This Wonderful Life

[Richard M]

I don't know if any of you have seen this short film but the graphics are almost impossible to tell apart from a real person.
Check out these images:
http://www.this-wonderful-life.com/gallery.htm

My god, I can't see much difference there

Who ever did that MUST have good imaging skills.

[Ramrod]

Very good!

[Paul K]

Originally Posted by Scott

My god, I can't see much difference there

Who ever did that MUST have good imaging skills.

See much difference in what?
They all seem to be CGI's, some very good ones admittedly. With the power of hardware and software packages increasing it'll be difficult to tell CGI from reallity soon

I had to really search to find what software he uses.

In the interview he says

I used 3DS Max for the modeling with various plugins (Shag:hair, Stitch, Dreamscape and SpeedTree), World Builder for the large areas of the landscape, Photoshop for texturing, Premiere and After Effects for editing and compositing.

I was using an Athlon 1.4ghz with 1.5gb RAM and a 64mb Geforce card. I had to buy three more workstations for rendering.

That all takes serious money.

[Millay]

It doesnt take serious money when you consider how much it used to cost to make a ball bounce across the screen....

Originally Posted by Millay

It doesnt take serious money when you consider how much it used to cost to make a ball bounce across the screen....

Well I can't imagine what your idea would be of a suitable amount for petty cash then!

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Incognitas

I had to really search to find what software he uses.

In the interview he says



That all takes serious money.

It depends. Assuming he didn't use pirate software, then that little lot is probably gonna cost between 6 and 10 thousand pounds (can't be more specific, don't have accurate prices for all the software).

Now, that is a hell of a lot of money for a personal project, but almost nothing when you consider the cost of doing that sort of thing live. Hiring a professional crew & equipment for a few days would probably cost more than £10K, without hiring the location for a day. Locations can range from £200 per day to over £10,000 per day. The campus where I work charges over £10,000 per day.

[Halcyon]

He did it it all at home.
The thing that takes the most processing time is when you have to render it all.
I did a short animation last year and that took about 4 hours to Render and it was only 2 minutes long.
His thing must have taken aboslutely years, so no wonder he invested in some more computers.
As for 3DS Max and Maya and Premiere to put it all together, and photoshop for the textures, they do cost a lot but are very powerful.

This kind of thing fascinates me as movies are now a mixture of reality and CGI and its hard to make the distinction now as they have become so good.

Does anyone know where I can download the "Wonderful Life" film or buy it ?

[iadom]

I get an "error downloading codecs" any suggestions as to how to clear this,

using Win Media Player 10.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by iadom

I get an "error downloading codecs" any suggestions as to how to clear this,

using Win Media Player 10.

Download divx from http://www.divx.com/divx/download/

[iadom]

Worked a treat on the movies, however on the page that the first post links to, the Gallery, I do not see any pictures or movie stills, only the text, not even blank boxes.?

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

Does anyone know where I can download the "Wonderful Life" film or buy it ?

There's a couple of versions on the edonkey network.
(It is free BTW)

[andygrif]

That is stunning, and a whole lot cheaper than having an actor - still they haven't sorted computerised voices out yet, so the world still needs voice-over artists (for now!)

[Richard M]

http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos/