Sort of off topic, but I saw Final Fantasy last night.. Wow.. It's not Vue, but still very nice to see what can be done out there. Chris

I should see it next Wednesday :) FF was made with Maya and took 4 years and close to 1200 PC's and over 200 artists. Quite a huge CG project, in fact, it's the biggest one ever made. I think I will start with a much smaller scale...say 5 PC's and 5 artists! ;+) Cheers!

LOL Fly! :) Chris, was the story any good? I keep hearing great things about the graphics (and the TV previews sure look nice), but I'd like to know it's got an interesting script as well. Does it?

Well, when it comes out here I'm surely going to see it. Did anyone see Shrek? Great movie. :D

Just saw it tonight. Personally, I think they wasted a whole lot of hard effort to make a very "run of the mill", clichridden SciFi movie. They could have done it better and easier if they'd used real actors. The CG is beautiful to look at, but they haven't got it right yet when it comes to human characters. They lack the subtleties of human movement...the head moving slightly as someone speaks...the involuntary twitch of the facial muscles...etc. Also, they lack the range of expression achieved by traditional animation. It was a lot like watching animated mannequins or Disney robots. Every move was too calculated. On the plus side, the world they created was beautiful, and the sound...especially the battle sound...was just awesome! -SMT

I'd give the story 3 stars - good, not great. Our local reviewer trashed the story as a typical computer game story, but I think he missed the slight anime touches to the writing. Sure, the facial expressions weren't always perfect (the villain was NOT well done at all) but often times they were quite close. Dr. Aki Ross, the main character, was IMNSHO only the second best animated character in the movie. Grey looked more realistic. There was some personality for the supporting characters in the movie - not as much as Aliens (which is still my standard for giving minor characters individuality) - but better than a lot of other action movies. They did cheeseball the ending a bit - I can't say in what way because I don't want to spoil the ending - but not as badly as they could have. I can kinda see why they did it, but it took the movie down a notch (and Dr. Aki in particular.)

The only major thing I had against it was the lip movement to the voice track.. Just seemed a little.. off

Saw it yesterday. There are a few technical problems but overall its worth seeing on the big screen if you're into 3d, but the story has big problems. It is not science fiction; it is metaphysical fiction with elements of science fiction. As one person said when I left the theater: "Great graphics, too much plot and no exposition." As for the technical complaints, I think that the movie is still one of the most ambitious projets yet and will serve as a major stepping stone to better future projects.