In avatar I think the imagery is absolutely amazing. It is done using a special motion capture suit with head rigs equipped with standard definition cameras that take constant images of the actors face. Those images are transmitted to another camera which creates a real time image of the live actor wearing their costume (how the character looks in the film)
You can see the stages a bit better in this image from Pirates of the Caribbean. From the human with the motion capture on his face to the simplified version of the character to the final version with all the details, but as you can see from the original image, they didn't use a camera on this one, maybe that is how James Cameron got his movements some great!!
This is a massive potential because if you think this was created in 2009 that was 6 years ago now, I wonder what other amazing things they can do in the next 10 years! The 3D on this was fabulous too! When I watched it in the cinema I was amazed at how far technology has come since spy kids 3D.There was no fuzziness and blue and red lines, just really clear 3D images that literally felt like they were coming out at you!!
3D software has a lot of potential as an animator, for example, a lot of software can do the inbetween frames for you. This cuts down on the amount of work you have to do/the amount of time you have to spend doing it. This links with the facts that you can do an intense frame rate like 40fps and just leave the computer to render it and it will do it fairly quickly in comparison to if you drew each frame by hand. This is a great potential as it gives you room to be really creative and do quite adventurous things and (hopefully) not get too stressed out by it as the computer does a lot of the work for you. Having a help like this means you can spend more time on other things like the smaller details and movements and the environment.
In medal of honour-warfighter, the cutscenes are actually visually and technically extremely impressive. This shows the potential for 3D animation, and how far its coming in very recent years shows that it is getting better all the time. I have to say this is one of the most realistic animations I have every seen. But they still enter into the realm of the uncanny valley- when they look so real but theres something that makes you feel uncomfortable. I think this is in the dead eyes. As when drawing a picture, the eyes are the most important part, they make it believable. If the eyes are wrong the drawing doesn't look right and it loses realism. It is the same with animation but probably even more so as its moving. The eyes show emotion as well which can really add to the empathy of the audience.
I also find the mouth a little unnerving. It looks like how a human mouth would move, as it actually doesn't move that much when we talk, but theres something about it being portrayed in animation that is just wrong. it doesn't look right even though it technically probably is. I think maybe if they exaggerate the movement it would be more believable but that defeats the object of it being realistic.
A clip that shows the uncanny a bit more obviously is from the polar bear express.
Although this animation isn't designed with a realistic look, the movements are done using motion campture as demonstreted by Tom Hanks below.
This means that they were obviously trying to get the movements right but unfortunately it just looks very strange. It's still a nice film with its story line and the scenery is nice but as adults watching the film there is definitely something off about it.
This is a big limitation for 3D animation as believability helps tell the story and if you feel uncomfortable, thats all your going to think bout through the movie. Im not sure its a technical issue or an artistic issue or maybe a bit of both. Maybe the motion capture needs even more points and the animators need to put even more detail into the movements.
A potential for 3D modelling and animation technologies and techniques are like if an actor dies half way through filming a movie, they can use CG to finish the movie. For example-Paul walker in fast and furious 7. "the filmmakers will use body doubles, CGI, and Walker's own voice to keep his character in the film to complete his storyline. The late actor's face will be digitally added to the body doubles and his voice will be used for the dialogue."
This is a really clever idea as it means the film can go ahead, even though the actor died. Some people may disagree with this or find it disrespectful, but what are you going to do? just cancel a movie that everyone has been looking forward to or working on and spent a lot of time and money on? If technology has the potential to help us out in this situation we should use it.
Sully from monsters inc. has 2.3 million individual hairs so each frame with sully in it, took about 12 hours to render. They had to double their render farm to accommodate this. This is a limitation to 3D modelling and animation technologies and techniques. Although there is potential to do amazing things with 3D modelling, the limitations lie in the technology at this point. Pixar has one of the top 25 most powerful computers and it still took most of the day to render. This is why it took 4 years to create monsters university. If you were to try and create something even more eccentric and daring it would take even longer and that is a major limitation. Imagine if your making something thats on trend in 2015 but by the time its finished in 2020, that trend is completely over and people aren't going to want to go see it. Although this was an enormous task to get the characters looking the way they do, I believe it was totally worth it! If it was done in 2D it would look something like this:
And although yes this is very cute, it wouldn't of had the same effect. There wouldn't be as much movement in the hair etc, which in turn would detract from the fact that these monsters are supposed to be scary and here they look just cute.
You can see the stages a bit better in this image from Pirates of the Caribbean. From the human with the motion capture on his face to the simplified version of the character to the final version with all the details, but as you can see from the original image, they didn't use a camera on this one, maybe that is how James Cameron got his movements some great!!
