I ran a vfx company before. Author clearly is just a hobbyist at best and has no experience in digital production.<p>Studios aren't clueless, this is their business. They take advantage of every hardware upgrade, have already expanded into the cloud, and the bigger companies have direct R&D access to nvidia's engineers to develop the next generation. Everyone wants faster graphics and lower costs, and they already use real-time rendering everywhere, especially in editing.<p>Yes, better hardware has made it easier for more people to produce more things, as evidenced by the exploding world of Youtube creators making high-end productions. However there is an immense difference in overall quality between those videos (which can easily climb into 6 figure costs) and the big budget studio productions that fill cinemas.<p>Also graphics are a tiny part of the overall product. The rest is the creative process, building the actual scenes, and making it all look and feel right. There's no magic button to transfer your imagination into the computer, and that's the majority of the effort, along with actually coming up with a good story in the first place.
So like, studios and FX shops like Pixar and ILM are very much aware of these techniques, because they are leaders in them (they closely partner with Nvidia on things like the super impressive real-time raytracing of the RTX GPUs, for example), and they develop prototypes and working production applications of these things. The technology to replicate cinema-quality graphics at lower cost has existed for a while, at pretty much consumer-level costs in-fact (if you know what you are doing). But if you have $100m to spend, you're gunna spend it to keep ahead of what is already possible.<p>But I think my take after reading this is what he sees as a bomb that's waiting to go off is in reality a gradual evolution that literally everyone in animation/film sees coming. I have spoken to a bunch of people in the space, and have been in the space myself, and have run into absolutely no one that is a non-believer (like the people who doubted the iPhone would take off, for example).<p>Also let's be real here, we are talking about entertainment art here, and from what I've seen, most people suck at telling stories. Cost hasn't really been a barrier for a long time with low-cost, damn good cameras and free distribution platforms like Youtube. Hell, the pilot used to pitch It's Always Sunny in Philidelphia was famously recorded on a home camcorder. People don't go from distributing their own stuff to pitching studios for technology resources they don't have access to, they do it for the marketing machines and higher-revenue distribution channels. The up-level in quality is just a bonus if you have a good story.
Yeah I don’t think this author has any idea what he’s talking about. His argument basically is that real-time animation and motion capture will, what, replace what Disney and Pixar are doing?<p>What people like this don’t realize is the degree to which every iota of detail in a Disney (Pixar, Dreamworks, Sony, etc) production is art directed and stylized. Every shot is cheated to camera (meaning the poses don’t necessarily read well in 3D, but look spectacular/have clear posing to the locked camera), at least to some degree. That’s why these movies are so fun to watch. Even something like Rick and Morty has stylized animation and it’s own particular motion language. To think you could replicate this with generic asset libraries and motion capture is beyond ignorant.<p>It’s particularly frustrating as somebody who once was a professional animator to hear this guy talking about how this technology will revolutionize the field, casually mention that he was “considering becoming a professional animator” - and then you look at his work and he has such limited knowledge of the craft. It belittles those who have devoted their lives into mastering this deep skill.
This isn't disruptive, it's evolutionary at best. Red vs Blue was a successful web series 15? years ago, made entirely from screen recordings from Halo 1. Look up "Machinema". As others have pointed out, lack of truly great artists/inspiration seems like the biggest barrier to producing entertainment. Look at season 1 of South Park - good content beats flashy trimmings every day of the week.<p>If you've never seen Red Vs Blue before, check out this scene:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/9BAM9fgV-ts" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/9BAM9fgV-ts</a>
The examples the author uses and states that they are “almost real” are in no way almost real. To compare his short film to Disney price and art is a joke. They’re nothing a like. One of Disney’s Moana stills was something like 15GB+. Try do that in real time.
The author probably does not realize that Moore's Law has really slowed down and the geometric increase in 3D rendering power is unlikely to continue as fast as in the past. Not to mention that you need ever more graphics processing power to make smaller and smaller improvements in realism. I therefore suspect it will take longer than anticipated to get to the cinematic quality that he hopes for at the price needed for the transformation he anticipates.
I would say the fallacy is the author's assertion that studios don't know about realtime techniques, or that they aren't already applying motion capture and GPU renderers internally.
I remember watching the great documentary "Good Copy Bad Copy." The most memorable fact from that movie is that Nigeria is the third largest film industry in the world. And, the film added that they are making films much more relevant to people from the African disaspora than Hollywood ever will, as Black Panther proves (it's the exception to the rule and took this long because Hollywood couldn't move any faster). I'm not doubtful that Hollywood isn't aware of this shift and will use the technologies, but the author's point that there is a lot of overhead which will need to be jettisoned to compete in the future is not something to ignore.
Today you can get 3D motion in pretty much real time just from your iPhone videos <a href="https://getrad.co" rel="nofollow">https://getrad.co</a> (not affiliated with them, just like the app)
<i>Already, real-time animation devices allow cartoon characters to "live." Systems such as Vactor and Alive propel toons onto talk shows and into interactive installations at theme parks.</i><p>That was from 1995. <a href="https://www.wired.com/1995/12/new-hollywood/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/1995/12/new-hollywood/</a>
The article inspired me to a couple of hours of research of the field. I feel it helps to see whats currently possible on a relatively low budget. This demo I came across uses an x sens bodysuit for capture (around $7000, plus yearly sub - prices aren't public) , and an iphone x for facial capture in realtime using ARKit programming.<p>To my amateur eyes, it looks superb, and better than many demos in terms of the sync/accuracy of the facial expression and speech.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i51CizUXd7A" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i51CizUXd7A</a><p>It's also quite charming and amusing. Here's a background article, explaining the approach.<p><a href="https://uploadvr.com/iphone-xsens-performance-capture-bebylon/" rel="nofollow">https://uploadvr.com/iphone-xsens-performance-capture-bebylo...</a>
On a somewhat similar theme, but far more in depth and exploratory, is the video 'Goodbye Uncanny Valley' by Alan Warburton - <a href="https://vimeo.com/237568588" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/237568588</a>
A bit weak article for HN frontpage, but it's good enough to start the discussion.<p>Yes, the cost of producing quality content will drop drastically. Yes, local improv groups will start making epic space operas and detailed historical reenactments.<p>One thing didn't get mentioned - interactivity. If you're creating content in real time, you can customize it to specific audience. You can respond to audience questions, give more screen time to favoured character and even alter the plot based on voting. What about crowd-sourced animated content?<p>The technology is already good enough (check Adobe Character Animator), but we sill need a good digital theatre software.
Neil Blomkamp of District 9/Elysium fame has released some shorts made with the Unity engine and was pretty effusive about the benefits of using a real time engine for animation: <a href="https://unity.com/madewith/adam" rel="nofollow">https://unity.com/madewith/adam</a><p>That said, the results are still quite far from studio CG animation. I wonder whether the market for cheaply produced animation is really as large as the author thinks. I think he's underestimating the primary value add of studios, which is marketing and distribution.
Off Topic Questions for All those working in FX and Studios etc<p>Are you all in on Nvidia? Are there any shops using AMD? Every Game / FX needs to mention they partner with Nvidia and I have yet to read much professional uses on Radeon. I understand for Data Science and Machine learning it is all CUDA, and likely won't change any time soon. But even for Graphics AMD doesn't seems to be doing well in professional space.
Too bad that everything centered around NVIDIA in that industry. It is one of the worst companies for the open source. Not only staying aside of open source, but actively resisting any attempts of supporting their hardware in open drivers.
The mocap example he showed was very uncanny valley for me. The disruption he envisions may be further away than he thinks due to how uncanny valley works. The closer you get to human the more revulsion you create.
The author is right, but not in the ways he thinks he is.<p>The change will be larger and even more unexpected to the people who are currently expecting it. It will be larger than even I can imagine.<p>Everyone in this thread can't see the forest for the trees. Tell me a story ...