TREK and CGI effects

[ATimson]

Kegek said:
The order of the questions is important. Point 1. is always more important than Point 2.

To you, maybe. Unless the entire movie is hyperstylized to the point of unreality--like Pixar's movies, or perhaps Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow--then being interesting takes a back seat to looking real within the context of the movie. I don't care how interesting it is, if it doesn't look like it belongs with the rest of the film.

This is where CGI Yoda fails; he doesn't look like he's real, like he's part of the scene. He never interacts with anybody; he acts like he's pasted on. (Which is a pity; Jar Jar at least looks realistic, unlike Yoda.)

 

[FalTorPan]

I think the CG Yoda looked spectacular -- and looked real within the context of the film. Watto, on the other hand...

 

[Kegek]

ATimson said:
This is where CGI Yoda fails; he doesn't look like he's real, like he's part of the scene.

This is true. I've yet to see a fully convincing CGI talking character; Gollum perhaps comes closest. But Yoda's facial expressions and body language was a great improvement over the puppets.

FalTorPan said:
I think the CG Yoda looked spectacular -- and looked real within the context of the film. Watto, on the other hand...

Watto was actually their first attempt in TPM. They did him before they did Jar-Jar. I think he looks about as realistic as the others. Moreso than Dexter Jettster, actually.

 

[trevanian]

Kegek said:

ATimson said:

CaptainStoner said:
With Star Wars you can really see the development, of say, Episode I Yoda to Episode III Yoda.

Not really, seeing as how Yoda's a puppet in The Phantom Menace.

That counts as evolution. Though his dialogue in the Prequel Trilogy never reaches his dialogue in Empire Strikes Back, the puppet in Episode I is a significant technical improvement over the original puppet, and the CGI Yoda was superb, a lot of nuance in his expressions were given that none of the earlier puppet versions attained. I was initially very sceptical when I heard Yoda was going to be CGI in AOTC - to put it mildly - but the end result worked. Unfortunately, the film did not, but that is another story.

A technical improvement in what way? TPM's puppet never seemed to live for me, probably because whoever photographed it didn't have time to light it properly. Even Rick Baker bitched about it, and that was just based on the TPM trailer. I'm not a fan of many CG characters, but the CG yoda in CLONES looked better than the TPM puppet (though only occasionally did it approach the credibility of the EMPIRE/JEDI puppet.) Didn't see SITH, so I don't know about improvements there, but I can easily imagine them touching up TPM, that thing really reeked compared to say, anything in FARSCAPE.

As for CG in Trek ... well, I've weighed in often enough against a lot of it. As bad a rap as it gets in INS, I actually thought some of the NEM stuff was much worse, unless you turn the brightness WAY down. The reveal of Ruafo's ship in INS is pretty damned incredible, with bits of patch sticking to the ship as it emerges, and took them forever to do. I have a feeling that if Paramount had started finaling shots sooner instead of doing the iterate-to-death thing, that INS might have turned out okay. SBS had Viewpoint scan the model, and viewpoint was tops at. They even made sure to keep the slight defects in the model, since you can't build something physical 100% to spec, which I don't think was done for NEM.

I think the background and midground CG ships in the FC borg battle work perfectly with the stage models, so that is a good case of cg working fine, but standalone for a hero beauty view? Hasn't worked so far in trek for me, outside perhaps of that INS shot I mentioned above.

But there are ways of making CG work wonderfully for ships, such as limiting the pallette. FIREFLY did a great job on their ships in city stuff, but they did it well because you had a limited pallette ... usually when they do a full spectrum of color, things fail (good example for me is the opening ship shot in SERENITY -- and the serenity-into-reaver-ship shot -- which to me play worse than almost all of the very solid TV work, and doesn't play as well as any of the other stuff in the feature either.) Of course, I usually hate these limite pallette movies, but for short sequences it is okay.

 

[Kegek]

trevanian said:
A technical improvement in what way?

Over the puppets used in Empire/Jedi. It looked more realistic than they did, though still not quite real. In turn the AOTC/ROTS CGI model was an improvement over the TPM puppet.

Didn't see SITH, so I don't know about improvements there, but I can easily imagine them touching up TPM, that thing really reeked compared to say, anything in FARSCAPE.

'Anything'? I'm going to assume you mean centerpiece puppets like Pilot and Rygel, and not the sometimes dodgy guest puppetry. Pilot was certainly more convincing, but Rygel and TPM Yoda were about the same. TPM Yoda at least looked 'real' even when he wasn't moving, which was not the case for Rygel. That said, Rygel was a superb puppet.

 

[trevanian]

I've only seen about 30 FARSCAPE eps, and I honestly don't remember critters other than the two you mention, and maybe one or two guest thingies. I just considered the work breathtaking, and that is after decades of rolling my eyes at most puppetry. I just thought it was odd that in the 90s, puppetry seemed to get a million times better (motion control work too for that matter), just as CG started replacing stuff, so the bar was raised at a time when it meant being trendy lowered the bar back down again.

Again, the TPM Yoda just looks utterly unconvincing to me, the color is bad (again probably due to the hurry up and shoot it GL approach, as the guy who photographed the prequels has done decent work elsewhere, I think on FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON.) I guess I don't have any basis for saying why, except it looks like a stand-in as opposed to being a star like the EMPIRE Yoda.

 

[USS Mariner]

^It didn't help that the Yoda started taking Weight Gain 4000 when he shot the prequels.

"Follow your dreams. You can reach your goals, I'm living proof...Beefcake, BEEFCAKE!"

"Cake of Beef am I, MOTHERFUCKER!"

The proof is indisputable.

 

[Kegek]

trevanian said:
I've only seen about 30 FARSCAPE eps, and I honestly don't remember critters other than the two you mention, and maybe one or two guest thingies.

Fair enough. I'm a fan of the show myself, I've seen it in its entirety. The alien designs are in general very imaginative and a refreshing change from Star Trek's blandness, but the guest puppets are pretty hit-and-miss. One example would be the early Scarrens, as they appeared for the first three seasons. These are actually actors with some puppet prosthetics, but the result was very unconvincing. (They later dropped the prosthetics for speaking Scarren roles.)

I just considered the work breathtaking, and that is after decades of rolling my eyes at most puppetry. I just thought it was odd that in the 90s, puppetry seemed to get a million times better (motion control work too for that matter), just as CG started replacing stuff, so the bar was raised at a time when it meant being trendy lowered the bar back down again.

This is true. There's nothing in 1990s CGI that could compete with 1990s puppetry.

Again, the TPM Yoda just looks utterly unconvincing to me, the color is bad (again probably due to the hurry up and shoot it GL approach, as the guy who photographed the prequels has done decent work elsewhere, I think on FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON.) I guess I don't have any basis for saying why, except it looks like a stand-in as opposed to being a star like the EMPIRE Yoda.

I see. The way I see the Yoda puppet, though, he's the result of the improvements in technology. I do find it interesting, though, that when they went to a CGI Yoda, they used the design of the Empire/Jedi Yoda, and not the TPM Yoda.

 

[CaptainStoner]

trevanian said:
Didn't see SITH...

Sith is by most accounts the best of the 3, you're in for a treat. The Yoda developments are there.

 

[AstroSmurf]

^ Especially with his skin textures and translucency. The Clones Yoda was a bit to creaky for me in those regards. He tended to flatten out in brightly lit shots.

And Nick Dudman, who's company designed the Yoda puppet for TPM, said that they had tried to make Yoda younger and it didn't work. When they removed some of his wrinkling and thickened his hair, it pushed the puppet beyond what people remembered him as and they had no time to fix him. But I don't think the mistakes made with the build were intentional. Since Dudman worked on the original Empire puppet, he had his team actually work in some of the "mistakes" made in the original Yoda, like one of his eyes blinking slower than the other, to help keep continuity. But unfortunately, the younger appearance just threw everything off despite the attention to detail. And of course, to make things worse, that really was a bad lighting job.

As for Trek, I liked some of the shots from "Insurrection" but I always felt the highlights and texturing was a little soft. As for "Nemesis", I thought the CGI was much better but it tended to come off very dark and dreary. However, the first shot of the ship, as she sweeps past the camera, is one of my favorites of the E. Seeing all of the light glinting off the ship's windows and the new shooting angle punctuated by Goldsmith's music made my hair stand on end. I also enjoyed the space battle for the most part as well.

 

[Kegek]

Anti_Drone said:
And Nick Dudman, who's company designed the Yoda puppet for TPM, said that they had tried to make Yoda younger and it didn't work.

I never understood that, to be honest. I got the part about improving the puppetry, but why should Yoda look younger? He's what, nine hundred years old? How much would he age in a mere twenty years?

 

[T'Baio]

Anti_Drone said:
However, the first shot of the ship, as she sweeps past the camera, is one of my favorites of the E. Seeing all of the light glinting off the ship's windows and the new shooting angle punctuated by Goldsmith's music made my hair stand on end. I also enjoyed the space battle for the most part as well.

See, I loved that shot too...at first. As the ship first comes into frame it looks great, but as it passes and comes fully into frame, it suddenly looks...really small. Like a toy. Like a kid filming his dinkie car Enterprise against his black sheets.

 

[AstroSmurf]

Kegek said:

Anti_Drone said:
And Nick Dudman, who's company designed the Yoda puppet for TPM, said that they had tried to make Yoda younger and it didn't work.

I never understood that, to be honest. I got the part about improving the puppetry, but why should Yoda look younger? He's what, nine hundred years old? How much would he age in a mere twenty years?

Well I believe that Dudman and his crew pointed that out but were over ruled by Lucas. I came across some concept sketches done months before the make-up/creature company was hired. The drawings were done to try and visualize what a younger Yoda would look like. I believe they even decided that the species would have red hair. But to be honest, the details are a bit hazy since it has been almost ten years ago since I laid eyes on them.

 

[Trekker83]

What ticked me off about Star Wars Episode II was that Jar Jar model was better animated, and the clothes looked they were actually there at the same time the live action elements were filmed. Unlike Yoda.

In Episode III, Yoda gets his due. I felt ^Sorry^ for him.

 

[StarMan]

First Contact was the first and only time the Enterprise looking great. The model - built by ILM - was used with the CGI model being used sparingly and effectively.

There were one or two shots in Insurrection which I think looked gorgeous (entering the briar patch), but I didn't *buy* what I was seeing. The final shot of the Enterprise - when seen on the big screen - was horrendously bad.

I expected more from Digital Domain when they got the contract for Nemesis. They certainly did a better job, but were certainly not on par with ILM's work on First Contact. The ship simply didn't move with weight (I know, don't point out the obvious). Hell, the immense Scimitar was moving about like a TIE fighter.

I'm stoked to have ILM back on board. I believe we're in store for the first fully realistic Enterprise produced entirely on a computer.