What makes a movie's special effects look fake?

This is certainly an interesting topic, and there's not one thing that you can nail down to answer this question of a movie's special effects "looking fake". There are many, many steps in the visual effects pipeline, and anything could go wrong in any one of those steps. Rigging CG characters, lighting those CG characters, compositing those CG characters onto match-moved backgrounds, etc etc... If one of those artists gets it even slightly "wrong," then the whole thing looks off.

And speaking of CG characters, anybody see this awesome VFX breakdown from Logan?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxWu5Brx_As

Now tell me you knew they were CG characters when you saw the film the first time.

SB

This just goes to show that when done well, CG is impossible to tell from the real thing. I think that one of the reasons why that people complain about CG is because in certain applications you know that it has to be CG and because you do some people will then either convince themselves that it's really fake looking or look at it with extra scrutiny.
 
Missing from some CGI is the luminous quality of skin. Photographers told how how Marilyn Monroe’s skin had a peculiar way of reflecting light, due to her skin quality.

In the comparison of Tarkins, you can see how Peter Cushing’s skin had some translucense to it (or appears to). His Rogue One double seems like a solid surface. A puppet. A lifelike puppet, but still a puppet.
 
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Besides the inherent creepy factor, that is very impressive. I wonder how far away we are from entire movies being cgi yet completely convincing. Probably not as far as some may think, judging by how fast the technology is developing.
 
There was always something weird about how Ewan McGregor interacted with CGI Jar Jar in PM. I later realized that he was gazing at Jar Jar in the wrong way. IRL when you converse with someone taller than yourself, you tend to keep your head relatively straight and just let your eyes gaze upwards for eye contact. Ewan wasn't doing that. He was tracking Jar Jar's eyes (i.e. the tennis ball) with his whole face instead of just his eyes and it looked really weird. Anybody else get that?
 
I would have loved to have had this conversation forty years ago. "What makes stop-motion look real or fake to you?"

Exactly, i've seen stop motion and minature work that's much worse from the 'take you out of the movie' perspective than the worst cg i've seen.

Not sure why, but cg seems to be a favorite whipping boy around here and anything practical seems almost elevated to god like status sometimes.
 
I'll just throw in that even the best effect work can come off as fake if it is something your brain knows isn't real. The best effects are the ones we don't even notice. The Social Network had more FX shots than Godzilla, but you'd never know it.
 
That Logan CGI reel is an impressive example of why movies cost so much. I'm not convinced those scenes really needed a lot of that CGI work. God Forbid the audience might be able to pause the footage on the Blu-Ray and spot an iffy makeup job or a stunt person's face for a few blurry frames in the middle of a hectic scene.

Impressive work? Yes.
But it's also why we get nothing but franchise sequels and remakes now. Studios would take more risks on whole projects if they weren't spending so much each time.
 
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There was always something weird about how Ewan McGregor interacted with CGI Jar Jar in PM. I later realized that he was gazing at Jar Jar in the wrong way. IRL when you converse with someone taller than yourself, you tend to keep your head relatively straight and just let your eyes gaze upwards for eye contact. Ewan wasn't doing that. He was tracking Jar Jar's eyes (i.e. the tennis ball) with his whole face instead of just his eyes and it looked really weird. Anybody else get that?

Agreed. It just looks wrong but when you're acting with someone wearing a hard hat with a cardboard cutout taped to it, it's hard not stare. :lol
In one scene, Captain Panaka is still looking at Jar Jar 2 seconds after he walked away.
 
Not sure why, but cg seems to be a favorite whipping boy around here and anything practical seems almost elevated to god like status sometimes.
It's probably because the study of practical effects involves an appreciation of overlapping disciplines, artistic media, technology and skills. It's fun studying cool solutions that might have been used for a given effect.

Great practical effects also have great stories behind them. And it's easy to marvel at the ingenuity that goes into great practical effects and to fall in love with them especially if there are tangible props.

On the other hand, innovative CG is really about improved processing power, new apps and software tools. No notable stories. Not much history. No props.

With CG it's all to easy to farm out the CG FX to folks who have little creative connection to the remainder of the production. That can result in a gross incongruence between FX shots and the look of the remaining film - which will only make it seem that someone just didn't care enough.



Also CG causes cancer.
 
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Around here we just love tangible things because it's our hobby. No big mystery there.

For the mainstream audience, I think the appeal of practical effects is that they are usually less objectionable when they look weak.

CGI can look better. That's a good thing because it basically has to look better. Anything less than very good CGI is bad.
 
Exactly, i've seen stop motion and minature work that's much worse from the 'take you out of the movie' perspective than the worst cg i've seen.

Not sure why, but cg seems to be a favorite whipping boy around here and anything practical seems almost elevated to god like status sometimes.

Speaking of practical effects and god-like status, check out the final battle of Rock and Roll Nightmare. Warning! Your eyes may never forgive you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPbzOKF55xE
 
It's probably because the study of practical effects involves an appreciation of overlapping disciplines, artistic media, technology and skills. It's fun studying cool solutions that might have been used for a given effect.

Great practical effects also have great stories behind them. And it's easy to marvel at the ingenuity that goes into great practical effects and to fall in love with them especially if there are tangible props.

On the other hand, innovative CG is really about improved processing power, new apps and software tools. No notable stories. Not much history. No props.

With CG it's all to easy to farm out the CG FX to folks who have little creative connection to the remainder of the production. That can result in a gross incongruence between FX shots and the look of the remaining film - which will only make it seem that someone just didn't care enough.



Also CG causes cancer.

It's really no different with CG, the tools may have changed but the techniques haven't. I worked with a bunch of kids (relatively speaking) who had graduated from one of those technical schools where they teach you 3 modelling and animation and hearing them talk their course work involved a lot of studying traditional art practices like drawing, painting, and art history, so it's not like these people know nothing about art. Having dabbled in 3D some, I can say first hand that it requires an artistic eye to be good 3D modeler and/or animator and most, if not all, of these FX studios would actually hire someone who is an amazing artist in traditional mediums and train them how to use the computer rather than someone who is a whiz on the computer but has trouble drawing a stick figure.

In regards to farming out the effects work, it's no different now than it was back in the days of miniatures and models. Ever since they stopped filming models against a miniature set hanging from wires on the ceiling the effects work has been handled by a dedicated effects shop who have little creative connection to the remainder of the production. Post production now is no different than post production of decades ago except for the amount and tools used and, ultimately, it's up to the director and to oversee the post work and sign off on it. Don't blame the tools, blame the one utilizing them, it's not bad CG, it's the director either not using it correctly or trying to demand too much of the effects crew. Now a days, the tool set has only gotten deeper with the advent of metadata in digital media the ties between production and post production have gotten close as the post people can get camera date now such as lens type, focal length, f-stop, shutter speed, etc. and enter it into the computer and duplicate it exactly.

If it seems like a CG effect looks like it was done with a lack of effort by someone who doesn't care, it almost certainly is not the fault of the effects house that did it, I'd blame the director and/or FX supervisor. The director is the one who determines what shots would use CG and the FX supervisor is the one who oversees the work and delivers shots for the director to say yay or nay. A lot of times it's a matter of trying to do too much in too little time or for too little money and the results are apparent, but it would be the same if it was done practically, quality requires time and time means money.
 
For me... when the CGI is so overused that the object(s) becomes less tangible.

I think that nails it. My biggest complaint with cgi is that few people using it seem to be able to show any restraint. It's the Michael Bay school of storytelling that thinks if people liked one explosion, they're gonna love 50 of 'em — all at once. But this all comes back to what Riceball is saying above... it's not the cgi or the artist who's usually at fault. It's the director, the one person who has the final say in how the story should be told visually.
 
One of my favorites is the tracking that is clearly off that stitched Tem Morrison's head to the Clone commander talking to Obi Wan in episode III
 
This seems an appropriate place to put this, this is an amazing look into the progressive aspect of effects.
https://youtu.be/VTGQ_K0DBPo
Phils reaction to the event of cgi is just what we are all about here.
Computers exist.
The RPF exists on mine, we adjust.
 
It's really no different with CG, the tools may have changed but the techniques haven't. I worked with a bunch of kids (relatively speaking) who had graduated from one of those technical schools where they teach you 3 modelling and animation and hearing them talk their course work involved a lot of studying traditional art practices like drawing, painting, and art history, so it's not like these people know nothing about art. Having dabbled in 3D some, I can say first hand that it requires an artistic eye to be good 3D modeler and/or animator and most, if not all, of these FX studios would actually hire someone who is an amazing artist in traditional mediums and train them how to use the computer rather than someone who is a whiz on the computer but has trouble drawing a stick figure.

In regards to farming out the effects work, it's no different now than it was back in the days of miniatures and models. Ever since they stopped filming models against a miniature set hanging from wires on the ceiling the effects work has been handled by a dedicated effects shop who have little creative connection to the remainder of the production. Post production now is no different than post production of decades ago except for the amount and tools used and, ultimately, it's up to the director and to oversee the post work and sign off on it. Don't blame the tools, blame the one utilizing them, it's not bad CG, it's the director either not using it correctly or trying to demand too much of the effects crew. Now a days, the tool set has only gotten deeper with the advent of metadata in digital media the ties between production and post production have gotten close as the post people can get camera date now such as lens type, focal length, f-stop, shutter speed, etc. and enter it into the computer and duplicate it exactly.

If it seems like a CG effect looks like it was done with a lack of effort by someone who doesn't care, it almost certainly is not the fault of the effects house that did it, I'd blame the director and/or FX supervisor. The director is the one who determines what shots would use CG and the FX supervisor is the one who oversees the work and delivers shots for the director to say yay or nay. A lot of times it's a matter of trying to do too much in too little time or for too little money and the results are apparent, but it would be the same if it was done practically, quality requires time and time means money.
Despite the way it might have seemed I wasn't trying to make the case that good CG didn't require any degree of artistry. I was responding to a question of why practical effects might seem to get a disproportionate amount of affection in this forum.

When I wrote that, " innovative CG is really about improved processing power, new apps and software tools" I was explaining that the evolution of CG is rooted in the technology. But, as you say, it still begins with visual design which is fundamental to all effects - whether it's rendered on matte or on a tablet.

Keep in mind that I'm not saying one is necessarily "better" than the other. That would be pointless because we live in a world where both exist.

I should add that I can also understand some of the basic hostility toward CG if it means that most new talent might not have as much interest in rolling up their sleeves for practical effects nowadays and, as a result, many skills and methods may eventually fade or even die out and certainly some equipment and tools may become harder to find.

Practical effects draws upon a wider pool of dissimilar disciplines than does CG. I'm not saying this makes it "better," but this is simply true.
Practical effects leave a much richer trail of tangible props than CG. This is also true. I think this is one thing that makes practical effects objectively better. Give me that at least.
There's a longer history of practical effects than with CG. This is also true.
There are also more amazing stories behind some legendary effects films. You can't debate this one.

With the fading of interest in practical effects it's easy to lament the past and feel at least a little hostility towards CG. That being said, a lot of the hate that might get hurled at CG has to be a bit tongue-in-cheek. It's certainly the way I meant it. I don't hear anyone arguing that CG should be replaced by practical effects. What I do hear is that folks rejoice when a production does take the extra effort to apply practical effects. Don't you think it would have been much easier if Villeneuve simply used only CG for Blade Runner 2049? It says something special when that much money, resources and time is spent for practical effects, no?

Is it any crime to be sad about the passing of 70 mm Panavision and the waning of film altogether with the advance of digital? Is it so hard to understand why mechanical wristwatches remain incredibly fascinating in an era where any $5 quartz watch will do just as well, if not better? They used to design automobiles from sculpting clay when today it's almost always done on CAD. I think classic cars are more beautiful.

Still, I'd rather have a world with CG than without. Similarly I drive a modern car as it's safer and more practical than a classic. And, yeah, generally things do look better with CG - especially nowadays. But I was only trying my best, as someone outside of the industry, to answer the question why CG seems to be the "whipping boy."



But I hear CG also causes cancer. ;)
 
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