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Do people really find CGI convincing?


temnix

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I've got to wonder. The best computer-made monsters in movies I've seen were sort of like the real thing, until they moved or light fell on them. The texture, the geometry are all wrong, and there is absolutely no interaction with the environment. In the 1980s and 90s they used CGI for things that couldn't be created otherwise - floating letters, holograms, weird spaceship battles, but ever since the fashion took in the 2000s to use computers to render what really exists, quality has been out of the window. I look at these wonderful enormous balloons from "Batman" (1989) and I think: "Nowadays they would draw these on the computer, no question about it," and they would look like crap. Only nowadays there probably wouldn't be prop makers creative enough to come up with such designs to begin with. But do people really even suspend their disbelief when they see these gods who raise lightning bolts that don't even throw light on their arms or smooth werewolves with all the mass of a hallucination? Or ships in "Dunkirks"?

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6 hours ago, Ardanis said:

... from actual footage.

You do know that no matter whaty kind of window you are looking it from, it's not actually happening in there, right ? Unless we are talking about augmented reality device and then only part of it is real. Or is it.

So for example, looki here.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola
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It’s good enough to let people enjoy the story? Like, people are criticizing the appearance of SPOILER in The Mandalorian, but it didn’t bother me. I didn’t look too close (luckily only watching in HD, not 4K) and it was a nice scene. Or take the Marvel movies. They are almost entirely CGI. Some if the actors basically aren’t even on the screen (Hulk, Spider Man). But who cares? It’s a live-action comic book, representing hand-drawn books. If you like the kind of schlock that Marvel has been putting out, then the CGI is perfectly serviceable, way better than it was when I was a kid. 

(Which is not to say it’s a good thing. The freedom to make an adequate depiction of anything they can imagine makes lots of movie producers forget the power of practical effects, even if it means working under constraints. For me, I much prefer the Daredevil/Jessica Jones/Luke Cage shows to the cartoony Avengers movies.)

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1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

(luckily only watching in HD, not 4K)

His face was way too dark... but, other that that, it was ok-ish. Fun fact, looking at the puppet in the show, it looks quite convincing, as in there's no always obvious puppetier ... and he needs to be drawn out of all of the material, so that's guite convincing CGI too, even if it's made easier with green screen effects. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

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CGI has its place, though using it to construct like 90% of a scene seems to usually look phony and visually exhausting to me (but I don't really care that much, since I'm not the type to really watch the big-budget CGI action movies/shows anyways, and have not kept up with anything Star Wars or Marvel or pretty much any other big movie franchise - I enjoy smaller movies more, so that's what I stick with). From what I've seen of human CGI examples, it seems to be currently at an uncanny valley level that's weird, creepy, and immediately scene-ruining due to it garnering a "...wait, is this CGI?" sort of reaction and taking you out of the movie. We'll have to see if that's something that's ever conquered at a very high detail like a cinematic experience would demand - funnily, lower detail video using like face-replacement software can seem less phony because of the lower detail nature and our brains having already been trained to fill in or at least ignore the missing details, but the same can't be said when we're looking at extremely high quality footage like you'd see in big budget films.

Edited by Bartimaeus
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On 12/22/2020 at 5:37 PM, Ardanis said:

Unless we're talking about grindhouse level budgets, modern CGI is indistinguishable from actual footage. That's all there's to say imo.

Really? Which ones, for example? I watched this trailer with Keanu Reeves not long ago, where he got digitized, and that's supposed to be the latest, and none of that convinces me one bit. True, I broke off before the point where Reeves would appear, because there were other figures on the screen, moving and grunting and pushing each other, and none of that impressed me, so Reeves would be done on the same level. Bad physics are the surest giveaway, because real bodies are compressible, they flatten and stretch out all the time, deflate and inflate, and these textured polygons are like stone commendatores from Don Juan, in hosiery. But even scenes are too flat and predictable - or predictably unpredictable. Nothing in life is or looks right the way CGI is and looks right. I don't know, maybe my peripheral vision is still too good and catches all these side details people are used to ignoring, but even if I can't point out what's wrong, a scene that looks devoid of any novelty or surprise like a stale Hades is a cue for my subconscious: this is plastic. Then again, CGI's realism may just benefit from extreme "curving": the standard of reality is so low, audiences don't find it too much of a stretch to accept a couple more gimmicks. I mean, some people actually talk to their robot dogs and voice assistants, Alices and whatnots. What kind of shift in brain matter does that require?

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CGI is best used sparingly. It doesn't matter how big the budget is or how "good" it is, its always obvious there isn't really anything there. You either need to pair it with practical effects, or for just small touch ups.  All CGI looks bad after a year or two anyway. Movie effects kinda peaked in the 80s with the best practical effects. CGI is still playing catch up. Directors also seem to forget how to make scenes look good when its all CGI. They just point the camera directly at the thing and call it a day.

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CGI can work amazingly, but it can't carry all the effects on its own. Let practical effects do all the heavy lifting, and use CGI selectively to seal the illusion. The shape of water is a good example. Its a practical effects fish suit with CGI eyes to give it emotion. It works really well. 

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I must be in the minority, but I love CGI. It can allow you to do things that you can't otherwise.  I say use CGI or traditional techniques in whatever fashion best accomplishes what you're trying to do.

Reality is unrealistic, oftentimes. There's a saying among writers: "Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense."

I've seen movies that pride themselves on "no CGI" that seemed far less realistic than movies that were heavy on the CGI. It's a tool and can be used well or poorly, just like an actor in a costume. 

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I would agree with @Thacobell, CGI can be a great tool to enhance practical effects, but, I feel the one thing even bad practical effects have over CGI is at least something is real and there's an actual physical craftsmanship involved. There is a charm to that, whereas CGI will always have a feeling of sterility, which just grows and grows the more movies basically become computer animations. I also haven't seen many movies actually use CGI at a high budget level artistically, Blade Runner 2049 is probably the strongest example of a movie where I was genuinely struck by the visuals on offer and that they carried with me after I saw it. But most Hollywood movies on that level are not very artistically expressive. 

The Shape of Water is another good example... I didn't really like the movie, but the effects were tastefully done and a strong aspect of it. 

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I can say this for CGI, computer effects really can bring to the screen something that couldn't be in any other way. I don't mean anything small, handheld or lifelike. A doll wolf doesn't necessarily look more convincing than a computer wolf, it may even always be a little ridiculous, but the computer wolf is not like the real thing either. Even if the CGI people copy the animal from photographs to make a still form, it shows itself false the moment it moves. But when it comes to scenes with masses of objects already artificial, identical elements or things that simply don't exist in reality (rays, projections, appearing screens and so on), there is no substitute. In the 2nd season of "Lexx," in the last episode, there are enormous battles between Mantrid drones and 790 drones, where thousands of these mechanical arms fly at each other and battle. They are all simple CGI creations and don't pretend to be anything else, but they give viewer's consent enough footholds. There is no way something like that could be done with practical effects, even though the model for the drones shown close and handled by the characters is a real arm from plastic and polyurethane foam. This is not the purpose for which CGI is used today, however. Instead of complementing reality, they replace it.

Speaking of wolves, using real animals is another part of "effects" that seems forgotten today. In "Wolf," the 1992 or 1994 movie with Jack Nicholson, there is a scene with a number of them advancing on the hero and one of them even pretending to bite him. Then they run away. Obviously some animal handlers were involved. Why not use more of that instead of a fake wolf? Because a fake wolf is cheaper, because all the good animal handlers have probably retired, because there would too much red tape to clear before bringing on set animals - who are probably endangered, too... Yada yada, the typical "make it cheaper make it faster" shit. I'm not really as flabbergasted at this as I was when I started the topic, though. I wish I was. But I understand now that the viewer who would scoff at today's CGI, like myself, is also a dying breed. Today's young audience doesn't care about realism, because it grew up on computer games, and for many other reasons. After all, everything else around is fake too, from food to politicians. They are all poured of the same virtual metaplastic.

 

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