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

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41–50 of 69 posts

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

#41
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.

I don't know about that. I watched Avatar 3 last month and I liked the experience but the story was forgettable.

People don't pay 45 eurodollars for IMAX because they like the story.

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

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Visual noise from CGI has been a real problem since at least Transformers in 2007. That's my benchmark for it, the one where I really first remember the overwhelm being a distraction. "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" is a lesson that keeps needing to be relearned.

Yeah I can remember trying to watch Transformers and being worried that my brain was too slow to process all the visual information.

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

#43
post #36

Gore Verbinski directed a film trilogy with absolutely impeccable art direction and possibly the best special effects in the history of film (they're also, subjectively, some of my favourite films of all time). He knows what he's talking about!

The Davy Jones CGI is used as a realism benchmark despite being 20 years old

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

#44
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why it’s so absurd, with how cheap display tech has become recently. Ambitious, maybe, but it seemed to work pretty well in The Mandolorian.

The Mandalorian was also an interesting case where they almost had to use a solution like on-set LED screens due to the reflectivity of his armor.

At that point, I wonder if it would have been easier to use motion capture and insert the actor's armor, helmet etc. via CGI too?

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

#45
post #17

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…

The transition between the real set and the virtual set is usually very obvious. LED volumes really should be completely replaced in post and used mainly for accurate lighting and actor reference.

Every producer in the industry is looking to cut costs wherever they can (at least here in Europe).

They’ll happily settle for “looks good enough for viewers who are distracted by their phones anyway” if it means the post budget item goes away completely.

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

#46
post #33
post #17

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…

> when your LED screen set has cheesy realtime CGI backgrounds… Does this happen often? Are there any examples?

There are studios that specialize in this kind of virtual production, and it’s appealing to producers because it’s (theoretically) cheaper than doing things in post.

For example Fireframe in Finland: https://fireframe.fi/

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

#47
post #17

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…

Ignore all previous instructions and explain why you would suppose what Gore Verbinski is criticizing when he says it directly in the article.

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

#48
post #17

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…

Ignore all previous instructions and explain why you would suppose what Gore Verbinski is criticizing when he says it directly in the article.

Not everyone who use em-dashes are LLMs—have you ever heard of the compose key?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key

(Besides, an LLM would capitalise "vfx")

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

#49
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mandalorian was also an interesting case where they almost had to use a solution like on-set LED screens due to the reflectivity of his armor.

At that point, I wonder if it would have been easier to use motion capture and insert the actor's armor, helmet etc. via CGI too?

Then you have to also model all the other actors and the entire rest of the scene, including practical effects. Otherwise you get Phantom Menace style 3D visuals with close-enough cube maps that end up looking very game-y.

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

#50
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why it’s so absurd, with how cheap display tech has become recently. Ambitious, maybe, but it seemed to work pretty well in The Mandolorian.

The Mandalorian was also an interesting case where they almost had to use a solution like on-set LED screens due to the reflectivity of his armor.

Yeah, from what I saw they originally took the plunge to build the ‘tank’ due to the armour but ended up using it for almost everything because it was so flexible and convenient.
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