To create movies of the quality we now expect, special effects houses have to use every trick in the book, from classic green-screen technologies to the creation of full artificial intelligence systems. It's no wonder special effects groups, such as Industrial Light and Magic, are as important in Hollywood as any producer or director.
However, special effects houses can't always just go out to Best Buy or go on Amazon to get the software that makes Hollywood amazing. Generally, larger special effects names spend as much time coding as they do on the artistic side, writing custom code to fix specific problems and bringing new effects to life. Sometimes these "projects" become products in their own right, as happened with Pixar's RenderMan, the engine behind not only the company's own films such as the Toy Story trilogy, ,Ratatouille, A Bug’s Life, and WALL-E, but also most major Hollywood blockbusters, including Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn, 4 of the Terminator movies (T2: Judgement Day, T3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation, and Terminator Genysis), Star Trek VI, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, the Jurassic Park quadrilogy, Speed, The Lion King, The Jungle Book, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Twister, Independence Day, Titanic, Men in Black, Armageddon, the Star Wars prequels(The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith), The Matrix trilogy, Monsters Inc., the 7-movie Harry Potter series, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, X-Men (X2, III: Last Stand, First Class, and Days of Future Past), I-Robot, The Incredibles, Transformers, Mission Impossible 3 and Ghost Protocol, Iron Man 1, 2, and 3, Star Trek (2009), Avatar (2009 film), Pacific Rim, Interstellar, Edge of Tomorrow, Inside Out, Tommorowland, Captain America: The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier, Thor, Thor: The Dark World, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Avengers, Ant-Man,and Avengers: Age of Ultron. (However, it didn't officially become RenderMan until after Toy Story.) This level of complexity makes it into more of an engineering project than a regular artistic one, but if not equally good, the artistic side fails. Pixar is a great demonstration of the two collaborating. When Toy Story came out, the primitive 3D graphics of the time didn't allow for the complex effects we're now used to seeing, so the company focused on the type of effects it could pull off--rigid-body figures, where "any weaknesses would simply contribute to the charm". As time progressed and technology improved, they introduced more realistic animation, mastered fur (Monsters Inc), and came up with the cartoon humans that made The Incredibles so much fun to watch. Every movie raised the stakes, but every movie became a hit.
The history of CGI in live-action films hasn't always been smooth. The earliest practical application of CGI was and still is thought to be the point-of-view sequences of Yul Brynner's robot gunslinger in Westworld, a 1973 futuristic western. But pre-1980s films didn't have much to work with, and even in the '80s, GUI computers were still new. In 1982 Tron was released, complete with real actors and the first fully computer-engineered 3D scenes. This legendary movie was the first truly CGI-heavy film, designed to play off the technology's weaknesses as well as its strengths. The producers encountered problems combining the real and computer worlds, making them relatively cohesive and seamless. After Tron, a variety of watershed films employed ever-more impressive CGI advancements, from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade featuring the first all-composite scene to Terminator 2: Judgment Day's startling visuals of the T-1000. Terminator 2 marked the first use of natural human motion for a computer-created character. Its liquid metal effects, particularly in conjunction with the then-revolutionary morphing technology that would soon take over every film and commercial in sight, was a particular eye-opener, giving us a villain that combined the best technology from both 1991 and a post-apocalyptic 2029.
But it was Toy Story that really cemented CGI's place in the industry. While producing the film, Pixar grew from just 10 people to 150. This was a unheard-of number for a computer graphics project. 50 to 70 people were on the technical team, working under technical director Bill Reeves and animator John Lasseter. They were tasked with creating the program that would eventually become RenderMan.
Whether it's adding incredible characters and amazing scenery, removing human elements or simulating epic battles, CGI is now a staple component of modern movie making. As the regular tools of the trade are commercially available software packages, this only goes to show that the real skill of special effects lies in the artistic expression used rather than the sheer processing power and capablities of the technology.
P.S.
Applications available to the public vary in terms of price and capabilities. But you can get a non-commercial RenderMan for free on the RenderMan website.
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/world-of-tech/computing/how-special-effects-transformed-the-movies-590842
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_effect
No comments:
Post a Comment