How much CGI was used for the ship battles in FC compared to Nemesis?
$150 million budget? Really?
- Thread starter darkwing_duck1
- Start date
REALLY ... ??!!
Who told you that? You're talking about having to write millions of lines of code for a program that simulates lighting effects, object modeling, etc.
I know WETA workshop had to write a program called Massif in order to create some of the battle scenes in Lord of the Rings because nothing out there exists that does that.
CGI being faster/cheaper is a myth.
RobertScorpio said:
"Back then" being the operative words. Babylon 5's effects while stylish are horribly dated, and not very detailed. As such the actual art assets would have required less man hours to produce. Not necessarily less time total due to how slow rendering was back then (and early B5 was produced using comparitively slow Amigas rather than the then state of the art SGI workstations), but less time that creative staff have to be paid for.
An example how things have changed in this way with regards to art creation is to look at the video game industry. In recent years the cost to produce a modern looking game has increased quite dramatically, and it is mainly due to the need to produce ever more detailed art assets to keep pace with technology.
That said if you want to do things on the cheap with CGI you can, and in a lot of cases do it better and more cheaply than equivalent model work. It's just that it will still look really poor.
Is there anyone on this forum who doesn't have the mind of a 5-year-old?
This is a fair question. FC had some absolutely beautiful FX with their use of models compared to the fully CGI FX from the movies that followed.
It seemed well spent to me! The CG sequences are unbelievable throughout and they have some very well designed and flashy sets throughout the movie.
Generally, when you're going to show everyone how much more mature you are than everyone else...you don't start calling everyone a child.
Is there anyone on this forum who doesn't have the mind of a 5-year-old?
I think FC used models and CG...it's one reason we've never seen the Norway class since then. The "file" was lost.
Curious... is "REALLY ... ??!!" the response of someone with a mind greater than a 5-year-old?
Now as far as CGI vs Models, give me CGI any day; far more flexible platform for creating scenes with. Of course you will need some seriously large and powerful render farms for the kind of scenes in JJ Trek. That CG budget must have been 50 mil? Wish there were a way to find out the exact costs of production by department.
Well, two notes of interest:
(1) I've read that about half the movie was CGI. So about 1 hour of screen time was CGI rendered. So yes, it adds up in terms of cost.
(2) The budget being $150 mil? Various news reports have stated the budget at $125 mil, $135 mil etc. Most state the budget at $150mil.
Cheers
photon70
(1) I've read that about half the movie was CGI. So about 1 hour of screen time was CGI rendered. So yes, it adds up in terms of cost.
(2) The budget being $150 mil? Various news reports have stated the budget at $125 mil, $135 mil etc. Most state the budget at $150mil.
Cheers
photon70
whats are to belive about it, the mater/anti mater reaction going on, the hot warp plasma or the dilitium crystal matrix which makes everything work. No this was just a sad excuse. I would have prefered a TOS style engineering, it looked real to me also, and a TOS or if they had to a TMP style bridge.
What's to believe about it? That neon tubes are the pinnacle of design.
Look, Abrams and crew had plenty of money to build something like this...
http://techspecs.acalltoduty.com/images/galaxy/ed-engineering1.jpg
... but they didn't want that. They wanted a cavernous, complex, real-to-a-contemporary-audience space. They didn't have the budget for that. In fact, after INS and NEM, it is amazing the film got the money it did.
The problem is you have to pay thoe people who know how to create the CGI and they're expensive. I tried fooling around with 3d models and it takes time and we all know time = money.
Some of the budget is likely marketing, which is really paying off well apparently.
As for CGI, not only were the ships CG, they also used it on the various aliens, set extensions, and backgrounds. All of which worked really well.
A pretty brilliant choice that makes the new Trek a bit more grounded to the real world in the eyes of the casual audiance. It was a good thing there was't too much technobullshit either.
whatever the case, this film looked much more realistic than George Lucas and his Episode I, II, and III. i know lucas shot digital way back then when the technology hadn't matured yet. but even now, Abrams chose to shoot on film to avoid "that digital phony look" - he said it, not me.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
Someone earlier said that the Romulan ship was powerful because of BORG stuff..this was in the comic book version. I AM SO GLAD the word BORG does not appear anywhere in the new movie. It is a GEEK work now, and would have raised the DORK flag high over that movie...thank god JJ avoided it...
Rob
Most of FC was done with models. There was some CG though.
darkwing_duck1
Vice Admiral
I don't think it's a question of "more", rather "how far do yo want to refine it".But with CGI there is also the tendency to pile on more and more FX, since it's cheaper and easier to do it, possibly bringing the FX budget back up to non-CGI levels.
You can always add more details to a scene, little things you don't really see but improve the realism. But there's a curve there; the more time you spend on details, the less you'll actually get in return.
You see that a lot with, for example, 3d model hobbyists. Some can make absolutely gorgeous models, but if a professional spent 5 years on something he'd be fired before he knew it; that timespan makes it commercially unviable. That's also what separates the professionals from talented hobbyists: they can get the most out of a very short amount of time and they recognize the moment the curve is becoming too shallow.
This is true. If anyone here has watched the "making of" spots from the LOTR special editions, you know just how big the "pile on" can get. Peter Jackson is a CG artist's love/hate poster-boy.
So, is it the consensus that the budget went to ILM? What explains why JJ had so little set money that he had to film in breweries and warehouses?
