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Director Gore Verbinski: Unreal Engine is the greatest slip backwards for movie

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Re: Director Gore Verbinski: Unreal Engine is the greatest slip backwards for movie

#11

Post by hasperdi »

joegibbs wrote: post #6

It's a video game engine. It's got a ton of optimisations and tweaks to make it run in realtime, but if you're making a movie there's no reason not to spend hours rendering each frame. You don't need to optimise meshes at a distance, or use real-time raytracing with noise reduction rather than just simulating a thousand bounces or limit yourself to 4K textures, you can use as many particle effects and simulations as…

On the other hand, it depends on what kind of movie you're making and who the target group is.

Say you're making children's videos like Cocomelon or Bluey in 3D, you don't need all these nice things.

At the end, movies are about the stories, not just pretty graphics.

Re: Director Gore Verbinski: Unreal Engine is the greatest slip backwards for movie

#12

Post by gambiting »

joegibbs wrote: post #6

It's a video game engine. It's got a ton of optimisations and tweaks to make it run in realtime, but if you're making a movie there's no reason not to spend hours rendering each frame. You don't need to optimise meshes at a distance, or use real-time raytracing with noise reduction rather than just simulating a thousand bounces or limit yourself to 4K textures, you can use as many particle effects and simulations as…

>> It's got a ton of optimisations and tweaks to make it run in realtime, but if you're making a movie there's no reason not to spend hours rendering each frame.

That's how it's used though? It only runs real time for preview, but the final product is very much not rendered in real time at all. Obviously it's a very flexible tool that works with what you need and what you can afford - Disney runs it on their compute farm and they can throw the resources at it to render at the fidelity required. But obviously there are plenty of production houses which don't have those kind of resources and they have to make do with less. But then you wouldn't expect Pixar's own pipeline to work in those circumstances, would you.

>> Unreal does have the ability to render out video but it's not going to be the same fidelity.

I really encourage you to look into what's possible with UE nowadays. Custom made pipelines from Pixar or Dreamworks are better still, of course, but UE can absolutely stand next to them.

Re: Director Gore Verbinski: Unreal Engine is the greatest slip backwards for movie

#13

Post by Antibabelic »

amelius wrote: post #8

The greatest slip backwards for movies was too much focus on visual effects.

All of that SFX budget is worthless without deliberate art direction. Most modern blockbusters look bland and busy. The scale of spectacle that computer graphics allow for just doesn't "WOW" any more. It's a shame that this is what the movie industry has come to.

Re: Director Gore Verbinski: Unreal Engine is the greatest slip backwards for movie

#14

Post by gambiting »

dinkblam wrote: post #2

good explanation and i also wondered why many of the CGI effects today are so unbelievably bad - and worse than decades ago. it still doesn't explain why it is done: • why do directors and producers sign off effects that are just eye-bleeding bad? • using a realtime engine to develop the effects, doesn't preclude using some real render-pass at the end to get a nice result instead of "game level graphics". a final ren…

>>and worse than decades ago.

I feel like there's some strong rose tinted glasses effect happening here. Early 2000s were especially full of absolutely dreadful CGI and VFX in almost every film that used them unless you were Pixar, Dreamworks, or Lucasfilms. I can give you almost countless examples of this.

The only thing that changed is that now it's easier than ever to make something on a cheap budget, but this absolutely used to happen 20-30 years ago too, horror CGI was the standard not an exception.

Re: Director Gore Verbinski: Unreal Engine is the greatest slip backwards for movie

#16

Post by [deleted] »

eurekin wrote: post #7

I'm really confused at that take. If you watched the Corridor Channel on YouTube, you can catch a lot of times that Unreal is treated as a draft, or the on-set reference, and gets replaced almost always, before shipping the final. Something doesn't add up here.

[deleted]

Re: Director Gore Verbinski: Unreal Engine is the greatest slip backwards for movie

#17

Post by pavlov »

It's important to distinguish between traditional post vfx and in-camera vfx, which has come into fashion in recent years.

In-camera vfx means that the final CGI is already present in the scene when it's shot. This is usually accomplished with giant LED screens. Typically the engine that runs these screens is Unreal.

One major advantage is that the cinematographer's main job, lighting design, gets easier compared to green screen workflows. The LED screens themselves are meaningful light sources (unlike traditional rear projection), so they contribute correct light rather than green spill which would have to be cleaned up in post.

The downside of course is that the CGI is nailed down and is mostly very hard to fix in post. I suppose that's what Gore Verbinski is criticizing — for a filmmaker, the dreaded "Unreal look" is when your LED screen set has cheesy realtime CGI backgrounds and you can't do anything about it because those assets are already produced and you must shoot with them.

Re: Director Gore Verbinski: Unreal Engine is the greatest slip backwards for movie

#18

Post by jimbob45 »

rcxdude wrote: post #9
eurekin wrote: post #7

I'm really confused at that take. If you watched the Corridor Channel on YouTube, you can catch a lot of times that Unreal is treated as a draft, or the on-set reference, and gets replaced almost always, before shipping the final. Something doesn't add up here.

There are definitely movies and TV shows now that are using unreal for the final render. But mainly because they can't afford anything else.

Having watched a great deal of Andromeda, Star Trek, and Hercules/Xena growing up, I would submit that weak video effects can be perfectly fine as long as the actors take them seriously enough.

Re: Director Gore Verbinski: Unreal Engine is the greatest slip backwards for movie

#20

Post by maeln »

Money and deadline are the real answer. VFX companies, even more so in later years, are squeeze for time and budget by studios. Unreal Engine allow for fast and quick iteration on CGI/VFX, so it dramatically reduces the time to make them, especially when the director changes their mind every Tuesday. It is the consequence, not the cause. If every studio was willing to spend Michael Bay money on CGI, it wouldn't be a problem.
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