As the crystallization of "love" between art and technology, CG technology has fascinated the whole world with every technological change in the film industry. Everything people appreciate in the future, such as movies, TV and games, will be brought by CG technology. It will not only bring people an audio-visual sensory experience, but more importantly, it will show the charm of visualization and interactive technology to the maximum extent with a gesture beyond all industries and subvert your traditional concept of "watching movies".
Internationally, it is customary to refer to the field of visual design and production using computer technology as CG (Computer Graphics). Since 1980s and 1990s, CG technology has developed rapidly, and it has been used in almost all visual arts creation activities, such as film and television special effects, three-dimensional animation, graphic design and multimedia technology. Of course, the most familiar one is its application in modern film industry. This kind of movies made by CG technology can be divided into two categories: one is the "real movie" made by real people and things through digital technology; One is to make full use of computer technology to make virtual images of "cartoons".
As the product of modern industrial civilization, commercial films are endowed with social and cultural values, and at the same time influenced by the commercial interests of producers, aiming at pursuing the maximum commercial value without violating the basic values. Therefore, the modern film industry pursues "new" (constantly innovating form and content to stimulate the audience's senses) and "fast" (constantly innovating technology and management to improve production efficiency), and CG technology can help filmmakers achieve these two goals perfectly and uniformly.
Seeking "novelty": the popularity of landscape films and the arrival of the era of three-dimensional films
As an audio-visual art, the development of film has played a decisive role in addition to its own artistic exploration and practice. Hollywood, as the overlord of commercial films, has always been a typical representative to cater to the audience's needs. Since 1980s, CG technology has brought a profound change to the film industry, which has made Hollywood movies undergo a gorgeous turn from "narrative movies" to "landscape movies". The "visual spectacle" created by digital technology has become a magic weapon for Hollywood to further occupy and consolidate its global market share in recent years.
From Kubrick's 200 1 A Space Odyssey to Lucas' Star Trek 2, CG technology began to enter the film industry, and then Cameron's Terminator 2 used CG technology on a large scale, followed by Forrest Gump, Titanic, Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and recently Avatar.
For Avatar, the most common word used by ordinary audiences is "being there". Many media and experts even predicted that the iconic appearance of Avatar marked the real arrival of the era of three-dimensional movies, and that "2D movies are as outdated as silent movies are to talking movies".
There is some truth in this statement. After watching Avatar, an audience member said with emotion, "I feel like watching two movies for so many years, one is Avatar and the other is all other movies. I used to feel like I was watching a movie when I went to the cinema. This time I came out and felt like I had experienced a movie. "
The "experience" perception of this "real illusion" is the best embodiment of modern film aesthetic principles such as "pleasure principle" and "spectacle principle". Wonderful CG technology has created a "virtual and realistic" movie spectacle.
Now, the reaction of the market has further led to the turmoil of capital, and the global upsurge of developing digital stereoscopic cinema has been set off. Projectors have begun to implement the installation plan of digital 3D system, and the number of 3D screens in the United States alone has increased from 800 last summer to 3,500 now. The manufacturer's response is more clear. Disney, DreamWorks and other companies have announced that all future animated films will be in digital stereo format.
Seeking "quickness": the maturity of 3D animation technology and the wide application of production technology.
With the application of CG technology, especially 3D animation technology, animation creation and production methods have been completely updated, working procedures have been greatly simplified, and production efficiency has been greatly improved. 1995, Pixar's Toy Story was born as the first real three-dimensional animated film. Since then, Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks and Blue Sky Studio have brought us visual surprises and box office miracles every year. This revolutionary change has injected new vitality into the animation industry and made it enter an unprecedented period of prosperity.
Now, no matter from the production mode, artistic expression, market reaction, social influence and many other aspects, three-dimensional animated films have become the mainstream of international animation development.
At present, the most advanced 3D CG technology has brought unprecedented shocking effects to 3D movies and 3D animation, but what really brings revolutionary development is not only the breakthrough of visual language, but also the full realization of the production process of the modern film industry in which CG movies are "creation/production, technology research and development, and process management", thus realizing the confluence of "real shooting" and "animation" in technology and production.
The production of Avatar fully draws lessons from the process and technology of modern three-dimensional animation. Except for the shot taken in real scene, the production of other shots is almost the same as that of modern three-dimensional animation: first, digital modeling, that is, making the model of virtual characters on the computer; Secondly, the virtual camera, which allows actors to wear clothes with sensors, collects the parameters of various parts of the body through performances and applies them to virtual models to make them move; Finally, rendering makes people appear in the virtual environment through computer technology.
Cameron left behind not only a brilliant film, but also his team's original 3D camera, virtual camera, performance capture system and his first attempt at GPU accelerated rendering technology. It is these CG technologies that have created a new era of 3D and digital special effects.
Stereo image technology: it will subvert the traditional concept of "watching movies"
Nowadays, stereoscopic movies mainly choose the light of movie pictures through stereoscopic glasses, which are presented to people's left and right eyes respectively, making people feel stereoscopic images. With the development of technology, the naked-eye 3D stereoscopic display technology without glasses has gradually matured, which has the advantages of panoramic, multi-angle and simultaneous observation by many people. It can directly observe 3D image technology with physical depth of field, and its displayed image depth (the third dimension) has the same effect as the real world we see. At the same time, perception technology is getting closer and closer to us, which can solve the problems of convenience, accuracy and functional diversity of human-computer interaction and affect our lives in all directions.
These advances in stereoscopic image technology and interactive technology are of great significance to the development of future films.
First of all, it can create a new movie time and space, and the audience will feel really immersed in it. The audience is no longer a "bystander" sitting outside the screen, but an "insider". The emergence of this kind of panoramic film is likely to cause changes in the concept of creation and viewing. For example, at present, the time concept of watching movies is physical, such as 90 minutes or 120 minutes, while in panoramic movies, it is more psychological time, which is not difficult to understand-just like a acrophobia patient riding a roller coaster, a physical minute may become extremely long in his psychological feelings.
Secondly, new technology has formed a new way of film communication. The traditional film acceptance theory is based on the cinema viewing mode. Large screen, dark scene and collective viewing have become typical viewing modes in the study of film acceptance aesthetics, thus the sense of ceremony in viewing has formed an "information field" for viewing. Because panoramic film is a spatial category and does not need a screen as a carrier, it is not limited to cinemas. The collective behavior of watching movies has changed the individual and private viewing experience and changed the viewing psychology. Therefore, the specific form of the future application of panoramic film is not easy to determine.
Finally, the new technology creates the possibility of interactive stereoscopic images. In many sci-fi movies, there are scenes where characters can talk to virtual images of real people instead of talking to each other on the phone. With the emergence of interactive technology, such sci-fi scenes can be seen in reality, forming interactive virtual reality. This has created a brand-new relationship between time and space in a real sense, which is bound to break the original film creation mode, but the specific form is still uncertain.
Take precautions: Promote the development of CG technology and film industry in China.
As far as technology is concerned, stereoscopic image technology is mature at present, and even holographic stereoscopic image and sensing technology have been developed. It is only a matter of time before it is put into actual film production in the future.
As film creators, we should have a clear understanding of this trend, and make full preparations and responses, so as to remain calm in the future and avoid the situation that everyone is amazed at the beginning of Avatar, because the impact of three-dimensional panoramic movies and interactive movie in the future is bound to be greater than that brought by Avatar.
In the future, due to the change of viewing mode and the appearance of interactive forms, 3D Panoramic Film and interactive movie are bound to break the current film form, break the current film language and grammar, and create a new artistic language. Even the film industry may have to be adjusted, and it is unknown that new artistic varieties will be born.
Looking at the history of CG technology and re-examining the development of CG technology in China, we can see that CG technology has indeed been neglected by us. As filmmakers and CG people, we still have a long way to go. CG technology is the crystallization of "love" between art and technology, and every technological change produced by the film industry has fascinated the whole world. Everything people appreciate in the future, such as movies, TV and games, will be brought by CG technology. In the future, CG technology will not only bring people audio-visual sensory experience, but more importantly, it will surpass all industries and show the charm of visualization and interactive technology to the greatest extent.