Will CGI ever be perfected?

Question

Will CGI ever be perfected. Or has it been perfected already?

You don't have to read past here to answer...

I'm going to use The Lord of the Rings an example. The Fellowship of the Ring was released and the troll, the fiery balrog and Gollum looked fantastic. I remember telling myself "nothing will beat this".

A year later out comes Two Towers. Gollum had an upgrade and looked amazing. The first CGI character to truly have a soul, the subtlety of the facial expressions the animation and performance combined to create a REAL character. This made Fellowship Gollum look like a cartoon. "nothing will beat THIS"

Another year later and Return of the King! I don't even have to describe this one, you've seen the movie... and wow. Again, the last two films look terrible in comparison. Now, this one still holds up today as a pretty good-looking film, not quite the same impact as it's first release, but the effects don't stand out like they do in the first film. Peter Jackson then went on to make King Kong which not only still holds up today, that gorilla looks REAL. Are we nearing perfection with CGI or will it continue to get better? Will King Kong look terrible in a few years?

Consider realism vs stylisation. I believe Pixar have perfected their art. Anything post Ratatouille will probably hold up and look great forever due to the fact that it's not supposed to look real. But what about things like Benjamin Button. Where the main character's head was CGI for the first half hour of the movie. Will that look ridiculous in a few years when human heads have been perfected? Will film-makers ever get past the dead-eye problems or will the uncanny valley remain a consistent problem?

Answer 1

nope

Answer 2

CGI is still pretty poor, the movements, opacity and perspective just takes too many man hours to be economic, even the stock library explosions superimposed on obviously unaffected building/cars/planes etc are primitive and slapdash and human movement and expressions are still a way off, they are countering that at the moment by exaggerating facial movement but every thing still looks like an advanced cartoon

Answer 3

I didn't quite read your text, not because I didn't want to, just that I was too tired, sorry.



To answer your question, I think it will. Compare a movie done right now, to a movie done 15, or even 10 years ago, and you see quite a difference. I think that today, a lot of people with a lot of resources could make something perfect, but that will probably become easier and cheaper in the future.

Answer 4

I think it will eventually be perfected. When you can hold up footage of a real face against footage of an entirely CGI face and there is absolutely no difference, all the tiny facial ticks and slight wind movements are exactly the same....thats when you know it's perfected.

Answer 5

I think CGI has been perfect for years.