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We'd get that hard-R level violence in an anime series, not the films. If Fox/Disney are going to push forward with Alita as a film franchise, they'll be surely keeping it in-line with Battle Angel in terms of cyborg violence and PG-13ness. And that's fine imo.
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Mar 3, 2019 04:26
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Yeah, I thought this movie was totally fine in that regard, it just kinda limits what they can carry over untouched. Like, that scene would be a hard no. I'm actually really surprised they got the eye-punch in.
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Mar 3, 2019 04:32
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I can lose the gore as long as the point that "Yoko" was molded into a monstrous killer responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths, but "Alita" can choose to be someone else remains.
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Mar 3, 2019 04:45
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Al Cu Ad Solte posted:Holy poo poo. You should read Last Order, friend. 
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Mar 3, 2019 04:45
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Decided to catch the movie a second time and yep, still good. Enough good things can't be said about Rosa Salazar, so much of the film really depends on Alita being an engaging character and drat if she isn't just charming as heck. Obviously the CG/animation does its job too, but there's a strong performance underlying it. (And I am glad to learn that Alita as presented is pretty close to the source material.) You can't help but be struck by how much this character enjoys just being alive, in a story where nearly everyone is jaded and cynical because the world around them sucks. And going off what people have said about the film's technical achievement, it really does seem to me to be close to a new standard in integration of CG and live action material. Hell, half the characters it seems have live action and CG elements and it is SO hard to match these up in a way that tricks the eye, but man. Everything seems to have the right texture, there's no obvious "wash" on the digital things. War for the Planet of the Apes kinda pulled this off too, making the CG apes look as real as anything else, but that movie was all dark and shadowy and could hide some things, this had to be more difficult.
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Mar 3, 2019 05:10
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:Yeah, I thought this movie was totally fine in that regard, it just kinda limits what they can carry over untouched. Like, that scene would be a hard no. I'm actually really surprised they got the eye-punch in. No poo poo. Or Nississa's decapitation. I will say that if we get our sequel, it better have Caligula Armblessed wearing someone's hands.
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Mar 3, 2019 06:40
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I would also be surprised if there was a hard R sequel given the movie's runaway popularity in China where I don't think they allow the equivalent of R rated releases, though I could be wrong. (censorship standards are arbitrary everywhere)
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Mar 3, 2019 06:41
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I like the eyes, even moreso on a second viewing. They look cool. Pity there was no brain slurps.
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Mar 3, 2019 09:53
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Young Freud posted:No poo poo. Or Nississa's decapitation.
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Mar 3, 2019 10:24
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teagone posted:When Benjamin Button's CG effects were brought up and compared to Alita, I went to go look for a VFX reel to see how the process of animating Brad Pitt in that film differed from modern day performance capture tech and found this video: I'm a VFX artist. The processes and techniques for both characters are exactly the same and CGI facial animation hasn't changed for two decades and won't change for the considerable future in a production environment. The fundamental pipeline (for a humanoid character) is: - Actor has hi-def photos taken of them doing FACS (Facial Action Coding System) expressions and Action Units - every human expression and phoneme is a combination of individual Action Units. - Modellers and sculptors use these photos/scans as reference and sculpt every Action Unit on the CGI model - these are also called 'morphs' or 'blendshapes' and the modeller could easily create 200+ of them for a character like Alita. Only the very top sculptors get to work on a character like Alita. - These blendshapes are processed into a facial rig for animators. - Animators use the head cam footage (the one with markers on the actor's face) as reference and begin to mimic and improve the actor's performance by blending together the blendshapes created by the sculptor. A hi-def head cam and markers on an actor's face don't automatically drive the model and facial rig. They are there as reference for animators.
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Mar 3, 2019 15:38
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Rollie Fingers posted:- Actor has hi-def photos taken of them doing FACS (Facial Action Coding System) expressions and Action Units - every human expression and phoneme is a combination of individual Action Units. i imagine flipping through an actor's Action Unit photos would be pretty interesting. watching them try to break "acting" down into quanta. also the funny ones would be prime avatar material
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Mar 3, 2019 16:54
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Rollie Fingers posted:I'm a VFX artist. The processes and techniques for both characters are exactly the same and CGI facial animation hasn't changed for two decades and won't change for the considerable future in a production environment. A little off-topic but this seems like a good chance to ask: is the same process used for video games? My understanding was that for games with a large amount of facial animation, the first pass was done automatically with mo-cap software and was then cleaned up manually by animators in subsequent passes. This is the reason Mass Effect Andromeda's facial animations were so uneven; high-priority, main-story cutscenes got (almost) sufficient attention, but there weren't enough animation man-hours to finish a lot of the side content before release.
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Mar 3, 2019 20:14
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Rollie Fingers posted:I'm a VFX artist. The processes and techniques for both characters are exactly the same and CGI facial animation hasn't changed for two decades and won't change for the considerable future in a production environment. Interesting! Thanks for the insight. Since the process/technique hasn't changed, would you say performance capture has made the pipeline more efficient then? Or no? Is it just a system that makes it easier for the actors to give their performance? Because based on the videos, it looks like it's way more convenient for Rosa Salazar interacting with the other actors on set vs Brad Pitt reenacting the performance while isolated in a booth. [edit] Also, this was brought up a couple pages ago, is this true? Macdeo Lurjtux posted:But even then there were definitely parts where Zapan looked a bit off, and this was much more pronounced with the hookerbot. A graphic designer friend I’ve spoken about this to has said a big part of it is that the cg parts are rendered at a higher definition than real life parts are filmed at. It’s a big part of why Tarkin looks so off in Rogue One. teagone posted:I'm not sure if this is true or not, because films are shot at super high resolution already. Having to render CG effects at even greater quality than what the film was shot at seems like it'd be a waste of resources/unnecessary. I'm probably wrong though, maybe. According to IMDb, Alita was shot on the ARRI Alexa Mini, and output was ARRIRAW at 3.4K res. I know there are a few goons who work in VFX that could probably explain the process. [edit 2] Clipperton posted:i imagine flipping through an actor's Action Unit photos would be pretty interesting. watching them try to break "acting" down into quanta. also the funny ones would be prime avatar material Haha, yeah. Now I wish there were blu-ray blooper extras for films where performance capture was used that has the direct video of the actor's facial captures during action scenes lmao. teagone fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Mar 3, 2019 |
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Mar 3, 2019 20:22
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I would also be surprised if there was a hard R sequel given the movie's runaway popularity in China where I don't think they allow the equivalent of R rated releases, though I could be wrong. (censorship standards are arbitrary everywhere) China's really loving weird about this. Sexual content gets turbo-censored, but their own movies include Wolf Warrior 2 and Operation Red Sea, both of which are absurdly violent. e: Basically if it's pro-PRC and doesn't get anyone too horny you can do whatever you want, but anti-PRC sentiment and any kind of horniness whatsoever are hard nos.
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Mar 3, 2019 20:38
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Clipperton posted:i imagine flipping through an actor's Action Unit photos would be pretty interesting. watching them try to break "acting" down into quanta. also the funny ones would be prime avatar material We get a real mixed bag. Some actors feel like they're belittling themselves and don't bother performing the AUs correctly so the reference is essentially corrupted and we have to use artistic license to fill in the gaps. The best material I've received was from Ron Perlman.
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Mar 3, 2019 23:11
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Fallen Hamprince posted:A little off-topic but this seems like a good chance to ask: is the same process used for video games? My understanding was that for games with a large amount of facial animation, the first pass was done automatically with mo-cap software and was then cleaned up manually by animators in subsequent passes. This is the reason Mass Effect Andromeda's facial animations were so uneven; high-priority, main-story cutscenes got (almost) sufficient attention, but there weren't enough animation man-hours to finish a lot of the side content before release. I've only ever worked in film but, yes, video games use the same fundamentals of FACS for facial animation. In the case of the lovely facial animation for Mass Effect, you're right it's all down to budget. For a hero CGI character in film (e.g. Alita, Benjamin Button, Thanos, Caesar, etc.), a sculptor will have spent ~3 months or more on creating all the individual FACS shapes for a character, and then there might be as many as 10 - 15 senior animators animating ONLY the face for lip sync and facial expressions for the hundreds of shots the character is in. What often happens with background characters (or if money has run out) is that their blendshapes are transferred from another completed character and the animators on them are often junior and have very little time to churn out something presentable. This was likely the case for Mass Effect: junior animators, very little polishing time and the blendshapes were simple transfers.
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Mar 3, 2019 23:23
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Clipperton posted:i imagine flipping through an actor's Action Unit photos would be pretty interesting. watching them try to break "acting" down into quanta. also the funny ones would be prime avatar material You mean like  , because you know that's where that came from, or at least, from modelling such a thing.teagone posted:Haha, yeah. Now I wish there were blu-ray blooper extras for films where performance capture was used that has the direct video of the actor's facial captures during action scenes lmao. I'm pretty sure Star Citizen has hundreds of these because of Chris Roberts' insistence on having actors do everything in full rig gear.
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Mar 3, 2019 23:27
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Rollie Fingers posted:I've only ever worked in film but, yes, video games use the same fundamentals of FACS for facial animation. In the case of the lovely facial animation for Mass Effect, you're right it's all down to budget. while you're in here I have to ask, as a VFX artist what's the best character work you've ever seen? and what do you look for that normal moviegoers might not?
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Mar 3, 2019 23:34
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Has there ever been a VFX artist thread in CineD? Reading all these bits about the process is super fascinating. My biggest misconception is I thought that head cam footage I saw first in the behind-the-scenes featurettes from Avatar showing the actors with the HD cam attached to a boom on their head is what really drove the performance of the CG character model. teagone fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Mar 3, 2019 |
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Mar 3, 2019 23:51
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Young Freud posted:You mean like That's what I was thinking of when I posted, yes 
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Mar 3, 2019 23:56
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teagone posted:Interesting! Thanks for the insight. Since the process/technique hasn't changed, would you say performance capture has made the pipeline more efficient then? Or no? Is it just a system that makes it easier for the actors to give their performance? Because based on the videos, it looks like it's way more convenient for Rosa Salazar interacting with the other actors on set vs Brad Pitt reenacting the performance while isolated in a booth. Animators (and directors) definitely prefer the type of performance capture used in Alita. It's what the vast majority of films use anyway. The method used in Benjamin Button was prohibitively expensive, overkill and it was more difficult for the actor to give a convincing performance. The studio responsible for Benjamin Button (Digital Domain) don't use the booth any more. FYI, they were the ones who created Thanos and the performance capture setup was pretty much identical to Alita's. teagone posted:[edit] Also, this was brought up a couple pages ago, is this true? "cg parts are rendered at a higher definition than real life parts are filmed at. It’s a big part of why Tarkin looks so off in Rogue One." This isn't true. Rendering time has a massive impact on cost. Without going into trade secrets, shots will pretty much never be rendered higher than they need to be. I can't be fully sure on Alita but, even on 4k films, CGI is rendered and composited at 2k and then upres'd to 4k 
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Mar 3, 2019 23:57
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Rollie Fingers posted:Animators (and directors) definitely prefer the type of performance capture used in Alita. It's what the vast majority of films use anyway. The method used in Benjamin Button was prohibitively expensive, overkill and it was more difficult for the actor to give a convincing performance. Cool  I was just reading about motion capture tech and came across an article from 2008 that compared Weta's performance capture headrigs used in Avatar to ImageMovers Digital's version that they developed a little after with Vicon — called HMC (Helmet Mounted Camera set-up) — but I guess HMC didn't catch on? The article states the headrig system used in Avatar doesn't provide as much fidelity as HMC since it only uses 1 face camera instead of 4, but it has the benefit of realtime facial motion solving and playback. I suppose that's more important to the filmmaking process and set the standard for performance capture now since you mentioned a majority of films use that kind of system. Article here for anyone interested: http://www.postmagazine.com/Publications/Post-Magazine/2008/September-1-2008/THE-FUTURE-OF-MOTION-CAPTURE.aspx [edit] Oh, I just read Disney shuttered ImageMovers Digital back in 2010, maybe that's why. Feelsbad. quote:"cg parts are rendered at a higher definition than real life parts are filmed at. It’s a big part of why Tarkin looks so off in Rogue One." That's what I figured hah. Thanks
teagone fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Mar 4, 2019 |
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Mar 4, 2019 00:17
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teagone posted:[edit] Oh, I just read Disney shuttered ImageMovers Digital back in 2010, maybe that's why. Feelsbad. This sounded familiar and I think I remembered why, ImageMovers did those CG Zemeckis movies, Polar Express/etc. which culminated with Mars Needs Moms which IIRC Disney execs saw a screening of and killed the studio the same day.
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Mar 4, 2019 01:28
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teagone posted:Yes, more positive box office news please Still chugging along, Alita is now the 5th highest grossing movie of the year so far. While that's not saying much, it's also a best performer in china ever for Fox. Groetgaffel fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Mar 4, 2019 |
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Mar 4, 2019 01:28
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I finally had time to see the movie and loved it, although I'd hesitate to recommend it to somebody who wasn't already familiar with the comic due to the way the story jumps around. Cut-and-pasting the first couple volumes led to some weird moments like how Makaku's big dramatic finale from the series is in the middle, complete with his little speech about growing up in the scrapyard's garbage, at which point he's immediately shunted aside and only shows up again to get effortlessly killed at the end of the movie. If it's still in theaters when spring break rolls around in a couple weeks I'll probably see it again. Doing my part!
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Mar 4, 2019 11:13
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When the huge dude with the proportionately tiny head in the trenchcoat showed up I was definitely thinking Sundowner. And the samurai cyborg is basically Jetstream Sam. Or probably the other way around, but still. Is the 'Damascus Blade' from the manga?
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Mar 4, 2019 11:18
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Is the 'Damascus Blade' from the manga? Yeah, but IIRC it's given to her by her (eventual) motorball coach instead of being a trophy taken off of Zapan.
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Mar 4, 2019 11:23
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Seyser Koze posted:Yeah, but IIRC it's given to her by her (eventual) motorball coach instead of being a trophy taken off of Zapan. Yep. Zapan just used some random cleaver thing. It's not a relic from the old world either, "just" a crazy strong blade forged from a bunch of rare metals. Later on it gets turned into a giant butterfly knife 
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Mar 4, 2019 11:29
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Kassad posted:Yep. Zapan just used some random cleaver thing. It's not the materials that makes it special, but the forging. Much like real life Damascus Steel.
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Mar 4, 2019 11:43
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You know, something that I noticed after Alita "grows up" and gets the Berserker body is that in the scene where she comes over to visit Hugo, she's wearing a touch of eye makeup. I thought that was a neat little detail to show that she'd aged, thematically.
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Mar 4, 2019 16:26
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I was perusing the Alita hashtag on Twitter earlier today and maaaaan, it bummed me out. There's a really lovely narrative on social media right now where people are essentially using Alita as a battering ram against Captain Marvel's release this week because of their agenda against Brie Larson and her "gender politics" and it's all a really bad look  The hashtag #AlitaChallenge on Twitter is just... ugh. Captain Marvel is going to be successful, and no amount of vitriol or brigading against it is going to change that, but trying to pit Alita against it and make it a political thing is so, so stupid. I mean sure, I want Alita to be successful and it kinda sucks that Captain Marvel is for sure going to take the wind out of Alita's domestic box office, but I hate to see the movie being "weaponized" on Twitter by a bunch of idiots in an attempt to bomb Captain Marvel. teagone fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Mar 5, 2019 |
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Mar 5, 2019 02:44
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It's especially gross as Alita's reaction to nazis is to turn them into shrapnel.
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Mar 5, 2019 03:27
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teagone posted:I was perusing the Alita hashtag on Twitter earlier today and maaaaan, it bummed me out. There's a really lovely narrative on social media right now where people are essentially using Alita as a battering ram against Captain Marvel's release this week because of their agenda against Brie Larson and her "gender politics" and it's all a really bad look There's a big problem with this "weaponization"... https://twitter.com/truongasm/status/1102689744595574785
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Mar 5, 2019 03:31
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https://twitter.com/SuedeBlade/status/1102695242543783936 https://twitter.com/ClayJAndres/status/1102706941292232709
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Mar 5, 2019 03:52
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gently caress it, i'm half a bottle of wine in and I don't have anything better to do: why exactly is Alita (big special effects action extravaganza with a WOC lead) more right-on to these people than Captain Marvel (also a big special effects extravaganza with a female lead)?
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Mar 5, 2019 03:54
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Yeah that confuses the living poo poo out of me too Like I've been saying similar stuff but from the literal opposite direction, because they're broadly similar movies but Alita is less white and, rather than very bluntly being military propaganda, is the most leftist thing Hollywood has made in quite a while
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Mar 5, 2019 04:03
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Clipperton posted:gently caress it, i'm half a bottle of wine in and I don't have anything better to do: why exactly is Alita (big special effects action extravaganza with a WOC lead) more right-on to these people than Captain Marvel (also a big special effects extravaganza with a female lead)? I'm sort of assuming they haven't actually seen Alita.
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Mar 5, 2019 04:05
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The MSJ posted:https://twitter.com/SuedeBlade/status/1102695242543783936 How the gently caress do you fall asleep during Alita, goddamn this guy.
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Mar 5, 2019 04:10
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Clipperton posted:gently caress it, i'm half a bottle of wine in and I don't have anything better to do: why exactly is Alita (big special effects action extravaganza with a WOC lead) more right-on to these people than Captain Marvel (also a big special effects extravaganza with a female lead)? Brie Larson said she isn't interested in what middle aged white men think of her movie, and would rather hear from women and children.
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Mar 5, 2019 04:10
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GoldStandardConure posted:Brie Larson said she isn't interested in what middle aged white men think of her movie, and would rather hear from women and children. I think she's probably heard quite enough from manchildren the last few weeks
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Mar 5, 2019 04:15
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