ESC Cuts Staff and Goes on Hiatus

[roto baggins]

its Warner Digital all over again.

[CB_3D]

I didn´t think that Neo flying looked that great?! Looked almost like claymation in some scenes.
Same for what i´ve seen from the Catwoman human fx, very plastic-like.

Just because the W Brothers payed hommage to Supes with Neo striking the classic pose in Reloaded doesn´t mean they would have been the best for the job. Superman needs 100% photorealism to work.

Sorry, I´m a HUGE Superman fan and want this one to be as good as possible. When i saw the flying sequences from the last Peter Pan i immediately thought:"Yep, this team has to do Supes!" And that´s exactly what Singer, or whoever decided this, thought.

IMHO a good decision for the movie.

I feel with the folks who got laid off, though.

[t-toe]

Superman needs 100% photorealism to work.

well, we're not at that point in technology yet. the "claymation" shots in the new Matrix movies were the closest they could get at the time. we will not leap from those to photorealism. it will be a long and painful road (what's the theory called where the closer something looks to the real thing, the stranger it looks if it's off by even the slightest margin?). I admire ESC because they were bold enough to use their noggins and come up with new and unique approaches for achieving the goal of photorealistic visual effects.

[CB_3D]

ok, you are absolutely right about the "the closer you get the stranger a little deviation looks".

But that´s not what i meant.

Considering the budget, research and time that went into these sequences, well, they should have been much much better IMHO. that´s not to trash the work our colleagues did, as a 3d guy i really enjoyed it and i wouldn´t dare to think i could ever do it better, no way.

But my girlfriend (and even my 60 year old mother;LOL) thought it looked much worse than, for example, the council humans in Final Fantasy.

The animation in some of the burly brawl scene (which as a stylized action piece by itself was excellent) simply looked very very bad when intercut with the real thing. Maybe it was simply the volume of these scenes that ruined them. There´s only so much you can do before you start to rush the shots out.

As far as fast action shots go I am quite optimistic it can already be done in a convincing way. Take the digital doubles in Van Helsing, for an instance. As dumb as the movie was, the 3D action doubles looked great. Same for Blade 2 and for both Spiderman movies.

Between these and the Matrix shots we are discussing there have been no significant leaps in the technology. In the end it´s the TDs and artists that made these shots look as good as they do.

Again, i mean no disrespect to the people who worked on the Matrix(es), they did a wonderful job of pulling off an insane volume of shots at high quality!

Just not as purrrfect as i feel they could be. Yep, i am too referring to the 3d Catwoman with this last comment. And these where done a few months ago.

[Ross Forster]

Personally, with regards to digital doubles...if they're animated correctly and realisticly then that performance goes a long way over what they end up looking like. Sure they should look good, but its one part of the performance.

In Blade 2, some shots were excellent, but the ninja/Blade fight was way off...too rubber.

[MasterZap]

My personal feeling on the matrix issue is that the main fault wasn't in the rendering, neither was it that much in the animating per se... it was the rigging that was off.

Neos head turned on a completely wierd gimble joint position ("Hes doing the superman thing") and the SHOULDERS of almost every character were simly completely incorrect. Notice smiths
wierd poses while flying in the Superbrawl in Revolutions....looked completely wierd.

I think a lot of the animation was mocap anyway, so I fault the rigging more than anything else.

Just my 2 cents....

/Z

[lestdog]

Quote:

slashed its staff on Friday the 13th and is going on hiatus.



Talk about a day of bad luck. Do you think they did that on purpose?

[SQ2]

Catwoman FX were terrible. worst i've seen.

[MasterZap]

It's sad coz ESC had some really really REALLY clever people on the rendering side, like George Borshukov (did I spell that right?) and friends.

Realy pity indeed. :sad:

/Z

[Ross Forster]

Yeah, I completley agree with that...its a shame. I'm sure they'll be snapped up elsewhere.

[Cogliostros]

Regardless of how you all might feel toward ESC's work, the bigger picture is that ESC has laid off over 250 people in the last few months, when events like this happen, its sucks and is bad for our industry. ESC was full of talented artists who are now looking for work... this isnt a time to rip on the quality of ESC's work but realize that when companies as big as ESC damn near shut down were losing opportunities to work and create and do what we love. You might think this doesnt affect you, but seeing as how most of you are working to get into this industry... it does.

"ESC has been through two rounds of layoffs already this summer, a practice that is common in the visual effects industry when projects are completed. Early last month, 158 workers were laid off, and another 89 were let go as of July 31, according to figures compiled by the Alameda (Calif.) County Workforce Investment Board."

[CB_3D]

Agreed. I commented primarily from a VFX and movie fan POV.

As someone working with 3d it sux big time. But i don´t feel we were ripping anyone´s work, just analyzing. There´s always a reason for things like these happening, be it management problems, internal politics or,AAMOF, the quality of the product.

No harm in discussing that, maybe this RIP thread just isn´t the best place to do so. Sorry if we stepped toes

[FloydBishop]

That's too bad. Best of luck to all those directly affected. I've been down that road, and I know how bad it sucks.

[MasterZap]

Oh me too, me too!

/Z

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