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Lucas makes superb movies but he just uses too much CGI. Every single shot in Attack of the Clones was CG. You should only use CG when You Really Have to Lucas just uses it whenever he wants.(Example. In AOTC when Padme is captured by Jango Fett and some Destroyer Droids and Jango was CG) it was so fake and the CG didn't even have to be used he was just standing there.

*** ASSMAN***

yeah but general grievious is going to use four lightsabers and know person has four arms so stop gripping and plus it is because he is using new digital technoligy so that is why he uses cgi so he does'nt have to go all over the world when he shoots.for now may force be with you.

cgi can be really hard to look at sometimes - it's not easy for my eyes it seems. watching all the gungans fight the droids was like watching a demented cartoon. even when the cgi looks really good, it can still be problematic. look at the clone troopers. at first i thought they were real, but when they started moving, i noticed that their motion was much too fluid for a real person. in real life, people make jerky motions, like raising and lowering guns, etc, yet the clone troopers are always so smooth - too smooth. anyway, that's why lotr looks so much better, because they favored models and real-life props when possible.

oh yeah, one other thing that kind of makes me wonder. i saw a clip of temura morrison putting his clone helmet on after talking to obi-wan, but his body was in a blue suit. wtf? why didn't they just put real armor on him? how on earth can cgi armor be better than the real thing if you've got the actor right there? if he's a digital double in the background it's not such a big deal.

all i'm saying is that cgi is ok to do things that you otherwise couldn't do (although a person should not write things like this into the script solely for the purpose of using and promoting cgi, like GL seems to do), but to use it instead of real props and models and characters is just uncalled for in my opinion.

I think the only problem with all the CG characters in STAR WARS is the lighting and texture. other than that they are pretty good like the Kamino people looked incredibly real.

I agree with ih8jarjar that the motions in the characters are to smooth to be a real person. But I think that the special effects in Episode 3 are going to kick ass.

now that would be all up to the SFX department and GL's approval of the final product.

If they are using Motion Capture suits with referance reflectors, they can obtain a pretty close to human chcracter. However it seems that they are only using the green suits just as they used in I robot.

Matte screens and Motion Capture suits are extremly cheaper than constructing entire sets and Filming on Location.

As we all know GL is a bit of a poor boy and needs to cut on costs.

^^^^^^^^^
thats is THE single creepiest AV I have ever seen.

Thats What I Always Thought Folks Why So F***in Smooth I Dont Get It!
I Hope They Will Kick A*s ASSMAN For Sure

these are cool reflectors; they are used for facial expressions

i very much doubt they could use them for GG face as he wears a mask

got to agree with you dere ih8jarjar. CG should only b used for the background and SOME environment elements, droids and all other robots, starships and aliens. apart from that everything else should be played by humans. the clones dont look real most of the time unless they are standing still or are doing very lil movements. i dont see y dey wouldnt use people in that situation (i find they are far more superior than CG)

if u keep staring at me i am gonna have to zap u

its the EYES man!! how can ya not look?!

So the Emperors a crack-head. I diddnt see that comming.

thread rot

yeah, lighting and texture play a big role, i agree. look at yoda in ep2 - his cloak looks great, even when it moves, but yoda's head looks translucent at times. it's like i could reach up and stick my hand through his face. oh yeah, we have to keep this an ep 3 thread, so ahem, i mean, uh i hope yoda looks better in ep3. (my guess is that there's going to be even more effects shots in 3 than in 1 and 2.)

hey JP, i almost think cavola's pic of the guy with the facial reflectors or whatever they are is creepier than his AV. looks like pinhead with one of those things girls put on their head to keep their hair down. a very happy pinhead.

^^^^^^^^^^^

those reflectors are used to mimic facial expressions of the characters in your video games and movies

sometimes a cyberscan is applied to the actor's , and the effects can be pretty awesome ; they impersonate ones facial signature



http://www.enterthematrixgame.com/img/smith_cyberscan33.jpg

http://www.enterthematrixgame.com/img/smith_cyberscan22.jpg

Whoa.

It;s not what GL wants, though. You believe that cgi should only be sued sparingly for such and such- he doesn't. In his filmaking style, he thinks it should be sued for as much as possible/practical.

So this is all about difference in styles- some people don't like the way he has chosen to do things. Fair enough. I don't really mind myself.

if you can tolerate the visuals of the cgi, that's fine. however, and i've heard liam neeson say this of filming star wars, the lack of a real set and real props and especially real actors, really has a negative effect on the actors. i know that this is essentially "acting" in it's most basic form, but could you imagine having nothing on set except for blue and green screens? wouldn't that be hard to really "get into character" or anything else when there's nothing there? i know ewan mcgregor has said similar things, and it shows in the acting. because they add all the cg later, the actors are supposed to interact with nothing, and if an actor's ability is suffering, then the movie is going to suffer.

I agree.

Yes, but that's because Lucas is trying out this style for the first (or near first) time. It's always going to take time for actors to adjust to something like that. It's a risk he knew he was taking, but in future it might pay off very well. In the end, some are better at it than others.

i agree with you, Ushgarak but i just think that star wars movies are too important to be using special effects methods that aren't really perfected yet. now, i know that's a contradiction, because the OT was using all sorts of special effects that were new and were pushing the envelope, but this is a little different because GL could have made the movies just fine without such a huge reliance on cgi. the clones and other aliens and gungans - use actors in suits. the ships - use models again. they did wonderful space battles in the OT without cgi ships. sw means too much to too many people to be using it as a vehicle to try out special effects just so that they can benefit future movies once they're perfected. cgi is not nearly as seamless as it could be at this stage in life (although it looks darn good in lord of the rings, much better than the prequals in my opinion) to be jamming every scene full of it. there are other ways, and it seems that GL is only creating certain situations in his movies (like the gungans vs the battle droids, for example) so that he has an excuse to use cgi.

to add to what i said, take digital yoda as an example. the only place where it was absolutely necessary for him to be digital was during his lightsaber fight. that's fine because it's necessary. however, he could have easily been a puppet for the other parts of the film. they would have just had to have used different camera angles so that we couldn't see frank oz beneath him. lucas will say that they wanted him digital to get more expression in his face and to have a greater freedom of movement. but look at puppet yoda in empire strikes back. frank oz did such an amazing job that i think that watching what he does with the puppet is much more emotional than anything digital yoda in ep2 did. and it's not necessary to have a greater freedom of motion, in my opinion. if doing so causes yoda to look less real (because it's cg and not really there) then it's not worth it. it just seems that GL is making yoda digital only because he can, and that's not a good reason.

Actually, I disagree that it could be done without the effects. That's why he waited so long- the point is scale (and also the true interactibility of the more obscure aliens). So whilst there are indeed problems, be assured that he could not have done this without the cgi; that was his plan from the start.

And it's not just the fight with Yoda, not really., Alot of thise walking shots would have been impossible as well! And I thought he looked no less real than the puppet did.

I think all the CG and special effects Lucas uses are great. I was watching a Webdoc from the AOTC dvd, and Lucas was saying how people are always asking him why he uses so much CG, and Lucas said that the real question is, "why not?" It's definitely working visually, and as long as GL backs SW up with a good story, I'd say it's doing it's job.

some of the cg looks great, i'll admit, but i think some of it doesn't and really detracts from the movie for me. cg droids - sure. cg ships - i can live with that, although those yellow naboo ones don't look so hot. basically anything non-humanoid looks ok to me, but once you try to replicate the human form and it's motions, you've got problems. it has to be done with severe caution because it's something that everyone is so familiar with, and any little flaw, like the overly-smooth motion of the clone troopers, like i mentioned earlier, is going to send up some red flags. well anyway, that's my opinion.

right, but what i'm saying is that it's not necessary to have these walking shots. i'd rather see a puppet yoda (but not the ep1 puppet yoda!) at a different angle and not see his feet, than see a whole body of yoda that to me does not look as real. cg yoda looks ok sometimes, but in other scenes, the texture and lighting seems a bit off, like when he says "begun the clone war has." just really look at him there. like i said before, his face almost looks translucent. and like the clone troopers, his movement is just too smooth. watch how he blinks and how he turns his head in the different shots. his cloak looks great, but sometimes the rest of him just isn't up to par. but seriously, watch the yoda sequences in ESB again. computers at this point just can't replace the human element that frank oz gives yoda in his motions.

Episode 1 showed that a puppet Yoda was no longer viable in the prequel movies. Polling for the movie after its release showed that about 80% of all viewers disliked the new puppet Yoda, so Episode 2 went in a different direction. Digital Yoda is much more preferable to Ep.1 puppet Yoda, and the way the puppet was, was about as good as Lucas was willing to do with a puppet, so it would not have been better.

ok, sorry to keep belaboring the point here, but here's the real question. when you watch the prequals can you tell visually that the cg is not physically there? obviously some things like the kamino aliens you know are cg because of the long neck, but like yoda, or the gungans - can you tell that they are cg? and i don't mean because of their increased range of facial expressions. but when they're just standing there doing things a puppet or a guy in a mask with radio controlled gizmos on his face creating motion could do. to me i can totally tell - some of them stick out like a sore thumb. they just feel out of place. their movement is just off enough to make it apparent to me. when i first saw the clone troopers come into geonosis, i thought they were guys in suits. but when they started moving around, it became obvious to me that they were cg. then i started going, "well wtf?" why even use cg to replace a guy in a suit? what's the point of that? i can understand cg extras filling in the background, but there seems to be no pragmatic purpose for having cg clones up in the foreground interacting with the real actors when you could have real life people in suits doing it better - which also makes it easier for the other actors who have to interact with the troopers. again, this makes me think that GL is just using cgi for the sake of using it. don't get me wrong, it's a great tool when used with care and when it's necessary. but to use it for just any old thing really dumbfounds me.

a puppet yoda is certainly viable - just because people didn't like it doesn't mean that it's no longer an option. people (myself included) didn't like the puppet in ep1 because whoever designed it made it look all goofy. people also didn't like it beceause it looked drastically different than ESB and ROTJ yoda. people like what they're used to. what they should have done is just re-used the ESB one and put some sideburns and more hair on it to make him look 30 or so years younger. so anyway, digital yoda is preferred because he looks more like the original ESB yoda, not because he's digital.

Dude where the hell are you going with this? GL uses cg, so what! GL used to use models on wires and puppets, so what! What difference does it make? Are you a film maker? GL said like twenty five years ago that a special effect is used to tell a story, and that a special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing. He uses any methods nesesarry to get the job done, and as effective as possible. Here is an assignment since you know so much about special effects. Why don't you go and recreate the Clone War from AOTC using stop motion photography, and let us know in about five years on how you are doing. Okay

ok, if that's the case, then GL and ILM should have done some other movies, like harry potter and whatever else first, in order to hone in on their cg skills and postponed production of the prequals. star wars is just too important to me and others to be the movies in which one uses as a vehicle for experimentation. i think that GL is more interested about pushing technology than about star wars - watch some of his and mccallum's interviews - they often talk about pushing the envelope so that future movies will be benefited from what they're doing now. that's ok, it's his choice, but for something that's a cultural phenomenon and a part of life for so many, you can't afford to, if you want to produce anything as good as the original trilogy, do this.

(can you tell i really care about this issue? )

i just want the prequals to be good movies. i like some aspects of them, but i don't think they come close to the OT. i really really really want ep3 to be good. that's all.

no no no, that's not really my point. my point is that it's overkill. yes cg is necessary for the clone war, but not for the clone soldiers. it just seems that there are some pretty bad byproducts of cg, ie not always visually looking as good, and causing poorer acting from the actors at times due to the difficulty they face when interacting with just a blue screen.

i'm not a filmmaker. i'm just a SW fan who is in a forum using it for what it's designed for - sharing my opinions. no harm in that. i'm not flaming, i'm not doing anything wrong.

Eventually, Lucas NEEDED digital clones for the massive clone battles which have thousands of them on-screen at once, so he created the digital clonetroopers. Then, for the scenes that show the clones on a smaller scale, it was no longer necessary to create clonetrooper armor and cast new actors, when the digital effects are already there. If Lucas did that, it would mean extra money, more labor on his part, a lot of new casting and direction, and they would not blend in as well with the already-existent clones.

Yeah I know, thats why I put a smiley face at the end of my post. I don't know why either GL made the cone troops cg, who knows. But what can you do about it ya know. Peter Jackson aint complaining about. People call GL a sceming money maker, a horrible filmaker, and number of things due to his actions in the past regarding Star Wars. Honestly, he appears to me as someone who is never satisfied with his work, and has an imagination that is always conjuring up new ideas. He probably figured CGI was the best way to get what he needed

I agree. And his imagination is totally wild. I mean, if you watch all 12 web docs on the AOTC dvd, after you've watched them all, you just get to see how much work actually goes into making these movies, and even how much work goes into a single shot, they make models, paintings, sketches, storyboards, everything and all the stuff GL has to keep up with and maintain, and the animatics department, it's totally crazy. So those who think GL is a bad film maker, he certainly isn't, he did his work, and put in his efforts, just for them, the film probably didn't turn out the way they had envisioned it, therefore making them not like the movie and saying that GL did a bad job with it.

i love the special effects in the new movies. sorry ih8jarjar, but it sounds like you and some others are still in love with the OT special effects too much. i guess when your in love with something you look at it with a curved eye, which in your case is with yoda. yoda hardly looked real in the OT and its even worse looking back on it now. after seeing the new yoda in ep1 i was so happy to hear about them doing a digital yoda in ep2. as for the clone troopers, alot of folks couldn't tell they were cg until a fanboy pointed it out at the theater and the only reason he knew is because he kept up on the spoilers. that goes for alot of the effects in the PT movies. what i really hope is that one day GL will go back and replace that weed-head looking yoda in ep1with a digital one. i'm not dissin anyone's view but some of you guys need to stop living in the past.

CGI can cut budgets and provide an epic canvas for a filmaker.
LOTR the return of the kings battle scenes are an example, but they are also a problem for the actors since there is little or nothing to get any feedback from to interact with, and this can lead to wooden perfomances.

Exactly !

Its all a mixture of :

A) Motion Capture
B) Animated Puppets (low res grey shaded)Scan the real thing, and then add muscle detail and skin texture. The animator would then programme it to motion.

C) Miniatures: by buildiing a 3d scaled model of a set, its a lot cheaper than waiting a week for the whole set to be done by craftsmen. For example below is a collage of the Separatist ship and i believe that this could have been part of the miniature work

thanks for the pics cavola looks like emperiors chamber in rtoj.

they have been downsized by this forum ; i got them bigger at another forum

Now, see, there you go, that is where you are just not looking at things at the way GL is- you are saying,. I want to limit myself in what I do. GL does not WANT limits where he cannot, for example, show a walking Yoda and his feet. CGI is the only way for him to realise this lack of limits. And it looks just fine to me.

Nah, I hate it, honestly. I honestly don't care if we can see Yoda jumping around, being able to see his whole body - because a puppet does so much more for the secene because it actually LOOKS more real.

CGI is next to useless when the illusion of realism is shattered.

I have no idea why certain bits were CGI - especially scenes such as in the Jedi Temple - where real actors placed into the scene look out of place.

Also, CGI is too obvious because they slap on SO MUCH effects. Case in point: Yoda's lightsaber. When Anakin and Obi-Wan use their sabers, the sabers don't emit a blue glow on them (until Anakins fight with Dooku of course). Yoda, on the other hand, is covered in a green glow from his lightsaber. Some say that is realistic - but I say it's inconsistent with the rest of the effects. It just hammers home even more that Yoda is a CGI character.

Sometimes I don't even know why Lucas bothers with real actors and sets any more. He may as well have made it completely CGI like that stupid Final Fantasy movie.

The main problem is with the lack of subtlety. Lucas seems to pack every piece of CGI with in-your-face real time lighting and amazing motion's that literally, look too good to be true (clone troopers movements). A good idea with the clones would have been to try and put more mistakes in there, make movemnets inconsistent, jerky, and LESS flowing.

CGI simply isn't good enough, because people just don't know how to use it properly.

Well, I will certainly never agree for one moment that the puppet ever looked, even remotely, 'more real'.

Well, no it didn't, but the puppet actually looked like it was THERE,

I kind of agree with both sides to some extent, the same way that i like some films shot on film, and others are fine on digital....

for a pro cgi angle think of the bits that people never realise are cg (obi wan being dragged along the ground by jango on kamino - i never would have known that was cg unless i'd watched the making of footage)....when people say the cg is bad they are usually thinking of the couple of bits that didn't work....

however i've never been able to get into the clone battle in aotc, and i don't know if it's purely a cg problem....when the droids all enter the arena it doesn't bother me, neither do the clones....but all the jedi look like they've been pasted in from different takes....when mace introduces them, and all the jedi around the arena light up their sabres, a lot of the movements are innapropriate....some of them are in mid fight with no opponent, some are using force-push against empty air....i don't feel comfortable with it until they leave the arena, and it annoys me that i haven't really been able to enjoy this scene.....so for me, in this instance, it's bad/lazy compositing that puts me off, rather than bad cg....basically, if it looks bad then it looks bad, whatever the method...

and it is kind of sad that they sometimes spend months and thousands of dollars just to make yoda do something frank oz could've done in 10 minutes.....

like i said before some of you guys are too in love with the OT. are you seriously saying that a muppet looks more believable than a cgi yoda who can now walk, have facial emotions, and doesn't move up and down like someone stuck a stick up his a**? all those cgi animations you see in the background are there to help create a more believable world. digital yoda was one of the best decisions lucas has made, especially after TPM. don't get me wrong, frank oz does a great yoda voice but the muppet is limited on the performance it can give. like expressing sadness, anger, or joy.

i dunno, i'm not insanely anti-digital yoda, i think it's an interesting experiment, but i definitely get more emotion from the original yoda....and i agree with red superfly, he looks like he's THERE.....if you don't get that, then there's really no better way to explain it....besides i don't need to see anakins feet moving in every scene to buy his performance....

i don't really want to take sides on this and get into a heated debate, when i'm kinda on the fence on this one to start with, but i guess now's as good a time as any to say.....(deep breath).....the yoda duel in aotc has always struck me, on a gut level, as a gimmick.....*ducks for cover*.....

Yeah that's the thing with a puppet - sure his facial expressions are better in CGI - but at least we all know that the puppet is actually ON SET, making eye contact with the actor.

That's another problem I have with CGI - the REAL actors never seem to be having eye contact with the CGI characters, it looks wierd.

I honestly don't care if I can see Yoda walk around, feet and all. In Empire Strikes Back, when Yoda is playfully raiding Luke's food thingy, we see his feet, through some brilliant camera trickery. Because we've seen his feet, and know that he has feet, we don't need to see them ALL THE TIME.

Puppets always look more real anyway, because they ARE real, on set with the same conditions as the actors.

if i sounded aggressive in my last post it wasn't intended.


i don't plan on getting into a heated debate with anyone on this subject. i don't think the yoda/dooku duel was a gimmick on purpose. meaning, for years fans have asked and wondered if yoda carried a lightsaber. so GL addressed that in AOTC. that was the biggest surprise to alot of folks that went to see the movie. honestly i think people just want to see the OT remade with anakin instead of luke and with the same 1977 crappy special effects. i mean, we all saw TPM right? so you saw how retarded yoda looked. yes, he looked like he was actually there but it sure didn't look believable. i actually laughed when mace would talk with yoda in TPM because mace would be all serious and muppet yoda could only make one kind of facial expression throughout the whole movie, which was that goofy smirk you see in all the TPM pics. i'm sorry but the muppet yodas in the OT and TPM just looked like they were on crack and just distracted me everytime they were on screen. i guess to each his own.
the clone troopers looked real to me when i first saw the movie. what made me start to suspect them was the weird reflection in their visors gave. i knew some were digital for stunt reasons but i didn't know all them were. i didn't keep up on spoilers for AOTC and went to the movie as an average movie goer. most folks who knew they were digital went to the movie looking for digital clonetroopers and then over analyzing their movements.
i think alot of you don't realize how much cgi cuts down on costs and production time. whether some of you know it or not most movies as huge as starwars, spiderman etc. take years to make. i mean coming up with a script, then a screenplay, storyboards, finding actors, negotiating contracts and salaries, i could go on but i think you get the point. GL is doing all this as he goes along and is able to put out a movie in 2 to 3. i rather get a starwars flick heavy with cgi in 2005 than wait till 2007 so all i can get is a clonetrooper with a more realistic walking motion and a muppet yoda.

I didn't mean to imply anyone was being aggressive, sorry....i was pointing out that i'm not aggressively anti-cg myself....

when lucas made the original films, he would look at each scene and decide the best way to make it work, whether that was puppetry, stop motion, blue screen or whatever....this is how peter jackson has made the lord of the rings films (can you imagine lucas using forced perspective the way pj did to shrink frodo at the start of the first film? not in a million years).....

people say the effects were better in lotr, i don't think they are at all, but if you do 90% cg, chances are some of it's gonna turn out crappy...i like to see skilled craftsman doing all kinds of different things, but i like harryhausen films, and others may disagree with me there.....

and yeah, i agree the yoda in phantom menace was weird, but i definitely wouldn't say the same for esb....

and while we're on the topic, reliable sources say there is a new version of tpm ready to go, exactly the same but with a cg yoda in place....and that's fine with me (apart from the idea of buying the SAME FILM, AGAIN....

but if he touches esb yoda, i might just begin using words like "childhoods" and "raping"....

I think CGI is necessary in the prequels. I also think it's OK to use it in order to replace real actors, like in clonetroopers scenes. But what I do not like is the overkill in every single shot. In AOTC there is that scene where Padme and Anakin are sitting at the table. Anakin uses the force on some kind of fruit. Was it really necessary to use a CG fruit?! I just thought "WTF?! Were they mot able to use a real apple for that?!". You can't tell me that fruit was real. The way Padme eats it is just... ridiculous. I mean... C'mon... do we really need that? I admit, most of the CG stuff is awesome, but there are moments in the movie where I get the impression that it is kinda cheap stuff where somebody didn't really care if it looks real or not.

yeah, peter jackson is a good example. he really understands cgi and how to apply it, but his movies are set in an entirely different world. a world without flying cars, lightsabers, laserguns. plus the PT is coming out of GL own pocket so course he going to create sets, aliens, and clonetroopers in cg. it beats having to pay someone to make all those costumes and then hire actors and stunt men to wear them. sometimes though i think gl is using the PT to test his ILM company's technology.

But even Jackson's CGIs are not perfect.

If CG Wouldn't excist in the PT Then We Wouldn't See The Clone Armys In The End Of Ep II Or Either Yoda Fightning Or The Start Of The Clone Wars So Dont Get Dissapointed Or Something Folks Because Lucas Did This For The Fans Of The SW So We Could Enjoy...Remember That He Wasn't Interrested For Doing The Pt At First

I agree. I love all the CG and I think it looks great. Why shouldn't they use CG? That's a question that is hardly answered.

And it's not all really CG either, well it is as a final product, but first, they have to make models of what they want, then the animatics look at it and then build it into CG. It's a long and hard process but I think it's well worth the time because on film, it's spectacular.