie is absolutely spectacular - and while SquareSoft will continue to develop their technology and techniques for games, they may not make another movie without support for this one. Personally, I'd like to see more FF movies. I hope it cleans up at the box office!

  • Almost without fail, if everyone else loves it, Roger hates it

    So basically you want groupthink from a movie reviewer.

    For instance, he totally thrashed Gladiator, saying it was horrid, etc

    I don't suppose you care the the plot is totally ridiculous?

    then it wins Oscar for best picture

    Here's a shocking piece of news for you: the Oscars are hardly more than a popularity contest. The movies nomimated for best picture are (more often than not) slickly produced but unremarkable. Once and a while something interesting wins, but most of the time not. Looking at the record of best pictures winners from many years ago reveals a few decent choices, lots of completely ignored classics, and a whole bunch of what-were-they-thinking-winners.


  • I saw the film in a preview showing on Monday. It was not as large as an attraction as A.I. was. I had arrived an hour early for this movie and they had not filled the seats.

    At the A.I. preview there were more than 60 people not able to get seats half an hour before the film. The A.I. preview took place in a 500+ seat theatre, while the Final Fantasy preview took place in a 300 seat theatre.

    Anyway, on to my review. The visuals in this film were absolutely the most amazing computer generated images that I can claim to have seen. Remember the first big full view of the Dinosaurs in the orginal Jurassic Park? These were almost identically awe inspiring.

    The story itself was decent for a Final Fantasy game, although nowhere near as in depth. This I would attribute to the lesser amount of time the movie is, in comparison to the length of a Final Fantasy game.

    A friend of mine commented on how the lips, while in synch with the voices, barely moved with the conversation. The expressions on the variuous characters faces were also rather awesome. There were a few parts when I would have expected some form of expression, but there wasn't.

    I would recomend seeing the film as a matinee as the ending was really not as whiz-bang cool as I would have liked. The climax was nearly anti-climatic.

    The very ending left quite a bit to be desired to me. Of course that is me and I expect a tremendous amount from the movies that I see.

    --
    .sig seperator
    --

  • Having seen Final Fantasy today, two showings in a row -- first "analog" then DLP ("digital"), I would strongly recommend you see this film in DLP [dlp.com] mode.

    While there were minor pixelation issues from the DLP projection (mostly in extra large fonts with diagonals), there was (to my eye) a dramatic difference in quality between the analog and the DLP projection, with DLP providing an astonishing level of extra detail and richness.

    I saw Final Fantasy in Canada; If you don't have DLP where you live, I suggest you move. =P

  • Almost there... (Score:4)

    by Derkec ( 463377 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:41AM (#91419)
    There is a decent review at the NY times. From what I've seen and read, it seems like the renderer is there for creating photorealistic humans. That is just beyond cool. However, I get the feeling that the project was somewhat lacking in compute power. While some of the characters look amazing and almost make you think you are watching a real person, some of the shots of seen of more minor characters are weak by comparision. The detail just isn't there. Either the artists didn't take the time to do the model or there were limitations on compute power. Either way, the movie has some weakness, but displays some awesome technology.

  • Related NY Times Links... (Score:3)

    by Thomas M Hughes ( 463951 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:54AM (#91421)
    Movie Stars Fear Inroads by Upstart Digital Actors [nytimes.com]
    They may look kind of cool, but the cast of ``Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within'' will never work in this town again. [nytimes.com]
    'Final Fantasy' Changes Performer Role [nytimes.com]

    Plus the one mentioned earlier. I haven't seen this much hype in a long time. Then again, did anyone not expect the story to suck in this one? It was intended, from the very begining to be an experiment in computer graphics. Not an experiment in good film making. They don't need to have a good story for this one.
    ---

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