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20th Century Fox
The Na'vi, a blue-skinned species in the 2009 movie "Avatar." were created with the help of computational physics.
Remember the Na'vi – the blue-stripped humanoid species with pointy ears and a powerful bond with nature in last year's biggest sci-fi epic, "Avatar"? They were created in a physics lab.
In fact, the entire movie "stands out for the amount of physics that was involved," Robert Bridson, a computer scientist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, told me in an e-mail. "A lot of the environments, and of course the characters, were completely computer-generated."
Bridson is an expert in the physics of computer-generated animation and co-author with Christopher Batty of a review of the state of the art and the challenges facing the field, published this week in the journal Science.
"Compared with more traditional animation methods that rely chiefly on artists' efforts, numerical solutions to the equations of physics allow computers to calculate realistic motion, such as that of smoke, fire, explosions, water, rubble, clothing, hair, muscles and skin," they write.
This, in turn, results in animated films with amazingly realistic scenes. For example, when "Avatar" was made, New Zealand-based Weta Digital used physics to simulate how the muscles and skin of the Na'vi worked, how their clothing moved, and how the trees and plants on Pandora moved as well, Bridson noted.
"I also helped write the Naiad software they used to simulate a lot of the water in the film, from the river Jake Sully falls into at the start to the ocean waves pounding the coast near the end, and the water drops in the leaf that Neytiri drinks from," he said.
Routines and challenges
Water, Bridson noted, is one of the biggest current challenges in computer animation, given the complex geometry involved.
Some aspects of making digital characters are becoming routine, such as making clothing ruffle, flames flicker and smoke billow realistically. (You can check out animations on Brison's website.) But really large-scale explosions, as well as scenes with multiple size scales — such as a boat on stormy seas — remain a challenge.
And then there's hair.
"Long hair or curly hair is still a huge problem," Bridson said. "It's difficult enough to get hair to behave in real life for action scenes."
Other challenges include getting computers to work fast enough to appease demanding directors. Filmmakers are also looking for methods to judge the quality of an animation. These are largely problems in transferring the technology from the lab to the movie studio.
"The scale at which studios want to do things is almost always a lot greater than what academics can tackle," Bridson noted.
He noted that most audiences may not even be aware how much of the action in the movies they see is already computer-generated. For example, rather than getting a yacht, camera crew and actors out in a real ocean to shoot a scene, it's actually cheaper for a studio to build a model of the boat, simulate the ocean around it and then put in the actors who were shot in front a green screen.
Coming attractions
In the coming years, advances in the algorithms used for computer-generated animation should lead to subtle improvements in the quality and creativity of visuals, and allow directors to achieve their vision with shrinking budgets, Bridson noted.
"'District 9' from 2009 is an important harbinger of what's going to be coming," he said. "With a relatively modest budget of $30 million, and from outside the traditional Hollywood blockbuster network, they made a gorgeous, visually compelling work of art with a bit of a risky and very intriguing idea."
Just don't get your hopes up for feature-length films made by amateurs, a la YouTube, he added.
"Even if all you were to need on the technical side was a computer — no cameras, no sets, no actors — the artistic challenge of creating a film remains, and will still require a huge amount of dedication, time and talent."
That sentiment echoes what Ohio State University computer scientist Rick Parent told me in November when we chatted about the computer technology used to allow Jeff Bridges to play a nearly-30-year-younger version of himself in "Tron: Legacy," the sequel to the 1982 blockbuster.
Bridges told the Daily Mail that he could imagine a day when he could appear in movies without really acting by simply leasing studios his image. Parent said maybe, but not anytime soon.
"With removing the actor completely, now you've got a whole different problem of building those body motions, those facial motions, the speech — which is a whole other problem. Building that essentially from scratch … that's a whole other level of complexity, and we are not there at all."
Check out the links below for more stories on computer animation.
- Brave new world for virtual actors
- 'Avatar' technology raises Oscar question
- Alien plants get new twist in world of 'Avatar'
- Scientists visualize virus on the attack
- Moving closer to a 'Matrix'-style virtual world
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
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Directors, producers, screen writers today have come to rely so much on "special effects" that story based films have gotten lost in all the pyrotechnics, morphing, cutting, and other mishmash that we're seeing now. The truth seems to be that its a lot simpler to hand it over to the technicians and let them make something out of nothing than to pay top flight screenwriters to write top flight scripts and find directors who are dedicated to telling great stories. Only the Coen Brothers, Cronenberg, Scorsese, Tarrantino and a few others* continue to make films that are character based and story driven. All the rest seem content to simply throwing @!$%# up there and hoping somehow it will stick. I'm actually beginning to feel sympathy for some of our best actors who while continuing to give excellent performances see them get lost in all the rapid fire filmcutting.
*Ben Affleck's film The Town is the only one I've seen this year that fits the category.
Big FX have always been a huge staple for the film industry- remember King Kong, Godzilla (or Gojira, for you purists), and all those wacky Greek myth movies (Clash of the Titans, et al.)? At the time, those movies were utilizing state-of-the-art special effects, from stop-motion to synthetic suits and massive scale models. The fact that we are now utilizing computers to more realistically portray the imagined characters, landscapes and effects in film is simply the evolution of the art. B-movies have always been around, CG animation does not necessarily increase the amount churned out every year. Plenty of directors and film makers have utilized CG animation responsibly to further the telling of their story. Inception, for example, was an excellent film that utilized some pretty stunning visual effects to immerse the viewer in the dream-world, yet the characters did not fade into the background of the CG. Or how about J.J. Abrams' Star Trek? A lot of great effects there, but the acting and character development was distinctly intact.
Still, failures mount. George Lucas and the Star Wars prequels being the most imminent example of special effects taking precedence over real story-telling and acting. Those three films were lemons through and through. The Transformers 2 was another let down, but with very pretty lights all along.
I remember when "special effects" were interesting. Seeing the way that the artists' use of miniatures and the tricks for making us believe that a death star had exploded was really cool. The story in the original "star Wars" trilogy was very trite, but the special effects were what held you there, especially wondering, "how did they do that?"
Now when you wonder "how did they do that?" and the response is CG, it's pretty boring to see the process.
Skipz
The key to your post is "mass audience". Once everything is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, all that is left is smoke & mirrors to try to spice up pablum. The classic movies of yesteryear were not made for the masses, they were made for the educated, sophisticated elite.
It wasn't that the audience was a specific group it's just that you had an audience that had nowhere else to look to other than three networks and whatever was at their local theater - which only played one movie at a time. Actually now movies are made for a specific audience - and that mostly tends to be people with kids, seeing the the movie with their kids. The great thing about digital effects is it allows them to put great visuals, for a lower cost, in movies that would only appeal to a niche audience. There isn't the pressure to have that movie pay off by forcing it to appeal to a larger audience, by making it less challenging. There have been plenty of challenging movies the last few years, with extraordinary CGI "Children of Men", "District 9" and even "Avatar" has some bold speculative ideas. Whether their popularity - or lack of it - are flukes or not is determined by time. This is the way it is with all movies in a competitive marketplace and in the public consciousness.
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Advancements in special effects obviously are something that--used with discretion--can add to a film. But the problem seems that all too often they're being applied with too broad a brush. It takes a strong-willed director, one with innately good taste, to use that artistry and not let it overpower his film.
And then there are the mechanics who just want to slap something together and see if the suckers out here will buy it!
I hear people leaving the theatre muttering all the time: "Why in hell did we pay good money to see that turkey!"
"just don't get your hopes up for feature length movies made by amateurs" oh yeah? take a look at Timothy Albee, currently working on his movie "Kaze", which is a prequel to his successful short film "Kaze: Ghost Warrior"
http://ta-animation.com
I agree, take a look at the movie called Starwreck In the Pirkening. A full length movie made and acted completely by amateurs from Finland with tons of special effects. Its also free to download and watch: http://www.starwreck.com/
Then there is the youtube short movie called whats in the box: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU_reTt7Hj4
I can name others like "Escape from City 17 etc.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1UPMEmCqZo&feature=related
Regardless of what someone may say, anyone with a computer and the skills can create a movie. The time has arrived and we are already starting to see this.
Why don't they just make some of the wonderful sci fi books into movies? Ringworld Series? Pern? Anything by Mercedes Lackey? Not just the same regurgitated junk, but the books that I'm thinking of would be new and exciting movies.