Check this out -- you can go to the Avatar site and download Adobe software and an "interactive" trailer, which shows the preview and hotspots where you can, using the AIR software, sky off on profiles of the main characters. Click on the Download Interactive Trailer button.
This is pretty cool stuff. And I have to say, from what I've seen, this movie is going to set a visual standard for CGI nobody else will be able to touch. Whatever you think about Jim Cameron, the man is one helluva moviemaker.
If the special effects studio where Cameron shot Avatar is still going to be around after he's finished, then guaranteed, his visual standard for CGI is gonna be touched and it's gonna be surpassed (and probably quickly). That's just the nature of computer graphics.
ReplyDeleteEventually, but not any time soon -- unless somebody has more money than God and a while to do it.
ReplyDeleteThe NZ EFX studio ran at 100%+ capacity for years. And, depending on whom you believe, the picture cost between three hundred and four hundred million dollars.
I expect the time and money needed to catch up might take a bit of doing.
All things must pass, of course, but since nobody else has been able to use that giant computer while Cameron was using it, he's got a pretty good head start.
I think a lot of the time Cameron used was probably because of three things:
ReplyDelete1) He's a perfectionist
2) They had to figure out how to do what he wanted
3) Rendering 3D stuff in multiple passes takes a gosh darn long time.
The next person might not be #1 and the studio might be able to use everything they figured out in #2 for the next movie.
I concede that you're correct about the money part. I think it was $300 million and Hollywood doesn't dole that kinda cash out to just anyone.