Future Gen video industry

Earlier today, a buddy one mine was bragging about passive "3D" TV that he had recently acquired. He was telling me how badass it is, and how the current generation is progressing in technology.
But all i could think is how crappy the current 3D technology is. No way something like that could ever become a standard. Just think about it, you overlay two images. Filter over 60% of the data on one side, same on the other side, and suddenly you see an illusion of depth.
To me, it feels like making a flat CRT screen, while waiting for a transition to LCD, back in the day.

What is the next standardized format then? Well i truly believe that we are moving towards domestic holographic solutions. Remember 2Pac concert, earlier this year?



Nasa's BlueBeam project, Chinese water godzilla (i think)
It seems that we are almost there.

Now imagine that we have a low voltage, affordable and efficient holographic "screen". How do you capture 3D images.
Recently autodesk released 123D catch software that renders multiple images into a mid to high poly 3D model. But that cant be an answer, imagine setting up all those cameras, covering every angle, fixing inconsistencies etc. Such technique doesnt justify effor-reward balance. In fact, that would be exactly the same way we do things today. Thats not innovation, just a slight alternation of what we've been doing for the past 50+ years.

Then i though about photorealistic rendering
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su504HbsX8c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJcnfgwoRxc

2007-2012 cinematic rendering from companies as blizzard and EA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBktyyaV9LY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE663eVKjgw

How long will it take until rendering can fully replace actors, scenes, effect and everything else we see on a television set today.
Actors will be motion capture performers. Scenes will not be filmed in locations but crafted in offices, by software engineers. Some areas will be scanned on a huge scale, some areas will be manually manufactured by talented artists. Movie celebrities will not be know for their looks but voices and their ability to pose facial expression etc

I give it an other 5 years until rendering matches and exceeds reality, and an other 5-10 year until 3D rendering fully replaces all manual image capture.

And if you think about it, now is a golden age for indie developers. We can create a simple 3D model in a few hours, and its perfectly fine. I feel that very soon, as the industry is shifting, very high standards will be adopted to maintain a neutral impression. People will be born to study and work around artificial imagery, until it becomes outdated.
The same could be said about computers 20 years ago. Smartphones 10 years ago. Who thought back in 2000 that in 2012 a product like Galaxy Nexus could replace newspapers, video and radio shows, public transportation info sheets, calculators, handheld consoles etc. A smartphone has netflix, all major magazines, gorgeous 3D games, RSS catchers, podcast feeds, GPS, weather forecasts and so much more. Not only that, with 3G,HSPA,4G, 5G,10G networks, you can access it all 90% of the time. In your car, on the bus, at home, at work, in the bathroom, in your closet...
And i bet if current generation "lagger" public segment would hear this, they would say: Ye i doubt it. But give the same text 10 years from now, they would say: Duh, isnt that obvious.

And thats concludes my thought of the day. In 10 years from now, ill search for this post, and rub it in my face how primitive my imagination was in 2012

 

Never underestimate cost when it comes to tech. Betamax was superior and bombed hard. I think the current (RealD passive) style 3D will win. It's cheap, it's practical, everyone can use it in the same room with no real additional expense with glasses and it works with everything. The 3D is sure good enough for the job.

All that's gonna happen is that the framerate will double in order to remove the current problems with 3D tech and fast moving images (it doesn't work very well)

Currently in the movie industry, the faster something moves, the less 3D they apply to it in order to work around those limitations. That is getting fixed long before anything else. See: the hobbit.

 

Thats exactly why i think that the age of movie stars is coming to an end. Do you pay a million to an actor, or do you hire 10 top natch artists for a year. Once the technology is there, and the new generation of directors takes over, i feel like virtualizing is unavoidable

 

I think you're forgetting that actors still need to deliver lines.

 

I see your point, but there are schools for that. Voice actors can be taught in a few years so as artistic and design skills. Thus, very easy to populate the market, therefore, very affordable. Not to mention easily replaceable and can be hired as a short term service.
Good looks with acceptable camera performance can not be manufactured and are somewhat rare. Also, actor commitment is permanent, and the performance will always alter the desired outcome. You can guide, but cant tweak and repair.

You can build an entire movie with a voice of Bethy the cleaning lady, and apply professional voiceacting at the end, with appropriate facial capture. You dont need them for the entire production of the movie.

 

Short term and easily replaceable aren't the qualities you need here. The qualities you need here are "good actors" and that's a lot harder to produce and commands a price due to quality and scarcity.

 

Realistic animations, especially facial expressions, would be a major undertaking, if it's even possible to do truly realistic ones for an hour+ worth of content with more than 1 model.

Even AAA games that cost nearly 1 billion dollars to make aren't even close to being ready for a movie....

 

Not only do they need to lend their voices (which don't come cheap), but they also lend their likeness.
Anything in realistic 3d would need faces, generic beauties and hunks don't cut it, if this were true, every
victoria secret model, every vanity fair cover would be an actor, it's not like that though.

Think of it likes this: if the hologram featured a generic black guy doing the rap, would it be amazing?

Didn't think so, the whole point of that exercise was getting the likeness correct, cos people love-d Tupac,
not a normal rapper like the hundreds - maybe thousands - that are out there trying to make it already.

An actor is much more than just a face and although companies do "create" stars out of actors (this is not ture, nearly every famous singer or actor yu think got famous overnight had already spent 10-15 years being a nobody, there are exceptions of course), that persona has to be evolving, have a life etc else there is no "worship effect", you can't emulate what doesn't exist, so you don't look up to it, you don't admire it etc.

Have you seen Simone?

The whole problem was that everyone wanted to be her, see her etc and they couldn't, the character played by Al Pacino, had to fill in the gaps, create the illusion of her existing, else the thing would fall apart.

So on top of creating a flawless 3d realistic character that has the same effect famous actors have when they are in movies ( they bring in tickets, massive amounts, believe it or not), you would have to do a lot more than just make a 120 mins of animation every 2-3 years.

 

Games don't cost billions of dollars to make. http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/c...ews/modern_warfare_2_cost_40-_50_million.html Modern Warfare 2 (which has similar dev specs to BlackOps and MW3) cost around 50mil to develop, this is one of the top selling franchises.

And the ten most expensive games: http://www.videogames.com.au/general/top-10-expensive-video-game-budgets-2/

 

Many people, including myself, hate recognizing actors in different movies.
When you watched star wars, lord of the rings or game of thrones for the first time, did u fell in love with the known characters, or the world that the director let you discover. Characters and personalities developed as the story goes? Likeness starts with beauty, and builds on personality. Something that can be perfectly manufactured. Written down, and expressed with words. Take old disney animations for example

@Imbarns Can you provide a source for AAA titles costing nearly billion dollars? You can perfectly build most of them under 10-15 million

Look at recent releases, the amazing spiderman for example, its half CGI already http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDeROIQi0_c

 

You are in a very small minority. "Big name actors" get paid BIG MONEY, because of who they are and the amount of people they attract.
Do some research and you will see.

 

I was going to ask him, since he mentioned Star Wars...

Force 10 from Navarone, Apocalypse Now, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blade Runner, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Witness, The Mosquito Coast, Frantic, Working Girl, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Presumed Innocent, Regarding Henry, Patriot Games, The Fugitive, Clear and Present Danger, Sabrina, The Devil's Own, Air Force One, Six Days Seven Nights, What Lies Beneath, K-19: The Widowmaker, Hollywood Homicide, Firewall, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Crossing Over, Extraordinary Measures, Morning Glory, Cowboys Aliens...

...with another in post-production, two filming, and one announced.

 

By the way...that 2Pac thing (or the Gorillaz concerts for that matter) are not really holograms. They are not even 3D. It's simply an update of an old stage illusion called Pepper's Ghost...they use a flat 2D video projection reflected off a thin translucent film at a 45 degree angle. It's no more a hologram than a reflection in a window. What bugs me is that the company that does these(Musion Eyeliner) even calls it a "3D Holographic Projection". I understand that's all marketing but it's not a hologram, not 3D, and more of a reflection than a projection. Technically, holograms aren't even a projection like how we see in Star Wars but that's a different rant.

But anyways, pet peeve aside, I don't see a true holographic screen coming any time soon. Everything out there that appears to be a dynamic animated hologram is really using tricks of some kind.

 

I would say, about 10 years to have facial and body animation technology standardized everywhere (event among low budget software).
But even so, that doesn't mean the end of real TV/Movie actors, people like to see their super stars acting in real-life. Big Hollywood blockbusters are driven by stars, if you remove them all, then they won't be blockbusters anymore.
I believe that in the future, there would be even more software tools to create content (for games, movies, etc) faster. I have no doubt that the next big engine will include character generations, they will be animated procedurally and respond to environment in real-time (nothing scripted), in fact there's few engines and 3D software out there that already have that but it will be more standardized.
This is all good for indies.

 

Maybe itl be a combination of the two. 100% bluescreened scenes with live actors.
Or scanned actor performances, with exact transition in 3d. So you maintain the perfect presentation of the actors, but with ability to render any angle at any time, plus possibility to fix details and flaws.

Check out the video for making of John Carter. Its fascinating that the software engineers were the motion actors for the models http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORAAwyeuK_A