I happened to be scrolling through the latest Renderman demo and it really struck me that not one example was innovative, special, or even good for that matter. Many were downright horrible. Not one thing was there that wasn’t done better 10 or even 20 years ago. They seemed to be trying to cover the fact by not staying on a shot more than 1/2 a second. It’s not because of the software because it is clearly better.
The same could be said for any CG art forum. It used to be amazing to visit and one would be blown away by new and incredible things every time you looked but now something is missing.
I work in mechanical engineering and I see the same thing every day. What used to be built in months and work right out of the gate now takes years and is plagued by problems. We can’t even make airliners that stay in the air or keeps all it’s parts anymore. Everything runs over budget, over time, and has all manner of issues which is exactly what good CAD systems were supposed to make better. That has NOT happened.
Now, I know there are many factors. However there is one that stands out as a question in my mind. The computer software and hardware we have is hundreds of times better, there is no doubt. Does that make us lazy and spoiled (myself included, I’m not criticizing anyone)? Do we not think on our own anymore? Has critical thinking somehow been crushed? Computer advancement really seems to have no positive impact on what is created and maybe quite the opposite, which is surprising to me.
If that is the case I hate to think what’s going to happen when AI makes even more impact.
What are your thoughts? Are we going backwards? If so what are the root causes? Or do I just have selective memory and things were always better in the past?
Practically all movies now have CG and we often don’t even notice, so…
The fact that it’s popular to say movies like Top Gun don’t use CGI tells us something… A movie with all main action being completely absolutely CGI and still fooling some people into believing what they see on the screen is filmed… that’s something. Don’t only look at movies like Avatar where it’s obvious, look at all the movies that are claimed to be filmed with practical effects only and know it’s a lie.
There are Videos called: VFX Artist react, they are breaking down every VFX/CGI they get hands on.
They explaining why something is looking really good und really bad.
There is CGI you dont even know that is there in many movies.
Photorealism doesn’t get easier over the time and additionally the expectations getting higher.
There are so many explanation why specific scenes looking terrible… and we need bad CGI to make it better in the future^^.
I think the point he’s trying to make is that given the technology that we now have, we still see a lot of shoddy VFX in top tier movies, and I have to agree. I was recently watching 3 Body Problem on Netflix and I was kinda surprised at times at the rather poor quality of some of the VFX.
Now, in all fairness, on any given show there might be a dozen or so VFX vendors, and some are obviously better than others.
But yeah, given the advances in technology, I do think that overall there has been a downturn in quality.
I think those advances give an access to VFX never seen before, so you see VFX in any production no matter its budget and artist expertise.
Studios want to premiere series and films in a rate never seen before and low salaries push apart expert workers quickly fired without the possibility of passing the knowledge to new generations (solve your doubts in YT little grasshopper).
What is happening now is that VFX gives a clue of how is the market: who invest more in their productions and personnel.
This is part of the point I was trying to make. Given the advance in tools I would have expected better.
Obviously I do have some selective memory, remembering great scenes and forgetting a ton of bad ones. However there are so many times recently I’m shocked at how bad something is and wondering how that shot got let through.
I don’t work in a VFX shop but there’s something I’ve noticed in engineering. Instead of carefully thinking something through, they will sit and say “let’s see what this looks like, let see what that looks like” and change things a 100 times just because they can now. Before they couldn’t, they would have to plan better.
There also seems a trend to overuse motion blur to cover what is not that great which is evident in the Renderman reel.
This is true. I suppose instead of noticing how great a VFX shot is, I now notice how bad another one is. The ones I don’t notice at all don’t get counted which is wrong.
Getting back to part of my original thoughts on whether faster and better software and computers produce better results I think there is a problem. In engineering, where there was 5 people doing a job there is now 1.
That 1 person can produce the same volume but not the same quality. The 1 person does not have the depth of practical knowledge that the 5 did but because he can produce the same volume of work he is expected to produce the same or better quality. That usually doesn’t happen it seems.
I just happened to see this today shortly after reading this thread. Only tangentially related, but might be of interest. Paul Debevec recreated the mechanism behind Disney’s magic prism.
Depending on how far back you are considering when you say “the past”, some of it could just be old techniques that got lost, or dropped when new tech came along instead of seeing if it could still be useful if adapted to the new thing.
Coming back to the more recent past, the baseline now is certainly higher, particularly in places where you don’t expect VFX to be where it’s practically invisible, but that makes it easier to spot problems with the big things. And I do think there is some laziness (or overworked vfx artists working to ridiculously short timescales). There’s industry politics, incremental improvements that don’t fire the same boundary-pushing excitement as the bigger paradigm shifts, familiarity breeding contempt, etc… all having an effect on output.
I think when people look back at the past with rose-tinted glasses, it’s because there genuinely is an element of truth to their ideal. It’s just not the whole picture. So the answer to the question in the topic title is yes…and no.
I think there is definitely no downturn in VFX. I think this is also the same phenomena as with music: it seems music used to be better, because we remember the good songs and forget the bad ones as they never get popular, so it just seems this way. It just seems this way, because there is no reason for us to revisit all the productions with terrible VFX and so we remember the better ones. In general there is so much much more VFX these days… And even the bad examples are in a way good. These days series often have better VFX than movies used to have. That’s amazing. Even if VFX are not the absolute masterpieces we would like to see all the time, they often add value and this is more common. Accessibility of VFX brings us more content. But the best ones are really good. Let’s take Dune movies for example. They were not possible to make before, now they are. That’s amazing. Personally(!) I didn’t like the newest one at all as a movie, but it was sure fun to watch the effects, they saved me for sure and I had a good time. Was that the best movie I have ever seen?.. Probably not, but I enjoyed the experience very much. It was fun. Because of the amazing VFX.
I believe that there is something to be said about working with limitations that can actually push people to find novel solutions.
When I watch 2001, none of the VFX bother me, it’s truly a work of art done in a way that completely engrosses me within the story despite the severe limitations present in 1968.
One of the problems that I see today is far over reliance on “doing it in post” along with a tendency to pixel-fuck a shot to death.
Our very own @BlenderBob made a fantastic rant video about this very topic:
Some years ago there was a trend of square concrete blocks instead of benches in the streets.
Some friend had the joke of “we have to wait until the architects learn to model to be able to sit in an aceptable place”.
At least now there are furniture libraries.
A movie with all main action being completely absolutely CGI and still fooling some people into believing what they see on the screen is filmed… that’s something. Don’t only look at movies like Avatar where it’s obvious, look at all the movies that are claimed to be filmed with practical effects only and know it’s a lie. 
