Definitely never underestimate how much work the animators do. There is so much fine tuning and artistic intent required to take footage of a guy crawling around and mugging and make that look convincing with physiology that is very different than a human's
So true - this video seriously under represents the incredible talent and artistry demonstrated by the small army of VFX artists and animators that create these projects. Don't get me wrong Andy Serkis is a phenomenal actor, but without a top notch VFX studio translating his performance data on to a CG character it'll still look pants
@@quuu42 exactly. I could rent a mocap suit, download the best chimp model I can fjnd into unreal engine and map it to the data from the suit, and no matter how much effort into tapping into my primal ape energy it's going to look hilariously bad. Serkis was an award winning stage and screen actor and is probably better than anyone at capturing the nuances of mom-human characters, but he simply does not have the body or face of a chimp, so a lot of work needs to go into translating his performance into something that looks natural
back in the days of DVDs , in a random movie I bought there was an extras behind the scenes special in regards of mo-cap and how animators often fight with the jank of realistic motion and try to enhance it in a way that often goes unnoticed.
Yeah, characters like Gollum still required basically all hand-animated facial expressions. The performance capture was used as a guide, rather than something you could just slap on and call a final product.
i do not think it's a coincidence that 2/3 of the good CGI examples here were portrayed by andy serkis - the man is a machine, an absolutely phenomenal actor whether CGI'ed or not. imo an absolute shame that he doesn't get more credit for his roles. dude's a legend
He does have enough credit, even too much for what he does. He repeatedly minimized the role of animators, referring to vfx as digital makeup. Hype went up to his head :/
As the other comments suggest, it's not Andy that is the coincidence... this doesn't detract from his talent at all as an actor. But it's the fact that Weta and ILM are working on those characters. They're two of the biggest and longest standing VFX studios in the industry. If you truly want to learn more about VFX, you'll see that actually there are many in the industry who don't appreciate Andy, because he claimed too much credit on his own without giving credit where it's due to the tireless VFX artists and animators who complemented his performances with hand-animation. Again, it's not a knock against Andy, but most people (including actors and even filmmakers who don't work in post-production) don't understand the true behind the scenes. The truth is that Andy's characters are, of course, built off his base performance. But there's a lot of artistic interpretation from animators to then complete the mocap data. Even with the latest performance capture techniques, even from use cases like Avatar 2 or Unreal engine 5 cinematic, there's still a lot of CG animators "finishing" the shot to add micro detail to the CG character.
Because while he's providing performance for the characters it's not really entirely him at the end of the day, It's the animators who share equal responsibility of translating his performance into the characters. I'd say it's 60% Andy and 40% the artists behind it. (I'm a CG artist btw)
Cats is a bad example - that was just horribly done CG, everything about it from the art direction to the general aesthetic to the overall quality of the production were all terrible
The Cats CGI is actually pretty amazing. It's incredible what they had to do and how they pulled that off while being overworked and underpaid. It just looks like hot garbage bc the designs just don't work and bc they had absolutely no freedom to adapt and change performances to suit the design better. Everything had to be EXACTLY as shot, since they had to use the plate photography of faces and hands.
@@Nejvyn Big whoopee, they didn't have much time and they still got it in, so the CGI is amazing. No it's not. E.T. The Extraterrestrial video game from 1982 is not an amazing game whatsoever, even for its time. And it's certainly not amazing because it somehow was programmed by one person in six weeks. What matters is the end result, (which is an unfortunate situation for the artists that are caught in the middle, but I digress.)
@@cinemagoose No, it's not good bc they had little time, but it's even more impressive due to that. The fur looks lifelike, the lighting fits the set lighting, the compositing into the plate photography is convincing, the paintouts are seamless. It's just ugly as fuck.
Strongly disagree with your avatar 2 statement "that we are never under the illusion it is a real world" Multiple times throughout A2 I forgot I was watching CG, I think it was one of that movies biggest strengths, managing strong character scenes into a CG cutscene and having the audience forget we were watching a cutscene.
Whenever I saw Koba on screen it truly did feel like a real bonobo. And the way the animators were able to capture the actors face expressions was AMAZING. I remember seeing Koba switch from pretending to be a goofy ape to his true self in the warehouse scene. It was terrifying. Dune also has some incredible CGI, my brain immediately gave in. I guess it’s also because they mixed it with some practical stuff.
Dune did something pretty wacky, they actually took the finished movie (CGI included) and transferred it onto 35mm film before converting it _back_ to IMAX.
I feel that instead of just using full CGI, a mix of practical and visual effects works best. Yes CGI has gotten to the point where it's so good it doesn't suck you out of a movie. But I feel the perfect blend of the two techniques can create amazing visuals. So when pursuing in the way you would create a shot of a fictional character for example, they should try to use both practical and visual effects. I feel that using just practical and just visual isn't the way to go. So in a way yes I feel your correct the CGI does look undoubtably better than the masks of the apes in the old Planet of the Ape Movies. If they were able to use visual effects of our day and age back then and were to blend the two techniques, I think it could look very real.
I would say that for the apes its better to go fully CG specifically because its apes, humans cant replicate the movements of actual apes realistically and you cant get apes to act in your movie obviously, so for the most realistic outcome for film like planet of the apes, the most realistic way to portray the apes is actually full CG
Practical and CG effects have a number of synergies when used in combination. It gives the CG artists, actors and cinematographers great reference, eases the difficulty of blending practical and computer-generated effects, affords greater directability than practical effects, and still allows you to achieve visuals that would be impractical to achieve in camera.
I think it's important to mention that artists and animators do a lot of heavy lifting. The motion and performance capture get them a really good starting point, but it by no means is anything close to a finished animation.
I think POTA is a great example of why Practical effects are just as important. The movie only looks real because the environment is real. The problem is overusing cgi then you can tell it’s fake.
I just think its simple. Some practical effects are good, some are lazy, some are just bad, and its the same with CGI. its just easier to judge CGI, as all the work i done on a computer, atleast thats what most people think. When something is done right, whatever it is, people will like it.
I will always appreciate the time in my life when I met Andy Sirkis at a mo cap studio trip in London. He's the most friendliest man ever and would be more than happy to explain things to you personally if you didn't understand something. He really is one of a kind! 😊
Some of the main ways to sell a convincing CGI character is by grounding the aesthetic presentation with gravitational limitations to what an actual lens connected to the physical weight of a real camera legitimately operated by human reflexes would be able to achieve in capturing real-time kineticism, motion blur, light exposures, flares, bokeh, and focal peremeters of genuine cinematographic configurations and happy flaws. Natural range of physical motion in the CGI produced performance is also key. Add atmospheric weather, obstructing objects, debris and elements - along with chiaroscuro tennibrism in the light and shadow play to the imagery - and it almost doesn't even matter how well rendered your cgi textures are. It will have versimilitude by proxy of attention to all those little details and nuances inherent to real life observation from photography. "Rise" doesn't adhere to this principle always, and the effect betrays the illusion every time the camera starts just swirling through space and around tries unencumbered and detached from natural timing and physics - it really undermines plausible suspension of disbelief. Rupert Wyatt is a good filmmaker in live-action productions, but he was clearly out of his depths when tasked to hold the overall vision for heavy reliance on VFX, and choose poorly in many key moments where he allowed CGI sequences to be untethered from the restraints of our known world experience. But Matt Reeves stuck to having a strictly disciplined approach which resulted in a sublime evocation of authenticity. Wes Ball also did exceptionally well adhering to restrictions on the methodology of his world building grandeur, proving his acumen well apt for such undertakings (high expectations for "Legend of Zelda" now).
Great video actually praising cgi, not trying to put it down like most media but the performance and motion capture technology is not really perfect and most of the time the actors movement still acts only as reference for the animators rather than full on 1 click and the animation is on the 3d model
The best shot in the entire apes series is the opening zoom out shot of dawn and you can truly see each grain of detail and you just get blown away by how much it has improved from rise
They're very well done, sure, but they don't hold a candle to the original Planet of the Apes movie ape effects. The prosthetics looked silly, and yet the performances had much more nuance and drama, because you were still looking at classically trained actors doing what they do best. Nuanced micro-gestures and eyes are something CG doesn't do well.
@_michantter_8671 appreciating is ok but lets be honest cgi can achive better result if done right. No amount of practicle can make apes look better than CGI one.
@@onepunchman7407 it depends what you use it for. Some things look way better practical. Sometimes cgi is the way to go. No one way is correct for everything.
My dad works as an animator to these motion capture scenes. They in fact do not come from the set as anywhere near perfect. Usually because the models aren’t human, so the movement needs to be adjusted. Like in avatar. Also the tech seriously struggles when it comes to characters interacting. They go through each other, and need an animators hand to go through frame by frame to correct. Obviously it’s more efficient and looks better than the alternative method of CGI, but studios like the public to believe that this technology does more for the movie than the animators. The unedited motion capture results can be really funny. Worth checking out.
I don't think there's a yes or no solution to visual effects. I get that like everything in art, there are things people generally accept as 'good ways' or 'bad ways' to do things, but I feel like when it comes to visual effects (and to the art of creating things that can trick the audience) these arguments are less valid than in other places. A lot of people use confirmation bias, or simply just past experience, to break down what they're seeing on the screen and how it was made. And that is a good thing, we learn from art and over time get a better understanding of how each part of a movie is made. But, what we're really proving is that we can connect the dots. It's not so much that something would look fake to someone from 1950, but that we as a society have been trained to spot the current techniques of modern day through constant exposure. I think that we expect way too much from visual effects, and ignore the flaws of older ones, and also write the rules of 'good and bad' effects too literally. At the end of the day - practical and visual effects can quite literally achieve the same things (even if the technology usually favors one or the other for each type of shot or series of effects) - it is just a question of how and when they are used. To me, a bad composite is just as egregious as a bad digital double. I think we overlook the simple errors that practical effects can make and focus instead on 'the plastic-y skin of CGI.' All in all, I think visual effects (usually) matter the least when it comes to a story, and I think in general our ideas on how to 'make the best' effects are less constructive than ones focusing on telling the best story or crafting the most compelling character. At the end of the day, there are so many ways to create visuals that fool the audience. But I think modern audiences tend to overlook the major mistakes and pitfalls of past effects. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people claim that forgoing CGI is the key to success, but then completely ignore the vast numbers of visual effects in movies that use them properly (for modern day), such as the new Star Wars, Dune, Top Gun, Rings of Power, etc. It's only when the effect fails that people claim that it's a problem. Just sharing my thoughts... love this channel btw, been watching for a long time, and thank you for uploading!
Cgi looks like video game cut scenes unreal engine yes amazing graphics for animation yes, but still it doesn’t look real when sharing the screen opposite live action actors on the same frame
I know this is a video about mostly the Apes, but thank you for including the "Let's get it done!" moment from Avatar 2, great character moment right there.
Practical is better than CGI is basically just survivorship bias, people only remember the good practical effects from the past and can't notice all the invisible well done CGI. But there's a massive misconception with how facial mocap is captured and transferred to the cg character, in reality, it's like 40-50% actor and rest is animator in the final result.
There still has yet to be a cg character that looks real to the eye. They're close enough that I can enjoy the performance, but they still look cg. I'm always slightly aware that is cg. Now I have seen good cg that looks better than bad practical, but the best practical effects still look better than the best cg.
A good example of cgi/animation creating a realistic performance is Rango and Fantastic mister fox They don't record audio in a booth but the actors actually act it all out and the animators use their acting as reference
Its not about them being better it is about the believability of them because practical effects usually look more real then CGI because they actually exist and CGI doesnt, and it is hard to make something look real that isnt there in first place but just an Computer generated image or animation. Greetings from Mars.
@@Bonzibud69 Keep believing in fairytales but my Martian eyes are wide open and I know what is and Looks Real and CGI isnt and will never be Real. Greetings from Mars.
i love watching early movies that used mocap and giggling at all the little points that animators added in the movie where they are moving around or dancing to show off there new tech
exactly. Many things done in CGI are almost impossible to do in real life. Even if they are possible, it'll still take tons of editing to make it look real. but I dont think CGI should be used for everything, such as basic backgrounds like interiors, etc. Unless that CGI background is unnoticeable. But alot of the time it is noticeable because the lighting doesnt 100% match the character
Cool video bro, but a big advertisement push has been how efective mocap translate into the pipeline, putting actors work over the animators work. with performance capture there still sooo much to clean up, and as you mentioned gollum needed in esence to fully animated based in the reference of the video of the actor. And having now the data helps more, but still the way we work with it is the same as the data doesnt translate too well from the physionomy of a human to an ape, so there is a lot of performance choices that are most important for a shot that always comes from an animator. For example the nose raising in a chimp, as is not something us human do, but is super important to get the physicality of an ape. So yeah, i feel that in the part of the research there should have been more emphasizing of animators work. Which I understand why you didnt as the behind the scenes always prioritice the actors over animators.
My favorite example of visual effects showcase is Gravity (2013). The choreography and spacecraft/suit detail is so realistic, and yet almost everything except the actor's faces is completely computer rendered.
I fully agree with this video, and I do believe that characters with an inhuman appearance that we are supposed to relate to on a human level should be portrayed using CGI or partial CGI, however this video doesn't discuss the use of practical effects for monsters, such as sammael and the angel of death in the hellboy films. I think that for both the sake of actors (as in supporting actors who need to react to a certain stimuli), as well as to ease off the workload for visual effects artists, some monsters (or characters too) should be portrayed with practical effects. The original planet of the apes films are largely a bad example of this, as the actors do not seem to be creature actors, as practical effect must be paired with an effective creature actor for the effect to be believable (EG doug jones). Anyway, cool video!! It would be sick as hell of you to do one on practical effects as well, and to show some good examples. Rock on dude :3
CG can look good. But here's the thing, it has to be done good. Otherwise, you get Cats or Alien Covenant. There are some effects that will only look good when it's practical. And as such, there's some effects that can only be done with CGI.
Same goes for practical too though... Or anything in general. "It has to be done well or it doesn't look good" I think people really overestimate the practical effects of 80s/90s movies because they only remember the good ones
I disagree. The new movies look too fake. The CGI is way too obvious and practical effects look much better when done correctly. 2001 A Space Odyssey had the most realistic apes ever filmed. The human apes in Burton's Planet of the apes are supposed to look more human than normal apes, as they have evolved and are a new species... I would've never made the apes with CGI and performance capture only, it never looks convincing. The human actors don't have the weight they need and the CGI is still not good enough to trick the human brain and the trained eye. There is Uncanny Valley despite not being human because we know how apes look, we know how fur looks and works. Real apes don't look like that in our real environment under real light... A hybrid approach would have been better, film real apes for realness and natural movement, use real suits and practical make-up and prosthetics for the needed acting and combine it with sessions of performance capture to enhance the face expressions further with CGI that blends with the practical masks, make up and body suits. That would look realistic and convincing... Avatar on the other hand not only looks much more real because the CGI is more advanced and has much more work and care but because all the creatures are alien and not human-like nor Earthy-animal-like, so there is no uncanny valley at all in Avatar despite being full CGI. In fact it being full CGI make the creatures work better as they don't need to integrate with real environments and real light most of the time.
i think that there is another reason for ranked modes feeling bad. that being that the meta isnt always or even usually isnt what we want to play, but if u want to win so play ranked it is the thing you ought to play.
I think generally, practical effects & makeup should be the default, and CGI should mostly be used where practical effects are impossible or to cover up the flaws in practical effects. As an example that I really liked, in the first Guillermo DelToro Hellboy movie the actor couldn’t see out of the Abe Sapien costume at all, and it had these big plastic eyes that didn’t look very believable so they just covered them with water-filled goggles so you couldn’t see how lifeless they looked. In the second movie, the Abe Sapien costume didn’t have eyes, and they just added them in with CGI, the end result being that the eyes were infinitely more expressive and were suitably wet & reflective so they still looked pretty real, plus the actor can now see what he’s doing and be more comfortable on set. But I really really appreciate the commitment to keeping things practical, with only supplemental CGI to make the practical effects more real. I can tell when it’s CGI and it didn’t need to be, and it kinda bugs me when I see it. Conversely, when I see an effect that blows me away it’s almost always mostly a practical effect, I think, “wow, they really actually did that in real physical space”
These days cg is often so good you can't actually tell though... Hence all the "we shot everything for real" marketing when things were definitely replaced with cgi
We are speeding towards a time when all characters are wholly digital, which is fine IMHO. I just do feel a bit sad that the incredible ingenuity of practical effects will become a bygone of this new era.
Even as an avid fan of practical effects, I have no problem with CHI. What I DO have a problem with is big studios using CGI to cut corners, and talented artists being mistreated and poorly compensated
One of the biggest complaints about post endgame mcu us the cgi. They reallt shot themselves in the foot by setting such a high bar in that movie, then not keeping it there or better. Really wish theyd give these artists all the time they need, because it makes such an enormous difference.
I feel like the Star Wars Aliens just work better as 3D models rather than puppets or costumes. Just gives the universe more diversity rather than making them all have two arms and two legs. They are not human, they shouldn't look like them. And you just don't really get that from costumes and puppets. Puppet Yoda just looks really fake. More than the 3D model.
Talking about uncanny valley you said an interesting thing, we're not apes to notice all the small flaws of apes' faces and movement in the movie. But i wonder if real apes watched the movie, would they be freaked out by the cg apes that we made? Would planet of the apes be for them like polar express is for us?
War actually looks better than Kingdom. You can tell in kingdom when they’re moving, it’s cgi. But when the characters are still and nuanced, it’s remarkable. 2017 still takes the cake tho
I don't think that the star wars prequel trilogy has bad visual effects. I think those films and their effects hold up tremendously well. They blend very seamlessly most of the time, whereas in the original trilogy, the matte lines are painfully obvious in all three films (that is, if you're watching the theatrical versions and not the computer-enhanced special editions)
Practical gollum, while he only appeared for a few seconds, looks so much better than cgi gollum. There is no creepiness to cgi gollum because you’re brain can tell it’s not real whether you’re thinking about it or not.
great message but animators r just as important as the actors as its not just minor tweaks the animators make to the motion capture and they contribute a lot more to the process of translating an actors face to a cg character
I say practical effects for are generally better and cooler for special and non special effects. That’s just my opinion. I’d rather see a crappy shot of a car explode for real than it being cgi.
Feel like you simplified the reality of performance capture, whilst yes the idea is that you can replicate the human facial movements 1:1 on let's say an ape, the reality is that an apes face is completely different to a humans so it takes A LOT of manual work by the animators to translate the effect over
No, 'FF: Spirits within' had cgi humans and it looked great for it's time, Akira also looked very good. So, if done well, cgi humans can work fine. It has lot to do with how much realism movie is aiming for and how consistently it sticks to that level of realism, also the sooner it is established in the movie the better. In the examples you mentioned, cgi human characters in star wars movie were introduced at later part of the film, I'm guessing the same happened in Irishman. It's like cgi human characters just walk out of nowehere in the middle of movie pretending to be 100% realistic, it just breaks the consistency and immersion of the film, which is why it feels off. Polar express was just badly animated, scorpion king was both badly animated and cgi character came in later part of the film. In planet of the apes, most apes are not cgied to look 100% realistic, which is established at beginnig of the film and then follows it consistently throughout, hence it works fine.
It actually made me so sad and angry to see Oppenheimer build and build so beautifully for so long right up to a glorified gas barrel explosion. What a waste of the tools that exist.
I think it depends on the application practical effects tend to age better but cgi is becoming more and more realistic over time. Also didn’t mention anything about what’s better just that it’s not convincing yet.
Practical effects is better than bad cgi, good cgi makes you wonder how its cgi and not practical effects I full thought davy jones was practical with robotic tentacles, it looked too real for me to realize it was cgi, and if it were practical, it'd likely be far worse
In the old planet of the apes movies I see a half human- half creature, something I haven't seen before so I accept it. In the new planet of the apes films what I think bothers me is that they totally look and move like real apes...and they talk! Like watching a dog or a cat talk, that kind of throws me off. Pirates of the Caribbean is great!!
Normal CGI humans have worked perfectly. You may not have noticed because, well, it worked. If you can point out the CG character in Logan (2017) without looking it up, you get a classic Marvel No Prize.
Who is your favourite CGI character?
The Avatar guys!
Jar Jar Binks of course!
@@graildemitrius6310 Roger Roger
De aged De Niro in The Irishman
Paddington Bear is probably my favourite. Though he was perhaps fully animated?
Definitely never underestimate how much work the animators do. There is so much fine tuning and artistic intent required to take footage of a guy crawling around and mugging and make that look convincing with physiology that is very different than a human's
So true - this video seriously under represents the incredible talent and artistry demonstrated by the small army of VFX artists and animators that create these projects. Don't get me wrong Andy Serkis is a phenomenal actor, but without a top notch VFX studio translating his performance data on to a CG character it'll still look pants
@@quuu42 exactly. I could rent a mocap suit, download the best chimp model I can fjnd into unreal engine and map it to the data from the suit, and no matter how much effort into tapping into my primal ape energy it's going to look hilariously bad.
Serkis was an award winning stage and screen actor and is probably better than anyone at capturing the nuances of mom-human characters, but he simply does not have the body or face of a chimp, so a lot of work needs to go into translating his performance into something that looks natural
back in the days of DVDs , in a random movie I bought there was an extras behind the scenes special in regards of mo-cap and how animators often fight with the jank of realistic motion and try to enhance it in a way that often goes unnoticed.
Yeah, characters like Gollum still required basically all hand-animated facial expressions. The performance capture was used as a guide, rather than something you could just slap on and call a final product.
i do not think it's a coincidence that 2/3 of the good CGI examples here were portrayed by andy serkis - the man is a machine, an absolutely phenomenal actor whether CGI'ed or not. imo an absolute shame that he doesn't get more credit for his roles. dude's a legend
100%
He does have enough credit, even too much for what he does. He repeatedly minimized the role of animators, referring to vfx as digital makeup. Hype went up to his head :/
I think mainly Weta and Industrial Light, Magic are the two VFX companies that know what they need to make vfx work in the environment.
As the other comments suggest, it's not Andy that is the coincidence... this doesn't detract from his talent at all as an actor. But it's the fact that Weta and ILM are working on those characters. They're two of the biggest and longest standing VFX studios in the industry.
If you truly want to learn more about VFX, you'll see that actually there are many in the industry who don't appreciate Andy, because he claimed too much credit on his own without giving credit where it's due to the tireless VFX artists and animators who complemented his performances with hand-animation. Again, it's not a knock against Andy, but most people (including actors and even filmmakers who don't work in post-production) don't understand the true behind the scenes. The truth is that Andy's characters are, of course, built off his base performance. But there's a lot of artistic interpretation from animators to then complete the mocap data.
Even with the latest performance capture techniques, even from use cases like Avatar 2 or Unreal engine 5 cinematic, there's still a lot of CG animators "finishing" the shot to add micro detail to the CG character.
Because while he's providing performance for the characters it's not really entirely him at the end of the day, It's the animators who share equal responsibility of translating his performance into the characters. I'd say it's 60% Andy and 40% the artists behind it. (I'm a CG artist btw)
Cats is a bad example - that was just horribly done CG, everything about it from the art direction to the general aesthetic to the overall quality of the production were all terrible
It's really just a matter of falling into the uncanny valley. They were too real to be cartoons but not realistic enough to be accepted as real.
The Cats CGI is actually pretty amazing. It's incredible what they had to do and how they pulled that off while being overworked and underpaid. It just looks like hot garbage bc the designs just don't work and bc they had absolutely no freedom to adapt and change performances to suit the design better. Everything had to be EXACTLY as shot, since they had to use the plate photography of faces and hands.
@@Nejvyn Big whoopee, they didn't have much time and they still got it in, so the CGI is amazing. No it's not. E.T. The Extraterrestrial video game from 1982 is not an amazing game whatsoever, even for its time. And it's certainly not amazing because it somehow was programmed by one person in six weeks. What matters is the end result, (which is an unfortunate situation for the artists that are caught in the middle, but I digress.)
@@cinemagoose No, it's not good bc they had little time, but it's even more impressive due to that. The fur looks lifelike, the lighting fits the set lighting, the compositing into the plate photography is convincing, the paintouts are seamless. It's just ugly as fuck.
The “cats” look more like barbie became a wookiee than actual cats
That actor who played Koba was fantastic.
Toby kebbell
He was also the main orc in a Warcraft movie
And kong
Fr
Agreed. He knew how to make a voice of a talking ape. He knew how to blend it. Plus the body moving. Genius.
Best CGI was done in Top Gun Maverick. It was so good the marketing people kept going on about how “it’s all practical effects”
Have you been watching 'No CGI is just Invisible CGI'? Ah, it's just so fascinating!
@@rhimiles That whole series was worth the watch. I highly recommend it myself.
@@rhimiles Yes, it's the reason why OP said the CGI was so good
Strongly disagree with your avatar 2 statement "that we are never under the illusion it is a real world"
Multiple times throughout A2 I forgot I was watching CG, I think it was one of that movies biggest strengths, managing strong character scenes into a CG cutscene and having the audience forget we were watching a cutscene.
Whenever I saw Koba on screen it truly did feel like a real bonobo. And the way the animators were able to capture the actors face expressions was AMAZING. I remember seeing Koba switch from pretending to be a goofy ape to his true self in the warehouse scene. It was terrifying.
Dune also has some incredible CGI, my brain immediately gave in. I guess it’s also because they mixed it with some practical stuff.
Dune did something pretty wacky, they actually took the finished movie (CGI included) and transferred it onto 35mm film before converting it _back_ to IMAX.
My brain never even got to the point where it "gave in" lol. It was just acceptance since the first frame.
I feel that instead of just using full CGI, a mix of practical and visual effects works best. Yes CGI has gotten to the point where it's so good it doesn't suck you out of a movie. But I feel the perfect blend of the two techniques can create amazing visuals. So when pursuing in the way you would create a shot of a fictional character for example, they should try to use both practical and visual effects. I feel that using just practical and just visual isn't the way to go. So in a way yes I feel your correct the CGI does look undoubtably better than the masks of the apes in the old Planet of the Ape Movies. If they were able to use visual effects of our day and age back then and were to blend the two techniques, I think it could look very real.
Totally agree, that's why the vfx in Dune looks so realistic, because it's expertly blended with practical stuff too
I would say that for the apes its better to go fully CG specifically because its apes, humans cant replicate the movements of actual apes realistically and you cant get apes to act in your movie obviously, so for the most realistic outcome for film like planet of the apes, the most realistic way to portray the apes is actually full CG
Practical and CG effects have a number of synergies when used in combination.
It gives the CG artists, actors and cinematographers great reference, eases the difficulty of blending practical and computer-generated effects, affords greater directability than practical effects, and still allows you to achieve visuals that would be impractical to achieve in camera.
Dont forguet that a mix of both helps actors a lot
@@kony2494 60x planet apes is better that new one.
When CGI is done correctly you get amazing results. When CGI is rushed and done wrong you get something like the end fight of black panther
And the same exact thing applies to practical
@@slick8232thats.... what the comment said?
@@thesithofearth3617Do you have anything against confirmation?
@@aguilarrojasoctavio4402 it seemed more like they were trying to correct the commenter
I think it's important to mention that artists and animators do a lot of heavy lifting. The motion and performance capture get them a really good starting point, but it by no means is anything close to a finished animation.
I think POTA is a great example of why Practical effects are just as important. The movie only looks real because the environment is real. The problem is overusing cgi then you can tell it’s fake.
I just think its simple. Some practical effects are good, some are lazy, some are just bad, and its the same with CGI. its just easier to judge CGI, as all the work i done on a computer, atleast thats what most people think. When something is done right, whatever it is, people will like it.
Caesar might just be my favorite protagonist of all time, and it makes me sad that i'll never get to be a strong ass, genius ape like Caesar
I will always appreciate the time in my life when I met Andy Sirkis at a mo cap studio trip in London. He's the most friendliest man ever and would be more than happy to explain things to you personally if you didn't understand something. He really is one of a kind! 😊
3:45 t-posing Caesar
erm axualy, it's more of an A pose
Its an A-pose lol
@@gergopiroska5749
Some of the main ways to sell a convincing CGI character is by grounding the aesthetic presentation with gravitational limitations to what an actual lens connected to the physical weight of a real camera legitimately operated by human reflexes would be able to achieve in capturing real-time kineticism, motion blur, light exposures, flares, bokeh, and focal peremeters of genuine cinematographic configurations and happy flaws.
Natural range of physical motion in the CGI produced performance is also key.
Add atmospheric weather, obstructing objects, debris and elements - along with chiaroscuro tennibrism in the light and shadow play to the imagery - and it almost doesn't even matter how well rendered your cgi textures are. It will have versimilitude by proxy of attention to all those little details and nuances inherent to real life observation from photography.
"Rise" doesn't adhere to this principle always, and the effect betrays the illusion every time the camera starts just swirling through space and around tries unencumbered and detached from natural timing and physics - it really undermines plausible suspension of disbelief. Rupert Wyatt is a good filmmaker in live-action productions, but he was clearly out of his depths when tasked to hold the overall vision for heavy reliance on VFX, and choose poorly in many key moments where he allowed CGI sequences to be untethered from the restraints of our known world experience. But Matt Reeves stuck to having a strictly disciplined approach which resulted in a sublime evocation of authenticity. Wes Ball also did exceptionally well adhering to restrictions on the methodology of his world building grandeur, proving his acumen well apt for such undertakings (high expectations for "Legend of Zelda" now).
Great video actually praising cgi, not trying to put it down like most media but the performance and motion capture technology is not really perfect and most of the time the actors movement still acts only as reference for the animators rather than full on 1 click and the animation is on the 3d model
honestly the best channel I've seen in a long time, as entertaining as lemmino and in a nutshell
absolutely wonderful!! keep going
Tom Felton's American accent is amazing when he says "take your stinking pawRoff me" 😂
Hoping Henry Cavill watches this video before he makes the Warhammer 40k series.
The best shot in the entire apes series is the opening zoom out shot of dawn and you can truly see each grain of detail and you just get blown away by how much it has improved from rise
I feel like we have entered an era where we can literally go
Why not both and blend the practical effects with cgi to work out the finer details
Top Gun Maverick did
I have a feeling that most people bitching about CGI "ruining everything" are just redditors trying to copy people who actually grew up with nostalgia
They're very well done, sure, but they don't hold a candle to the original Planet of the Apes movie ape effects. The prosthetics looked silly, and yet the performances had much more nuance and drama, because you were still looking at classically trained actors doing what they do best. Nuanced micro-gestures and eyes are something CG doesn't do well.
Yes you're right they do look better. I am a sucker for puppets and practical make up though. And I will always appreciate when they go that route.
yeah don't get me wrong practical is great most of the time, but sometimes you need to go digital to get more subtle expressions.
@_michantter_8671 appreciating is ok but lets be honest cgi can achive better result if done right. No amount of practicle can make apes look better than CGI one.
I just saw hellboy 2 again and I remembered how PEAK the practical effects were in that movie
@@onepunchman7407 it depends what you use it for. Some things look way better practical. Sometimes cgi is the way to go. No one way is correct for everything.
My dad works as an animator to these motion capture scenes. They in fact do not come from the set as anywhere near perfect. Usually because the models aren’t human, so the movement needs to be adjusted. Like in avatar. Also the tech seriously struggles when it comes to characters interacting. They go through each other, and need an animators hand to go through frame by frame to correct. Obviously it’s more efficient and looks better than the alternative method of CGI, but studios like the public to believe that this technology does more for the movie than the animators. The unedited motion capture results can be really funny. Worth checking out.
I don't think there's a yes or no solution to visual effects. I get that like everything in art, there are things people generally accept as 'good ways' or 'bad ways' to do things, but I feel like when it comes to visual effects (and to the art of creating things that can trick the audience) these arguments are less valid than in other places. A lot of people use confirmation bias, or simply just past experience, to break down what they're seeing on the screen and how it was made. And that is a good thing, we learn from art and over time get a better understanding of how each part of a movie is made. But, what we're really proving is that we can connect the dots. It's not so much that something would look fake to someone from 1950, but that we as a society have been trained to spot the current techniques of modern day through constant exposure. I think that we expect way too much from visual effects, and ignore the flaws of older ones, and also write the rules of 'good and bad' effects too literally. At the end of the day - practical and visual effects can quite literally achieve the same things (even if the technology usually favors one or the other for each type of shot or series of effects) - it is just a question of how and when they are used. To me, a bad composite is just as egregious as a bad digital double. I think we overlook the simple errors that practical effects can make and focus instead on 'the plastic-y skin of CGI.' All in all, I think visual effects (usually) matter the least when it comes to a story, and I think in general our ideas on how to 'make the best' effects are less constructive than ones focusing on telling the best story or crafting the most compelling character. At the end of the day, there are so many ways to create visuals that fool the audience. But I think modern audiences tend to overlook the major mistakes and pitfalls of past effects. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people claim that forgoing CGI is the key to success, but then completely ignore the vast numbers of visual effects in movies that use them properly (for modern day), such as the new Star Wars, Dune, Top Gun, Rings of Power, etc. It's only when the effect fails that people claim that it's a problem. Just sharing my thoughts... love this channel btw, been watching for a long time, and thank you for uploading!
Cgi looks like video game cut scenes unreal engine yes amazing graphics for animation yes, but still it doesn’t look real when sharing the screen opposite live action actors on the same frame
I know this is a video about mostly the Apes, but thank you for including the "Let's get it done!" moment from Avatar 2, great character moment right there.
Totally, I’ll be an Avatar 2 defender till the day I die
Practical is better than CGI is basically just survivorship bias, people only remember the good practical effects from the past and can't notice all the invisible well done CGI.
But there's a massive misconception with how facial mocap is captured and transferred to the cg character, in reality, it's like 40-50% actor and rest is animator in the final result.
This is the first time I Iearn how CGI works into depth! Cool, great video!
"... because you actually got an actor crawling around in a floor"
Process to show a scene without motion capture 😂
the star wars prequels had tones of practical effects , they even have those insanely large sets of cities and interiors like in the lord of the rings
There still has yet to be a cg character that looks real to the eye. They're close enough that I can enjoy the performance, but they still look cg. I'm always slightly aware that is cg. Now I have seen good cg that looks better than bad practical, but the best practical effects still look better than the best cg.
The roto scope basis was not the animators brother. It was a singer and comedian Cab Calloway.
A good example of cgi/animation creating a realistic performance is Rango and Fantastic mister fox
They don't record audio in a booth but the actors actually act it all out and the animators use their acting as reference
combining the two concepts are the best way to get it
Its not about them being better it is about the believability of them because practical effects usually look more real then CGI because they actually exist and CGI doesnt, and it is hard to make something look real that isnt there in first place but just an Computer generated image or animation.
Greetings from Mars.
Cgi is always better than practical effects. Practical effects almost always look like shit- rubbery, plasticy,wooden, inflexible shit.
@@Bonzibud69 Keep believing in fairytales but my Martian eyes are wide open and I know what is and Looks Real and CGI isnt and will never be Real.
Greetings from Mars.
Thing is FX studios rarely get the resources and time they need to deliver.
i love watching early movies that used mocap and giggling at all the little points that animators added in the movie where they are moving around or dancing to show off there new tech
exactly. Many things done in CGI are almost impossible to do in real life. Even if they are possible, it'll still take tons of editing to make it look real.
but I dont think CGI should be used for everything, such as basic backgrounds like interiors, etc. Unless that CGI background is unnoticeable. But alot of the time it is noticeable because the lighting doesnt 100% match the character
Cool video bro, but a big advertisement push has been how efective mocap translate into the pipeline, putting actors work over the animators work. with performance capture there still sooo much to clean up, and as you mentioned gollum needed in esence to fully animated based in the reference of the video of the actor. And having now the data helps more, but still the way we work with it is the same as the data doesnt translate too well from the physionomy of a human to an ape, so there is a lot of performance choices that are most important for a shot that always comes from an animator. For example the nose raising in a chimp, as is not something us human do, but is super important to get the physicality of an ape. So yeah, i feel that in the part of the research there should have been more emphasizing of animators work. Which I understand why you didnt as the behind the scenes always prioritice the actors over animators.
My favorite example of visual effects showcase is Gravity (2013). The choreography and spacecraft/suit detail is so realistic, and yet almost everything except the actor's faces is completely computer rendered.
I fully agree with this video, and I do believe that characters with an inhuman appearance that we are supposed to relate to on a human level should be portrayed using CGI or partial CGI, however this video doesn't discuss the use of practical effects for monsters, such as sammael and the angel of death in the hellboy films. I think that for both the sake of actors (as in supporting actors who need to react to a certain stimuli), as well as to ease off the workload for visual effects artists, some monsters (or characters too) should be portrayed with practical effects. The original planet of the apes films are largely a bad example of this, as the actors do not seem to be creature actors, as practical effect must be paired with an effective creature actor for the effect to be believable (EG doug jones). Anyway, cool video!! It would be sick as hell of you to do one on practical effects as well, and to show some good examples. Rock on dude :3
CG can look good. But here's the thing, it has to be done good. Otherwise, you get Cats or Alien Covenant. There are some effects that will only look good when it's practical. And as such, there's some effects that can only be done with CGI.
I feel like the new Apes movies is one of those very few films where CGI can work by itself
Same goes for practical too though... Or anything in general. "It has to be done well or it doesn't look good"
I think people really overestimate the practical effects of 80s/90s movies because they only remember the good ones
I disagree. The new movies look too fake. The CGI is way too obvious and practical effects look much better when done correctly. 2001 A Space Odyssey had the most realistic apes ever filmed. The human apes in Burton's Planet of the apes are supposed to look more human than normal apes, as they have evolved and are a new species... I would've never made the apes with CGI and performance capture only, it never looks convincing. The human actors don't have the weight they need and the CGI is still not good enough to trick the human brain and the trained eye. There is Uncanny Valley despite not being human because we know how apes look, we know how fur looks and works. Real apes don't look like that in our real environment under real light...
A hybrid approach would have been better, film real apes for realness and natural movement, use real suits and practical make-up and prosthetics for the needed acting and combine it with sessions of performance capture to enhance the face expressions further with CGI that blends with the practical masks, make up and body suits.
That would look realistic and convincing...
Avatar on the other hand not only looks much more real because the CGI is more advanced and has much more work and care but because all the creatures are alien and not human-like nor Earthy-animal-like, so there is no uncanny valley at all in Avatar despite being full CGI. In fact it being full CGI make the creatures work better as they don't need to integrate with real environments and real light most of the time.
You were not convinced by the apes in rise, dawn, war and kingdom?
What a high standard you have bro
Im suprised there isnt a game based on planets of the apes that would be a great open world game if done correctly imo
i think that there is another reason for ranked modes feeling bad. that being that the meta isnt always or even usually isnt what we want to play, but if u want to win so play ranked it is the thing you ought to play.
great video!
I mean, people who cry about cgi are obviously not that bright. So why even take their wrong and irrelevant opinions remotely seriously?
I think generally, practical effects & makeup should be the default, and CGI should mostly be used where practical effects are impossible or to cover up the flaws in practical effects. As an example that I really liked, in the first Guillermo DelToro Hellboy movie the actor couldn’t see out of the Abe Sapien costume at all, and it had these big plastic eyes that didn’t look very believable so they just covered them with water-filled goggles so you couldn’t see how lifeless they looked. In the second movie, the Abe Sapien costume didn’t have eyes, and they just added them in with CGI, the end result being that the eyes were infinitely more expressive and were suitably wet & reflective so they still looked pretty real, plus the actor can now see what he’s doing and be more comfortable on set. But I really really appreciate the commitment to keeping things practical, with only supplemental CGI to make the practical effects more real. I can tell when it’s CGI and it didn’t need to be, and it kinda bugs me when I see it. Conversely, when I see an effect that blows me away it’s almost always mostly a practical effect, I think, “wow, they really actually did that in real physical space”
CGI is super powerful and is way too hated. If its cheaper, looks better, faster, or safer as CGI then it should be CGI.
These days cg is often so good you can't actually tell though... Hence all the "we shot everything for real" marketing when things were definitely replaced with cgi
Okay now I'm convinced one of the criteria of a great CGI is how well they can say "No.""
We are speeding towards a time when all characters are wholly digital, which is fine IMHO. I just do feel a bit sad that the incredible ingenuity of practical effects will become a bygone of this new era.
Wel... not being human avoids the uncanny valley a bit... but not even that saved CATS.
Did love the video!
Even as an avid fan of practical effects, I have no problem with CHI. What I DO have a problem with is big studios using CGI to cut corners, and talented artists being mistreated and poorly compensated
9:03 in short, its all about good lighting .....and how the 3d model reflects it.
One of the biggest complaints about post endgame mcu us the cgi. They reallt shot themselves in the foot by setting such a high bar in that movie, then not keeping it there or better. Really wish theyd give these artists all the time they need, because it makes such an enormous difference.
Hell yeah! Some love for CGI is always appreciate
I feel like the Star Wars Aliens just work better as 3D models rather than puppets or costumes. Just gives the universe more diversity rather than making them all have two arms and two legs. They are not human, they shouldn't look like them. And you just don't really get that from costumes and puppets. Puppet Yoda just looks really fake. More than the 3D model.
The makeup in the old ape movies have me nightmares as a kid
Talking about uncanny valley you said an interesting thing, we're not apes to notice all the small flaws of apes' faces and movement in the movie. But i wonder if real apes watched the movie, would they be freaked out by the cg apes that we made? Would planet of the apes be for them like polar express is for us?
I always had this fantasy that if I can go back to the time of the first Kingkang movie, and show people morden CG movies, and watch their reations.
i like polar express, planet of the apes (new and old) and pirate of the CRAB-BEAN
Over exposing literally shows the detail. You can't hide in the sun. Your premise is flawed.
When it comes to humans and animals, practical effects make the picture believable. Computer effects make creatures lifeless
War actually looks better than Kingdom. You can tell in kingdom when they’re moving, it’s cgi. But when the characters are still and nuanced, it’s remarkable. 2017 still takes the cake tho
Noone. Noone said that.
I don't think that the star wars prequel trilogy has bad visual effects. I think those films and their effects hold up tremendously well. They blend very seamlessly most of the time, whereas in the original trilogy, the matte lines are painfully obvious in all three films (that is, if you're watching the theatrical versions and not the computer-enhanced special editions)
There seems to be a big gap in your explanation.
A huge part of this process are the vfx artists... and I really mean a huge part.
5:15 it's no "automatically" tracked, animators do most of the works regardless
Practical gollum, while he only appeared for a few seconds, looks so much better than cgi gollum. There is no creepiness to cgi gollum because you’re brain can tell it’s not real whether you’re thinking about it or not.
I am Monke, Monke is Monke, Therefore Monke can be Monke, and Monke Together Strong
you said, pal
great message but animators r just as important as the actors as its not just minor tweaks the animators make to the motion capture and they contribute a lot more to the process of translating an actors face to a cg character
Practical effects can suck at times. Just look at the dilophosaurus and giganotosaurus scenes in Jurassic world 3
Any special effect can suck if poorly made. This isn't evidence of practical effects being worse.
CGI = Ghost
Practical = Zombie
One you can see but cannot touch.
One is brought to life through (re)animation.
0:16 - me cameo?!
I say practical effects for are generally better and cooler for special and non special effects. That’s just my opinion. I’d rather see a crappy shot of a car explode for real than it being cgi.
9/10 of these films can be made wirh practical effect with less money and time and you'll get the same or better results.
PRACTICAL EFFECTS BEFORE CGI
That's my motto
Love the concept of the uncanny valley
TDLR: Yes, practical effects are indeed always better.
I dunno, the CG on the new POTA trailer looked like a step down from War.
Feel like you simplified the reality of performance capture, whilst yes the idea is that you can replicate the human facial movements 1:1 on let's say an ape, the reality is that an apes face is completely different to a humans so it takes A LOT of manual work by the animators to translate the effect over
Cab Calloway was not Max’s brother.
I like the premise for the video but I do not care at all about the new apes films. Thankfully you cover other stuff a well.
Awesome.
The fact that we still have people preaching about abolishing CGI and going back to practical effects even after movies like these is just asinine.
Damn my morbid curiosity, I knew it was a clickbait title and would be a lazy parroting of stuff we've heard a thousand times, but I clicked anyway...
No, 'FF: Spirits within' had cgi humans and it looked great for it's time, Akira also looked very good. So, if done well, cgi humans can work fine. It has lot to do with how much realism movie is aiming for and how consistently it sticks to that level of realism, also the sooner it is established in the movie the better. In the examples you mentioned, cgi human characters in star wars movie were introduced at later part of the film, I'm guessing the same happened in Irishman. It's like cgi human characters just walk out of nowehere in the middle of movie pretending to be 100% realistic, it just breaks the consistency and immersion of the film, which is why it feels off. Polar express was just badly animated, scorpion king was both badly animated and cgi character came in later part of the film. In planet of the apes, most apes are not cgied to look 100% realistic, which is established at beginnig of the film and then follows it consistently throughout, hence it works fine.
It actually made me so sad and angry to see Oppenheimer build and build so beautifully for so long right up to a glorified gas barrel explosion. What a waste of the tools that exist.
Nobody. Most people refer to the idea that practical effects are underrated and often better.. not that they’re always better.
All hail Andy Serkis
It’s still obviously CGI so it’s not exactly convincing. It’s high quality animation but not good enough to not be able to tell yet.
But practical effects can also look unconvincing. I don't think either method is better or worse than the other.
I think it depends on the application practical effects tend to age better but cgi is becoming more and more realistic over time. Also didn’t mention anything about what’s better just that it’s not convincing yet.
Cgi is always better than practical effects. Practical effects almost always look like shit- rubbery, plasticy,wooden, inflexible shit.
@@Bonzibud69 not always and it ages very badly at times.
Practical effects is better than bad cgi, good cgi makes you wonder how its cgi and not practical effects
I full thought davy jones was practical with robotic tentacles, it looked too real for me to realize it was cgi, and if it were practical, it'd likely be far worse
No-one did. Most can agree that a combination of both usually works best.
In the old planet of the apes movies I see a half human- half creature, something I haven't seen before so I accept it. In the new planet of the apes films what I think bothers me is that they totally look and move like real apes...and they talk! Like watching a dog or a cat talk, that kind of throws me off. Pirates of the Caribbean is great!!
Normal CGI humans have worked perfectly. You may not have noticed because, well, it worked. If you can point out the CG character in Logan (2017) without looking it up, you get a classic Marvel No Prize.
0:24 wait.. What did Gollum say? 💀
Oh that was me! Year book quote
🙂✊️
📖
See!