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In the world of VFX, there's two final bosses - Two big challenges that place the most pressure and demand on the VFX artists working on them.
Now, one of them you’ve probably heard of - and that's CGI humanoids - characters like Thanos or Tarkin or the blue people from Avatar - These guys tend to get a lot of coverage in the media these days for all their technical breakthroughs and how hard it is creating a photorealistic human
But… There's also a second huge challenge… that no one really talks about… - and that is: the creation of CG animals.
Because under the surface - These guys have almost the exact same same features as a CG humanaid - They’ve got muscles, and tissue and skin that all needs to be very carefully figured out by a massive team of artists.
And on top of this, since things like the Lion King remake in 2019 - CG animals have exploded in popularity, to the point where they are filling the same positions narratively as these other CG characters - Now we have walking around, dancing, talking and emoting - and essentially carrying the entire story on their backs.
So, As a VFX artist myself, and someone whose found themselves constantly going in and out of working on these CG animals over the last few years - I thought I should shine a spotlight behind the scenes workflows of these animals, and discuss the tremendous amount of work that goes into making them.
So, without further ado, let's dive into the world of CGI animals
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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:54 - 3D Modelling
3:42 - Grooming
6:41 - Rigging
9:01 - Animation
11:15 - CFX
15:18 - Fur CFX
16:22 - Outro
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More VFX analysis here!:
• VFX Breakdowns And Ana...
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SOURCES:
Art of VFX: www.artofvfx.com/the-lion-kin...
Pictures of Cats: pictures-of-cats.org/how-many...
SideFX: www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/n...
ARTISTS:
Francesco Gioia: • Bison walk cycle and cfx
And: • CGI & VFX Breakdowns: ...
Mehmet Fatih Usta: • Horse Muscle Simulatio...
hosenjackeArts: • Breakdown: Panthera - ...
Mekhla Kadam: • 2021 Grooming Show-ree...
Mehmet Fatih Usta: • Horse Muscle Simulatio...
A lot of people who are not in the 3D Industry think CGI works are easy, few clicks of buttons and stuff, computer does all the work and calculations and pictures get rendered easily. 3D artists got to be smart, have patience, know alot of physics and have good trained eyes on references. We really don't get appreciated enough. Salute to all the 3D Artists out there!
Nah BS . . .dont act like you dont get templates for literally everything
@@gamedrop3262 If you think there are "templates" for things like this then all you're doing is proving to everyone that you're an ignorant child whose only knowledge of this stuff is producing dogshit in blender.
Average person who has never touched a 3d Program before:@@gamedrop3262
@@gamedrop3262 please be a joke
@@gamedrop3262 Don't act like a joke please
Imagine you're a 3D artist who put so much effort in making these CG animals, then critics says the movie you worked on have bad CGI.
lol yeah. But the problem natrully more nonmetal than the CGI, and as a programer i know this feeling to well. 80% or even 90% of the stuff i can spend days on people will maybe not even see, but the stuff that takes seconds to add in are often 90% of what people judge and see. but you not gonna have a working program/game with out the it all working.
@@MouseGoat So most of the work is done without anyone ever noticing? Man, knowing that I just won't judge programming the same way again. You guys have it hard. Thankfully, you have the passion for it cause otherwise it's very tempting to just give up.
Marvel?
@@dhananjaysharma5330 There aren't that many CG animals scenes in recent MCU releases. The Lion's King is a better fit in that regard.
Every job is hard and time consuming. We don't know what each person goes through. But as a viewer/consumer we judge on the quality of the final product not the process..especially when we have seen better products
Came from the District 9 video, super excited for this channel
Same. This is really high quality content, I can see 2 million subs in months
Prehistoric Planet is probably my favourite use of photorealistic cgi creatures, mostly because they draw from the latest possible research and archival wildlife footage as a reference. They also treat the dinosaurs and other creatures as animals, not dragons that can’t breathe fire. The pterosaurs are a highlight, in particular how they move and interact with each other when grounded, since they are barely touched upon in most media.
I like that there's this new wave of small creators who make such quality content. Subbed.
I'm a 3d artist, and I can't even believe the tech and artistry that goes into these assets. Bone, muscle, skin and hair all playing together...it's just insane how good we've gotten at this. Incredible talent and patience.
And all started with a simple donut...
@@greenrabbit4075 This is like meme now, everyone on earth started with fucking donut
@@mihajlojovic8631 even in theory of strings
you aren't a real 3d artist if you really didn't know this was a thing
Hahah. Love the internet.@@applecore4525
As a Game Developer and a 3D modeller myself, this video is absolutely well done. I hope people appreciate the hard work of every artist from this video.
can you control these animals like in animal simulator games or only watch them like in a movie to move ?
@@GoreSlauYes this requires 2 artists. A modeller plus rigger and a developer. The animations have to be made like walking, running, etc and a developer can easily integrate them with inputs of players and can control them.
Which app can we use to like practice this animation
@@jadenalmeida8592 To make 3D model and animations The famous and free software is Blender!
It's absolutely astonishing the amount of work that goes in to this. I was lost after the first 2 stages, if I must be honest, but fascinaing all the same!
This was so incredibly interesting and well written! Please continue to make videos! Don't let the Nerdstalgic thing get you down. There are a lot of people out here that see your work and respect it. Thanks! I subbed and I'm looking forward to seeing your next video in my subbox.
Thank you so much!! I have alot more lined up on the horizon so don't worry! - Thank you so much for the support and I'm really glad you enjoyed the videos :D
i totally agree with you if he do work like this continue he will grow this channel in no time
pathetic walt disney pixar hollytrash ... what a moronic way to show animals. Thousands of VFX artists or robots serving the same dull narrative over and over and over again ... CGY !!
What about Nerdstalgic? What happened?
10:02 Is this a test for a movie? Where is this cat from? Is it entirely CG? I guess it's the left one?
Wow! I’m blown away by how detailed and fun your VFX breakdowns are. I’ve learned so much from your videos and I can’t wait to see more. Keep up the great work!
As a VFX artist far away from organic stuff, I can say whole heartedly that hands down characters, animals or human beings in CGI is the most complex thing to do maybe aside from FX. It takes the best CG artists with decades of experience months to create photoreal characters and all aspects of it and animate, if it's a human being then just 100x the complexity. For any character work, animation is IMO the most make or break thing and CG animation is basically stop motion animation but you're doing it inside a computer where you're basically moving, stretching, shortening the 3D model over a period of time. That's literally it, the more complex the character is, the more controllers you're gonna have to work with that was set by the rigger who has set up all the deformation and connections with other bones etc. Rigging is definitely one of the most technical yet under appreciated jobs in CG. Really appreciate you making these deep dives kinda videos about CG/VFX. KZhead is full of couch experts with no knowledge of CG/VFX making baseless claims about CG and how bad/unartistic it is etc,. Most average people on the internet have 0 clue about CG and how much time, technical and artistic skills it takes to create something of that caliber. Please keep making these cool videos to educate the general public about CG and how underappreciated it is truly.
Bro 😂 all this words for wat 🤔 We know ur a vfx artist, no need to waste laters
@@djsanti211 It's called appreciation. Never heard of it?
10:02 Is this a test for a movie? Where is this cat from? Is it entirely CG? I guess it's the left one? To be fair most of the animals do look fake even in this video. They don't really fool me.
As someone who loves the nitty gritty details of VFX I gotta say that your channel has all meat, no bones in that matter. I checked out your channel because of that district 9 vid, and I'm on a course to watch the rest of your vids, great work!
Thanks for making this video! As a character modeler myself (in AAA games, almost same pipeline) it's frustrating to see people not understanding how much work goes on behind the scenes of movies and games, and that they take it all for granted and when it doesn't look great they blame the artists themselves and not the "higher ups".
Yes definitely please do make more videos about each of these processes! This was so interesting!
I joined an animation course a year ago and learned a lot about software, techincheine, and technical things. I thought i know about the animation process, but after watching your video felt like zero. still, helps a lot to decide what to focus on. thank you
this video was fantastic, i loved how you explained everything, it was super entertaining, your really underrated man, keep up the good work!
This was so well done I’m glad I found your channel!
I think the Revenant's bear scene will always stand out for me in terms of realistic CG animals, and I think what sells it is not only the stunning bear but the mix of practical effects with Leo being on wires as he's being attacked. Makes the scene so horrifying to watch because it looks so damn real.
The bear looks anything but realistic. Have you ever seen a real bear? Come on only a blind person you think it was realistic.
This was a really cool video! I am a 3d artist by hobby and i can model a lot of stuff but animals are something i cant touch. The amount of work that goes into it is INSANE!
Superb video, Really loving your work. Keep it up dude, you're doing amazing!
I love this video. Because it highlights each department contributing to creating the assets through the asset creation pipeline. I started as a 2D artist then developed into 3D, and I got into doing rigging which involves a lot of technical skills involves both art and scripting so it is a niche role and definitely overlooked as mention. I suppose the good thin with know a bit of everything in asset creation is that you can create your own without relying on other but it is difficult.
I'm a 3D modeller, and I love the respect you give to the job but honestly I think a lot of the magic for movies especially is in the compositing and post-production effects. I could model a very cool dog, but making it move and react, have a realistic walk, match a scenes lighting and camera details, have fur that reacts to things around it - that's all stuff which usually falls out of my 3D Artist workflow. Maybe some studios have the artist also do the animation and hair physics, but definitely none of the compositing into actual footage.
Wow that was some high quality content right there keep it going please!
This is well done, wanted to weigh in a bit since I'm a cfx artist, when it comes to these studios most cfx artist don't even have muscles or skeletons they can use so a lot of the muscle you might see in something like a bear in a scene will be faked using various methods, but working with cloth and fur is always a challenge. But yeah most of what you covered will ring true for any huge movie with a major hero scene like Lion King. Hope to see more of this amazing work.
Wow - That's really interesting to hear, and something I was completely unaware of! At my current studio we almost always simulate the muscle-tissue-skin unless the shot is really really far away - even for shorter projects like adverts. Which software do you typically work with for CFX? We've been using Houdini 19/19.5's new creature tools and they provide a surprisingly quick turnaround - but I've never touched things like Ziva, and I was wondering if that's a slow process? And therefore why muscles are faked more often? Anyway thanks for watching, and letting me know! And I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
I’m not sure this is entirely correct, I’ve worked in CFX for film for 10+ years and it’s very very rare for big shows that we don’t have the skeleton and muscle. For certain digi doubles it’s not required but for hero creatures it’s standard now. 👍
@@CGWHY Software wise Houdini Vellum has been pretty dominant in most studios I have worked at as of recently, but Maya is still used in some shows. But from what my recent studio was using we where transitioning to 19.5 for the new tools but stayed in 18.5 since the pipeline was still being changed to incorporate 19.5. As for Ziva I have used it to an extent in some shows but it's always to time consuming to go and get things started there since most people where not trained to use it. But yeah the process is a bit slow since the models need to be done a certain way to make the skin and jiggle move the correct way **(There is a more comprehensive answer that can be said about this but in that regard I'm not very knowledgeable)**. On the other hand faking muscles always ended up costing less time and money for the studio, since most times they had a tool developed for another show that had the effect wanted at a fraction of the time. Not faking it will give you a better looking muscle movement obviously but as long as you can get something looking good on screen the clients have never really cared. Though most big films will have the budget for a complete skeleton and muscle setup but most don't have the foresight. A lot of the times they end up wanting muscle on a character half way through the project life in the studio. So lets say we have a mouse that while we where setting things up in the beginning it was never intended to have a muscle system, then the client sees one shot that the mouse is doing jumping jacks and then says well actually can we add some secondary movement to the fur from his muscles flexing and also some jiggle on the stomach. Then suddenly you have a week to come up with a solution because prod was blind sided by the request and it's not in the budget so you end up having to do a lot of OT to make up any development time that needed to be done. So it's things like this that make faking the muscles a more used method in most shows and films I have been in at least. Like the person said below, on very big films hero assets will have a skeleton and muscle system if the character obviously needs it. But as I said clients and sups dictate if that is done beforehand or done 3 months away from the hard deadline. Sometimes even with the muscle system you might run into issues with the animation, that being able to fake it will save you from doing a lot of work that will probably lead to doing a lot of OT.
So much of hardwork goes into this.. As a computer science student it makes me feel I'm no where close to what this skilled people can just carry out in days and months ...
Thanks so much for making this video. Hope a lot of non-artists see this and appreciate the process even more. :)
Great video! Everything is very clearly enough. Keep it up, you're doing the right things!
what a brilliant n fun overview! loved it! much appreciated
Maybe giving a brief summary of the subsections at the beginning of the video would help pre-establish them before we jump into the details. Also maybe some very quiet non-intrusive music always keeps people's brains entertained (like lofi or whatever you enjoy). You clearly have a lot of knowledge on these subjects, hope the channel goes far! :)
i really like your work on this videos, very good job, keep it going
Congrats on all the new subs
Am loving the breakdown, this is awesome and gives me a different perspective of the cgi which i deem to be not so good. Awesome presentation
This channel is amazing. Keep up the great work and see you at 1mil
I’m exhausted just watching this 😄 Having just watched Disney+ programs on Industrial Light & Magic this is a great explanation of something we take for granted these days. Thanks
I stumbled onto your channel by accident and watch now the 4th video in a row. Good work man, i really enjoy it and learn something new. Would be awesome if you would do a video about Startship Troopers or Jurassic Park one day. Regards
I know the field kinda well so i knew a lot of the stuff you were talking about but i think this video is perfect, its easy to understand for the people that know absolutly nothing but there is also a lot of information for the people that already know the basics. Good job, this is a very well done video.
The best application of CGI animals I have ever seen is in Prehistoric Planet. While other media can have impressive animal work, they impact of these is often limited. Beyond making animals talk, there really is little relative value in making an existing animal do things on screen. Basically, it's A LOT of work for relatively little storytelling or visual interest. Not saying it's not impressive, but it seems to be largely thankless work. However, every millisecond of animal work in Prehistoric Planet brings to life animals that are completely extinct and have never been witnessed before, bringing the audience an incredible visual value for the amount of work done.
Excellent Video. Keep 'em coming!!
Seriously excellent channel. Never stop
New subscriber and love this channel so far. I’m sure you’ve got dozens of ideas but I’ve always wanted to see a VFX breakdown of the Godzilla films. Like 1998 vs Legendary vs TOHOs shin godzilla or something along those lines. Keep up the great work man
That's actually a really good idea! There's potentially 60+ years of effects work to unpack there and I bet it's super interesting - I'm currently writing a "comparison across time" for a different franchise, but maybe it could be part of a series 🤔 Thank you so much!
@@CGWHY even the low fi atomic breath and lightning effects are a vibe so you could certainly go back all the way to the 1954 to modern day! Sounds like a ton of work though
Yea could be an interesting long term project? Or perhaps it could just be a comparison between the super old school "guy in a costume" ones and nowadays 😂😅 - Either way it's a great idea, thank you!
Insane 🔥🔥 Awesome Video!
man you cover the whole shit smoothly af
Damn bro. Had under 500 subs and everyone was like “yo, that dude *did* steal your vid.” Then saw the other good content and decided you deserved a sub. Look at you now. May you grow further brother. ❤️
Youre gonna blow up man. Your content is so GOOD!
word up
Thank you so much! I'm really glad you enjoyed it! :D
This was fascinating and informative!
Just for the record, I watched the entire video and I loved it😊
Very well Informed... Thanks for the knowledge sharing
So much work. Thank you!
The work that has been done for Kong, as well as the rest of the MonsterVerse, is phenomenal and visually impressive.
This was absolutely fascinating!
I needed this right now as I've been dreaming of becoming a rigging artist.
Very detailed video .thanks for this
Amazing video dude
Excellent info video, thank you.
Gosh!!! Salute and mad respect for the creator 🫡🤩🤩 thnx for so much info ❤️🔥🙏
Great to see whole the workflow as a amateur cgi artist myself mainly sculpting non organic stuff.
I know of people who had to learn to rig in order to be able to animate their own models and fell in love with the rigging process. I don't think I know anyone who started learning a 3D software just because they wanted to become a rigger. On a big team where you are only doing rigging and nothing else, you are taking the work of one artist and preparing it to pass it on to a different artist, but what you do never ends up on screen or gets any type of recognition outside your own industry, so in order to be a rigger you must really love rigging.
Awesome vid! Very informative and fascinating for a beginner artist wanting to get into the industry. How will AI influence VFX could be an interesting video. Or just showing what steps do other areas of film and animation take.
Deep analysis ❤❤💯💯 Really interesting and joyful work. 💯💯👌
Amazing video! The overall video quality is great, and your audio is even better then in some older videos, glad to see how you are evolving with each video! One thing I'd really like to see, if you can, of course, is some of your own experiences working in this kind of profession, like some problems you needed to solve or just personal experiences in general. Thanks for the lovely content!
Thank you so much - Yea there's a suprisingly long learning curve to this and you learn something every video. And thats a very interesting idea - and could provide a really different angle to these other movie oriented videos - Thank you! Cool M-16 btw :D
Was very interesting to follow!
awesome breakdowns in the intro
It's crazy how much work went into creating one of the most creatively bankrupt movies ever made (Lion King 2019)
Great vid and narration ❤
Definitely lot of hard work put in to make a project alive ❤❤❤👍👍👍
Great video and as someone who is trying to learn 3D animation this video has been interesting and also very informative for me. Could I suggest adding some background music to your videos in the future? Without any "white noise" your narration could sound a bit empty.
Yea thats probably a really good idea, and certainly something I'll look into - but I already make these on super tight time frames and adding music would eat up alot of time :( But we can see for sure :D. Thanks so much for watching and good luck with the 3D animation! Are you in school or self teaching?
never knew that an entire skeleton and muscles were under there lol
This is what i subscribed for ❤
Great channel! Subbed Have you seen Prehistoric Planet? Probably some of the best animal VFX I’ve ever seen
Good Job Bro 💖💖
W vid, learned a lot more about what it takes to make these cgi animals
this video is very informative, thanks you
Wowww it's a huge amount of work !!!
Thank you for the video. And thank you for not putting in any annoying music.
Hey, nice video! Thanks for featuring some of my work :)
It's amazing work! And you have some really awesome breakdowns that really show the effort that went into it 😁
@@CGWHY Thanks that means a lot, keep up with the great work on your videos!
my neck and hands hurt just from thinking about modeling these omfg
This is a very gold information.
what a awesome video.. love this
CGI = Old School AI = Now & Future "Nothing is faster than competition in the technology industry." (Steve Jobs)
Wow great explanation yarr... Thank you so much...
BEST VIDEO EVAAA!
The tinger ear flik in mogli was awsome
Amazing video
VERY INTRESTING PIECE. LOOK FORWARD TO MORE...
I learned a lot from this video, Thank You!
me too
Man I have been studying Vfx for 25 years.. I am a sort of vfx hermit. I very much enjpy your channel. Keep doing what you doing your infos really usefull...
Great video. Really appreciate it. Since you're making videos about CG on YT for entertainment and educating the general public, I'd highly recommend you to make a video about Steve "Spaz" Williams. If it wasn't for him, we probably wouldn't have CGI in modern day. He was basically the first CG animator who animated those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and he basically paved CG for the modern day, but he got basically no recognition and no one knows about him. There was a brilliant documentary that came out this year called Jurassic Punk which was about him. Would highly recommend it.
What about the CGI in Terminator 2?
@@gamej7946 Done by the exact same guy. He even talked about the process in his Documentary, Jurrasic Punk. The guy who played T 1000 talked about the process they went through while filming the movie as well.
I like how all the motions for a lion's face moving and deforming for speech were worked out since the lion the witch and the wardrobe, and yet the lion king "live action" lions emote like cardboard
The first step of the video made my pc blast 😂😂
Well ain't this cool if you don't grow to 100k by the end of this year I'll be surprised just keep making vids you got it.
What an amazing video, thank you for providing futter for us nerds!
Interesting as always, and those funny parts make the video more lively, so continue to use them :D Btw what makes CGI feel...like CGI? I mean the part where you show a real lion cub and CGI one side by side - and we can clearly see where the real and unreal ones are. Is it lighting? Less detail?
Thank you!! I'm glad it's working! Yea that's a very good question - I think at the quality level of things like Lion King it's the uncanny valley: that phenomenon where Hyper-realism starts to look more and more fake to our brains Maybe this is a good video idea 🤔 Thanks!
I genuinely had a hard time telling which was which with that orange tabby at times
@@CGWHY The problem is animation , too floaty , too perfect . We subconsciously can pick up that , the only time I've seen a cgi animal animated too realistic that it looks real its the mononykus from prehistoric planet.
@@CGWHY Almost none of the animals looked really realistic to be honest. Only exception was the cat at 10:02 Was it just copy pasted or completely animated and what movie was this animation test for?
@@spinosaurusstriker Except for the cat at 10:02 Can you guess which one was CG? The others look very obviously CG you're right. It can look realistic as long as it doesn't move but as soon as there is movement it usually gives it away as fake.
"soul-less remake of one of your favorite childhood movies" 😂😂😂😂😂😂 great video
16:30 “…that’s now ready to be put into a soulless remake of one of your favorite childhood movies.” It’s a shame how much passion and hard work goes into something like creating these realistic models just for the writers to completely destroy the movie and overshadow your work.
love videos like these
i started in VFX 30 years ago before moving to the games industry, its not surprising the smaller studios cant compete ... price cap on this stuff is crazy these days
what a story! From 400 subs and 3k was your best video to almost 20k subs and 850k total views!!! I instantly subbed and ringed that BELL!! I usually dont do that to sob-stories. But you are genually an unfound nugget of gold that is finally getting the recognition you deserve through all this. I got your video in my recommended and im so happy to see that this is actually a interesting channel that i want to watch more of. And the fact that all your videos has gotten insane traction since you stealth video shows that what im saying is true for alot of people! Great work mate!
great content!
If you have 1 rabbit skeleton you have all rabbit skeleton....STILL hats off to the guy who did it first!
Perfectly explained
informative video. thanks a lot