VFX Artists React to THE PREQUELS Bad & Great CGi

lisa wants to see some good vfx the folder exploded before i touched it boom hello hello welcome to another episode of vfx artist

react

s today the

prequels

oh wow what a time for star wars when george lucas gave it his last hurray and then i got a little depressed and sold the franchise to Disney, you might be thinking that we are going to criticize these movies because everyone loves to hate the

prequels

, but this is what the prequels had some revolutionary visual effects and I want to see yes or no. they're still stacking up today so let's look at some shots here we go this is a pod race this scene got me so excited this is a six scene yeah this looks amazing it looks so good it looks so good , as if 3D rendering were already available. of this world it's the same guy from uh jingle all the time I don't know, I think it's the same kitchen although I think it's pretty sure it is.

I'm willing to bet you ten dollars it's not Jamie, it's Jamie, man, they did it. projection mapping for a lot of this podracing scene was like literally two guys made 70 of all the backgrounds for this whole scene wow and basically just took a lot of pictures of arches and stuff and projected them into 3D Models and that gave them It allowed you to have very realistic looking environments where you can place the camera anywhere you want. Another really interesting thing about the scene is the motion blur. This is a physically accurate motion blur render and the reason you can I say this is because the ground is blurred but the shadows are not blurred, you see the motion and on top of it, like hits and things like that, and they get blurred by that motion , but the shadows technically move at the same speed as the camera, so there is no directional motion blur in the shadows, while you get directional motion blur on the ground where they are above, it's a

great

example of people achieving cool cg motion blur, which is really hard to do, dude, that shot looks so good. the mirage they had you can turn on to get a mirage effect that looks so good in that shot, man, they spent a lot of time on the sequence that's for sure, it's a crowd manipulation shot, although you can see it's a bit strange looking, It's the same people copied and pasted and exactly let's see if you can find the same costumes that you have.

You have a rebellious person with the belt. That guy was simply duplicated. I love these accidents. That was. I think that's all computer generated. It falls apart, yeah, it falls apart, the dust exploded before it touched it, wait, come back, boom, how do you think they did that? Do you think it was an actual filmed element of an explosion that was traced? No, I know, they look like cg, those are trailers. God, that looks so good, those pieces though, man, how are they going? The physics looks so good, that's what the motion, it all makes sense, it hits, it starts spinning that way, then it hits the ground and starts spinning the other direction, that's crazy, okay, welcome to the jar jar binks section oh, did you expect us to

react

violently against the jar jar binks part of this episode?

Guess what jar jar binks is pretty well done as far as visuals go. Jar Jar Binks is kind of a master class for 1999. This was the first time you had a completely CG character interacting with real actors who had gestures, they had motion capture for the first time and then they had to go and give them a Caribbean accent. . It's embarrassing, yeah people haven't made a full main cg. previous character, so how are we going to make this guy, well, we have a costume, why don't we just replace the head on him? There are shots of the guy in the costume, it looks really strange, I've never seen it before, it's got

great

shades.

I'm surprised at how realistic his arms look. I think they covered his eyes. The actors did not look him in the eye. They looked at the mask. I think you're absolutely right. Can you imagine Jar Jar Binks is up here? and the actor says: yes, how are you? and he says: why are you looking at his neck? For example, our forearms are a certain size so that we can touch our shoulders. If you want jar jar to have irregular proportions, you can't make a person in costume end up having the same proportions as a normal human.

So they did a test. Can you tell which is which? Don't look at the proportions of the arms. Now they look like real arms. This is digital. Well, the movement is much more cartoonish in the second take. Yes, it looks like this jar. binks is just a caricature and in a way represents George Lucas no longer taking the world seriously when it comes to computer generated work, although it is very difficult to do, especially in 1999, so you might think that all these effects shots require millions. of dollars and huge teams of advanced technicians, but that is not always the case, look at this beautiful scene, look at those super intense water simulations of the waterfall, you think they are super intense water simulations for the waterfalls, you think it took computers huge for many, many months.

Calculate those incredible waterfalls. I have a feeling that's not the case, but I'll play along. Yes, I think there are simulations that took hundreds of hours. Guess what these waterfalls are that you could create at home because everything they do. these waterfalls spew salt, salt, salt, salt down a black screen which is so cool you get the realistic movement of the water, but since it's white it actually makes it look like it's the really churning foam of a waterfall, yeah yeah whatever the The best type of visual effects is when it comes to creative negotiations with a scene of a pair of lightsabers.

Here's a bad idea of ​​a scene on the big movie screen. It was difficult. Look at these zooms. Wait, those are those digital zooms that are actually in the film. Yes, okay. Look. this is a CG pair look at it, okay, floating, can you imagine trying not to eat anything? So we'll make it look good later, okay, it's much better with that sound effect, I mean, look at that distortion through the actual vase, yeah, water there. That's cool, a set designer decided to give everyone glass plates and glass vases and I'm sure the visual effects guy was like, "Oh my god, they're dealing with green screen too, yeah, it's just the green screen city in the back or blue". screen, whatever, it's probably blue screen, look at this and you're going to have a key, that vase over there, yeah, that's tough, dude, you can see a hint of blue in the vase, so tough, that's tough, what a nightmare, is there more? shots of these two hanging out like maybe in a field, so this is equivalent to Legolas's elephant scene from Lord of the Rings, look at them frolicking in the field with the giant ticks, there's a storm waiting for them that night that Looks great buddy, look at his physics.

Who's standing on that thing this fall coming here? Wow, I remember thinking it was really strange when I first saw it. It's still so unstable. It's really very strange. Look at the way he does it. Don't do a backflip with that thing you just like, they just pick them up, spin the blue screen element like it's literally standing in front while it swings like a bull, they seem to be full of blood, like giant ticks. I guess they just eat a lot of grass. All of Ford's legs are in the front, but all of his weight is in the back.

Technically things are just like a butt sliding across the field like a dog. Oh, is this Yoda's fight? Of course, it's the other fight. when yoda was fighting saruman and the funny thing is it's also very similar to Gandalf's fight yeah oh you're right so far the only real thing we've seen so far is saruman here it's called when this happened in theaters . I was blown away, yes, this was the coolest moment, yes, of the whole movie for me, Christopher Lee, he's just fighting the air, he's doing a great job, what a fantastic actor, something interesting to note is that Yoda's lightsaber sheds light on him, but Christopher Lee's lightsaber doesn't shed any light on him, the reason you can see it on Yoda is because he is a 3D model and he has a 3D model lightsaber , so they can shed light from that 3D model lightsaber to the 3D model that's there, yeah.

Look, it looks great there, but they had to be careful because they can't shine any light on Christopher Lee, so they have to keep the light very subtle on Yoda so that it doesn't stand out that Christopher Lee is standing there. blackness holding a red lightsaber, lightsabers are usually made by just drawing them in the frame afterwards so the person just fights with a stick and then you can do something like after effects or photoshop or whatever you just draw basically a glowing laser and the laser is actually just a white stripe with a colored glow on the edges but the thing is that it's something you just paint on afterwards, there's no lighting that really affects the environment, technically lightsabers are super bright, it's bright white, it's turning off the camera, they should blind everyone.

Dude, this was my favorite, this is such a good fight, Darth Maul is so sick, the mall's favorite, what a move, what a tactical move, this whole fight, oh my god, I almost lost him, man , this whole fight is so intense that I feel like The opinion of this movie evolves over time. People hate her. People love her. People hate her again. People love her again. a masking problem is that like a key problem, it's like what I don't know, I don't know what's going on right there, really strange man, it must just be a thing that blends in, you just hold it like a toy lightsaber. , it seems that you have to feel. through it you can see through it, it's so strange that the white level is reduced, what if it's like I think it's a color issue and they're just turning down the brightness, but you can't turn something down which is eight bits because the data isn't there it's been clipped so you just turn it down to gray yeah it's definitely a color grading thing look at the key that clips oh my god what you're seeing there Basically, they were filmed in blue. screen and you have individual hairs and folds of fabric and motion blur and all that kind of stuff and some guys sitting there are like fuck it, blur it softly, send it if you ever feel bad about your coding just know this is a premiere in theaters here now, the thing is, no one cares because there's a sick fight scene in the penultimate moment of the movie, yeah, no, king, oh, and then the movie solo basically says that Darth Maul is still alive, nothing like taking hard-earned story points. and I'm sorry, I'm supposed to react to the visual effects.

I'll continue adjusting the visual effects. You know, I should mention that one of the reasons we're reacting to these prequels right now is because of the comments you guys left. you want us to react to certain vfx shots that you couldn't understand how they were done or you think they're just mind-blowing or whatever, please leave a comment, don't hesitate, that's enough, come back, come back to the reaction, so I remember be a big fan of this whole finale, this sequence was amazing, yes I love the sequence and this is all computer generated, nothing in this shot here is real, the background could be a model, oh, turn it down, turn it down.

Guys, this right here, oh that's great, this right here was crazy, especially the first time I saw it in theaters. Okay, this seems like something out of the newest trilogy, to be honest, remember what I said earlier about lightsabers usually being painted. Yes, the same goes for the lasers in the movie, the lasers and lightsabers have the exact same effect, but they are 100 cg, so they can have lights as part of the lasers that move through the scene and , for the first time, you see the environment illuminated by lasers. flying, you see the soldiers lighting up, you see the bad guys lighting up, you see the silhouettes changing as the lights move through them and the way the dust and dirt moves is extremely realistic, look at that, look at that red light going through the crowd there. this is included by the people in the foreground who have not yet been hit by the light, yes this is amazing up to this point in terms of computer graphics, nothing like this has ever been done because there were no full battlefield scenes how are you doing. which was 100 cg and there was no smoke which was 100 cg it had no atmosphere which was 100 cg so this is the first time that all of that is put together in one shot and you're seeing lasers here in a way that you have never seen lasers before in cinema.

It's a little jarring to go from that awesome laser shot to this with a pensive Yoda. Did you know they didn't build a single clone trooper helmet for all of this? Actually, each and every helmet was fake. The filmmakers thought it was okay, we can get away with it, we don't haveWe had to build that and everyone reacted and did it negatively because you could feel that it was not tangible. I mean, the reason this looks fake is just the lighting simulation. It's not up to us, yes, the shadow of Yoda's hair on his head is not there, the hair is just like it floats on his head, there is no shadow, the underground scatters on his ears, there is no grunge pass on the reflection on his chest plate, there's a similar fingerprint, same for Yoda too, like he just looks like a toy here and the ambient light is very, very flat, that's something I think most people don't really appreciate.

It has developed a lot in the last two decades. It is the representation of light. Another thing they did in these movies. They had these super chrome spaceships that they wanted to show off all of them. really cool reflections, wow, it wasn't even tracked, oh look at the background, whole shots reprogrammed, there are reprogramming artifacts, look at that over there, look at the right side, whatever that little black stick that comes out like that panel is now. If you go to a frame look how there is a double image and you go forward again and now it goes back to a single image and you go forward again with a double image, so I think what is happening here is that the falling guy is going too slow, they need do it.

Retime it so it gets to the ground faster, but they didn't record it in slow motion, so what they're basically doing is creating a transform for those extra frames that don't exist, but possibly getting artifacts because of that. we're just picking it up because I'm really scrutinizing, look at that guy you can see inside his head, so obviously there's not a human head inside that robot, it's not a costume, but now he's walking around the scene, it looks pretty . well, it moves very well do you think that computer generated c-3po here no, I think it's a 3d model, it's not a 3d, no, no, this weight, right, you know why because it looks so good, does it?

Do you know what they did? It's a puppet and there's a real person attached to its back operating it. No, actually, it's like I'm doing this, but like the sticks are coming out of me and moving the guy in front of me, yeah. wow, that's smart, that's the way to do it and you. In fact, I can see in the final shot here that they have to do a slight wrap around him, that blurry highlight like bloom around his shoulder is because there's a person occluding the background in that shot that they had to remove and then add it back to that shot. so actually the entire background is probably a clean plate filmed separately, what isn't Star Wars?

These guys have been working hard, oh my gosh, Ren and I have been working so hard on us. Have you ever wanted to see Boston Dynamics robots turn on the scientists, well that's what we did using motion capture technology, completely computer-generated characters. We would love for you to go and see it on youtube.com digital corridor. We are very proud of it. In fact, there is a video of the team on this channel that you can see the details of all the hard work we put into it and all the pain we went through to get there.

Do you have any movies or television shows that you like? Well how do they make those vfx? Write a small comment also if you are not subscribed to the runner's crew channel. Well, what the hell are you waiting for? Here's a hint of what will be in our next video. I don't know, you'll have to find out.