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Computer generated fashion models will take over the industry – Is it happening already?

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This is a topic that I’ve seen come up every few months in some form or another. Removing photographers from the process of image creation. And every time CG makes some incremental improvement, getting closer to the appearance of reality, I hear doom and gloom from photographers that their future is in jeopardy and “they won’t even need photographers anymore in a couple of years”.

And while that future might already be here for some product photography, it’s not quite happened for human subjects. Yet. But we may not be far off, if Imma’s Instagram account is anything to go by. Because Imma is actually not human. She’s a CG “virtual model”, who has mostly managed to claw her way out of Uncanny Valley.

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Scandinava makes insane practical VFX that look like CGI

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Russian film studio Scandinava makes insane effects that will make you think are CGI – but they’re actually all real. Using practical VFX, a robotic arm, miniature models and other gear, these artists make the real objects look like they were animated. Check out how they do it in the video below.

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Gatorade creates animated water man without using CGI

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Gatorade has released a commercial that features an animated 3D man made of water. Nothing special, you may think. But the man was literally made of water, without the use of CGI.

The “waterman” is running, jumping and kicking, making you wonder “what if your water was as active as you.” They have also released a short BTS video, showing just how much effort they have invested in making this fantastic advertisement.

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Watch BBC demonstrate the beginnings of CGI in 1982

Computer generated graphics has been in our lives for quite a while now. We can’t accurately predict what it will bring in 35 years, but we can go that far into the past and see where it all began.

This video from BBC’s show Tomorrow’s World demonstrates the beginnings of CGI in 1982. The witty presenter Michael Rodd explains and illustrates what it looks like to transform a 2D image into a 3D model on the television screen. And it’s pretty impressive to watch the very beginning of what’s so common nowadays.

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“Rogue One” BTS reveals that Star Wars is going back to its practical effects roots

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We are only a week away from the official release of Rogue One, and all Star Wars fans are curious to see what the new film will bring. A new featurette shows some behind the scenes moments, and reveals that Gareth Edwards created creatures much closer to the George Lucas’ original vision.

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Software makes selfies look as if they were taken with a 200mm lens

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If you hate the way you look in selfies, here’s some good news for you.

Firstly you are not alone. Big noses, squashed ears and weak chins make selfies looks less attractive (maybe this is why duck face is so common). Secondly, this may change as researchers at Princeton University developed an algorithm to convert selfies into long lens portraits (and vice versa).

Their method uses an automated mesh places on a photo, which calculates the face warp (and then adjusts it).

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How I blended photography and CGI to create a desert door composite

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Good morning guys! JP here again with another image breakdown. I’ve been friends with Mario for quite some time now and his recent work just blew me away, so I wanted to get in touch with him and get a step through of his some of his latest work.

Today he’ll be sharing how he blended CGI into his composition to make an album cover for the artist Carlos Contra. Take it away Mario! *points to Mario*.

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Fashion Industry Turning To Solutions That Remove The Photographer From The Process

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Models, Photographers, MUA’s – The computer is out to get your jobs!

In recent years, we’ve seen how photography is being taken out of catalogs. IKEA was one of the first to embrace 3D rendering, with about 75% of its catalog being computer generated. Now it seems that fashion photography is following the same footprints.

Looklet is a company that does to fashion catalogs what IKEA did to furniture catalogs. Almost.

The video description explains how a fashion house can focus on shooting clothes while Looklet will superimpose them on models (of your choice), provide backdrops and create a finished image.

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Oblivion: The Cinematography of Claudio Miranda

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Out of the top ten highest-grossing films of 2014, nine were either sequels or reboots for franchises already long-established – the remaining film was Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. With the current film industry an unarguable golden age for comic book adaptations, it’s become customary for most studios to play it safe and rely on audience familiarity to sell their productions. And it’s unfortunate – original stories like Edge of Tomorrow end up suffering in sales as a result while at the same time gaining critical acclaim (Edge of Tomorrow was even retitled Live Die Repeat around the time of its home video release in an attempt to re-market the film).

Given the criticisms warranted towards Interstellar (Oh man, that dialogue…), it was still refreshing to see a new, original, and all-around good science fiction film become a box-office blockbuster in the middle of Oscar season. For directors not as well-known as Nolan, making a film like that is a particular risk when taking sales into account; back in 2013, Director Joseph Kosinski took that exact risk with the release of his second film. After his debut with Tron: Legacy, Kosinski brought the cinematographer Claudio Miranda on board once more for a story he’d been working on since 2005. The result was a film released eight years later, titled Oblivion.

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Realism: The Role Photography Plays in CGI on the Big Screen

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A reader brought up an interesting question last Saturday on my weekly cinematography post, this one over Eduardo Serra and his work in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; he asked how much credit a cinematographer can really claim for a shot done in CGI. Another reader answered him correctly in saying that the shots done in CGI are still directed in planning by the cinematographer himself. Basically, the work the animators do depends on the input of the director of photography.

That exchange made me want to write this post today; I’ve been obsessed with science-fiction and fantasy films since I was a kid, and CGI is something that’s impacted the films I grew up with as much as it has for many of us since twenty years ago. But there’s the films that do it well, and then there’s the films that we look back at and cringe in retrospect; remember those atrocious-looking monkeys in Jumanji?

So what sets apart the good CGI from the bad? How do they get it done right? If you’re going to make something look like it could have been right in front of the camera during filming, like it was real, then it would have to follow the same basic rules of photography that everything else in real life would. And what’s possibly the most important part of good photography in the first place? Good lighting.

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