Miniatures vs CGI - Spacecraft Visual Effects
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
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Spacedock delves into miniature effects and computer graphics in depicting sci-fi spacecraft effects.
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fantastic, thanks for doing it
God I really wanna get one, but me broke :(
I would love to speak with you about a business opportunity how can I contact you. And are you a engineer?
The CGI in the original "Tron" was meant to represent a World inside the computers of the time. An imaginary World at that. It wasn't supposed to be "Real Life."
CGI has a place, miniatures have a place, use both properly to make awesome VFX.
Indeed, the combination of the two is where greatness lies. Alloys are usually good like that.
100%
@@BernddasBrotB7 👍 👍
Yeah cgi enhanced miniatures, props, and sets generally speaking are the best visuals
@@BlandSpagetti definitely.
One advantage of Practical Effects is that it forces the creators to think about what they want to film. You can't just shoot a bunch of random stuff and "fix it in post". Raiders of The Lost Ark was shot in something like 76 days, why? Because they had to plan everything out at start, very little wasted efforts.
So... Tron's CGI might be "old", but it also fits the style of the movie. You see, the movie came out around the time when vectored 3D graphics were in their infancy. Think games like Star Fox on the SNES or even earlier with the original Elite, with solid, untextured surfaces and wire frames used to create primitive abstractions of what was being portrayed (this is actually why most of the ships and some of the space stations in Elite: Dangerous look the way they do - they're designed to resemble the original vector-based models from the original game). I actually remember playing an old tank battle game as a kid that was already nearly a decade older than I was at the time, with graphics that looked right out of Tron. Tron, of course, was based around these old-style arcade games. The iconic Recognizers used by Master Command's armies? They were an asset from a game called Space Paranoids developed by the movie's protagonist.
You're mixing eras. Tron's CG was cutting-edge at the time. There essentially were NO polygon-graphics video games because the hardware to do it was exhorbitantly expensive. (The only thing close to Tron's style anywhere near that timeframe is Atari's I, Robot). Wireframe was doable, but usually required vector displays.
And Tron isn't flatshaded or wireframe, it has full-on Gourad shading.
The lightcycle sequences are based on the tried-and-true snake gameplay, but look nothing like any snake game.
If you want to bolster your "based on actual videogames of the time" argument, I'll throw you a bone. The "recognizers" may have come from a fictional video game, but they're likely based on an enemy from the REAL video game Defender.
"I actually remember playing an old tank battle game as a kid that was already nearly a decade older than I was at the time"
Ahh, Battlezone. That was a hell of a fun game.The classic Empire Strikes Back arcade game used the same sort of wireframe graphics, and was even more fun, because you got multiple environments to fight and dodge through.
You left out SeaQuest DSV. That was AMAZING for the early 1990s.
I know this was spacecraft, but you could have mentioned hunt For Red October again, as those minitures are fantastic and because the underwater scenes were actually underwater they feel so so more real than anything in with CGI (I'm looking at you Avatar 2!)
On kitbashing, (and because I know you like Starsector) kitbashing ships for that game and actually making them work is surprisingly easy and really fun. Theres lots of software and tutorials expressly for doing it which the modding community has developed.
Personally, I'm a big fan of doing both. Use each where it is strongest and use each to supplement the other's weaknesses.
A note on Last Starfighter. The use of CG was a major selling point for the film, and initial renders had significantly better texturing and lighting, but the studio complained it didn't look computer generated enough. So they were made to render it to look more like what the studio felt the public would expect.
You can draw a direct line between that and studios today pushing unrealistic deadlines and changes on CG artists and companies, leading to substandard looking work.
No artist wants to do crappy work, but sometimes they are forced to because of studio pressures.
Those 3 shots of discovery, Macross plus, and force awakens made me sick, happy, and sad within 10 seconds. Interesting video.
Iam still waiting to see a live Action MACROSS series or film
Oh grow up.
@@Tuskin38 what exactly is your problem sport? Are you some kind of kurtzman trek or Disney wars simp? Did my comment make you sad?
@@Shrike1988 Just laughing at your fragility. They're just TV shows/movies, no need to get upset.
Funny that you mention the snap zoom in Force Awakens. I believe that Firefly was the first notable Sci-Fi TV show to use snap zoom shots but Attack of the Clones released months earlier and also used snap zooms during the Coruscant chase and Geonosis battles. I don't know how long the VFX production time was for either project but it's interesting that two 2002 SF titles picked up on it before it became synonymous with the 2003 BSG remake.
I like when they’re used together
I remember the SW exhibit at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. There were original tie fighter and x wing models. You could see the blistered paint from the harsh lighting. I would truly kill, to own them.
Babylon 5 was amazing for it's time. you have to consider how bad the TV image quality was, like 480p at best.
that both hides a lot of crimes and needs shot composition to be clear enough so you can actually see something.
B5 premiered in 1994. The average home television set in North America was a 19"-20" CRT NTSC that had, for analog broadcast TV, a resolution of of about 640x480 and about 40 pixels per inch. You could get larger TVs, especially projection TVs, but that would only mean that the individual pixels were more and more obvious, and the TV's didn't have the software available that's pretty much standard these days to smooth it out.
While I appreciate CGI use, I love practical miniature work. The combo of the two, like in Starship Troopers, highlights a great marriage of the two
I think people sometimes use miniatures or downplay the CGI because they're worried it will look bad in 20 years. But as you showed with Babylon 5, good artistic direction stands the test of time.
PS: I really like your slightly less spaceship related videos, like this one or the BSG episode video. You should do more.
Tron holds up even today because it's supposed to be the living manifestation of an 8-bit gaming environment, and everyone expects it to look 8-bit.
This is where I'm conflicted because I love a good model and I love good CG and I am solidly of the opinion that the best effects are when the two are married and can create something that is better than the sum of its parts. By combining them properly, you can reduce the workload on both modelers and CG artists while producing a wonderfully convincing effect. But so many times we see a show or movie play up one end of the spectrum of the other to the detriment of the people who are working at the other end and I feel like that just cheats everybody out of their work.
The only real problem I have with what could be considered bad CGI in movies is that the technique has been a crutch for so long that directors and creative teams don't understand how actual camera work behaves anymore. That's where it shows.
Always good videos on this channel.
Hey man, long time fan, love your channel… I would love to see somebody take the last starfighter and re-render all of the CGI with modern technology. It could be a really great community project if you just uploaded all of the green screen, chromakey pilot, sections and let people go to town that could be hilarious actually. MS paint last starfighter version.
I think the issue people have with CGI is that it’s being overused and over saturated often done poorly in spite of huge budgets. If they were done more thoughtfully there wouldn’t be such an issue. IMO, the best results come from combining CGI with practical effects (including real locations).
I can't imagine that anyone who is seriously asking for 100% practical effects knows what they are asking for.
The best CG is when you don't notice it.
YAHHHHH MACROS PLUS!!!!! WOOOOO
If I had a video request it'd probably be how the brain ship from the Three Body Problem is poorly designed and was doomed to failure from the start.
Minitures are amazing but there are just some things you can't do with them
Balance is the key
I really like the VFX in Iron man. The hole suit was something real and build, even the mask works, but the most difficult effects like the fire, the in between of the suit and the explotions are CGI. The result is an Iron Man that looks and feels real. Even if tony should die at the first hit of an missele, you just accept it cause everything looks just to real...
CG and irl models have their place and ideally, you can use both to achieve the best results. Though overuse of either is not too appealing imho.
By now, CGI has evolved to a point where the question is no longer "what can we possibly create", but rather "what do we want to show".
So nowadays "bad CGI" really just means that the creators had bad ideas.
Or good ideas but not enough skill to successfully pull it off.
Or good ideas and skill, but not enough time and workers.
In my mind, the first big CGI film was Jurassic Park, as it really did somethings you simply couldn't do with traditional Special Effects. I remember being awed watching it on screen, these Giant looking dinosaurs that looked real. Now that CGI has become common place, you don't get the same "wow" out of being a big Special effects film.
But going back and watching Jurassic Park, it still is wow, because it uses practical effects really well, and all the other parts of the film still work, and lend to make the CGI amazing. The awe in seeing the Brachoisaurus for the first time, the music, acting and shot still make it amazing. The Rex breaking through the fence, and destroying the cars is tense cause of the sound design, (that Rex roar), rain and lighting.
What they don't tell you in those documentaries and bts about miniatures, is that 95% of the time all of those miniatures are replaced for cg models nowadays. Because miniatures just look bad on a screen.
It's also a lot easier to add extra effects and such when you just replace the whole thing, use the original as reference.
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
I can be quite forgiving on CGI/Models, if the writing and acting are good.
I can look past bad models and bad CGI if it's a good story. Not everything needs to look perfect. Also, I'd suggest watching movies in SD can make bad CGI look better, because you're less likely to see the details (or lack thereof). I grew up watching sci fi in vhs tapes. The picture quality was terrible but it didn't stop me enjoying the films. I wonder if that's where my tolerance of less than perfect effects stems from.
I just want good looking shots that fit the story being told. The professionals know better which method of making the shots works better for any given scene. Though I will say that I'd rather have a good story being told with bad visuals than great visuals telling a bad story. Up to a point anyway. So use what fits the budget, film makers. And credit your artists properly and stop denying their incredible contributions.
A lack of restraint being the real problem hits the nail on the head. There's a ton of great CGI work that you wouldn't know was CG unless it was told to you. Issues pop up when no one plans properly, people throw in last minute changes and there are too many competing ideas.
A lot of the issues with (especially marvel movies) that were rather poor showings can be traced pretty much directly to that sort of "well we can just change it in post" mentality that has been plaguing the industry.
One HUGE problem with CGI is that it's often used because it is easier and cheaper than practical effects. Cheap and bad looking CGI has ruined many projects, and that doesn't deserve any praise regardless.
Lack of restraint in special effects is exactly at the heart of the issue.
With the individual effect beign relatively cheap, you can just put in more.
Back in the day when it was all models, real stages and props and every special effect had to be hand-drawn via rotoscopy, those effects were expensive. And thus, the producers though really hard where and when they would use them. Now, they seem to be thrown in everywhere without a thought.
Rogue One is another master class in making cgi looking great. They built the 3d ships in the same way as they built the models way back when.
so they used a form of virtual kitbashing?
@@richardvhal8140 kinda.. for the star destroyers for example they scaned a lot of the kit parts used in the original models so they could incorporate that in the CGI model wich is relativy different (its a ISD-I but with some updates like the bridge deck to match what was seen from TESB onwards).
Unfortunatelly in one of the lamest exercises of lazyness they reused the exact same 3D model for the "planet killer destroyers" seen in episode 9 upscaling them to 2.4km (150% size) without doing anything whatsover to the windows or bridge..so its completelly out of proportion unless you acept all windows are 150% size
@@sparrowlt EP 9's new ships were simply laughable
@@My-nl6sgBold of you to call them "new"...
The crazy thing is, CGI actually CAN recreate all the imperfections and detail, including the camera movement and look like practical effects... that's when it looks great and believable. The key to that is exactly what said in the first halve: it has to be in line with the overall artistic style and storytelling.
The time when people went to the big screen to watch the "next big CGI FX fireworks" and were awestruck are long gone.
The combination of scenery, practical effects, prosthetics, make-up and motion capture and CGI to merge into believable and great world building, that's the golden grail of good movies. 😊
Another thing that works really well is combining CGI and practical effects together. CGI benefits from having something real in the scene to act as a frame of reference, a good example of this is the Iron Man movies which make heavy use of CGI both to touch up costumes and to allow for various scenes that would be impossible with practical effects alone.
Plus there's many CGI effects that don't directly create visual assets but rather allow you to do more with the practical assets, such as compositing. The Battle for Gondor from LotR Return of the King used compositing to massively increase its scale from a handful of actors to a massive siege, and Mad Max: Fury Road used compositing to create the varied, exotic terrain from existing geography.
The trouble is, studios don't necessarily want to spend the money to get the details right. The too perfect, mass copied, poorly shot CGI blob fests are usually directly due to studios saying "eh, good enough, stop there". At some point models become cheaper than CGI time, and that threshold sets the limit on spending, because switching to models means new filming crews, more set time, more actor time, more insurance, more storage of physical leftovers. CGI means shoot quickly and spend the time in post fixing all the issues and errors and poor shots for a LOT less money than paying an actor to redo a scene again, or reshoot a miniature, but again, not too much that is costs more than just doing it right the first time. Then you have directors with no skill at directing digital scenes so they fall back on extremes and spins and rotations to cover up the wall of objects they can play with but not understand how to prioritize shots.
CGI _can_ recreate imperfections, but the issue is that it needs to be done _consciously._ Here is where many traps lie, from imperfections not feeling random and organic, to execs just not giving you enough time to add those.
Kinda reminds me of what I read about happening when “motion pictures” first debuted and people lined up down the block to be amazed at… trains and cars driving around, people walking down the street, kittens frolicking on the grass…(OK, I made that last one up but it probably did happen) then very quickly filmmakers realize they actually had to come up with some kind of story because people were real bored real quick of all the fancy new technology. CGI just seems pretty much the same, cool as heck when it first comes out but then it just fades into the background as a technique that gets used way too often, kinda like that god awful shaky cam technique that was used for a while and just seem to make people sick.
...but "The Last Starfighter" is still awesome though. Definitely aged CGI, no argument. But still awesome.
I mean, its hard not to like the Gunstar.
One of my favorites. I'd almost be in favor of a remaster with new CGI effects but the original scenes.
absolute classic movie !
@@jakeaurod Same here! With modern high-grade CGI scenes replacing the originals, the movie would still stand up.
And it was an incredible feat at the time. The fact it needed a super computer to render it. We shouldn't judge CGI of those movies, by today's standards
CGI and miniatures will matter very little without a master artist overseeing the process.
The VFX in Starship troopers both CGI and practical, from the ships to the bugs still holds up amazingly well to this day. There are many modern big budget films that look comically bad next to those VFX.
Because they cheap out on time for volume. Or the director has no idea how to utilize CGI objects in shots so they just wing it.
Starship Troopers, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2. All have better CGI then modern MCU.
I'll posit that the boundary between 'good' and 'bad' effects (practical or cg) is 'does this object look like it's actually in this scene or does it look like an effect added afterwards?'
A gorgeously detailed physical miniature ship would look as out of place on an episode of _Star Trek: Lower Decks_ as an animated ship lacking surface texture or lighting would look on an episode of _The Mandalorian_ (although I would *love* to see the _Lower Decks_ crew dealing with a reverse-Roger Rabbit space encounter).
Strange New Worlds' crossover episode with Lower Decks did give us a tiny bit of a glimpse into how the latter would handle a Roger Rabbit scenario - even if it was downplayed a bit (though I loved Boimler's "You look so realistic!" just before he passed out). That episode has earned an award nomination, so it's definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it. I'm hoping they get the chance to do more of this sort of stuff.
B5 does still hold up, especially with enhancements. The most important parts are its story, characters and themes, which can't be more relevant
For me personally, the best effects come when it's both miniature work and CG together. When you have the base effect done physically with a model and then flash up and polish and emphasize it with CG. When the two come together in harmony you end up with SFX better than either could do alone.
Babylon 5 was a masterpiece I am glad you gave it the pass it deserved.
When used correctly, any effect craft can look wonderful.
I'm an indie scifi writer/director/vfx artist (who used to work as a Matte Painter on The Expanse) currently working on a scifi short film that we partially shot on the volume stage here in Toronto Canada. I will say, that miniature work for space is just...not ideal currently in my experience. At least not if you're trying to design something that would make sense in space. Spindly parts, possibly sails, rotating parts, etc just looks so much better when you have a ship built digitally using techniques unbound to Earth gravity. All in all thanks for not giving in to the current anti-CGI backlash it's very much appreciated :)
Oh and I absolutely loved the ship design in Alien Covenant.
Oooh that's a very good point, thank you for your insight!
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
Here's my 2 cents (I'm a physical models with minimal CGI overlay fan)
Your rotating parts & sails can look better with practical effects. (Mostly because it has to rotate / catch the wind functionally & reliably under filming conditions, making you deal with the same design requirements the ship-builder would have)
I'm not sure "miniature" is the right term for a 30 foot model, either. (The good ones are bloody massive to give the effect of a "high definition render" using sheer physical detail level.)
P.S. I was just a grip & a fan - good models are amazing sitting on the sound stage, they become awe inspiring after the CGI pass "breathes life into them".
yeah and miniatures also often to look really good have to be very expensive, which puts them well out of the budgets available for may small indy creators. Where as nowadays, especially with how powerful modern GPU's like the RTX 4090 are, with sufficient time and skill, an indy creator can make some very good looking short films on a budget of a few thousand dollars, Ie, the price of the rendering rig. No miniature work is really ever going to reach that level of cost effective, as with miniatures, you dont just have to build the miniatures themselves, but you have to build a whole set and studio around them, with often very expensive high grade film camera's.
Space scenes have another benefit from cgi you cannot get with miniatures, the stark edge of lighting. With nothing to diffuse light around in space a beam of light has an extremely sharp edge.
@@jaquigreenlees That one's doable with practical effects, assuming you've got the budget for the optics (and the 3 grips each to move those lights). Something about lens speeds being able to remove the atmospheric scatter, but the hard edge of a coherent beam being "impossible to simulate". Thus a big fancy light with weird halos of prisms, and 3 grips instead of 1.
It's legitimately easier to move a 30 foot model to get the angle right than it is to move the light.
Practical effects got pretty damn amazing in their day - few things were "impossible", but were instead "difficult", "tedious", "slow", and "expensive".
P.S. The more I learn about the practical effects and models I used to work around, the more I appreciate "good" CGI.
My main Issue with CG is that it is so easy to overuse it and make scenes look muddled such as the example of Star Trek Discovery space battles as they, make battles just look like a confuused mess. Restraint is extremely important when you have the Ability to Use CG
For me, prees X to doubt if the actors or directors saying "no CGI".
I love practical effects. They scenes are slower and not over whelming. That being said, E.C Henry and his buddies do some amazing stuff.
Both? Both is good.
Also love the use of Macross Plus footage.
It's like cel painted vs digital art in animation. Unique benefits and drawbacks.
You'd hear people keep saying the 1990's was anime at its peak.
@Joshua_N-A and in some cases, I would totally agree.
I think CGI has thoroughly proven itself as capable of giving us resplendent visuals on its own, they just need solid visual direction which understands the technology they're working with and for studios to treat animators like professionals rather than disposable galley slaves.
+1 for the Macross Plus cameo
2:16 -- One thought... You said that the fake camera zoom on the Falcon doesn't feel like Star Wars. I would argue that the fact that The Maker himself, George Lucas, used fake camera zooms in his films, well, there is nothing more "Star Wars" than that! 😉 --- That's my opinion, I welcome yours.
The most important thing for filmmaking, is that what effects chosen must suit the movie and be chosen with care and consideration.
Surprise! That is true for every type of art! ;) There are not many cases where you can have a glowing bride start cursing in front of the altar.
But Tron (the origin one the other one also but for different reasons...) is one of my every time favorites... also i love Babylon Five, but mostly for the long term Storytelling and Story Arc...
Re-doing Babylon 5's CGI, shot-for-shot with modern systems has the potential to be amazing eg Digital Era Studios' work.
As many said, each has their place. Anything can be overdone and look bad. Practical effects can make use of too much pyro or trickery and bad camera shots too.
CG is great for accentuation and making what would otherwise be unfeasable or limited in practical. Good job doing Galactica's flak shield in practical and look right.
Practical is ideal for fine detail and gradient as you said. CGI is best when is complexity of a scene, particularly for contrasting scale or movements.
I find miniatures a lot more fascinating just from a production standpoint. The most impressive miniature use is probably the Battle of Endor, which actually used computers to position each miniature independently as part of a camera shot so they could then all be composited into a single shot. It was pretty amazing
*Blake's 7* had a important lesson for model effects - try to hide the fishing line holding the model.
How can anyone look at tron and not love the entire aesthetic?
If those CG studios would getthe time they need to make it look just as good as practical effects, we wouldn't even need this discussion. ...
Combining all elements seems to result in the best effects. Teamwork!
I much prefer models and miniatures to CGI. Both should be combined to make a superior product.
This makes me want to get a 3-D printer and try it out
What Babylon 5 was able to do in the mid 1990s with CGI for its various space battle sequences is just incredible to look back on. Not only do I still enjoy watching the show today and i can still enjoy the various space battles, but the fact that when compared to some of the other shows at the time (most Star Trek), B5 was just on a different level with what they were able to accomplish with realistic small and large scale battles.
Babylon 5 still holds up, mostly because it is a story and character driven show, not effect driven.
Before anyone tries to criticize stop motion, try it yourself. Believe me, it's hard, especially when you need to animate multiple elements at once! The same probably goes for CGI as well. I tried Blender once (you can tell how it went by "tried."😅)
Great video!👍
having someone actually try real cgi themselves is by far the quickest way for them to no longer think cgi is quick and easy, or for them to stop discrediting something because 'its just cgi'
The Starship Troopers just adds so much Meinung to the devastation on that assault.
5:48 I think you got that backwards, as Blood and Chrome released 3 years after Caprica
The Rogue One star destroyers are a great example of CG kit bashing. They actually went out to model shops and tried to find all the greeble used in the OT, and scanned those parts into the computer to use on the CG models
Yep I got the two backwards but you can still see the way the parts were reused, which is the important bit!
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
Both work, even on big productions it's always a combination of the two
Fractal Sponge doesn't get nearly enough credit. His work has literally been stolen by Disney!
I like both CG and miniatures, I agree. I personally don’t care about one over another as long as it looks good and cool
If you want to see an amazing rundown on how miniatures are made and filmed go over to Tested. Adam Savage and his team had a sponsored miniseries to build and film (a configuration of) the hero ship from Starfield. Honestly a fantastic series if you want that deep dive.
I honestly prefer a mix, playing to what both excel at. And even then, if a movie has sub-par CGI, it can still have some amazing scenes. I'm not totally on board with Starship Troopers Invasion's artstyle, but the shot of the UCF John A. Warden firing all it's bow weaponry lives rent free in my mind and is what I think of when it comes to energy weapons in space.
HUGE SMILE! Thank you man! We disagree on some things but you and I are 100% in tune with there being great and sucky CGI & practical effects. Both of them are on the bell curve, and the best effects are the ones you don't notice because they seem natural, or they give you the least amount of pause to say "nice effect". They'll make you say nice ship, or alien, or whatever it is.
It's also like with the old horror/monster movies. They didn't have the tools and materials we have today. the Universal Monsters don;t seem scary to us but when thy came out they were. Same with some of the cheesy Creature from the Black Lagoon and Hammer films, they didn't have the foams and rubbers to do stuff we take for granted now... When you get a happy medium of in-camera and post effects.
Bad CGI is most often the fault of the money side of things, rather than any fault of the artist. Artists need time to do their thing and they just don't get that time.
I would love to see how SPACE:1999 Eagles would be shot. If filmed today. Would it be practical, CGI or Both
To be frank I think the original TRON's CGI is perfect for the setting... an old computer mainframe. And it makes sense that the sequel would have updated graphics since the system has also been updated.
I love physical models. I love CGI too!
One has story behind it's creation and stands as a dedication to it's craft that dates back millennia, and the other has the capability to bring to life the most incredible scenes, teeming with life and character!
It's just that in this day and age, all we have to do is look at M*rvel Studios and the consequences of it's actions, and we see *exactly* why CGI gets so heavily insulted, for the reasons you (possibly) eluded to: shoddy craftsmanship at the hands of ridiculous deadlines and WAY too much going on that would make even the most stoic ADHD-afflicted individual have a sensory overload. It's tiring, it's pointless and it's frankly insulting, not just to it's viewers but to the people who are actually good and are allowed to be good at what they do.
As an aside, it's funny how many complaints levelled at current cinema can be traced back to the MCU, when you think about it lol
In B5 some of the ships can only be done in cgi since several of the ships have extreme curves to them or has a movement that is a main requirement for the show like the station and the fighters doing snap movements. In other shows a physical model looks better. These shows may require the hero ship making planetfall or in slow flyby sequences where the detail is is keylike in Star Trek. The great thing is both can be combined like digitizing a model and inserting it in a configuration that is physically imposable to achieve with armatures like R2D2 doing a flyby across the screen after a battle. Epsilon 47 out
I think the old adage "All things in moderation" applies nicely to both CG and model work. Play to the strengths of each medium and use them to make the production better, rather than touting a film as superior for using one or the other in excess. There are some truly phenomenal fully animated works, just as there are outstanding fully practical productions, but all films are better when every part of them works well with every other part and effects added in post can be just as good, or just as bad as scenes of physical objects which were shot on set.
IMO B5's pure CGI scenes still hold up reasonably well today.
My preference for the longest has been practical+CG, Iron Man proved that it's the sweet spot.
If you put enough effort into your effects, its going to look good regardless. Attention to detail is key. Sadly that costs time and money which many companies cheap out on.
I can digitally try to program a really awesome drum part of a song to convince someone its a real drummer on a real drum kit. Or I can just hire a real drummer to play the part a couple of times in his own session studio and we're good.
I think both works if and when done right it wouldn't surprise that there is a project out there where it uses miniatures and then to really make it pop make a pass with CGI like a ship crashing through the atmosphere
Each has their strengths and their place, and I wish that the media would admit that and not try to hide all the amazing CGI and instead focus on only bad CGI or pretend that good CGI is actually all practical. I mean, the only F-14s still in existence are in Iran, so even the tiniest amount of research would immediately tell you that the F-14 scenes of Top Gun Maverick are all GCI, yet there's constant praise of them being real jets.
CGI, when done right, are at the level that is impossible for all but the most veteran experts can notice isn't real while watching in real time, and most of the reason is because they're better than what practical effects can achieve. Soon, we'll have AI generated CGI filling our movies, and nobody will be able to tell, yet people will constantly complain about the lack of practical effects despite the technologies that will allows us to do things that are impossible today, at only a fraction of the costs on top of that.
Corridor Digital as well proves the democratizing powers of CGI, allowing indie filmmakers to make short films of a quality that only a few decades ago would have required professional investment to make possible.
I've always felt that many complaints about bad CG come from people simply knowing that CG is being used and so either go into a show or movie with a hyper critical eye to support their think that all CG is bad or simply call it bad because it's CG and not because it's actually bad CG. And I'e seen at least one video that showed scenes from various movies that were actually CG and nobody recognized it, much less criticized it.
At the end of the day, the computer and digital effects are just tools. Doing effects on the computer utilizes the same principals as practical effects do. Digital set extensions are just the modern day equivalent of matte of old. 3D models replaced physical models but the usage and concepts are the same. And even when practical effects are being used, they're still bein composited digitally, something nobody seems to complain about.
@@Riceball01 I think it goes beyond just that. You wouldn't believe how many times the jank and problematic usages of practical effects are referred to as the "charm" of such techniques, yet even the tiniest cracks in CGI usage was been referred to as "the very reason why modern film making sucks" and other hyperbole.
Can you talk more about CGI vs practical models with regards the windows in spaceships? I didn't quite follow what you were suggesting.
Even on a huge miniature, the windows are really small and often just cutouts. Before LEDs were in wide use, you had to use either traditional light bulbs or fiber optics (fed by a light bulb) to put lights in those windows. But the scale was still off, or there was one light for multiple windows, or the fiber optic happened to be pointing directly at camera. So rather than it looking like rooms filled with light, theres lots of variation, and sometimes really bright spots. It's hard to describe in text without an image example!
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
I give a lot of respect to well done stop motion. You have to have massive amounts of patience and attention to detail to make it work which is why Ray Harrihausen is such a legend.
Some of Aardman's work (creators of Wallace & Grommit, Chicken Run, etc) are great uses of stop motion, though one of my favourite ones was the end of the movie Boxtrolls, where it pulls out and lets you see the process of the creators actually making each frame. Shows just how much work goes into doing it well.
I think it's pretty obvious that BOTH can work, and BOTH can fail. The determining factor clearly isn't "real or cg", but the care and attention needed to make either one (or, more likely, both together) believable and authentic looking. There's tons of CG in the early Iron Man movies, but they took the care to make them feel solid and believable. Whereas in the later Marvel films - including Iron Man in, say, Infinity War, the liquid-y magic nano-armor never feels like anything but a cartoonish effect. You stuff so much CG into one movie and it turns out some of it just doesn't get finished with the same care and polish. Go figure. But the same is true of practical effects - think of all of the cheeseball action films from the 80s and 90s that were stuffed with practical effects that just look super cheap (even by the standards of the day). So yeah, it's care and attention that matters (with enough time and budget, and probably as little studio meddling as possible), in the end.
I don't believe that there is such a thing as good or bad CGI/pratictal effects, but good and bad overall design. If a particular style fits the setting, narrative, art direction etc. it comes across as good, if it doesn't it feels janky and off-putting. One example that comes to my mind from gaming is the difference between the Borderlands and CoD series. The original concept for Borderlands actually went with realistic graphics, which were totally achievable, just look at CoD4:MW. They ultimately decided to go with the graphic novel art style (not cell shading) that went incredibly well with the overall theme and made it iconic. This art style never would have fit MW.
NJM Photo has been doing some really fun stuff with homebrew motion control and small scale (Star Trek) miniatures lately. Hoping he gets a chance to tackle a studio scale model, eventually, because that's currently the major limiting factor.
I sorta find myself liking when they use a relatively balanced mix between models/practical effects and CGI. Though I might, slightly lean towards miniatures, in part because I have nostalgia about the various sci-fi ships, but also because I can't help but think on the 'Bigatures' that the folks making Lord of the Rings made. I remember watching the special features and seeing an artist paint the rust onto the little bars in the window of a house in Minas Tirith. I recognize the hard work of CG artists too. Like that dude who made Astartes by himself! But watching a person work at a computer on a high end program is often a bit difficult to connect with compared with a person standing next to a model and working on it. At least for me?
I think the main key is quality. It's not quite the same, but think about the movie "Dinosaur". All CG work (as far as I know), and it stands up pretty darn well even today. I'd argue B5 stands up better than you give it credit for, especially compared to come more recent stuff that feels rushed and not any where near as well thought out.
I also think we can see some of the problems in a thing someone did a while back where they reshot the trench run from Star Wars with modern graphics. They used many of the same techniques used today claiming they were better, like adding camera shake to he shot where it's the Y-wings right after the guns stop. They say it's better, I don't agree. They had the fighters moving around in the shot. The camera shake, however minor, detracts from the shot instead of adding to it. In my opinion of course. Many of the modern super hero movies are full to the brim with rushed, flashy CGI. Avatar used a ton of CGI, but it works because it was done very very well. It all had purpose and intent, not just trying to be flashy.
So whatever the medium used, time spent and quality of the shot are most important. If you focus only on making it the best it can be, it won't matter what you use. It will work out perfectly because you took the time to do it well. Too often these days, they don't, and it shows.
I think we need to take the view of Plays for Movies, Games & TV. As when you watch a play you don't complain that it looks fake or that the people play multiple characters & likewise we should accept that with GCI & Model work. Allowing the flaws in it become something better as how limitations lead to often better looking things than just the same looking stuff. For example star wars using real guns to make the props instead of making them from scratch leading to realistic looking weapons unlike some things we'd get in the Sequels which clearly where made purely by a prop department & not a weapons manufacturer leading to a terrible design.
I think that's what really throws me off about latter day Star Trek CGI, especially in regards to the ships, they're not lit properly. Frankly, nothing is lit properly, it's all very dark, but the space shots especially are very very dim.
The problem with CG is the same problem i would have if i got a chainsaw, i would want to use it for everything and i would end up cutting off my arm. CG is a tool to enhance not make your whole bloody film.
CGI is bad when it causes you to lose your suspension of disbelief. Even early, basic CGI can still be good if its being used appropriately.
Both have their place. What shouldn't have a place in film making is denying their use because that is an insult to the people who worked hard to make that lie even possible. Same for "did all their own stunts" type of lies. Everyone working on a movie or other work of art should be credited and their work acknowledged and documented so others can learn from them to make even better and safer (in the case of stunts) movies in the future.
I like your balanced opinion on this. I m biased toward CG because I think it looks cool and I do it, but I see the benefits of miniatures. Another option for shots might be to make a physical model for the imperfections, then scan in into 3d for the freedom.