Avatar trailer is up....

[jinxx]

Waterworld 2.0!?.................

 

[tylerdurden]

here's how i see it.

cameron is an obssessive perfectionist.

the cgi we saw in this teaser is by no means finished, especially for the na'vi.

my guess is he has been pressured to release a trailer now, for marketing purposes. he may be in charge of every aspect of his film but he knows full well this is necessary to generate public buzz. the average moviegoer still hasn't really got a clue as to what "avatar" is all about and this trailer is a means to ease them into it.

remember when early footage was shown (at comic con) of the scene in "iron man" where he blew up the tank and walked away from it? that was unfinished cgi, and the fans jumped all over it, saying it looked crap, etc etc. but when the movie came out, that scene, along with the rest of the effects were great.

i'm fairly certain it's the same here. like many of u i am not terribly impressed with the cgi rendering so far but i'm sure cameron will continue finetuning it right til the premiere. the guy's earned my trust for sure.

it's the story i'm more concerned about, actually. but i'll reserve judgement on that til i actually watch the film.

 

[Eli26]

here's how i see it.

cameron is an obssessive perfectionist.

the cgi we saw in this teaser is by no means finished, especially for the na'vi.

my guess is he has been pressured to release a trailer now, for marketing purposes. he may be in charge of every aspect of his film but he knows full well this is necessary to generate public buzz. the average moviegoer still hasn't really got a clue as to what "avatar" is all about and this trailer is a means to ease them into it.

remember when early footage was shown (at comic con) of the scene in "iron man" where he blew up the tank and walked away from it? that was unfinished cgi, and the fans jumped all over it, saying it looked crap, etc etc. but when the movie came out, that scene, along with the rest of the effects were great.

i'm fairly certain it's the same here. like many of u i am not terribly impressed with the cgi rendering so far but i'm sure cameron will continue finetuning it right til the premiere. the guy's earned my trust for sure.

it's the story i'm more concerned about, actually. but i'll reserve judgement on that til i actually watch the film.

As a student in animation and film, what you see is pretty much what you get. There is not much they can do in the next few months. They can tighten some things, but the visuals are pretty much "what you see is what you'll get" on opening day. This has taken years, and anyone who says some of the scenes look like this come from a game cut scene, or they have seen better, yeah, right. *rollseyes*

 

[Sithlord1975]

Hey this movie is going to suck! It has CGI in it! I thought it was going to be real people and real mechs and real aliens!!!

 

[wofford29]

Nice eye Darkness. Unlike Wofford, you are not blind. You have perfect 20/20 vision. Wofford, not so much.

But apparently this is mediocre or decent CGI.

NOT!!! That's some phenomenal stuff right there!

Wofford, you looking at this? Oh you can't... cause you're blind man! BLIND!!!!

I could post a picture from Ang Lee's Hulk that looks just as good, if not better than any screen cap you're quoting that is supposedly ground breaking.

 

[Sithlord1975]

The Blue Aliens look no worse than anything thrown at us and running around in the Star Wars prequels, such as Obi Wan on that Lizard mount.
So what's the problem here?? I don't get it...

How can you for sure say something doesn't look real anyway, when it doesn't exist and you've never seen it before. Perhaps they would look like the stick out and be bright blue with big eyes and smooth skin.
Who knows right?

And yes discussing the film is one thing. Being so sure you know how to make movies and it's not right, or not good enough, or the CGI sucks, is not really discussing.

And can we please remember it's in 3D and it's James Cameron.
And perhaps there is plenty of cool CGI stuff they didn't even show you yet.

And for crying out loud, it's just a movie!! lol Enjoy it and go home when it's over.
It shouldn't have to be a life altering experience. Just a good two hours of money spent.

And I'm not even sure where the hype was everyone is talking about?? Last I knew, Cameron was working on some new film and that was it. Total quiet secrecy for like 2-3 years since I first heard he was working on a movie called Avatar.
Up until SDCC and this trailer, I knew nothing about this movie.

 

[jye4ever]

Man does that CGI look like crap, I can do better than that!!!! :emperor

Wait.....WTF am I saying, no I can't!

Ummm, that CGI looked Bad Ass!

 

[tomandshell]

I don't think the CGI looks bad at all. It looks fine. It just doesn't look groundbreaking--it seems like he's done a good job using the existing set of tools to give us motion capture driven CGI creature characters similar to what we've seen before. It doesn't blow me away or leave me wondering how they could have pulled off something so shockingly photorealistic, which is what I've been expecting with this project all along. I'm excited to see the finished film, but it's clearly not going to be the one that finally leaves me wondering what's real and what's fake. It still looks like CGI. Well done CGI, but CGI all the same.

It's still really cool to see a new movie trailer with the words, "FROM THE DIRECTOR OF TITANIC."

 

[wofford29]

The Blue Aliens look no worse than anything thrown at us and running around in the Star Wars prequels, such as Obi Wan on that Lizard mount.
So what's the problem here?? I don't get it....

Again. I'm not saying it looks like crap. I'm just saying it's not the ground breaking, revolutionary step, "we've crossed over the uncanny valley", end all be all it was made out to be by Cameron and the likes. The CGI looks better than some movies, as good as some, and IMO not as good as others that have been out for years now.

 

[isculpt]

I could post a picture from Ang Lee's Hulk that looks just as good, if not better than any screen cap you're quoting that is supposedly ground breaking.

Take one then, I'm curious.

 

[isculpt]

And I honestly do not see whats wrong with the cgi at all. Please, can you guys be more specific, instead of just saying its bad, say exactly why. Constructive crits people!

 

[ShazBo]

The CGI looks like a Pixar film. Hyper-realism. It doesn't seem that great but why are we talking about the CGI? Have you all forgotten Stories make Movies? I don't know about you but I'm watching it for the Story.

If you want to just watch CGI then go watch 'Crapformers 2: Rise of the Made up Transformer that never existed, who gets so much build up as a Badass but only lasts 10 Seconds in a Fight against Optimus Prime'...

 

[Sithlord1975]

Actually just watching it again for like the 10th time in 1080P, I can say it might not be groundbreaking from what we are shown, but I know it's still a step up from the stuff in the SW prequels.
At least that's how feel, as I try to picture certain scenes from the movies.
Especially if the MoCap is more advanced as I read.
But even that creature chasing and pouncing on the guy looks a bit better than the recent SW monsters.
Just keep watching the trailer to let it all the detail sink in.

Everything he sees when he first wheels out of that carrier, all around him and the Mechs. The shot with the floating islands. The jungle shot when the helicopter craft comes down and disrupts the jungle. The alien chick getting all bad ass firing arrows in the darkness. All amazing to me.

 

[plasmid303]

I wonder how many textures and render passes comprises each blue person on screen. Skin detail, skin translucency, dirt, sweat, muscle flexion, all the different types of lighting. It must have taken a lot of work (of course).

 

[tomandshell]

Everything he sees when he first wheels out of that carrier, all around him and the Mechs. The shot with the floating islands. The jungle shot when the helicopter craft comes down and disrupts the jungle. The alien chick getting all bad ass firing arrows in the darkness. All amazing to me.

The scenery shots are very well done. The character animation/rendering is what's not fully convincing and photorealistic IMO.

We're getting to a point where CGI can be used to create very impressive and believable fantasy worlds and environments--it just can't yet create fully believable beings to live within them.

 

[ShazBo]

The scenery shots are very well done. The character animation/rendering is what's not fully convincing and photorealistic IMO.

We're getting to a point where CGI can be used to create very impressive and believable fantasy worlds and environments--it just can't yet create fully believable beings to live within them.

District 9 begs to differ. Though there are some scenes (very few) where you can see that it's CGI. But again I didn't goto that Movie to see CGI. I went to see the Story.

 

[plasmid303]

District 9 begs to differ. Though there are some scenes (very few) where you can see that it's CGI. But again I didn't goto that Movie to see CGI. I went to see the Story.

I discussed this with a couple of friends, who tricked me into watching the trailer (I wanted to wait for the movie, blind).

They thought the prawns from District 9 were more convincing CG creations than the beings from Avatar. I rebutted, defending Avatar on the account that D9's aliens weren't fleshy beings that resembled human beings, just with blue skin. Throw up a photo of an anthropomorphic shrimp in comparison to a CGI D9 Prawn and we'll talk further, I said. So, bringing this into focus, CGI "beings" is nondescript, although I think most humanoid fleshlings could apply.

Everything fantastical and impossibly epic is CGI or special FX fakery. That's just how our brains interpret the images. There's no getting away from it. The Navi (or whatever) are blue and their proportions too extreme to consider traditional makeup a possibility. Movement. Frames per second. I found the slow scenes and still shots extremely convincing. It's just that the fast action scenes contain movements that are too fluid from what we're used to seeing in real life.

Human beings have the tendency to observe closely things that aren't real more than things that are real, if they're not told which is which beforehand.

 

[darthviper107]

And by the way---cartoons are hand drawn animation, cell shaded type--if it's 3D (like 3D animation in Maya or something) then you would make up a lame name like Computer Animated Adventure--but seriously, 3D animation is not cartoons.

 

[ShazBo]

I discussed this with a couple of friends, who tricked me into watching the trailer (I wanted to wait for the movie, blind).

They thought the prawns from District 9 were more convincing CG creations than the beings from Avatar. I rebutted, defending Avatar on the account that D9's aliens weren't fleshy beings that resembled human beings, just with blue skin. Throw up a photo of an anthropomorphic shrimp in comparison to a CGI D9 Prawn and we'll talk further, I said. So, bringing this into focus, CGI "beings" is nondescript, although I think most humanoid fleshling could apply.

Everything fantastical and impossibly epic is CGI or special FX fakery. That's just how our brains interpret the images. There's no getting away from it. The Navi (or whatever) are blue and their proportions too extreme to consider traditional makeup a possibility. Movement. Frames per second. I found the slow scenes and still shots extremely convincing. It's just that the fast action scenes contain movements that are too fluid from what we're used to seeing in real life.

Human beings have the tendency to observe closely things that aren't real more than things that are real, if they're not told which is which beforehand.

I don't think it's the flesh it's the Eyes that are the dead give away. The scenes where you can tell the Aliens are CGI in District 9 was when it was sunny and you can clearly see the Alien's Eyes. The Samething applies to Avatar but becuase the Navi are more human looking the Eyes are always visible.

 

[Eli26]

I could post a picture from Ang Lee's Hulk that looks just as good, if not better than any screen cap you're quoting that is supposedly ground breaking.

I am surprised you can even type. After all, you're blind.

And Ange Lee's hulk looked better than the Edward Norton Hulk. Granted I like the last Hulk movie more... well, maybe. Anyway, Avatar is unbeatable Wofford. Unfrickingbeatable.

Then again, the last Hulk, in all his veiny cardiovascular glory was pretty intense!