Note that the latest version of this wallpaper is CGI. [1]
[1] https://mspoweruser.com/new-default-windows-10-light-theme-w...
Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)
241–250 of 291 posts
Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)
#242Very cool but I would prefer spending all that time and money on building a better product and what they delivered. This is like a startup spending hours upon hours on logo and name instead of actually building something.
This is such an ignorant take. The default wallpaper is seen by millions if not billions of people. Many never change it. It's an important part of the branding. The total cost of the shoot, including equipment, salaries, the studio, etc. is NOTHING to Microsoft and its marketing budget. It's not like they had to prioritize this over anything else, they are printing money left and right, they are a trillion dollar co…
And yet the best wallpaper they ever used was a lucky fluke by the photographer, who was driving through Sonoma after a rainstorm, in a year where they had to burn the vines off a hillside due to blight infection.
Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)
#243Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)
#244To me as a photographer and as computer vision expert, this sounds wayyyyyy over-engineered and -produced. I get that there's a big vision (and budget) involved, but c'mon!
Gmunk was working on visual graphics for the web back in late 90s / early 2000s with Vir2L. If they wanted to, they could have easily banged out half a dozen wallpapers in an afternoon using Maya or whatever, but they chose the physical route.
This is the hilarious part about the comments. Nobody knows who GMUNK is and it shows. Dudes been knocking it out of the park for decades.
Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah that's post hoc rationalization. The amount of busy-work that went into it is ridiculous. Just because a colossal amount of effort was poured in this wallpaper doesn't mean that they used the right tool for the job or that the output was better because of it.
You're thinking like an engineer, and speak as if there is a right amount of time to spend on artistic endeavours; if you cross this threshold for you it is a "ridiculous and colossal amount of effort". Budget aside, art isn't constrained or criticized by how much effort the artist put in. All that matters is the result. A wallpaper or any other artistic creation isn't less beautiful or evocative because the artist s…
"All that matters is the result. A wallpaper or any other artistic creation isn't less beautiful or evocative because the artist spent thousands of hours on it."
Disagree, HEAVILY, a ton of the biggest marvels in the world are so because of how much work was put into them.
Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)
#246The technical ingenuity is impressive. I personally find this visual quite cold and soulless, compared to previous Windows wallpapers, mostly XP's of course. For me this also coincided with Windows becoming completely useless and my moving to a Mac.
Try Linux/Fedora intead. Windows is really awful, and Macs are super limited in hardware. (It might work if you only do web dev) Fedora is literally better than both. People are just so used to repeating the linux prayer of 'debian/ubuntu/mint', that most people don't know: Debian is an outdated/old distro with limited features and lots of bugs. Fedora is up-to-date, loaded with codecs and drivers, works with Nvidia,…
Fedora favors shifting the technological overton window over shipping working software. I first tried Fedora out on the initial release which switched on Wayland by default -- this was in like 2017, or around there. I installed it, booted to the login screen, and then logging in went to a black screen which booted me back to login. I was on an Nvidia card which was unsupported and I had no idea what Wayland was, so I ended up uninstalling it in favor of Linux Mint.
It's not like they weren't aware this wouldn't work for the majority of the desktop marketshare. They didn't try to mitigate this by detecting your card and defaulting to x11. They did not apparently care. Evidently causing friction and getting the ecosystem to switch was more important to them then my machine working with their software.
I'm sure Fedora is great, but I think it's poor form to recommend it to people new to Linux.
Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
The final image is shaped by a variety of people observing live changes to the scene and giving inputs. You can't iterate as quickly when you're interrupted constantly by the artist having to modify the scene and then render it. I'm sure you would have made a nice looking image using a digital scene, but I don't think you can duplicate the experience. It would not have been the same creative atmosphere.
I'm pretty sure it'd be far faster for a team of people to view various options on a screen while an artist moved virtual lights around and played with colors and lens flair effects in a computer than it would be to wait around while people set up and move around various lasers and projectors and smoke machines between attempts and then looked at a screen to see how the camera picked it up.
No, it certainly isn't. Creating renders and scene modelling is definitely not real-time. Teams do markups and sketches for brainstorming.
Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't need to because you can't argue with success. They continue to have the dominant product in the space for several decades.
Successful product != well-designed product. Microsoft got Windows where it is by having no sense of self-respect and willing to play the B2B race to the bottom. And it remains dominant thanks to decades' worth of legacy software that needs to continue running. So that's cheapness and momentum. If Windows was ever a beautiful product, it certainly isn't now. It would never become popular today in its current shape an…
>Successful product != well-designed product.
Anyone can say that about any product. That doesn't make it true. Windows is a successful product that satisfies a need that people and businesses have. You can't fake dollar bills.
>Microsoft got Windows where it is by having no sense of self-respect and willing to play the B2B race to the bottom. And it remains dominant thanks to decades' worth of legacy software that needs to continue running.
>So that's cheapness and momentum.
>If Windows was ever a beautiful product, it certainly isn't now. It would never become popular today in its current shape and principles.
I'd rather sell a hundred million copies than convince some randos on the internet that my software is "beautiful".
Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looks good but rather too foggy and not as crisp as the original which is much more detailed. Video artifacts notwithstanding. blender: https://i.imgur.com/0BjMWi3.jpeg original: https://i.imgur.com/GGwVibG.jpeg
TBF, the blender version you reference was from an animation, not the first single still render. blender (frame 0): https://i.imgur.com/XIV8Hma.png original: https://i.imgur.com/GGwVibG.jpeg Also, it includes a caveat: > Unfortunately, due to the nature of volumetric rendering, I was unable to economically render the final animation at a high resolution with enough samples. So I had to resort to denoising, which sadl…
And so the remaining 20% of the work will take another 80% of effort.
Classic
Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Stranger Things intro scene is CGI. Artists were consulted who originally created similar titles in the 80s with practical effects to see how they could do it too. The old-school artists said to just do it in CGI because that’s what they would have done.
People don’t hate CGI - they hate bad CGI. It’s hard to explain, but you know it when you see it. Bad practical effects do exist, but even when bad they don’t look “unnatural”.
Speaking of "Bad CGI", the making of the HBO Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agS6ZXBrcng