Star Wars

[moonshield]

Has anyone seen the latest part? I saw it a few min. ago and all I can say is one word 'tragic', the story itself was not a tragic failure, but the whole point was of tradgedy. Kinda depressing really, with a little hope mixed in.

Overall I would give it 4/5. Best one of the prequels.

[lz83ny]

I hate StarWars because it's so damn lame - I like The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy because it's funny.

[James]

I just came back from it, and all I can say is: What the hell was that?!
It was bad enough that it had bad acting, it was worse that the entire movie's plot was pathetically cheesy and boring, and the damn squeeky lizard thing pissed me off so much, as did Yoda's backwards talking. The only two redeeming qualities were the graphics (of which I was actually pretty amazed by), and how funny that Sith Lord guy was--he just kept laughing in his funny voice, and had a butt on his head (immature, I know, but still funny).

It's a matter of taste, but I just couldn't stand that movie. The sad part is I paid for it, and was more entertained by the pain in my back, and the sadder part was that some people waited 5 months infront of theaters to watch it.

[Chris]

I have beef with "Sith".

1. Lack of music during the opening battle/fight. Anyone notice this? Music totally sets the mood -- think of Duel of the Fates at the end of Phantom Menace? (one of the best sequences in the movies still).

2. The battles didn't feel epic. I think it was too character driven. I would have totally loved to see more of the capital ships fighting than that stupid "buzz droid" sequence with Anakin & Obi Wan. It was Coruscant, there were hundreds of ships, there were new laser colors, but it didn't hold a candle to the epic feeling you got when Lando led the assault force on the Death Star in ROTJ. Maybe its because we didn't have any other characters really other than the two Jedi that Lucas didn't think to show any of the rest of the battle. We had no Lando, no Ackbar, no Red 2. In short, I was hoping for a battle like in ROTJ but bigger and with more action. Instead I got a half comic sequence as exciting as watching two people play bumper cars with a picture of a battle in the background.

2.5 Ditto for Kashyyk. I was hoping for a awesome wookie ground battle. We got about 10 seconds. The ground battle on Hoth is still #1.

3. Grievous needed a bit of a back story, who is he? Why is he general? How did he become who he is? I think most people thought he was a droid that for some reason had a human personality.



Just think about the end of ROTJ. You have epic space battle. Character driven drama on the death star, and ground battle on endor all waging at the same time. Instead it kept with the characters the whole time, it never felt epic. Even the ground battle in AOTC was much better.

[moonshield]

hm, interesting points. I did not notice the music part but that makes great sense. This is why I am not a movie critic. :)

[Generalissimo]

Time for some British Humour!

http://pctoons.co.uk/toon.pages/starwars.html

[lz83ny]

That animation was quite funny, and still much better than the movie.

[Jaffro]

Just watched it today after reading this thread. Chris i see what you ment with the music during the intro, should've been more noticable - it was there but just drowned out by the sound fx!

I think it suffered from the same thing most of the others did. Lack of individual story, or lack of telling it well. As a whole all the films work exceptionally well, but you have to be willing to slowly get involved. Example of great marketing not film making imo :) hehe

[AndyH]

3. Grievous needed a bit of a back story, who is he? Why is he general? How did he become who he is? I think most people thought he was a droid that for some reason had a human personality.

You do in the Clone Wars, i'm pretty sure. I havn't got the last volumn yet though.

The problem I guess is that they had to fill in alot of blankes to get from Episode 3 to link to the 4th.

I personally enjoyed the movie and wasn't let down at all.

[James]

2.5 Ditto for Kashyyk. I was hoping for a awesome wookie ground battle. We got about 10 seconds. The ground battle on Hoth is still #1.
I wanted to see some hardcore wookie-on-wookie action.
...that doesn't sound right.

I agree with everything Chris said. If I wanted to watch a boring soap-opera then I would go see a show I'd expect to be one, but not this.

And the battles were not only feeling non-epic, they also felt short and shoved aside for some more boring drama--I think there must have been a good 20 or 30 minutes of this movie dedicated to people staring into the distance, teary-eyed.

I also really hated the voices of Anakin and Obi-wann.

Another point to bring up is that this movie seemed to take way too much stuff from Episode 2 and use it over again.

I'd say I liked Phantom Menace the best out of all the movies: best bad guy, best fight scene (between Darth Maul and the 2 Jedis).

And while the effects were amazing I thought it was pathetically written and portrayed when Mace Windu (that's the black guy) is getting shot at with lightning then the guy gets drained, and the guy's about to kill him, when Anakin cuts off his arms saying that he's defying the code--he could have just blocked the attack. And he could have also killed the Sith Lord or at least blocked the lightning when he started attacking the Jedi.

I just couldn't comprehend how exponentially down-hill this movie was--what's worse is that George Lucas had 20(30?)-or-so years to rewrite the script, but I suppose he didn't recognize how bad it was.

[thebillionaire]

I love starwars, Im gonna see the third one this weekend. Although I heard the plot was crap, there isnt much Lucas could do because they 4,5,6 are already completed. But any who my friends went to see the movie and they were telling me how they were screwing around with people waiting in line. Once the movie finished they left and while walking one of my Friend yells "Holy crap, R2D2 was Dark Vader" lol the crowd goes crazy thinking that the movie is screwed up or something. lol just something funny I though I would share. Dont make fun of star wars its my favorite movie(s) / trilogy of all time.

[James]

Dont make fun of star wars its my favorite movie(s) / trilogy of all time.
Can I make fun of your grammar?
:P ;)

It's not too tough to spend 20 or 30 years rewriting a movie to have a good plot and fit in with the plot of movies before and after it.

[thebillionaire]

yea, true it could have been better, but its my number of trilogy right now.

[James]

Isn't it a septology? or are there only 6?

[Jaffro]

I think this third one was the greatest of all time, we all went to see it didn't we?! Great through marketing. If you look at the whole story from all films then it probably is amongst the greatest.

[James]

we all went to see it didn't we
That doesn't make it good. Lots of people went to see that Scorpion King movie with The Rock in it.

[Jaffro]

my point is that there's more then just filmic quality to make a film 'great'.

[James]

I don't understand.

[thebillionaire]

starwars rocks

[mini]

Boring, fell asleep half way.

[thebillionaire]

well no point in arguin, I love sci-fi thus Starwars, but dont like fantasy, medeval, therefore I dont like Lord of the Rings

[thebillionaire]

The movie was quite sad, but it was funny because my friend actually started crying, lol

[Westech]

The movie was quite sad, but it was funny because my friend actually started crying, lol

It takes a big man to cry. And it takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man. :)

[moonshield]

lol, thats good stuff.

[Jaffro]

Hahahaa thats fantastic :)

What did people think of the special fx? the computer graphics, was Yoda better than Golum? Or do you think that we've reached a level of CG that cant go any further?

[James]

We can go a hell of a lot farther.

The largest rendering time on a scene was approximately 40-48 hours per frame, which is the closeup on Grievous' face. The Wookies were fantastic, they were at a point that they couldn't go much farther, but most of the things like lava, Yoda, the hall of senators (dunno the name), and blue-screening could still show improvement--especially blue-screening, sometimes it was so bad I'd have to say just using someone's crappy cam-corder with the person standing infront of the top could have been an improvement over it.

I'd say that it's a bit of an improvement over Golum, but they need to learn to add some more shadow to their CG characters, and add some more textures.

PS Yoda's hair is great in this, along with his cloak, that's a really good effects job. I think, however, that they could have improved his movements.

[Jaffro]

wow 48 hours is crazy. Supprised that its grevous' face that causes that too as i would've thought it was that intensive, at least when compred with a cg wookie or yoda who have far more complex skin / fur.

I thought that yoda still looked CG, i think its his forehead, just doesnt look right as far as underskin muscle goes. And there was a bit where anakin done a flip that was really not well animated imo - noticed similar things in the matrix smith fight. Mightve been the cloth simulation that just made it wrong but without seeing it again i'll never know :) hehe

[Chris]

Heh... the matrix was horrible. Plastic Neo -- real Neo --- plastic neo --- real neo.

[James]

Indeed, Chris.

It's really a matter of the film-animators making the characters move too fast, and in physically unprobably ways. They really need to do something like build a physics engine that can be applied to characters right in 3D Studio Max, so that people don't really need to work as hard at making things look real.

And Jaffro, it's because of how many layers of textures and things they put into it. All of it very very high quality. They really probably just spent more time making him look realistic than the other people, and it's pretty close up to them.
As for Wookies and such, they're not really too tough for the film makers to create, as they're skilled artists and a Wookie basically looks like a man with an overpronounced jaw and forehead; sort of ilke a caveman. The hair is mostly done in software programs such as Poser this Poser Tutorial (http://www.3dcommune.com/3d/page.mv?/3d/reviews/store/mac_Poser5/index.html) can show you an example of how hair can be made. It's obviously much more complex for something like a Wookie, and chances are that they've used another software, possibly programmed just for Skywalker Ranch, but that can give you a general idea.

[thebillionaire]

I bought Star Wars Jedi Academi, awesome game. Any one else have it I wanna duel someone

[Jaffro]

It's really a matter of the film-animators making the characters move too fast, and in physically unprobably ways.




Yea its a fundimental problem when trying to do physically impossible things. The matrix is espically intresting as they went to masssssive lengths to get the surface properties realistic. Its a prime example of how scientifically accurate doesnt mean it looks right. You espically see this in motion capture that very often needs corrective work.

James, have you got any links where i can find more info about the grevous stuff?

I doubt they would've poked at poser with a barge pole! ILM have been building apon the origional softimage for years now prodominatly for their animation tho. Yet as with everyone who works at that level its whatever does the job best, even it if means inhouse programming.

thebillionaire, Jedi Academi is a great game, really enjoyable! I gave it to my nephew tho so cant give you that duel!

[James]

Well, I'm pretty sure they used nothing but Maya and in-house software on the project. Maya was used as their main pre-visualization and animation software. Grevious appears in 84 shots in the movie.

http://www.alias.com/glb/eng/press/press_release_details.jsp?itemId=2000002

a Grevious model is available for download here: http://scifi3d.theforce.net/details.asp?cat=details&key=612&intGenreID=10&intCatID=11
though I'm sure it's not the actual one from the film.

[Jaffro]

Intresting read thanks James :) Its about time ILM stopped building on a 10yr+ old softimage for animation! hehe Watch out for those maya press releases tho, they're very carefully worded to make it sound like maya was the saving grace to their production and nothing else existed. They would've used a lot of off the shelf software.

Check out these articles. I havent had time to read them yet but you sound like the kinda bloke who'd enjoy the read too :)

http://www.vfxworld.com/?sa=adv&code=319b255d&atype=articles&id=2497

http://www.vfxworld.com/?sa=adv&code=319b255d&atype=articles&id=2508

[James]

they're very carefully worded to make it sound like maya was the saving grace to their production and nothing else existed
They made it sound like ILM just took Maya and added a plug-in or two. Whereas the reality is that they took Maya, and transformed the entire program using massive amounts of altered code, and even then only used it for animation and pre-rendering visualizations.

And you were right about the articles; I enjoyed even just seeing the different layers between green-screen, adding the bridge, and having the background. This is a really cool site, thanks for the link.

[Jaffro]

np man :) Ive been studying this stuff for past 3 years, only a month left before i get my BA ( i hope! hehe). So i got a few sites that hook upto these things. If your intrested in cg/animation i cld pm you a load of links?

[James]

If your intrested in cg/animation i cld pm you a load of links
Dude, that'd be great. At the moment I still need to come by a few thousand that I have nothing do to with but spend on Maya, or 3D Studio Max, or Cinema 4D.

PS I checked out some of the 3D stuff on your site. I like your ChromeBallChain and Kirov Airship. You ever model any human forms?

[Jaffro]

Yea i'm working on a massive project at the moment on a human character. Ive done bi-ped in general as well.

Hmm i've moved this toNew thread (http://www.websitepublisher.net/forums/showthread.php?p=29763#post29763) cause its getting off topic :)