CGI - When did photorealism become so important?

[Elentári]

I saw that too. About the only thing notable about the article, unfortunately.

Really? I don't pretend to know anything about CGI techniques, but perhaps those that do can weigh in on this...

“For Avatar we came up with a nice way to do global illumination called spherical harmonics lighting,” Letteri elaborates as Empire nods in — what is hopefully — a knowing fashion. “In that time we’ve been working on new rendering software we’ve written in house that can handle all the global light properly. We actually rolled it out in a couple of shots on Desolation as a test. We used it extensively on Apes and we’re going across the board on the final Hobbit. You’ll really see its big, full-scale roll out on the Battle Of Five Armies.”

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I saw that too. About the only thing notable about the article, unfortunately.

Really? I don't pretend to know anything about CGI techniques, but perhaps those that do can weigh in on this...

“For Avatar we came up with a nice way to do global illumination called spherical harmonics lighting,” Letteri elaborates as Empire nods in — what is hopefully — a knowing fashion. “In that time we’ve been working on new rendering software we’ve written in house that can handle all the global light properly. We actually rolled it out in a couple of shots on Desolation as a test. We used it extensively on Apes and we’re going across the board on the final Hobbit. You’ll really see its big, full-scale roll out on the Battle Of Five Armies.”

I stand (or rather sit) corrected, particularly since that passage is particularly relevant to the discussion of the past several posts!

Keep keeping me honest, Elentári! (I hope you don't mind me addressing you by your full name; it tickles my fancy to be able to do so correctly without actually having to type the accented a).

[Primula Baggins]

I know nothing, but Google found this spherical harmonic lighting wiki (brief):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_ ... c_lighting

Spherical harmonic (SH) lighting is a family of real-time rendering techniques that can produce highly realistic shading and shadowing with comparatively little overhead.

By "overhead" I would guess they mean computing time/power, which is always a limiting factor in CGI work.

[Elentári]

Keep keeping me honest, Elentári! (I hope you don't mind me addressing you by your full name; it tickles my fancy to be able to do so correctly without actually having to type the accented a).

Not a problem, Voronwë...glad to be of service.

(Of course, that ë is the reason most people shorten your name in so many different ways, too!)

[Passdagas the Brown]

Letteri's comments translated into simian speak:

"The Battle of Five Armies will be nearly all digital, with all digital lighting."

I would rather play a video game myself than pay money to watch PJ play one for three hours.

[yovargas]

I would rather play a video game myself than pay money to watch PJ play one for three hours.

Even if he's playing on the PS7?

[kzer_za]

I think the lighting in the Azog shot looks really bad. Oversaturated bloom to the max - it could be called "videogamey", but I think even videogames generally get castigated when they overuse that type of lighting (if they're not going for a highly stylized non-realistic look)!

Everything I've heard about the BoFA sounds like it epitomizes my comment on filmmakers being too excited about what they can do and not thinking enough about whether they should ("cool gadgets", for example). It doesn't need to outdo Pelennor.

[Passdagas the Brown]

To be fair, PJ has always over-lit his scenes (see Weathertop, and practically all the night scenes from LOTR, for example). I think it may be a Lesnie thing as well (and, perhaps, an Alan Lee thing, as Lee's watercolor-esque aesthetic dials down the contrast significantly). Or, its a high res thing. Or all of the above.

But that Azog and orc army shot does look like my brightness is turned up way too high. There's practically no contrast, and there's too much detail in the shadows.

[yovargas]

Oversaturated bloom to the max - it could be called "videogamey", but I think even videogames generally get castigated when they overuse that type of lighting(

Yeah, I heard the term "bloom" from video games too and early on games were using it a lot to sorta show off that they could do it but eventually people got kinda sick of it and there's a lot less bloom used nowadays. The Azog shot and the ram charge shot are going nutso with the bloom though so it seems PJ isn't sick of it yet (maybe he should play more actual video games ).

[Passdagas the Brown]

yov wins this round, I think!

[Smaug's voice]

The last part of Avengers is almost 80% CGI with CGI space armies and CGI caterpillar-giants coming out of CGI portals to fight CGI superheroes and CGI nukes and in the process crashing thousands and thousands of CGI buildings and CGI vehicles, scattering CGI people.This goes on for well about 40 minutes and yet people like that kind of thing, even if it is completely artificial, and not the TH CGI-Extravaganza? Why?
The CGI for the portal, the buildings and falling rabble especially isn't convincing at all.
Is it just because it's a superhero movie?

[Alatar]

Most people outside Tolkien Fandom don't have much of a problem with the CGI in The Hobbit either to be fair.

[yovargas]

In Avengers case I'm gonna say it was because the action was phenomenally well directed. The action was fun, memorable, exciting, and well paced. A lot of mega-giant-action set pieces can become just a chaotic jumble of stuff but Avengers managed to avoid that while going mega huge, something too many directors have a hard time doing. (DoS's grand finale suffered a decent bit from that sense of "What's happening right now??" IMO).

[Passdagas the Brown]

The last part of Avengers is almost 80% CGI with CGI space armies and CGI caterpillar-giants coming out of CGI portals to fight CGI superheroes and CGI nukes and in the process crashing thousands and thousands of CGI buildings and CGI vehicles, scattering CGI people.This goes on for well about 40 minutes and yet people like that kind of thing, even if it is completely artificial, and not the TH CGI-Extravaganza? Why?
The CGI for the portal, the buildings and falling rabble especially isn't convincing at all.
Is it just because it's a superhero movie?

IMO, because people expect more of a Tolkien adaptation (and Peter Jackson). The Hobbit isn't just some fun Marvel-esque "let's have all sorts of people from our franchises get together and fight it out, and add a dose of Whedon humor" kind of thing. It's Tolkien. It should be better than all that other stuff.

I can forgive Whedon for not taking Avengers very seriously, because you shouldn't take it seriously. It's popular entertainment, and it's best served glitzy and funny. I can't forgive PJ for treating Tolkien the same way (though occasionally, he does get it very, very right, and that's the main reason I haven't written him off entirely).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The last part of Avengers is almost 80% CGI with CGI space armies and CGI caterpillar-giants coming out of CGI portals to fight CGI superheroes and CGI nukes and in the process crashing thousands and thousands of CGI buildings and CGI vehicles, scattering CGI people.This goes on for well about 40 minutes and yet people like that kind of thing, even if it is completely artificial, and not the TH CGI-Extravaganza? Why?
The CGI for the portal, the buildings and falling rabble especially isn't convincing at all.
Is it just because it's a superhero movie?

IMO, because people expect more of a Tolkien adaptation (and Peter Jackson). The Hobbit isn't just some fun Marvel-esque "let's have all sorts of people from our franchises get together and fight it out, and add a dose of Whedon humor" kind of thing. It's Tolkien. It should be better than all that other stuff.

I can forgive Whedon for not taking Avengers very seriously, because you shouldn't take it seriously. It's popular entertainment, and it's best served glitzy and funny. I can't forgive PJ for treating Tolkien the same way (though occasionally, he does get it very, very right, and that's the main reason I haven't written him off entirely).

At the end of the day, despite the (sometimes good-natured and tongue-in-cheek) arguments, are perspectives are basically identical.

Just don't tell anyone!

[Smaug's voice]

PassdaGas, I don't think anyone is denying that. I agree that Marvels should have far
more lunacy than The Hobbit.

But that does not excuse the fact that both have quite bad CGI and yet one is said to be a "synthetic, CGI-overload" while the other is not
simply on the premise for being mindless entertainment.
Quality of CGI has nothing to do with the type of film, whether a Tolkien one or Superhero one. It's odd to criticize a film saying that
it looks very fake, while saying nothing about the CGI (of the same quality) in another.

So if one felt that the CGI of TH is objectively bad, I would think one would also feel that the Avengers CGI was objectively and equally bad.
And not choosing to criticize that particular element would be playing favorites, imo.

[Passdagas the Brown]

I choose not to criticize the CGI in Avengers not because I am playing favorites, but because I don't care.

On the other hand, I care about the story of the Hobbit, and how it is adapted to screen.

[Passdagas the Brown]

The last part of Avengers is almost 80% CGI with CGI space armies and CGI caterpillar-giants coming out of CGI portals to fight CGI superheroes and CGI nukes and in the process crashing thousands and thousands of CGI buildings and CGI vehicles, scattering CGI people.This goes on for well about 40 minutes and yet people like that kind of thing, even if it is completely artificial, and not the TH CGI-Extravaganza? Why?
The CGI for the portal, the buildings and falling rabble especially isn't convincing at all.
Is it just because it's a superhero movie?

IMO, because people expect more of a Tolkien adaptation (and Peter Jackson). The Hobbit isn't just some fun Marvel-esque "let's have all sorts of people from our franchises get together and fight it out, and add a dose of Whedon humor" kind of thing. It's Tolkien. It should be better than all that other stuff.

I can forgive Whedon for not taking Avengers very seriously, because you shouldn't take it seriously. It's popular entertainment, and it's best served glitzy and funny. I can't forgive PJ for treating Tolkien the same way (though occasionally, he does get it very, very right, and that's the main reason I haven't written him off entirely).

At the end of the day, despite the (sometimes good-natured and tongue-in-cheek) arguments, are perspectives are basically identical.

Just don't tell anyone!