Solid Snake

Yeah, the extended DVDs have amazing features. You could pretty much make your own film with great knowledge based off those special features...

devilshalo

Funny, I knew a lot of American colleagues working at Weta.

Blu Man

I've decided to give this thread new life with a timeline. It will show you which FX house is currently on top.

1989: ILM creates the pseudopod in the Abyss.

1991: ILM creates the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

1993: ILM outdoes themself again with the first living, breathing CGI creatures in Jurassic Park.

1995: ILM uses photorealistic hair and fur in Jamanji.

1996: ILM creates the first complety CGI character Draco in DragonHeart.

Ok, WETA hasn't done shit yet and ILM has been kicking ass for seven years.

2002) WETA Digital establishes itself as a major player with Gollum in The Two Towers.

2003) WETA creates Gollum for a second time, creating the most realistic CGI character in history. ILM's in trouble...........

2003) ILM tries to have a come back after getting it's ass beaten in the ground with the Hulk. Although impressive, it can not compare with the stunning Gollum.

2005) WETA does it again, creating the incredible King Kong. King Kong him self is an incredible feat, but alot of the other CGI was sub par. WETA though reclaims it's spot as the best digital effects house in the world.

2005) ILM is now sick and tired of WETA killing everything they do, so they bring us Star Wars Episode III. The entire film was loaded with incredible special effets, most notabley General Greivous and Yoda. Whether it was better then King Kong or Gollum is still up for debate.

Now WETA has surficed as a major player and able to beat even the best at ILM. What's ILM gonna do about it?

2006) ILM has done it. They have finally out done Gollum. Davy Jones is considered to date, one of the most realistic CGI characters to ever be created. It fooled a lot of people into thinking that only his face was CGI, but his whole body was created with preformence capture.

2007) ILM creates the Transformers in Transformers. The most realitic CGI robot's todate. The Transformers are with out a doubt some of the most complex CGI charaters, Over 60,000 seperate pieces between all fifiteen of them.

WETA's fucked. ILM has beaten the shit out of anything they've done for the past two years running.

2009) ILM comes out with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Although a shit movie, the special effects are some of the best we've ever seen. The robot devastator alone had over 52,632 parts. This is almost as much as all the Transformers from the first film combined. Not only that, but the films CGI was rendered at 4k resolution. Up until this film CGI had alway's been rendered in 2k.

Well, there you have it. WETA had a run but right now ILM is king. Will Avatar change this? One December 18th will I have to add another landmark that put's WETA as the current king? I'd like to hear from some the people who saw footage at Comic Con for the time being. Will TinTin change anything? Even if it does, will ILM just turn around and beat it?

Supermallet

The timeline would be more appropriate without the editorial comments, IMO. Also don't forget the CGI presentation in Star Trek II and the stained glass window that comes to life in Sherlock Jr.

Deftones

editorial comments? i think that's being extremely kind.

Supermallet

Oh, and I still think Devastator looked like crap compared to the robots in the first Transformers.

And yes, I was being very kind.

RocShemp

And only the IMAX scenes had robots rendered in 4K. Last I read, everything else was still done in 2K in TF:ROTF.

And, yes, Devastator was crap. What's even funnier, the infamous testicles shot was even more poorly rendered. And don't get me started on how terrible the debris from the pyramid looked as Simmons was attempting to scale it.

In general, the robots in TF:ROTF looked inferior to the robots in TF. This is due to the large amount of robots ILM had to render and animate in the sequel versus the small number in the first movie.

Solid Snake

I only saw TF2 once..but..the robots looked fine EXCEPT for Devastor...I need to eventually see it again. I dunno...the first 10 or 15 mins were well made I think. Not that there was plot to it..but it was cool.

rexinnih

Had to go with ILM. WETA has some great movies but not enough to come out on top.

al_bundy

since they all have projects that take years and different upgrade schedules one will always be on top. reason they can make better CGI every few years is that they are always upgrading to faster hardware for each project and someone will always have more horsepower at any time

both houses do a lot of custom coding for a big project, but a lot of it is still limited by the hardware which is AMD or Nvidia

Blu Man

You saw the Avatar footage didn't you? How did the CGI compare to Davy Jones and Optimus Prime? Better? Worse?

starseed1981

Saw the Avatar footage, wasn't as mind f@#ked as alot of the critics.

That being said, I'd say ILM takes the cake with Davey Jones still being king.

Blu Man

Good to know. Thanks.

Supermallet

In terms of photorealism, Davy Jones and Optimus Prime still are on top, imo. But Avatar seems to be going in a different direction, and the footage was still fan-fucking-tastic. Plus it's 3D on top of it.

RocShemp

That is true. After the silly prologue, the first 15 minutes are great. I loved seeing NEST and the Autobots in action. Optimus Prime's intro was fantastic. After that, once the first rumblings of a plot (what little there was) show up, it all goes to hell. But when it was all soldiers and Autobots vs. Decepticons, it was fantastic.

Blu Man

How's that? Different direction then photorealism? I thought photorealism was what Cameron wanted.

Supermallet

He wants to create an immersing alien world. I'm not sure that requires photorealism in the same way that the Autobots did.

Supermallet

After District 9, I'd say WETA is once again neck and neck with ILM. The prawns looked as good as anything ILM has done, including Davy Jones.

Blu Man

WETA didn't do the CGI for District 9. Image Engine did the CGI. The CGI in District 9 was good, but it wasn't even close to Davy Jones and Gollum.

Supermallet

WETA is in the credits of District 9, listed for creature effects. But there was more than one effects house listed.

And obviously the second statement is an opinion, as it is my opinion that they were as good as Davy Jones and Gollum.

project86

District 9 absolutely blew me away, so I'm going with weta.

Defiant1

The effects were very impressive considering that D9 only had a budget of $30M. I wonder if the prawns were entirely CGI or if they used body suits or animatronic puppets for some shots?

Supermallet

They were all CGI except for a few shots at the very beginning.

Blu Man

WETA did the final touch ups, but Image Engine in Vancover did most of the work. Peter Jackson said this at comic con. Aparently at the time this was done, Avatar was useing all of WETA's resources.
They were all CGI except for the prawns on the tables in the disection room.

tylergfoster

My major issue with ILM is they clearly become lazy on sequels in my eyes, or were through the late 90's/early 2000's. The best example is The Mummy Returns. The sand warriors created for the sequel look fantastic and stunning, but effects like the mummy warriors, the water-head and the scarab beetles look like shit because the animators adopted what boils down to a "been there, done that" attitude. Also, the grafting of The Rock's head onto the Scorpion King is a bit of a failure.

As for WETA, they're all right, but I've never quite been a fan of the way the things they've created end up looking, as far as personal aesthetic taste goes. I would personally nominate John Gaeta and the companies that worked on The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions as having done work I enjoyed. The one exception is Sony Pictures Imageworks, a studio responsible for what I consider the worst major-movie digital effects I can remember seeing (constraints of available technology notwithstanding), in The Legend of Zorro. The shots of the train at the end were the most memorable thing about that movie for me; I've forgotten everything about it except how awful the closing sequence looked.