What does the future hold for VFX?

[robbiec101]

Hello,

I'm a 3rd year Animation student at the University of Dundee in Scotland. I am currently writing my dissertation on animated visual effects in film and I have a question I think you guys can help me with.

What does the future hold for VFX? With recent films like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in mind, it seems like it is possible to create even the most outrageous or far-fetched ideas and make them seem real on the big screen.

So from a professional VFX artist point of view, what does the future hold? what are the new challenges that we face in VFX, and where do you see the VFX industry in 10 years from now?

Any help, ideas or opinions would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

Rob C

[Andreas.Jablonka]

hello rob roy (ok could not resist),

i think it still holds true that you can create anything with enough time and money. the budgets go up (2012 and avatar both having 200mio$) but the time goes down. Button was a good example of how TIME make a movie better, never the money. I think everything is possible, water has be done now, photoreal humans as benjamin or gollum (yeah i know creature now human) are definitely believable by now.

[robbiec101]

Thanks a lot Andreas, great info!

[Dotcommer]

I see VFX continuing on the road to blurring the line between real and fiction, and the next step in bringing the viewer into the story's world, is through stereoscopic. I feel that when objects start having real depth to them, not 2D faking depth, but we actually see it and process it with our own eyes and brain, it will be come just that more tangible, believable, and mystical.

One of my favorite examples of this is with Coroline. I saw that in 3D. That was incredible. When she first opened up that little passage way, and the portal expanded out to the other world, and it let out a light gust of wind, I could almost feel a soft wind against my face, just by looking at that scene. The 3D helped me forget where I was, and that I was in the story's world. Again with the garden all lit up later on in the movie.. that was beautiful.

[theta]

I think in 10 years the line between what's real and what's CG will have completely burred together. Computing power will have exponentially increased, resulting in the ability for larger productions to produce better realism and more of it, as well as smaller productions scale up their level of realism and quality of FX.

Autostereography & holographic films I guess is the next logical step past Stereographic films?

But I bet we'll still have to roto by hand

[the ckynus]

stereoscopic is suposta be the next big thing but i doubt it ever takes off as more than a fad. i always dreamed about the day when we would be working real time but that too will never happen, as software and hardware get bigger and better the sh!t we are asked to do gets more and more insane, and i love it.

we just keep pushing it forward.

[Gentle Fury]

What I'm really hoping is the next big thing is photoreal realtime rendering! Forget more gimmicks work on making production quality FX IN REAL TIME! We need realtime CG and realtime comp......once that is perfected I say we are in a great place....stay there and work on what is important! If there was no longer a render time factor in the equation can you imagine how much further FX could be pushed???

[jaywallace23]

In the future, I think another High School Music TRILOGY will arise.... making man's VFX efforts futile.


...I only hope that VFX will never be used for such teenology (*tear *)