Support NeoGAF

[WhiteRabbitEXE]

Attack of the Clones

I seriously want to know why this is CGI. It probably would have been easier, faster, and cheaper to just film that with a handful of extras in suits and a generic control panel prop pulled out of a studio prop collection. And it definitely would have been a lot, lot better looking.

Then again, "Why?" could be asked of about 50% of Lucas's decisions from the 90's on.

 

[The_Hitcher89]

Oh jeez another GAF thread shitting on visual effects when you guys don't know anything about the process. Carry on as usual.

Don't really see why you need any understanding whatsoever of how the process works when discussing this.

If something looks like shit now compared to its peers, it looks like shit.

 

[DiscoJer]

The Giant Claw

"It's a big as a battleship."

They were bad for the time. Apparently they didn't have any money left for special effects (originally they were going to use stop motion like Ray Harryhausen), so they got some puppet maker from Mexico City to do it.

 

[NetMapel]

Don't really see why you need any understanding whatsoever of how the process works when discussing this.

If something looks like shit now compared to its peers, it looks like shit.

Time, resources, financial, physical constraints often prevent the visual effects of some of these films to be fully realized. I'm sure you like your work to be criticized by arm-chair internet experts on your work done under duress, yeah ?

 

[Chuckie]

Wait what's up with the batman vs superman billboard in the background in the last few seconds??

It predicted the movie 8 years ago

Oh jeez another GAF thread shitting on visual effects when you guys don't know anything about the process. Carry on as usual.

This makes no sense at all.

 

[demon]

Oh jeez another GAF thread shitting on visual effects when you guys don't know anything about the process. Carry on as usual.

I don't know how visual effects are made therefor The Rock in Scorpion King looks great.

 

[ultracal31]

Oh jeez another GAF thread shitting on visual effects when you guys don't know anything about the process. Carry on as usual.

I do this for a living so I know quite a bit on the process.

In my official capacity in this subject I can say that these are good examples of effects that aged poorly

 

[border]

I seriously want to know why this is CGI. It probably would have been easier, faster, and cheaper to just film that with a handful of extras in suits and a generic control panel prop pulled out of a studio prop collection. And it definitely would have been a lot, lot better looking.

Then again, "Why?" could be asked of about 50% of Lucas's decisions from the 90's on.

The answer from Lucasfilm has always been that it was actually cheaper to make CG Stormtroopers than it was to actually manufacture the outfits and have actors wear them. I don't know if that's really even true, given that thousands of cosplayers every year seem to produce stormtrooper armor at relatively low cost. Not to mention that any given shot only requires you to have 5-10 stormtroopers in the frame -- why not just make 5-10 costumes and share them amongst all the extras? Even if you need more troopers in a particular shot, you could just composite in more of them.

Even if you buy the line that it was cheaper to make CG troopers, it still kind of rings hollow as an excuse. The prequels weren't some low-budget indie production that was starved for money......why not just go all out and build actual costumes for some marginal extra cost?

 

[NetMapel]

I do this for a living so I know quite a bit on the process.

In my official capacity in this subject I can say that these are good examples of effects that aged poorly

I do this for a living too and seeing vfx-related posts in GAF is about the same as seeing the gaming side whine about 60fps vs 30fps. Basically, very uninformed bashing with little understanding of the actual subject.

 

[Guess Who]

Time, resources, financial, physical constraints often prevent the visual effects of some of these films to be fully realized. I'm sure you like your work to be criticized by arm-chair internet experts on your work done under duress, yeah ?

You're being ridiculous. This is basically an argument against criticism in general, like no one is allowed to say anything looks bad ever because hey, someone worked their ass off to make that! The process is irrelevant to criticism. The end result is bad, and that's worthy of criticism, and that's all that matters.

 

[i am unagi]

Clash of the Titans (1981)

I still love it though.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Clash of the Titans (1981)

I still love it though.

Too charismatic. Invalid.

 

[| Praxis |]

Time, resources, financial, physical constraints often prevent the visual effects of some of these films to be fully realized. I'm sure you like your work to be criticized by arm-chair internet experts on your work done under duress, yeah ?

Tell me one profession that doesn't get criticised by "arm-chair internet experts"?

 

[Livingskeletons]

Clash of the Titans (1981)

I still love it though.

Hard to believe The Thing came out a year later.

 

[NetMapel]

You're being ridiculous. This is basically an argument against criticism in general, like no one is allowed to say anything looks bad ever because hey, someone worked their ass off to make that! The process is irrelevant to criticism. The end result is bad, and that's worthy of criticism, and that's all that matters.

I don't personally like making broad stroke arguments on a subject which I know nothing about. If you're going to criticized something, be more specific and maybe have a solution. At least, that's how we operate here in the industry because it's unprofessional to criticize something without offering some kind of viable solution. Yes, some of those visual effects look dated, but there were significant limitations placed on visual effects throughout its young history. Maybe understand the subject instead of posting a particularly bad frame from a bad vfx film will be better. I will fully admit I am more sensitive to this subject because I work in it, but I've seen too many hard working artists worked hard to create the visuals you see on films only for internet arm chair experts to cherry pick apart their work. I wouldn't do that to your work.

Tell me one profession that doesn't get criticised by "arm-chair internet experts"?

and you get people defending said criticism in just about all those professions too. I'm just doing that for the vfx professions as I work in it.

 

[Osahi]

The CGI in AotC looked incredibly bad even in 2002, which is kind of shocking considering how well most of the CGI in TPM has aged. I'd really like to know what led to the massive drop in quality in the CGI between TPM and AotC.

Lots of what you think is cgi in tpm is actually models with cgi on top. Aotc has a lot of 100% cgi shots. I guess that is why

 

[TAJ]

It did deserve better. I wouldn't say this has aged horribly though. It was total shite when it came out.

It was total shit compared to the other CG creature (the Violator) and CG Spawn double in the same movie.

 

[NetMapel]

Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible is a nice little documentary that help show you guys a bit of history of visual effects with a focus on ILM studio. Check it out when you guys got a moment

 

[Chuckie]

I don't personally like making broad stroke arguments on a subject which I know nothing about. If you're going to criticized something, be more specific and maybe have a solution. At least, that's how we operate here in the industry because it's unprofessional to criticize something without offering some kind of viable solution. Yes, some of those visual effects look dated, but there were significant limitations placed on visual effects throughout its young history. Maybe understand the subject instead of posting a particularly bad frame from a bad vfx film will be better. I will fully admit I am more sensitive to this subject because I work in it, but I've seen too many hard working artists worked hard to create the visuals you see on films only for internet arm chair experts to cherry pick apart their work. I wouldn't do that to your work.

You don't need to know anything at all about the process of visual effects though to judge how it looks. I cannot make chairs, but I'd recognize a crappy cheap one.

The solution is probably always: "More budget" or in some cases when the design is horrible maybe better artists.
Films are art. SFX are part of said art. Art gets judged by people who do not perform said art. This goes for all art, why not for Special Effects? Does that get a special pass because they work so hard?
People who make roads also work really hard, but if there are holes every couple of meters, I am also going to complain...even though I don't know how to make asphalt roads.

 

[Dash_Riprock]

Episodes II and III look like PS2 cutscenes

Mustafar is the only part of Episode III is the only part that still looks decent

 

[Twilight Gap]

The answer from Lucasfilm has always been that it was actually cheaper to make CG Stormtroopers than it was to actually manufacture the outfits and have actors wear them. I don't know if that's really even true, given that thousands of cosplayers every year seem to produce stormtrooper armor at relatively low cost. Not to mention that any given shot only requires you to have 5-10 stormtroopers in the frame -- why not just make 5-10 costumes and share them amongst all the extras? Even if you need more troopers in a particular shot, you could just composite in more of them.

Even if you buy the line that it was cheaper to make CG troopers, it still kind of rings hollow as an excuse. The prequels weren't some low-budget indie production that was starved for money......why not just go all out and build actual costumes for some marginal extra cost?

never bought that line

 

[Cranster]

The CGI Mask in Halloween H20.

 

[Beren the Empty-Handed]

Then with the special editions he just went for quantity over quality. Why do so many scenes need a bunch of stupid cgi creatures in the background? Why do they have to be doing something funny which distracts from the actual focus of the scene?

This is actually my issue with the whole thing. I can forgive poorly aged CGI most of the time, but when CGI is used to actively draw focus away from where it should be, or creates a tone that goes against the rest of the scene, it really baffles me. And yes, Lucas seems to fall into that trap more than I'd like.

 

[Glin]

The Mummy series...it looked like shit nowadays

Also Judge Dredd (Stallone) vehicle chase looks very iffy but hey 90's werent that pretty with CGI.

 

[Putosaure]

I love Fellowship of the Ring with all my heart but the PS2-ass mountains and shitty composite fellowship running over the rocks without even correctly aligning to them is so, so bad and obvious on blu ray.

Wow.

 

[mrklaw]

I don't personally like making broad stroke arguments on a subject which I know nothing about. If you're going to criticized something, be more specific and maybe have a solution. At least, that's how we operate here in the industry because it's unprofessional to criticize something without offering some kind of viable solution. Yes, some of those visual effects look dated, but there were significant limitations placed on visual effects throughout its young history. Maybe understand the subject instead of posting a particularly bad frame from a bad vfx film will be better. I will fully admit I am more sensitive to this subject because I work in it, but I've seen too many hard working artists worked hard to create the visuals you see on films only for internet arm chair experts to cherry pick apart their work. I wouldn't do that to your work.



and you get people defending said criticism in just about all those professions too. I'm just doing that for the vfx professions as I work in it.

In the past, generally you worked within the constraints of the medium. A few movies pushed the boundaries, but generally you work with what you have.

The t-Rex in Jurassic park is a good example. CG mixed with animatronics mixed with good cinematography, direction, and editing.

A lot of these example of bad effects are big, screen filling effects where the tech simply wasn't ready to stand up to that kind of scrutiny. I don't think that is any criticism of the effects house. We can't expect them to do miracles. It is IMO more a criticism of the producers/studio for thinking you can just do anything with computers.

In the case of a more 'in-house' approach like ILM, I think there are times when they should have turned to Lucas and said 'no'. But then they were founded on pushing the envelope, so maybe they thought they could pull it off?

 

[Frozenprince]

Time, resources, financial, physical constraints often prevent the visual effects of some of these films to be fully realized. I'm sure you like your work to be criticized by arm-chair internet experts on your work done under duress, yeah ?

You do...

You do understand how criticism works, right?

It's not even like this thread is saying CG is easy to do, all it is, is pointing out examples where it aged very poorly or never looked good to begin with because of whatever constraints they were under.

God forbid someone say that something that looks like ass, looks like ass.

I pitch, I'm a pitcher, it's what I do. People who talk baseball criticize pitchers more than ANYBODY ELSE IN THE SPORT and I'm sure 95% of them have no idea just how hard pitching is. But I don't immediately dismiss their opinions and critical views because they don't know that, because that's stupid.

I don't personally like making broad stroke arguments on a subject which I know nothing about. If you're going to criticized something, be more specific and maybe have a solution. At least, that's how we operate here in the industry because it's unprofessional to criticize something without offering some kind of viable solution. Yes, some of those visual effects look dated, but there were significant limitations placed on visual effects throughout its young history. Maybe understand the subject instead of posting a particularly bad frame from a bad vfx film will be better. I will fully admit I am more sensitive to this subject because I work in it, but I've seen too many hard working artists worked hard to create the visuals you see on films only for internet arm chair experts to cherry pick apart their work. I wouldn't do that to your work.

Then I really hope you've never been critical of anything in your entire life or you're going to look like a massive hypocrite right now,

 

[Undead]

Pretty much all of them as far as I'm concerned, I always get distracted by the CGI in movies, couldn't even make it through more than 10 mins of 300 because it was so bad.

 

[ResidentDante]

The answer from Lucasfilm has always been that it was actually cheaper to make CG Stormtroopers than it was to actually manufacture the outfits and have actors wear them. I don't know if that's really even true, given that thousands of cosplayers every year seem to produce stormtrooper armor at relatively low cost. Not to mention that any given shot only requires you to have 5-10 stormtroopers in the frame -- why not just make 5-10 costumes and share them amongst all the extras? Even if you need more troopers in a particular shot, you could just composite in more of them.

Even if you buy the line that it was cheaper to make CG troopers, it still kind of rings hollow as an excuse. The prequels weren't some low-budget indie production that was starved for money......why not just go all out and build actual costumes for some marginal extra cost?

Baffles me too.

 

[Randy Monk]

I'm going to have to call shenanigans on this one, don't recall it being in the movie at all.

 

[Zombine]

The CGI in X-Men is so fucking bad it ruins the movie. If I go back and watch these films, I start with X-2.

http://youtu.be/VagrTsi5vsw

Bonus:

 

[HazySaiyan]

Spy Kids movies had shitty visual effects even for the time though. I remember thinking how ugly it was as a kid.

 

[TheDanger]

I don't personally like making broad stroke arguments on a subject which I know nothing about. If you're going to criticized something, be more specific and maybe have a solution. At least, that's how we operate here in the industry because it's unprofessional to criticize something without offering some kind of viable solution. Yes, some of those visual effects look dated, but there were significant limitations placed on visual effects throughout its young history. Maybe understand the subject instead of posting a particularly bad frame from a bad vfx film will be better. I will fully admit I am more sensitive to this subject because I work in it, but I've seen too many hard working artists worked hard to create the visuals you see on films only for internet arm chair experts to cherry pick apart their work. I wouldn't do that to your work.



and you get people defending said criticism in just about all those professions too. I'm just doing that for the vfx professions as I work in it.

It's like saying you can only criticize movies if you know how to make one.

 

[El Daniel]

Attack of the Clones

Is this really from the movie? Looks beyond awful.

 

[Chuckie]

It's like saying you can only criticize movies if you know how to make one.

Or anything for that matter.

So if a family member dies because a botched surgery.. I can't criticize because I have no idea how to do it myself.

 

[newtypepilot]

The answer from Lucasfilm has always been that it was actually cheaper to make CG Stormtroopers than it was to actually manufacture the outfits and have actors wear them. I don't know if that's really even true, given that thousands of cosplayers every year seem to produce stormtrooper armor at relatively low cost. Not to mention that any given shot only requires you to have 5-10 stormtroopers in the frame -- why not just make 5-10 costumes and share them amongst all the extras? Even if you need more troopers in a particular shot, you could just composite in more of them.

Even if you buy the line that it was cheaper to make CG troopers, it still kind of rings hollow as an excuse. The prequels weren't some low-budget indie production that was starved for money......why not just go all out and build actual costumes for some marginal extra cost?

I think it's more that at the time Lucas was just too obsessed with using green screens and relying too much on CG. I'm pretty sure it would cost more time and resource creating the digital assets and animating them than shooting actors in trooper costume. Sure ILM can do it, but it obviously wasn't the best choice, but no one was going to tell George that.

 

[JoeNut]

fucking hell guys i was saving myself for deep blue sea

 

[Cheerilee]

The answer from Lucasfilm has always been that it was actually cheaper to make CG Stormtroopers than it was to actually manufacture the outfits and have actors wear them. I don't know if that's really even true, given that thousands of cosplayers every year seem to produce stormtrooper armor at relatively low cost. Not to mention that any given shot only requires you to have 5-10 stormtroopers in the frame -- why not just make 5-10 costumes and share them amongst all the extras? Even if you need more troopers in a particular shot, you could just composite in more of them.

Even if you buy the line that it was cheaper to make CG troopers, it still kind of rings hollow as an excuse. The prequels weren't some low-budget indie production that was starved for money......why not just go all out and build actual costumes for some marginal extra cost?

There was a thread a month ago about George Lucas "morphing" two different Hayden Christensen performances together because he liked the merged performance better than anything the human actor provided, and then he composited it into a scene in Episode 3 (where Anakin wasn't even the main focus).

Posted in that thread was a behind the scenes clip of Episode 1, where George plays "create a shot" in the editing room and mixes and matches individual actors performances using compositing.

He absolutely could have made one clonetrooper costume and had one extra play five-to-ten clonetroopers. But why hire an extra for that when you can just build a goddamn robot in your computer and it acts exactly the way you want it to act. George hates actors. He thinks they're an unwanted obstruction standing between his script and the camera lens. Why wouldn't he replace faceless stormtroopers with CG. I'm surprised he didn't replace C3PO with CG. Oh, wait...

 

[Setsuna]

Is this really from the movie? Looks beyond awful.

Its a small scene taking place during the largest ground battle in movie history

 

[Zepp Twofist]

http://i.imgur.com/Z1EDO7K.webm

I remember thinking this looked terrible when it first came out.

 

[mrklaw]

There was a thread a month ago about George Lucas "morphing" two different Hayden Christensen performances together because he liked the merged performance better than anything the human actor provided, and then he composited it into a scene in Episode 3 (where Anakin wasn't even the main focus).

Posted in that thread was a behind the scenes clip of Episode 1, where George plays "create a shot" in the editing room and mixes and matches individual actors performances using compositing.

He absolutely could have made one clonetrooper costume and had one extra play five-to-ten clonetroopers. But why hire an extra for that when you can just build a goddamn robot in your computer and it acts exactly the way you want it to act. George hates actors. He thinks they're an unwanted obstruction standing between his script and the camera lens. Why wouldn't he replace faceless stormtroopers with CG. I'm surprised he didn't replace C3PO with CG. Oh, wait...

Well he's already have the stormtrooper models on the computer for the big fancy shots, so it probably wouldn't cost much to reuse them.

But that 'digital editing' is just odd. Editing shouldn't be about changing entire shots after the fact. You should have shot it correctly in the first place

 

[| Praxis |]

Or anything for that matter.

So if a family member dies because a botched surgery.. I can't criticize because I have no idea how to do it myself.

But you don't realise the stress the surgeons were under, they are working with the duress of the medical system. Screw you armchair internet experts.

 

[dbztrk]

Independence Day.

 

[HazySaiyan]

Is this really from the movie? Looks beyond awful.

Legit thought it was from Clone Wars at first.

 

[AlphaDump]

Jaws 3 glass break scene. The ultimate.

 

[Jarnet87]

The CGI in X-Men is so fucking bad it ruins the movie. If I go back and watch these films, I start with X-2.

http://youtu.be/VagrTsi5vsw

Bonus:

Only Brian Singer could have designed such an awful Sabertooth costume.

The Matrix Reloaded special effects are so terrible. That smith fight looked like something straight out of the 90s CGI.

 

[Jack The Nipper]

wow, when i saw this movie a few weeks ago i was thinking this movie was made in like 89

but 1996 and snes level cg, damn.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3aD9zpME3I

wait for the shark

 

[Daigoro]

The shark in Jaws looks terrible. Stiff and robotic as fuck.

And it still looks miles better than all the cgi crap mentioned in this thread.

ALL cgi in films until very recently has aged very poorly, and the stuff we have now will prob look dated as well in a few. Its gotten so much better though.

Gci has been a blight on films for a while now, but a necessary one.

 

[TAJ]

Those X-Men fireworks are beyond terrible. There's basically no way they looked at any reference to jog their shitty memories of what it should look like. If they did then they're so unobservant that I don't know how they get through life.

 

[Son Of D]

Attack of the Clones

I thought this was a gif from a CG cutscene from a PS2/GC/Xbox game at first. Is that really how it looked in the film?

Spy Kids movies had shitty visual effects even for the time though. I remember thinking how ugly it was as a kid.

Yeah. Same here. I noticed that in Rodriguez' kids films. The CG is cheap as fuck and often gimmicky (Spy Kids 3 and Sharkboy and Lavagirl have CG things just pop out at the screen because they were in 3D which is just awkward when watching in 2D).