Attached Link: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Server/9029/images4.html

Here is a link to their website showing renders of the characters and scenes from the film, plus a beefcake shot of the character Grey and a nude picture of the main female character Aki Ross, both of which you can find at the bottom of the page.

WOW! Talk about realistic! Those black squares look incredibly real! Regards- Lemurtek

Did you check the uncensored image below? At least she's not shy, unlike some actresses. ;-)

I can't tell if someone just photoshopped her bikini away. If they did, it's an excellent job. I wonder if this will create a scandal for her, now that she's a movie star now. ;-)

Ooops! Guess I should pay attention. Still like the photo real censor blocks. :)

Jeez..... how come we didn't get a shot like that for Grey??? Still, whoever did this... amazing work.

she looks like a 13 year old.

What's interesting is that the poses (Maxim calendar shot vs nude) are not exactly the same. They're real close, but not the same. Look at - The tilt and pitch of her head. The edge of her hair on the right side and the position of it on her shoulder on the left. The position of her thumb on her right hip. She also shows more thigh length in the nude. Given how much else is the same I'd suspect an early comp of the image. But that's just my studied guess. :-) TD

They didn't look like that when I was 13.... She looks like a slim, healthy 18 :)

BTW: go to this guy's home page and check out the link to the CGI Frankenstein. Long download, but worth it.

is the Grey character also a CGI? If so, he is even better than she is and she is fantastic! I can't wait to see the flick. :)

I saw it today--Dr. Sid (or Syyd, not sure)is the most realistic, IMO. I'll be curious what others think. One of the members of a digital photography forum I'm on was in the charge of the renderings and something else (not very far down in the credits--and before this was involved at Pixar with Toy Story, etc.). It was kind of neat 'sort of' knowing someone involved in it. Everyone is CGI, BTW Bia.

Picnic--I saw it tonight, and thought the major, or whatever the older subordinate to the general was, looked the most "real", probably because he got the most flattering lighting from a CGI perspective (dark, not glaring light, etc...) All in all, it definitely raises the bar, as we discussed earlier. Now, if they'd gotten the skin translucency as well as Shreck did, and let the characters sweat and get dirty, it'd have been perfect... :) GrayMare

oh, yes--I know which one you mean. Yes, he was excellent. I agree about the sweating/dirt LOL. I also thought that Aki just was 'too' perfect--they just didn't give her enough facial movement for emotions. I would have liked to see more 'emotion' when she cried, etc. My husband thought the black 'Deep Eye' guy was very good. I saw Shrek last weekend and was very impressed with their work. My problem is I keep looking at textures and transparency maps (or what I perceive where they might be). Speaking of--the hair movement on Aki was something--even down to just a few hairs falling out on her cheeks at times as the wind blowed.

amazing! :)

Suuposedly Tom Hanks had made a stink about this, saying it's the next step in replacing live actors with virtual ones. A critic in Toronto responded that, based on what he saw, the only actors who needed to worry were the really bad ones (tongue firmly in cheek).

LOL--this isn't my kind of movie for 'drama', I have to admit. I was totally NON blown away by the story line altho' I found the 'spiritual' thing interesting and totally fascinated by the textures, animation, etc.

Damn! Gives me somthing to try for...

Has anyone else noticed just how much her hair is like Koz's?

It may be similar in style, but it moves better and the strands are individual.

Attached Link: http://www.geocities.com/ffclips2/

Hi, Well, the rest of the stuff including long mpegs, can be find at the link above, but I suspect that us poser types will be interested in this dir: http://www.geocities.com/ffclips2/maxim/ Wherein you will find what look like reference face renders of all the main characters, fairly impressive really! As for Ms Ross' pictures, I expected as much. Lets face it, if you were building the world's most realistic model you'd render a few nudes too right! ;) The hair is fairly amazing, and they've shared such technical inovations with the team that's doing the FF10 game, so you'll be seeing more of this technology :) For those interested in how this was done check out this page: http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2001/july/final_fantasy.html which contains data of the hard & software that made the movie possible, chalk up another "hit" for Gnu/Linux :) Oh yeah... :) This site: http://www.thegia.com/features/ffmovie/ffmovie.html has details about square's ambitions for the project and links to some extreme closeups on it, so you can drool over the detail, and wish you too could afford your own render farm :) later jb

And at the same time, Praxis, I think we can also see FF as a sign of things to come. Face it: when Poser 1 came out, none of the stuff we can do today was even barely possible (Imagine Poser 1 with a walk designer?). But the technology has advances by leaps and bounds, and I'd happily bet that by Poser 7 (maybe even 6) we'll see the capabilities of animating cloth and strands of hair (probably with some kind of random generator) and the like. This stuff has a wonderful way of trickling down, and while being able to pull off FF may be out of the reach of the individual artist, I have no illusions that s/he will come damn close. We're practically there now in the still work. While animation is a little tougher, it's simply a matter of time.

I can't see actors being replaced unless people go in knowing its a CGI movie. What I do see are models being replaced. Its far cheaper to render a model who can pose in any position, have any proportions, never complains, never is late, is always fit and always young as opposed to a model like Cindy Crawford or Cathy Ireland. What I find interesting is the crossing of the two mediums. Taking the nude pic for example. I real photography they try to eliminate the skin bumps, wrinkles and textures. In 3d they try and enhance them. If that were a real pic of a nude girl I doubt you'd see the skin bump pattern at all. One of the big problems is the 3d renderer does not simulate a real life camera. On a camera details are lost, not added. I think the industry on a whole needs to step back and look at the subtle things that humans use to identify reality. 3d renders are too perfect and that's what kills the illusion. Freckles, skin bump maps, sheen on skin should be extremely subtle, not super high definition. Seeing pours on faces isn't even in real movies (actresses wear make up to cover that up) so why have it in 3d movies.

IMHO, it's a fine line, Mason. We don't see the bumps or imperfections for a couple of reasons: (1) because the camera hides most of them and (2) because we don't look for them. Next time you rent a movie, watch the close-ups, and you'll see that makeup can only go so far when it comes to creating that illusion of clear, perfect skin. We do the rest by just ignoring them. But with CGI, we want to see them because it establishes the CGI's "non-existence", as it were. Sure, right now they're going overboard with the imperfections, but that's just par for the course. Eventually they'll find the happy medium, and then we really will be wondering what's real and what isn't. And I'll find out who it was, but someone in Italy recently (within the last two years) had a "virtual" fashion show to show off his/her new line; it was broadcast on the web as well in a shortened form. It was an intruiging experience, to say the least. But what's going to have to happen there is a better way of creating and controlling (and rendering) cloth, and that's still a bit of a ways off.

I don't know about that real to cgi comparision. I think real photography and cameras diffuse more. CGI tends to be super sharp. Like you said they need to find the happy medium but, being someone who works in the entertainment biz and works with CGI renders I know that artists don't train or work with real arts to find that happy ground. They create super high detail renders that actually shouldn't be high detail. When they did Jurasic Park they found they ahd to actually dumb down their renders and add imperfections like dull lighting, fuzzy renders and smoothed surfaces or people didn't feel the dinosaur looked real enough. Its just more technology to fiddle with. I'm sure they will get there.

WOW!!! i'm tellin ya if GARY was reall..mmmmm..mmm he'd be in trouble..lol, HE IS SO DAMN HOT! yummy! i wish i was rich so i could get miya and beg for him...hell i would buy him... CD-RW;)