Final Fantasy Movie Trailers

Splitzy writes, "Square has finally released the site for the Final Fantasy movie. It includes background on the movie, and two short trailers in Quicktime format. You can check out the site here." The movie was first mentioned here a while back, but Hooboy, this looks like a good one. Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi and Peri Gilpin? It's a far cry from FFIII on my NES.

Sign of technology to come

Fast-forward five years when the processing power exists to render this stuff in real-time and combine it with stories generated on the fly... there are already computer programs that can write short stories which are indistinguishable from that of humans. Custom movies rendered on the fly tailored to your wishes that know how to push all of your emotional buttons. What tactics will the MPAA use against this technology? Will they hold the licenses to all the good digital actors/personalities. Will they club us to death with patents? Food fer thought.

Close up of FF girl

Hello,

Here is a mirror [169.197.10.178] of the character face (See how detailed it is).

NotE:, I'm on DHCP, my ip might go off any time. So pls mirror and post below.

Enjoy!
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Hmmm

I'm a bit worried about the story for this movie, the FF games have had stories comparable to novels while the brief diddy on the site doesn't lend itself well to a story. I'm going to go see it either way. I am impressed with the 100% CG animation of the movie, George Lucas eat your heart out. I think it would be really funny to find out it was rendered on a processor farm on PS2s. As for translations (into Japanese among other languages) I think it might be possible to re-synch the lips to the other languages if Sony wanted to spend a few bucks to do it. Pixar re-rendered Bug's Life to fit into the 4:3 aspect ratio for the videos, Sony could do something similar so it won't look like a bad kung-fu movie. I say they should have the blue text boxes in any case!

Another Mirror

Trailer A [uark.edu]
Trailer B [uark.edu]



john

Re:must...resist...urge...to...moderate...trolls

It is entirely done in the style of the Full-Motion-Videos of Finaly Fantasy 7 and 8 (though the graphics are better than either game). I donwlaoded a smaller trailer long ago and it was really quite impressive. They have gone all out on this one, with real people wearing little devices and moving around to give data to computers as to the most realistic way the characters should move. You should research a bit more on it. This is one of the most anticipated mvoies in a long time for me..

Re:must...resist...urge...to...moderate...trolls

They have gone all out on this one, with real people wearing little devices and moving around to give data to computers as to the most realistic way the characters should move.

That's called "motion capture," and while it's a great way to get gross movements into your animation, it actually requires quite a bit of work to achieve truly top-flight results.

Animation isn't about exactly replicating natural motion; otherwise you'd just dress a bunch of actors up in silly suits. The movements of animated characters are carefully exaggerated to elicit an emotional response; hang out on animation mailing lists for a while (www.hash.com) and read their discussions about bounce, squash, stretch etc.

Once the motion capture has "roughed in" the character's motions, the animator will often go in and DELETE much of the information to achieve an economy of motion and a stylistic edge to the animation. That's why good animated characters can seem so supernaturally graceful and natural... someone busted their ass to get it done!

Movie Plot

So will the plot of the movie be similar to the game where the main characters spend 40+ hours leveling up and searching continent after continent for the mythical 'Purple People Eater' so that they can obtain the one spell/weapon/item that will actually keep them alive when they encounter the main villain?

If so count me in! I mean, it just won't feel like a Final Fantasy movie if it doesn't have these elements.

Hot d@mn

I've been following this one for a while. For those who didn't know, it's all CG, and it makes Pixar look like South Park. These aren't cartoonish, this are realistic enough to blow your mind. There was a video in Japanese I watched that showed both the antagonist and protaganist of the movie in action, and they almost look realy. You looking for freckles? They're there. Veins in the eyeballs. SOmething like 5 simulated muscles move when they blink. Absolutely amazing.

Oh, and FF3 didn't come out for the NES. If you mean the english FF3 (FF6 in Nippon) it was for the SNES (Super Famicon in Nippon). FF1 (english) and FF2(Japanese) were for the NES.

Check out the tribute movies on http://squaregamer.com . It has some of the highlights of all of the FF series in CG, set to a cool Offspring single. For those of us who went through and know just how cool the Opera house scene in FF3 was, you'll appreciate it.

Toodles

Re:Damn the system...

you posted this just to raise your slashdot purity score... didn't you... ;)

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How CG is CG?

When you digitize real world textures, laserscan objects to get surface meshes, and motion capture the animation, is it still really CG? Or just digitally altered?

A lot of human effort besides mouse/keyboard/monitor interactions went into producing these images. Simply calling them "computer generated" is like calling rotoscoped cartoons "hand-drawn animation".

Re:Overload!

In the days before Final Fantasy, Square was barely getting by. Eventually, they decided that they would devote all of their resources to their next game in hopes that it would be truly spectacular. If it failed, however, they were through. Hence the name "Final Fantasy".

Overload!

Dear lord, there are going to be more of these than there were Halloween movies. What are they up toby now? Final Fantasy VIII? I can see it now:

Final Fantasy XXVII: This time we *really* blow up the world! Our hero, a misunderstood youth with a mysterious past, is caught in a web of conflicting powers, ending in a spectacular fight to save the world, and his own soul! Complicating his struggle is the love triangle between him, the tomboy friend from his youth, and a flirtatious, mysterious woman who will play a large role in the future of humanity. Don't miss this latest installment of the saga for the survival of humanity!

Did I miss anything in the plot summary?

Mirror

The first clip is mirrored here [ign.com], and the second one is mirrored here [ign.com].