Comment Re:Then where will we fix everything?!?!?!!! (Score 1) 79
I can say from firsthand experience that Kim Libreri speaks in nothing by hyperbole and is a world class d-bag.
That being said, there is some merit to this concept, at least as it applies to the type of movies Disney will be churning out under the Lucasfilm moniker for the next decade or so. It won't eliminate post-production, but as others have said it will move some of it to actual production time, and streamline some of the repetitiveness in vfx production, namely animating the same stormtrooper dying in different ways.
I don't know how this technique will help when rendering things like fire, water or buildings collapsing. But when rendering and re-rendering known things (stormtroopers, Millenium Falcon, etc.) it'll give the director some insight into how his shot will actually turn out, without having to wait months and months for it. Seems more like previz on sterroids, which was more than good enough for a video game.
Some directors have an eye for that stuff. As much as people hate on Michael Bay, he's crazy good at visualizing things like this without having to actually see them, but other directors not so much. It'll be a neat toy for directors new to the big-time effects picture. But I don't think it'll go much beyond that.
The technique was originally spearheaded by Lucasarts in the production of 1313 (and another game, I think) to animate characters in a realistic way instead of by hand. The technology was shared with ILM and now, obviously, they have to carry it on. It's a shame the 1313 game will not likely see the light of day. I think it would have passed the scrutiny of the average Star Wars fanatic.
The only thing holding this technology back is the culture at Lucasfilm. I think it's changed drastically but I don't know that it's changed drastically enough. Each production thinks they know the best way to do things, and they don't normally use the exact same pipeline. Custom tools are always hanging off the software end of the production. They tried to build a sort of universal pipeline at one point, but nobody wanted to risk using it and fall too far behind in production, so they normally fell back to the same base pipeline and tweaked it from there. Nobody had the time to follow through to the end of a completely new pipeline.
But now that Lucasfilm is mainly in the Star Wars business, maybe they'll be able to pull it off. They'll be able to build this new pipeline and use it to spit out a movie in two years, right? A movie they haven't even hired the principle actors for? Nor have a complete script? And with a third less employees than they had before April?