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Should Trek do an all CGI show?

Romulan_spy

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CGI has gotten really good and very realistic. I feel like it would be cool to have a Trek show that is all CGI. It would have the advantages of being animated while not looking cartoony.

Here is an example of the CGI that I am talking about:

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I feel a Star Trek animated show would look great like this.
 
I'm not a fan of the uncanny valley CGI. It will never ever look truly real.

I'd be more curious of a Star Trek series with real-life characters and all-CG sets.
 
I mean, technically, Lower Decks and Prodigy already are all-CGI.

As for creating really photoreal human characters, I don't see the point?

I'd be more curious of a Star Trek series with real-life characters and all-CG sets.

evVDHOn.jpg


(It gets worse the longer you look at it.)
 
CGI has gotten really good and very realistic. I feel like it would be cool to have a Trek show that is all CGI. It would have the advantages of being animated while not looking cartoony.

Huh? You're talking as though Prodigy doesn't count as all-CGI just because it isn't photorealistic. Since when? The initials stand for "computer-generated imagery," period. Nobody ever said it had to be realistic. That definition would exclude most of the CGI movies ever made by Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, Polygon, etc.

Besides, what is the point of using computer animation to create something that looks exactly like reality? If that's what you want, get something real and point a camera at it. That will always, always give better results than faking it. Especially where human beings are concerned. There is nothing harder to do than convince a human being that an artificial face is genuine, because a huge amount of the human brain is devoted to the perception of faces. It's enormously simpler and better just to use real actors. Put them in an all-virtual environment? Fine. That gets done a lot already. But replacing them with entirely CGI people that look exactly like real people anyway? What is the point? It would be an enormous waste of effort to do something that can be done far better with real people.
 
I'm not a fan of the uncanny valley CGI. It will never ever look truly real.

...
Yeah, the "photo-realistic" CGI people always have that uncanny valley fakeness that makes me want to puke, even when others insist that it looks really really good. That includes the Starship Troopers trailer up above. I would not enjoy Trek that looked like that. I would much rather have a stylized, cartoonish look.

Kor
 
I mean, technically, Lower Decks and Prodigy already are all-CGI.

As for creating really photoreal human characters, I don't see the point?

I happen to like the style of photoreal CGI characters.

Huh? You're talking as though Prodigy doesn't count as all-CGI just because it isn't photorealistic. Since when? The initials stand for "computer-generated imagery," period. Nobody ever said it had to be realistic. That definition would exclude most of the CGI movies ever made by Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, Polygon, etc.

Besides, what is the point of using computer animation to create something that looks exactly like reality? If that's what you want, get something real and point a camera at it. That will always, always give better results than faking it. Especially where human beings are concerned. There is nothing harder to do than convince a human being that an artificial face is genuine, because a huge amount of the human brain is devoted to the perception of faces. It's enormously simpler and better just to use real actors. Put them in an all-virtual environment? Fine. That gets done a lot already. But replacing them with entirely CGI people that look exactly like real people anyway? What is the point? It would be an enormous waste of effort to do something that can be done far better with real people.

I am not saying they don't count as CGI.

And yes, we have live action too for the best realism. But we also have animated shows. It's a different style. I like the style of the "photoreal" animated shows.
 
What you said was, "I feel like it would be cool to have a Trek show that is all CGI," as if Prodigy either didn't exist or didn't count. So that certainly seemed to be what you were saying. Maybe you should rephrase that, laddie.

Sure. I meant "it would be cool to have a Trek show that is in the photorealistic CGI style".
 
I'm fine with photo realistic CG aliens, but it's still creepy with humans. I think we're still a few years away from that working.
 
I'm fine with photo realistic CG aliens, but it's still creepy with humans. I think we're still a few years away from that working.

I think it already can work, if there's enough time, money, and talent put into it. Lots of big stunts in movies and TV these days are performed by digital doubles of the actors, and at best, it's very hard to tell the difference.

That's the thing about CGI -- how good it is depends on how well it's done. It can be nearly perfect, but it's very, very hard to get it right. Which is why it's so much smarter just to use something real when you want something that looks real, and to save the CGI only for the stuff you can't do for real. CGI is a powerful tool in the kit, but it's unwise to try to do absolutely everything with the same tool.
 
If Paramount has a squillion dollarydoos to burn on a photorealistic animated show... Absolutely.
Back when I was just starting out in 3D, I had dreams of doing something along the lines of Halo 4's Spartan Ops cutscenes by Axis Studios.
But... Its an insane amount of highly skilled and specialised work that costs an insane amount of money.

Still... The state of the tech these days...
Take this example from Snow in the Desert by Unit Image for Love, Death + Robots.

2fxefFk.jpg


IymgST1.jpg
 
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Though, being completely honest... I would not scoff at something Trek at this level of fidelity released in 2012.

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I think everyone criticizing the CGI as creepy might be a bit too nitpicky, but that's just my opinion. I think they certainly look better than the full facial mask plastic Orions currently showing up in Discovery, which basically kills the attractiveness of what's supposed to be an insanely attractive species. Even just the snapshot of the Starship Troopers trailer in the first post, which has CGI from a few years ago, caught my eye because the CGI character is really pretty.

For those still saying that CGI is too ugly etc. we're all probably too used to having insanely attractive actors and actresses on our movies and television. Most people don't look like that. I'm fairly certain that if they take a look at what I look like in real life, the CGI critics are suddenly going to realize that the CGI characters they've been criticizing suddenly don't seem that ugly anymore. :eek:
 
I think they certainly look better than the full facial mask plastic Orions currently showing up in Discovery,

Surely that's a false dichotomy, since those aren't the only two options. Traditionally, Orions were just actors in green body paint. No idea why DSC needed to change it, but it's hardly a endorsement of CGI.

Indeed, my objection to realistic CGI humans is the same as my objection to DSC's full-face-mask Orions: Why bother? If you want a character to look convincingly like a real person, obviously the best, simplest way to do that is to bloody well get a real person. Anything else is going to more trouble than you need to get a worse result, which is just pointless.
 
Hard pass on a CG Trek series using photo-realistic human models. They're like puppeteered corpses.

They've got dead eyes. They lack any real facial expressions (points at the stiff emotionless facial animations in the vids posted up-thread). They've got stiff body animations that lack any subtle movement a living human being has.
 
Hard pass on a CG Trek series using photo-realistic human models. They're like puppeteered corpses.

They've got dead eyes. They lack any real facial expressions (points at the stiff emotionless facial animations in the vids posted up-thread). They've got stiff body animations that lack any subtle movement a living human being has.
I literally just got flashbacks of Scotty trashing the transwarp in Star Trek 3 reading this.
 
I literally just got flashbacks of Scotty trashing the transwarp in Star Trek 3 reading this.
Modern CG aliens, buildings, vehicles, and environments can be rather convincing, but when it comes to humans they've got a long way to go.

Just because one can build a realistic looking human head doesn't really mean anything if you can't animate the damn thing realistically. Again points to the vids posted in this thread. They've got mouth movement but no real facial expressions and stilted movement.
 
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