VFX Artists React to Bad and Great CGi 169

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Transcript

00:00What's up everybody welcome back to visual effects arts react. I hope you're having a wonderful Saturday or Friday if you're on the website

00:07We got some cool clips to look at here gladiator 2 just dropped and it's got some pretty crazy scenes in it

00:13You're never gonna rear naked choke coked up baboons

00:18Also, we're gonna take a look at Jurassic Park 2. I

00:22Think that's done by hand. This is such an advanced shot plus we're gonna look at some Ghostbusters

00:28But we're not gonna look at the ghosts. We're gonna look at the backgrounds. Whoa, really? What a trip

00:33I don't spoil it gonna get into it

00:35logo

00:41Gladiator to

00:43I

00:52Look at those teeth baboons are terrifying by the way like real-life baboons

00:57You never want to get in a fight with they will rip your face off. They know the soft parts

01:04That is animated really nicely like that's pretty convincing right there

01:08Like look at skin it looks so real do those little micro hairs all down the side of the arms the skin texture and

01:15They're not photo scanning a baboon. No

01:19This is entirely created from scratch and it's an artist or multiple artists literally going through and they sculpt everything they model everything

01:26Then you have an additional artist come in and texture everything and they're painting not just like the colors

01:32But all of like the wrinkles and dimples and pores and all that stuff

01:35It all gets like brushed on and it's like anytime you have a CG animal

01:39especially like a

01:40Skinned animal like this you have all the bones

01:43Interacting with all the muscles connected to those bones and then skin over the top of all that just simulation layers

01:48Friggin onion friggin onions monkey onions

01:54Is it ever explained why this one baboon doesn't have hair even though he does have some hair have you never googled naked chimp

02:01Yeah, I think it's truly inspired just by just being like, well we saw a video of a naked baboon and it was crazy

02:06It's a freakiest looking thing. There's the real one and there's a CG one. How do you know? That's a real one? Oh

02:22That's not real there's an artist who should be arrested immediately I have to make a wiener

02:31Oh

02:41This is the scene that took me out of it like from from a CG perspective really difficult thing to do

02:46Well, they did a great job just conceptually. Yeah, like you're never gonna rear naked choke not even baboons dude coked up baboons

02:55Get a rear naked choke a coked up baboon, okay

02:58A baboon is significantly stronger than a human way stronger. You're not gonna be able to put your hooks in it's gonna rego

03:04It's gonna eat your soft parts. None of them would be alive right now. Yeah

03:09There were a few parts of this that really stood out to me as being really well done

03:12So one is when he throws the monkey off of him

03:14I've heard pulls the teeth out of the chain and the monkey kind of flies and lands in the dirt like that

03:18It feels really good. It moves really naturally it comes off of him really naturally

03:23This isn't motion capture. He's not fighting a real monkey actor who's wearing a motion capture suit

03:27So it's really an animator doing it by hand and totally inventing it from scratch. That's so hard

03:35This to me it's like it looks great for doing a guy wrestling a CG character

03:40This is fantastic the way he's grabbing it interacting with it the lighting

03:44It's pulling at his fabric on his shirt and the way it throws him and like changes the center of gravity

03:48It puts him to the ground. I can't get over what looks like him

03:52Just grabbing nothing and spinning around and then throwing himself down. It doesn't look like there's anything interacting with him in real life

03:57Well run, there's actually a big burly dude in a gray spandex suit really cuz it doesn't look like it wait

04:02Is there actually mm-hmm?

04:08He's a dude he's like a full-on dude, oh my gosh wait, that's so much harder than what's the pain out there?

04:15Dude there's a huge swaths of his legs that are covered by this guy. Do you think he goes to career day in that outfit?

04:25It is weird though run cuz I also didn't really feel the weight of it

04:28That's crazy cuz I totally felt the weight of it. It's because the weight distribution isn't the same

04:34He's like up on his shoulder and swinging him around like that as opposed to swinging down around his hip

04:39Yeah, that's center of gravity. I see that I see that the center of gravity is technically off

04:43Well, here's the point like you're talking about

04:45Accounting for weight in CG the fact that you guys can tell or all of us can tell when an actor is holding an empty cup

04:51Of coffee. Yeah, I mean that little bit of weight makes a difference

04:56So imagine having to account for the weight of an entire monkey, but they did such a good job painting it out

05:02Keeping the shadow of the guy adding the shadow of the monkey dealing with the dust

05:06Yeah

05:06Dealing with the fact that it's grabbing him and interacting with him having the foresight on set to shoot with somebody that does the same

05:11Action, so you have real footage that does the real reactions all that put together. It's just really well done

05:16Yeah, I mean at the end of the day, this is really good work. Let the gulps decide

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06:41You guys head back to react I'll take care of the little guy

06:49All right, it's time for animal fight to this one has more nuance it also involves a human being on the animal

06:55Are you not entertained? This is a crazy idea. The Rhino looks great

06:59I can really tell it's a CG Rhino, but the dude looks complete photo real. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait

07:04Wait, that's a CG dude

07:06He is obviously in many shots a real guy a real actor

07:09but still the fact that he never feels like a CG character in this sequence is like a testament to like the approach to

07:15Filmmaking on these scenes. So I already noticed something. He's not bucking up and down

07:19Yeah

07:19the Rhino is like

07:20Running but the level of his hips on the Rhino is staying the same and then it cuts to the big wide shot

07:27And he's good

07:29Yeah, I'm willing to bet that Rhino and the writer on him are not real at all. Yeah, they're all hundred percent. Yeah

07:36Yeah, he's on some sort of mount on a track there and then it's full siege for the wides make sense

07:41That's some good. I sure like homes that you guys are doing right now because that's exactly what they're doing

07:45Yeah, anytime it's like smooth then it's a guy on a track anytime. It's like really moving CG Rhino

07:51Also, it's like the detail of it if he's just small enough in the shot

07:54You can get away with having him be CG can't quite tell but if he's large like in that shot there

07:59That's probably a real dude there. Yeah

08:04Yeah, all that secondary motion of like the kilt and the skin of the Rhino and the muscles and the straps of the saddle

08:11You know, it's cool to is his handling of the straps on the side with his legs

08:14Yeah, I was gonna say like pivot. Yeah Wow all the straps the physics Sims

08:18Yeah of having a skeleton structure for the Rhino

08:21Muscles on top of that contract and expand and jiggle that then influence a skin type cloth simulation over that but then they have another

08:29Like harness and saddle sim on top of that skin and they're not clipping

08:36That harness and saddle is literally pulling in some of the belly fat on the Rhino it's literally indenting the fat

08:42Yeah, so they're simulated together. It looks like, you know, it's like wet

08:45It has like their Loki simulator, which is like fire and water and smoke and you know, I guess these guys put together

08:50They're like, I don't know their blubber system. Yeah, they have fire and water figured out but we got Rhino fat straps down

08:57You know the thing that always gives away CG isn't the rendering it's the animation and the animation here is

09:03perfect on the guy like the guy feels like a real dude riding a rhinoceros the fact that he never feels like a CG character

09:09And this sequence is like one's gonna testament like the approach to filmmaking on these scenes

09:13One other notable thing about this film is they built some huge sets

09:17Like there's a lot of real stuff and they really committed to not replacing it

09:20Like they built a whole castle and they replaced the desert with ocean. Wait

09:25What? Yeah, they CG'd the ocean onto the desert. Dude, that's the dream of everyone in a desert

09:31And they have this big boat assault and once again

09:33like they have real boats on the sand on wheels and they're filming with and

09:38There's so many shots where you're like, oh, they could have just done that all in CGI and save themselves the money

09:42But they shot it for real. Mm-hmm like that shot right there in the background, too. Yep. Okay, that's pretty legit

09:47And this is like a reference dream. If you're working on this as an artist, it's like thank goodness

09:52They have like real boats in the shot. I can match it perfectly

09:55They're not gonna like if they say oh, it doesn't look realistic enough

09:58I can then just do the wipe and show them that's the actual boat in the background. They filmed

10:01Yeah, you know, it's having reference really protects you as an artist like look at that shot

10:06Look how much they kept in that they added shields. Whoa

10:10Yeah, look good

10:12Probably cuz they're like, who are those dudes in the middle?

10:16Oh the camera guys, you're right they covered up the camera guys. Oh my wait, those are camera guys. Yes. Oh

10:22Sorry, but I can't accept this that flies in the face of gladiator lore. You're supposed to leave the cameraman visible

10:38Yes in the car, you know, I didn't know that you're supposed to leave the cameraman

10:43Hey kiddos, listen, this is gonna be some zippy fast crazy CGI moment here. This is an older film 1990

10:50This is a film that demonstrates the effectiveness of a simple effect

10:54If you're ever like I want to get into VFX, but I can't learn CGI

10:57Yeah, I know there's some do some basic masking and after-effects. It's like this is basic masking and after-effects

11:01This is these are effects

11:02You're about to see here that you can do in five minutes on your computer

11:04I'm willing to bet these might be effects that you can do on your phone now

11:12Whoa, it's like there's just a simple cut juxtaposition. Yeah. Yeah. He's a ghost right now. Nobody can see him. He's dead

11:21Oh

11:24They're drawing a mask around him by hand, yeah, you can see it on the left side of his neck

11:29I like how they reintroduce some of him when he's in the transparent glass. Yeah, that's a nice little touch

11:34You can't push it with your finger. You're dead

11:40Basic VFX, right? Yeah, but the way it's used in the story and when they decide to show it to you

11:45Like you're built up to see it. You know, it's it's the magic pattern, right?

11:49It's a magician setting up the trick

11:55All right, if this is the simplest visual effect, how would you do it?

11:58I would actually have the shoe there in front of the shoe stick his fingers because it's film

12:02you can't tell if he's in the foreground or not because it's two-dimensional and I just take a bit of the shoe cut it out and

12:07Stick it over his fingers for a moment and have some transparency

12:10These are all these are all shots you can do by just filming stuff with your camera on a tripod

12:15Cut things out using some masking and you just literally change transparency of them so far everything I've seen you can do on a phone

12:21You can actually do relatively

12:24Advanced masking effects in CapCut and or various other video editing apps on your phone

12:32So there's the scene from Ghostbusters

12:35Frozen Empire that I wanted you guys to take a look at I want your thoughts on what you're seeing in this whole shot

12:40These kids are so green screened

12:45This weird video game world comping oh, oh there it is

12:53Yeah, the lion's kind of an interesting thing here because it's like they're trying to make it seem like real concrete

12:59But at the same time real concrete doesn't stretch at all

13:02Yeah, and even then there's like something missing in the tactility of the concrete

13:06There's something about like in the original where they base it off of the puppetry and there's a tactility to it

13:11That's really nice, and it's like it's decent, but I don't feel that same tactility for the stone

13:16I do like some of the elements that they're introducing of like cracking of certain joints when they're stressed too much

13:21That's a cool idea now. What if I was to tell you I didn't bring this clip for the lion I

13:27Brought this clip for the library wait

13:29I can see that so yeah Nico kind of called it out pretty early the kids are green screen

13:33But more than that they couldn't shoot this in New York City of course so none of the background is real

13:40I could I was feeling that so you you saw there's like. Oh, that's weird comping ironically. That's part of the stuff

13:46We're seeing that is real whoa

13:49People are comped in for that

13:51I'm talking about like the background all the backgrounds real the library was made from scratch

13:56They did a bunch of LiDAR scans of the whole library and all that stuff

13:59But they only use that to reconstruct the entirety of the library stone by stone

14:04Getting everything to be as accurate as possible because that needs to be a CG asset so that you can get all the different

14:09Perspectives of it for all the different shots

14:11But you don't really need to do that for the surrounding area of all the buildings in the background

14:17So normal like remember on Avengers 2012 they literally recreated the entirety of New York City

14:22They could have done that here, but they're like that's unnecessary work. We just need to see that

14:26We're never taking the camera down the street. We just see it from the steps of the library here

14:32so they essentially just took footage of the surrounding area and

14:36Thousands of images and just basically have it all as two-and-a-half D comps Wow that's that looks amazing

14:42So they had to go through and paint out all the people all the cars

14:45And then all of the cars you see in the background are CG

14:48And then all of the people are green screen plates or blue screen plates

14:53I should say and that's the part that stuck out to me because like they're all like very

14:56Flatly lit and didn't quite have the lighting lineup with the environment

14:59Yeah, so a full CG background shot tracked in real people on elements

15:04And the cameras far enough away that you're not gonna get any parallax from the camera moving so you can get away with the 2d

15:09Cutout the benefit here is that you get super realistic rendering and animation because they're actually real

15:14But now you have to composite it and that's a bit of a challenge crazy to think that it's easier to do that than

15:19To film on the steps of the library in New York. Yeah, it's crazy that it is cheaper to recreate the public library here

15:26Than it is to shoot at the public library and shut down the street for however many weeks

15:31They got to do it. The library itself looks amazing. They did a really nice job with the library looks really good

15:37How fast can you say quarter digital comm still enunciate it fast as fast as you can go?

15:43Quarter digital, that's pretty good

15:46Quarter to the gum

15:52So every talks about the t-rex in Jurassic Park 1 like I was thinking we never looked at Jurassic Park Lost World the second

15:57Jurassic Park came out in 97

16:01He's very angry I

16:04Wanted to see just how much the t-rex effects have evolved since the first Jurassic Park

16:09And of course, this is ILM following up with like their history defining movies

16:14So they're of course going all out and doing the best they possibly can

16:22So, did you notice that those doors were CGI the whole time the whole time even at the beginning I did what a shot though

16:30In my opinion the t-rex still looks really good and in fact looks as good if not better than a lot of CGI these days

16:37They are matching that sort of faded look so perfectly the compositing is flawless

16:44They're leaning into the strengths right that strong directional light single source notice all the stuff he interacts with all the debris

16:50That's a huge thing is there's so many things that are real on set special effects

16:54They're rigged and triggered to fall and get knocked over and be part of the t-rex's animation

17:00So they are planning out exactly what's happening in these shots like they're envisioning it

17:04They got their CG goggles on the t-rex is its thing and that action of like really committing to an a vision

17:09Committing to idea and getting real things on set to interact it goes

17:12So far when we say that the effects were better in the 90s. This is an example of what we're talking about

17:18It's not that the effects were better. It's the mindset behind them were so much more integrated into everything

17:24There's so much more planned out like you're saying

17:26It's like this whole shot was planned out exactly to have all these different things happening

17:30And they just got to add in the dino

17:32This is the advantage of not being able to do anything, right?

17:35You have to be intelligent in how you approach it and the net result is something that looks better

17:40All

17:42Right, what's CG in the shot the Cedar sign?

17:46No, I was joking. I don't know. Okay. So what is CG in the shot? Well the t-rex t-rex?

17:52Mm-hmm the car on the left looks real. I mean, honestly those three main cars in the middle. They look real to me

17:58Maybe it's the the stoplight. Yeah, I can go the top right one

18:02Yeah behind the red light the entire stoplight structure is CG. Wait, so I kind of nailed it when I said the Cedar sign

18:09Yeah

18:11That's so funny. Dang. Wow. Yeah, that looks great

18:22That's smoke

18:24Crazy I think those are hand-masked roto plates for the snow. I don't think they're doing Z depth

18:30I could be wrong. No, you have to though, right?

18:34So Z depth is just giving you a like close to the camera is darker farther from the cameras lighter

18:38And you can use that as a mask so because I'm you like more transparent closer is less transparent farther back

18:43It goes from vice versa

18:44so you can use that take your t-rex and take like a smoke layer for that smoke layer on top of the t-rex and use that

18:50Z depth on the smoke layer to have the smoke be transparent by the t-rex's head and less transparent by the t-rex's tail

18:56However, that's just on top of the t-rex

18:58You can match it to the smoke around it and that may not be the best way to go about doing it

19:03Sometimes just selecting areas by hand animating by hand and just adjusting levels by hand is the way to go to wait

19:08Though but there's look at the

19:11Volumetric rays, that's comp. You see the God rays, you know, the the light rays coming through that smoke from the t-rex

19:17I think that's done by hand and comp

19:19I think somebody's literally rotoing out shapes and animating them and moving and just like making like a 10% darker

19:24Yep pass just there and just yep

19:27Again, it's just animation

19:30hand-tracked animation

19:31You're getting the details of the smoke passing over the body

19:35Like it's not just one solid color like the actual plumage and noise detail in the smoke is actually passing over his body

19:41This is such an advanced shot because also when he hits it the sparks go flying out and the sparks are all in front of

19:47The dinosaur which I think you could easily do by just extracting out the brightest parts of the shot and layering it back on top

19:53And that's what they're clearly doing here and they're hitting him with that bounce light underneath and it's also a massive moving shot

19:59Yeah, yeah the camera tracking

20:02Like that dude, this is what that's mind-blowing

20:09Wait, what the heck kind of store is that that's a blockbuster video blockbuster

20:14Love that they have an advertisement for a real movie with Robin. Ah, actually there is no movie

20:19Sorry, those are not real movies. Those are not real movies

20:22Oh, I saw Jack and I know he's been in one call isn't Jack?

20:25He was a Jack on the freakin beanstalks

20:27There is no Arnold Schwarzenegger in King Lear and there is no sequel to Jack called Jack and the Beanstalks now

20:32Here's the really crazy thing about this Easter egg. We're gonna go deep on this Easter egg for a second here

20:36Okay, so Steven Spielberg was the executive producer of Animaniacs. Uh-huh

20:41There's an Animaniacs skit about reading variety the magazine about Hollywood entertainment business

20:47Which is a super inside baseball skit and there's a joke in there that

20:51Yakko makes where Paramount is struggling. So they're casting Arnold Schwarzenegger in King Lear

20:57It's a lyric from an Animaniacs song and they put it into a poster in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park 2 that's

21:04This is the first multiverse a bit of IP. I think yes Animaniacs and Jurassic Park exist in the same

21:13Wait, I know it looks like they're so casual. Yeah, if they trip they're dead. Yeah, that's great

21:20I feel like you accidentally just trip and suddenly there's a bus on you

21:24There's the woman in the red jacket with the blonde hair and she's like kind of casually strolling and she doesn't look that athletic

21:29But obviously being a stunt woman she is so when she puts on the freaking gas

21:33You just see you're just freaking Terminator out of there

21:40Oh, dude, dude Hank Green, no not Hank a Texas switch to the scene Wow

21:46Falls out of frame they take over the CG guy and then they hide him behind the car. That's a horse

21:54Slid sideways. Oh, yeah, it's crazy in the tree branches getting hit by the t-rex

22:03All the tree getting hit

22:07Like all these different things like this car is gonna move the trees gonna shake the bumpers gonna go up and down and then there

22:14Will be a dinosaur dude. They freaking crushed it. That's so cool

22:18Is it a very very nicely lit and comp shot here to that's coming up the t-rex walks under the pavilion

22:27Lighting here, that's so much more difficult than single-source

22:30Yeah, it's so much more difficult. You can get a sense of that CG rendering on the t-rex

22:33Like it doesn't have like shadows where it should it doesn't have these little soft dark shadows in the folds of its skin

22:38It doesn't have quite there if the correct

22:41Reflectivity and changing light values from the light bouncing off the ground as it runs

22:45Because all this stuff is probably being placed by hand people are placing lights above to match the lights of the gas station and they're

22:51Placing lights below to try to estimate what the real reflectivity of the light coming off the ground would be based on the technology of

22:58The time they're not running an HDR. They're not photo scanning the environment

23:01Like this is truly artists just putting in lights and trying to line it up

23:04And here's the thing if you're an artist you can go out with like a paintbrush and paint a photo real portrait or still life

23:10You can take a janky 3d program and get photo real renders out of it

23:13Because you know what it needs to look good

23:19That was a fun episode guys, I hope you enjoyed it as well, and we'll see you next week. Bye. Bye

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