CGI Models from movie to movie

[chrisgroy]

Something I have noticed...

TF1 - CGI models looked natural, blended in with the environment.
TF2 - CGI models were too reflective, looked unnatural and didn't blend in with the envorinment.

What do people think about the CGI models from the trailers we have seen from the 3rd?

[I Fight Giant Robots]

Something I have noticed...

TF1 - CGI models looked natural, blended in with the environment.
TF2 - CGI models were too reflective, looked unnatural and didn't blend in with the envorinment.

What do people think about the CGI models from the trailers we have seen from the 3rd?

I think it looks cool! i think it looks cool when they're reflective, actually. especially
Optimus.

[Trailbreaker]

The CGI in ROTF was rushed, but it had its moments. My favorite moment, personally, was that one shot of Optimus at NEST when he says, "General, our alliance has countermanded six Decepticon incursions this year, each on a different continent." That was AMAZINGLY realistic!

The CGI in DOTM looks fantastic. Of course, they had more time to work on it.

[Crainy]

First of all: Its not the models. It the effects that you talk about and how they are used to make them blend into the enviroment.
Second: There is no second. I agree with you, ROTF looked rather unrealisitic when compared to TF1, but really, what doesnt? Afterall, no movie to date has ever surpassed the quality of CGI that was seen in TF1.

However, when we look at the Trailers from DOTM, we can assume that the CGI in DOTM will be just as good as in TF1, or maybe even better.

[JuanCarlos]

This is something I've wanted to talk.
I think in Trans 1, the CGI is well blended into the environment becouse of the color rather than the reflections. Reflections are always perfectly there. I remember in the behind the scenes of ROTF that Michael said he'd give them a more realistic look by adding some blur.
Maybe Trans 1 always has this, and ROTF did not have time for some scenes, remember that the problem in this movie was the time. But ROTF also has more complex models unlike the first one and that is something that is noticed.
But ROTF has many flawless and very well done scenes. For example, all the battle of the forest is perfect and very very complex, with absolutely no failure or missing of elements that make it look realistic. The interaction with ambiante has no equal in any movie I've seen. I think it only fails after Megatron shoots Optimus through his back and then remove his canyon letting OP fall down. That scene lasts 3 or 4 seconds and I think it doesn't have the same quality of the rest.
There are 2 scenes from BB that I love in the two movies. They look very real and above all, is when he transform. In the 1st, is after he kills Barricade and BB talks to Sam right through the radio. And in the 2nd, is when Sam tells BB to forgive him for the death of Optimus. Works of art!
But yes, I agree. In DOTM, everything is looking above anything else. Photorealistic, complex, and well blended into the film. I just can't wait! This will make history

[transfrominside]

TF2 suffered badly-done motion blur, which in some scenes, made the CG robots look like stop motion (especially the Prime-Fallen battle scene)

[Moy]

Here we go again.. :lame

It has been discussed several times that ROTF's production/art team had a hard time getting the film finished by Paramounts dumb summer release.
I would have loved it if Paramount allowed way more time to finish the editing, add more scenes, and the like.

I seriously doubt it will be any problem in DOTM, almost impossible I'd say.
But hollwyood must go on..:head

[JuanCarlos]

I'm liking every CGI image from DOTM and I know it will be literally perfect. But by now one of my favourites things are: the amount of detail and realism in the building sequence and the transformation of BB and OP we barely could see in the Cannes arch. But everything is amazing, Optimus, Shockwave etc wow! Already deserves a visual FX Oscar

[The Transformer]

Something I have noticed...

TF1 - CGI models looked natural, blended in with the environment.
TF2 - CGI models were too reflective, looked unnatural and didn't blend in with the envorinment.

What do people think about the CGI models from the trailers we have seen from the 3rd?

Well i noticed that Brawl, Long Haul and maybe a sideways clone will come back. There's probably more of them robots from ROTF coming back, maybe just in the backgroud. I hope they dont take up much screen time. I personally thought TF1 CGI models were better and in the trailers we see fot TF3 the CGI looks sharp and detailed.

[wingzero]

The CGI in ROTF was rushed, but it had its moments. My favorite moment, personally, was that one shot of Optimus at NEST when he says, "General, our alliance has countermanded six Decepticon incursions this year, each on a different continent." That was AMAZINGLY realistic!

The CGI in DOTM looks fantastic. Of course, they had more time to work on it.

What did you watch, a pirated copy on a tiny screen of Transformers Revenge Of The Fallen or what?
No, really.. how can you tell that the CGI there was rushed?
It's still the best mechanical CGI to date and this 3rd movie CGI so far from trailers doesn't look as much detailed.

[wingzero]

TF2 suffered badly-done motion blur, which in some scenes, made the CG robots look like stop motion (especially the Prime-Fallen battle scene)

You can't be serious.
Watch the original Blu-Ray (maybe the US IMAX version even better) release on at least a 46" HDTV 1080p screen (better would be a 80-110" screen with a good SXRD,DILA,DLP 1080p projector) and then you could see how much detailed the CGI really is.
Step motion what?
Blurred CGI what?

[I Fight Giant Robots]

I didn't pick up on that...Because in my opinion, i think they improved
on the cgi from movie to movie. Also, in ROTF they had a lot more to deal with, like
devestator, so maybe it was hard for him to look completely real...however, with all
the rest of the robots I think it looked better...Optimus looked better....Bee looked better...that opening scene of Ironhide looked crazy real....those little bug things looked completely real. i think the cgi looked cooler, and from watching the trailers, i think it looks cooler in the third one.

So im confused about what you're saying, but it's your opinion.......

[Trailbreaker]

What did you watch, a pirated copy on a tiny screen of Transformers Revenge Of The Fallen or what?
No, really.. how can you tell that the CGI there was rushed?
It's still the best mechanical CGI to date and this 3rd movie CGI so far from trailers doesn't look as much detailed.

My exclusive Wal-Mart Big Screen Edition DVD.

It was rushed. The animation was not as natural and fluid as in the first movie. Examples, Megatron on the Empire State building, pretty much any scene with a random Decepticon drone out in the desert, and of course, the battle between the Fallen and Optimus. (Bay even admitted in the audio commentary that that scene got shafted the most.)

Of course, CGI robots don't blend in well with sand, that's why they're in a city rather than in a desert in this movie.

[wingzero]

I didn't pick up on that...Because in my opinion, i think they improved
on the cgi from movie to movie. Also, in ROTF they had a lot more to deal with, like
devestator, so maybe it was hard for him to look completely real...however, with all
the rest of the robots I think it looked better...Optimus looked better....Bee looked better...that opening scene of Ironhide looked crazy real....those little bug things looked completely real. i think the cgi looked cooler, and from watching the trailers, i think it looks cooler in the third one.

So im confused about what you're saying, but it's your opinion.......

From original BluRay source (I own the Italian, USA and USA IMAX BluRay editions) of Transformers2 having watched the movie multiple times on my 92" screen with SXRD 1080p projector I can tell that Devastator CGI is absolutely perfect, top-notch, no issues at all and it looks real. CGI thruout the movie looks amazing, absolutely photorealistic, it's very hard to find any rendering mistake if there there, you surely can't see any at playing speed, if there are mistakes only a frame-by-frame analysis could reveal them.

This 3rd movie CGI from trailers downloaded at the highest bitrate and quality being offered seems affected by the 3D syndrome.. which means that production doesn't have time to properly finetune the CGI and the final rendering won't look that much better because they have to finish the movie something like 2 to 4 weeks before the premiere release date for completing 3D conversions.
The lack of any Combiners in this 3rd movie to me shows that they had to cut down on costs and time in order to finish the movie for 3D gimmick.
I seriously doubt the CGI is going to be better than that on Transformers2. Being set mostly in city environments instead of desert it might look better than what it really is but so far it failed to impress me and due to 3D I doubt they will manage to sort CGI issues out, surely no Combiners fighting in Chicago is something this movie is going to lack completely.. Silverbolt has been practically confirmed to not be in the movie so no Superion either, no Aerialbots and no Decepticons Combiners.. I doubt even Devastator re-appears in the movie otherwise we would have seen something on trailers already.
I mean the CGI doesn't look to be of a larger scale than the 2nd movie, it looks like a re-rendering and enhancement of 1st movie final battle and that's it. It will be cool too watch but while 3D blurs details in both time domain and spatial domain and so they could get away with what they got without full finetuning like they did on the 2nd movie, this 3rd movie watched in 2D on a big screen it seems is going to have a less detailed and smaller scale CGI than the 2nd movie.

[wingzero]

My exclusive Wal-Mart Big Screen Edition DVD.

It was rushed. The animation was not as natural and fluid as in the first movie. Examples, Megatron on the Empire State building, pretty much any scene with a random Decepticon drone out in the desert, and of course, the battle between the Fallen and Optimus. (Bay even admitted in the audio commentary that that scene got shafted the most.)

Of course, CGI robots don't blend in well with sand, that's why they're in a city rather than in a desert in this movie.

Of course the DVD looks blur to you. You can't judge the movie by watching the DVD, really.
I watched the BluRay multiple times, I watched the movie in Digital IMAX and Digital2K standard theaters when it was released and the CGI is not blurry, not rushed.
The battle between The Fallen and Optimus is perfectly detailed, it's too short but not rushed meaning the CGI is lacking something. Michael Bay wanted it to be longer and more epic but he didn't have time to do it that is what he wasn't happy about as much as many viewers. The CGI doesn't have any major issues, it's so much detailed that you can't distinguish what is real and what is not.. a promise James Cameron made for Avatar and that turned out being a disappointing cartoonish movie instead, Avatar CGI is absolutely disappointing instead. But Transformers2 CGI is practically perfect. Watch it at its full quality (well, full available quality for consumers at least) from BluRay with a proper HDTV large screen or better yet good projector and then judge, there is a huge difference compared to DVD release. Watching the DVD on either small or large screen it's actually watching a downsampled low res version of it and the oversampling effect doesn't help much, details just got lost.

[I Fight Giant Robots]

From original BluRay source (I own the Italian, USA and USA IMAX BluRay editions) of Transformers2 having watched the movie multiple times on my 92" screen with SXRD 1080p projector I can tell that Devastator CGI is absolutely perfect, top-notch, no issues at all and it looks real. CGI thruout the movie looks amazing, absolutely photorealistic, it's very hard to find any rendering mistake if there there, you surely can't see any at playing speed, if there are mistakes only a frame-by-frame analysis could reveal them.

This 3rd movie CGI from trailers downloaded at the highest bitrate and quality being offered seems affected by the 3D syndrome.. which means that production doesn't have time to properly finetune the CGI and the final rendering won't look that much better because they have to finish the movie something like 2 to 4 weeks before the premiere release date for completing 3D conversions.
The lack of any Combiners in this 3rd movie to me shows that they had to cut down on costs and time in order to finish the movie for 3D gimmick.
I seriously doubt the CGI is going to be better than that on Transformers2. Being set mostly in city environments instead of desert it might look better than what it really is but so far it failed to impress me and due to 3D I doubt they will manage to sort CGI issues out, surely no Combiners fighting in Chicago is something this movie is going to lack completely.. Silverbolt has been practically confirmed to not be in the movie so no Superion either, no Aerialbots and no Decepticons Combiners.. I doubt even Devastator re-appears in the movie otherwise we would have seen something on trailers already.
I mean the CGI doesn't look to be of a larger scale than the 2nd movie, it looks like a re-rendering and enhancement of 1st movie final battle and that's it. It will be cool too watch but while 3D blurs details in both time domain and spatial domain and so they could get away with what they got without full finetuning like they did on the 2nd movie, this 3rd movie watched in 2D on a big screen it seems is going to have a less detailed and smaller scale CGI than the 2nd movie.

I didn't say there was anything wrong with Devastator. Everything was done well in ROTF as far as CGI goes. Im just saying Devastator didnt look as real as optimus, and the rest of the robots because he was massively huge. However, everything else looked really awesome in ROTF...They definetely improved on the first one...and about the third one, i think they improved too. Just because it's 3d doesn't mean it won't look as cool. i think the cgi in the trailers look better than ROTF, and everything looks awesome. In fact, there's not one thing that i heard or seen that i disliked about DOTM. It seems awesome! Also you said the lack of combiners....about that, they don't need combiners....They can have other cool things in it besdies combiners.... if that's what you were saying...

[Trailbreaker]

Of course the DVD looks blur to you. You can't judge the movie by watching the DVD, really.
I watched the BluRay multiple times, I watched the movie in Digital IMAX and Digital2K standard theaters when it was released and the CGI is not blurry, not rushed.
The battle between The Fallen and Optimus is perfectly detailed, it's too short but not rushed meaning the CGI is lacking something. Michael Bay wanted it to be longer and more epic but he didn't have time to do it that is what he wasn't happy about as much as many viewers. The CGI doesn't have any major issues, it's so much detailed that you can't distinguish what is real and what is not.. a promise James Cameron made for Avatar and that turned out being a disappointing cartoonish movie instead, Avatar CGI is absolutely disappointing instead. But Transformers2 CGI is practically perfect. Watch it at its full quality (well, full available quality for consumers at least) from BluRay with a proper HDTV large screen or better yet good projector and then judge, there is a huge difference compared to DVD release. Watching the DVD on either small or large screen it's actually watching a downsampled low res version of it and the oversampling effect doesn't help much, details just got lost.

You do know you're the only one here who thinks the Avatar CGI was crap, right? The Na'vi were practically photorealistic. I swear, there were shots where they looked like actors in makeup. I don't need glasses to see otherwise, I have to wear glasses when I watch movies anyway.

It doesn't matter what medium I watched ROTF in, DVD, Blu-Ray, 35mm movie theater film, the animation was the same in all formats. There were still rushed scenes!

[vipe99]

i think the worst cgi in ROTF is when the guy gets sucked out of the plane. It looks so unreal you can easily tell its cgi

[Trailbreaker]

Ya know what? Fuck it, why am I even arguing with this guy? He'll never change.

[vipe99]

Ya know what? Fuck it, why am I even arguing with this guy? He'll never change.

yeah dont waste your time the thread will just close if it continues

[wingzero]

Ya know what? Fuck it, why am I even arguing with this guy? He'll never change.

So being rude turns Avatar CGI into photorealistic,uh?
No it is not photorealistic at all. It's cartoonish like that on the upcoming Green Lantern for example, that looks lame cartoonish too, they used practically the same technique and it shows.

Photorealistic CGI is that on District9, Transformers1&2, Battle Los Angeles, Skyline.. they all look way more photorealistic than anything on Avatar.
Also on Avatar the blending between real actors and CGI on bluescreen is poorly done, it seems a low budget tv movie production. And what about mechanical robots on Avatar.. all the mechas look fake as much as creatures.. Jurassic Park CGI is now ancient yes but way more photorealistic than anything seen on Avatar for sure.

[Link]

Huh, didn't know Avatar's effects had any relevance with TFs effects. I know you hate Avatar 'till the day you die, but you don't have to say it here over and over and over and over just to prove it.

Write a book, make a movie, rant in other site, but let's leave all Avatar hate and other stuff in the place it belongs: Inside of you.

Now back on topic: All effects are great, even if ROTF was a bit rushed, the bots looks very real, and to those that look at them odd, when was the last time you saw actual real bots kicking their asses? Sometimes, some effects look a bit strange 'cause there's nothing quite like it.

[Crainy]

Ill just drop this here:

ROTF has ALOT of CGI mistakes. You can clearly tell that its rushed. TF1 is way better.

[wingzero]

Ill just drop this here:

ROTF has ALOT of CGI mistakes. You can clearly tell that its rushed. TF1 is way better.

You obviously watched a downscaled low res pirated copy then.
Watch the BluRay on a good tv or projector system and then maybe you will see how much detailed the CGI on Transformers2 is even compared to the first movie. Transformers1 CGI wasn't as much detailed.

[Flyingheart]

Ermm.. ill leave this up to the professionals of ILM.

but IMHO TF1 looked great but not as much detailed as ROTF, reflectiveness goes with the cleanness of the cars.