Nils Norgren Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 About this: http://www.fxguide.com/article466.html There are a few parts of this article that I take offense to, first the writer discusses the "Sterile" nature of architectural animation, and "no narrative and were driven by unmotivated camera moves". It is good that these movies are being made to bring more focus on our industry, but when they bash the industry in the process it bothers me. I am fairly sure that Yrian did a rain drop (better) in the AVC competition 3 years ago. Read it for yourselves, I feel as if we have all been preaching these tenants for the last 12 years, and now Imageworks has "Discovered" a new way to approach architectural animation. Perhaps I am being overly sensitive. -Nils Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
upshot Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 The entertainment industry is full of people who think/act like they are pure genius.. Don't take it personally. It's their nature. "hype" It is funny how Ideas from outside their ivory tower quickly become their crown jewels eh? 75 friggin team members!! Could you imagine having that manpower?? I can't... Here you model the chair, and you model the vase, and... LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ikinman Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 I've dealt with Imageworks before (they've bought city models more than once) and I can vouch for a well paid PR department that they have. That being said, I've run into chauvinism at CG houses several times before. I've had far too many mentions of, 'Oh, you're in architectural visualization...' and then I'm dismissed as a visualizer even before they look at a portfolio. I have to go out of my way when dealing with these houses to specifically mention that I have no interest in Hollywood FX. It's somewhat natural, I suppose. We all spend our time focused in the specific world of architectural visualization. They spend their time in the world of CG for film and TV. So we're all looking at our own navels. Much of these houses' work is in advertisement, not movies. And I can imagine that a developer of the world's tallest residential building is going to want to do something big to promote it and be able to brag that they hired Imageworks (or Digital Domain or whomever) to do their promo film. I expect to see more of this as we go on. The fact that most Arch Vis studios are centered on the East Coast, and not the West, is symptomatic of this. If someone tries to set up a 50 person Arch-Vis studio in LA, they are going to either end up idoing Hollywood CG, or their workforce is going to leave them for another firm that does Hollywood CG. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horhe Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 It is funny how Ideas from outside their ivory tower quickly become their crown jewels eh? Same applies to knowledge also. Tell me, when your looking at forums for information and receiving answers, do you credit the people that actually helped you earlier when someone asks you a similar question later on? Probably not. In this industry we learn and we learn and we learn. When someone shares his knowledge it becomes your knowledge. You probably dont credit that person till the end of the world. How good or bad this may seem, I think the same thing applies to ideas somewhat. Im not defending anyone Im just saying that this happens a lot. The only way to stop this is to close down all forums, shut your windows and produce animations and images then put them in your drawer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 tokk 75 people 2 years to make? Phooey. Its not that good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
upshot Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 Believe me, I've given away the farm more than once and that's fine. I do heartily believe in the share and learn principle. The comment was purely tongue in cheek. I expect to see more of this as we go on. The fact that most Arch Vis studios are centered on the East Coast, and not the West, is symptomatic of this. If someone tries to set up a 50 person Arch-Vis studio in LA, they are going to either end up idoing Hollywood CG, or their workforce is going to leave them for another firm that does Hollywood CG. Very interesting observation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
upshot Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 tokk 75 people 2 years to make? Phooey. Its not that good. It took them 4 months... they were using the 'rendering time' hyperbolic calculation to get the 2 years.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 yes, the number and the amount of time made me chuckle. i could see 10 people for 4 months on this but 75? maybe this includes people who delivered food, and brewed the coffee. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
upshot Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 yes, the number and the amount of time made me chuckle. i could see 10 people for 4 months on this but 75? maybe this includes people who delivered food, and brewed the coffee. 10 of them were; director, assistant director, director of directors, director of photography, director of lighting, director of pigeon, director of water, director of dandelion seed, director of cg people, AND director of giant penis... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horhe Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 10 of them were; director, assistant director, director of directors, director of photography, director of lighting, director of pigeon, director of water, director of dandelion seed, director of cg people, AND director of giant penis... Hehehe. I see you had the opportunity to work in such a company with so many directors. Just out of curiosity, which one were you? ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 10 of them were; director, assistant director, director of directors, director of photography, director of lighting, director of pigeon, director of water, director of dandelion seed, director of cg people, AND director of giant penis... You forgot all the producers and assistant producers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EddieLeon Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 Uhhh...I almost lost my lunch reading the article and then watching the video. I can't believe Imageworks would have any association with Sheena and the letdown that she helped produce. This is really disturbing stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hidden_Pixel Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 Wow, I am seriously unimpressed. I watched the quicktime expecting to be blown away. It was average, one nice shot looking up the tower. With a team that size and their resources I thought it would be outstanding. Nils I wouldn't take it personally. I have spoken with many guys in the VFX industry, as soon as you mention you do arch viz, they almost look down on you. In my opinion it comes from not fully understanding our industry. This animation shows that it is not easy to jump from VFX to architectural animation. Don't get me wrong it wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything I hadn't seen before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EddieLeon Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 "Duggal is currently working with Ridley Scott on "Body of Lies"." Didn't she already do that in this article? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaneis Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 Thankfully I hadn't eaten lunch before I read Madam Sheena's enlightening spiel. Remarkable how she managed to explain the Fibonacci sequence and architectural/ natural relationships as something new and innovative. Kind of flies in the face of 6000+ years of architecture, doesn't it? Modern day DaVinci! Ha! NilsN, I see what you mean by "bashing the industry", but all I heard when I read the article was sanctimony. Maybe we should start to include a "really cool" alien/ mech warrior/ comic book hero/ transforming penguins in every render we produce, then we'll start to gain Hollywood's respect? Nah! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jkletzien Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 Nils, I think you should feel good. If you can produce quality comparable to them with your present staffing in less time (and you can) you stand to be able to charge a crapload more with them in the industry than if you're only competeing with dbox, spine, etc. We've all got it made it's the dawn of a new pricing paradigm! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 I've always been curious how an arch viz would look if done by a high priced team in the entertainment world. I guess I now know. Wow, all I could think while watching this was how the client was screwed out of A LOT of money. 70 people! That's ridiculous. The animation Zhu did last year that won her the 3Daward was MUCH better than this and she did it herself in less time than they did. The best part of the entire thing was the opening sequence through the clouds, the soundtrack and when it ended. Whoever their Maya shader expert is should be fired. Maybe it's just me, but I thought the glass looked horrible, most of the lighting was flat and the metal facade looked plastic. A few of the camera moves were good, but the rest was pretty average, as has been pointed out. It's funny how she spoke about the project like they just filmed the next contender for Oscar of best cinematography. A weak effort at best in my books considering the resources they poured into this. There are so many people in our industry who do work that is so much better than this. I think these FX people should stick to what they do best and leave Arch Viz to the professionals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hidden_Pixel Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 It is weird, I always used to look up to the VFX industry. This has changed my whole outlook. Now I wonder if there is anyway we can find out the budget!. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EddieLeon Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 you stand to be able to charge a crapload more with them in the industry than if you're only competeing with dbox, spine, etc. ...and StudioAMD also Ok, so the plan is that we are all going to be filmmakers and kick Sheena's arse. In all seriousness, if any of us was able to dedicate 2 years of man hours to one project it would be spectacular. The truth seems to be that there are amazing efficiencies in our industry as opposed to Hollywood. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neko Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 looked to me like the building got in the way of their 'artistic vision'. there was very little of it until the final few seconds. not very impressive, and not one i'd be proud to point out the numbers and time involved. only people not generally familiar and knowledgeable about architecture would be pleased with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AFK_Matrix Posted February 16, 2008 Share Posted February 16, 2008 Now I am a relative noob in the field myself, have only been working for 4 years and I still have soo much to learn but still even I was a bit miffed by that video I was at the DMVC in San Diego last year and some of the animations from Neoscape and the individual animations just blew my mind. I was sitting there going how in hell did they do that in the time they had!! Especially the animation from Zhu. I agree with Jeff the beginning looked promising and the clouds made a nice beginning but then it rapidly went down hill. I would have thought a dramatic view taking in the whole building to give a sense of scale and wow factor would have been a better intro. I know I am new to this but still, I think someone should send a copy of Zhu's animation to that Ms Duggal!! Perhaps she'll learn something!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted February 16, 2008 Share Posted February 16, 2008 Hmmm. I think the typical elements that come into play with architect/visualizer relationships came into play here also - with a tycoon thrown in. You have an important architect and an important man with important money who wanted an important company to produce the promo for his important building. My only criticism of the film would be that you went from lofty heights to practically stubbing your nose on the pavement without ever really getting a feeling for the project. That is where it fails. Not in how much money or manpower they had. Not in the notion of using feature film-like concepts and music scores. I think Mr. Tycoon wouldn't want a plastic surgeon to do his gall-bladder surgery. Maybe the same kind of thinking applies here. I wonder if the two dandylion seeds ever got together? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
otacon Posted February 16, 2008 Share Posted February 16, 2008 I have to admit that as a fan of architecture and cg i enjoyed the video very much. I tried to forget about who worked on it, and just watched it for what it is. I think it's well done...only when you see it with the article do you realize how many wasted man hours were put into it, and how much more efficient those in our industry are at what we do. Though, architecture is our forte. I'm sure if most of us tried to do a VFX shot in a movie then we would not be as efficient as them. I loved this quote from the article... "In order to achieve exactness, we needed answers on design decisions that had not yet been made and so we had a running list of questions referring to: the landscape and pathway design; lighting design; floor plans; door locations; window walls and structural spacing; and many other questions about materials and how to interpret the architectural information and blueprints". HA! Thats the kind of stuff we have to go through on almost EVERY project in this industry!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AFK_Matrix Posted February 16, 2008 Share Posted February 16, 2008 I personally love how they keep going on about how accurate and exact they had to be. Lol what do they think we do, close one eye have a quick 10 sec look at the CAD plans and then just throw something together? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
own1221 Posted February 16, 2008 Share Posted February 16, 2008 Imo the video seems more like the intro of a cheesy movie than a representation of architecture. Way too much time was spent #1 in the clouds #2 looking at the bird and # 3 staring at the empty ocean. The last 1.5 minutes were the most useful and interesting. Funnilly enough it had elements of a short movie I made for uni two years ago, even had a rain drop too:p. http://www.deviantart.com/download/39612477/final_render_windows_media.wmv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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