[rescue] recommended: Final Fantasy movie

[Shawn Wallbridge]

The limitations we ran into with BMRT are probably a bit unique. We were
trying to render 4k frames at 16bit color. We ended up using the Maya,
Houdini and Max renderers. They got the job done. I don't see us moving away
from Max/Maya/Houdini until something better comes around, and I would think
it would take a while before an OS project could match any of them.

We do visual effects and post production for film and commercials. Our
biggest (and coolest) project so far is the explosion at the beginning of
Swordfish. Massive bullet-time like sequence. It took 8 months. Lots of CG
elements all photo realistic.

shawn



-----Original Message-----
From: rescue-admin at sunhelp.org [mailto:rescue-admin at sunhelp.org]On
Behalf Of joshua d boyd
Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2001 1:08 PM
To: rescue at sunhelp.org
Subject: Re: [rescue] recommended: Final Fantasy movie


On Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:45:02AM -0500, Shawn Wallbridge wrote:
> I guess when I mean the lip syncing being 'off' I mean that the characters
> didn't look like they were talking properly. I thought the facial
movements
> while the characters were talking were unrealistic, they weren't moving
> their lips/jaws enough.

Yeah, I agree, I just don't think it was as bad as some people keep
insisting.

> For someone that hasn't played any of the games, I felt parts of the story
> were missing. I can't even really pinpoint them, but it just felt
> disjointed.

I don't know.  It flowed for me.  It doesn't really depend on being
familiar with the games.  None of the games share the same story or
characters.  Any disjointedness might have been from the style.

> As for free software, I don't know. We tried using BMRT for some stuff at
> work and it just couldn't handle what we needed and it wasn't free, so we
> couldn't pay a programmer to improve it. Now we are looking at paying big
$$
> for PRMan or Renderman :-( If we had the time and the $$ it would be
> interesting to start work on an OS renderer, but we need a top quality
> renderer NOW. I think a OS project to build a high end renderer would be
> great, we would probably hire someone to contribute (sure beats $5k/cpu
> licensing fees), but I haven't heard of one.

Yeah, I've never run into any limitations with BMRT but slowness.  But, it
sure would be nice to have RiPoints, and BMRT is a documented memory
hog.  Exluna (current maintainer of BMRT) has a new renderer that is
supposed to be better, but it isn't even gratuit.

However, if the animation and story are good, then you can get away with
even using Povray (also not entirely free, but better) or almost any other
crappy renderer.  Because of this, I'd rather spend time focussing on
animation tools rather than rendering tools, although, it really is time
for someone to make a good renderer.  Hell, I'd be happy if they even just
took one of the existing free raytracers and added real animation support
and shaders.

What does you company do anyway?

--
Joshua D. Boyd
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