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Interview: revisions Producer Kazuya Ide




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hissatsu01



Joined: 08 May 2006
Posts: 963
Location: NYC
PostPosted: Fri Aug 17, 2018 11:56 am Reply with quote
Well, that trailer certainly is something

(Movie trailer narrator voice)

"In a world of bad CGI people, everything goes to hell and bad CGI monsters attack!"

Nice of pink haired girl to show up, give her entire overly long title, then shoot.
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MarshalBanana



Joined: 31 Aug 2014
Posts: 5286
PostPosted: Fri Aug 17, 2018 11:58 am Reply with quote
Quote:
but having looked at the audiences here, I'm also confident that this will be accepted by the Western fans as well. I certainly hope so.
There certainly seems to be more people, either that or it is just the people on ANN. But on other platforms like YouTube there seems to be a majority who do accept it.

Based on what the Canipa Effect said on another page about creators keeping western audiences in-mind. It would be the first good thing to come of it, if a director or someone else in charge thought "Well we best tone down the CG for our international audiences".
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jroa



Joined: 08 Aug 2012
Posts: 536
PostPosted: Fri Aug 17, 2018 12:22 pm Reply with quote
Unfortunately, I think there's still a sizable contingent of people with a very narrow-minded view of what qualifies as acceptable in terms of 3D computer graphics.

Everything that isn't perfect automatically becomes bad, no matter how much objective technical progress or prowess can be pointed out. If all companies don't adopt the "right answer" (pun not intended), then it's all worthless in the eyes of such individuals.

hissatsu01 wrote:
Well, that trailer certainly is something

(Movie trailer narrator voice)

"In a world of bad CGI people, everything goes to hell and bad CGI monsters attack!"

Nice of pink haired girl to show up, give her entire overly long title, then shoot.


Actually, I thought the CGI in the trailer was pretty good. Not perfect, but good. I am still kind of sad about the prospect of even attempting to have a conversation about the show if that's going to be the tone though.
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Zerreth



Joined: 16 Mar 2006
Posts: 207
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 17, 2018 3:58 pm Reply with quote
i wonder what takes more time at this point as i know both are incredibly time consuming aspects of animation: Compositing 3D CG animation with higher framerates, or animating the clean and crisp hand-drawn animation of the more famous studios.

The CG isn't that bad in the trailer, but the lighting (or lack there of) is really jarring.

ufotable with their CG effects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3R6cf6njz4
I'm not saying they should do everything like ufotable, but they should probably run through another pass to clean up the distinct discrepancy between their environment and the objects in it.

A good example is 2:45 where it's very noticeable that the background character moving is actually CG but less noticeable with "camera" tricks and multiple layers of compositing.
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fantaselion



Joined: 22 Dec 2016
Posts: 351
PostPosted: Fri Aug 17, 2018 5:11 pm Reply with quote
Zerreth wrote:
i wonder what takes more time at this point as i know both are incredibly time consuming aspects of animation: Compositing 3D CG animation with higher framerates, or animating the clean and crisp hand-drawn animation of the more famous studios.

The CG isn't that bad in the trailer, but the lighting (or lack there of) is really jarring.

ufotable with their CG effects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3R6cf6njz4
I'm not saying they should do everything like ufotable, but they should probably run through another pass to clean up the distinct discrepancy between their environment and the objects in it.

A good example is 2:45 where it's very noticeable that the background character moving is actually CG but less noticeable with "camera" tricks and multiple layers of compositing.


I think "houseki no kuni" is a much better example as its actually fully CG (well mostly) unlike anything ufotable has done and since thats what Revision will be.... yea.

also one thing people always get wrong, Frame rate for CGI is just a SETTING you change, animated at 2 frames per second and animating at 23.976 frames per second takes the same amount of effort.

For example, the pv that recently aired for "kumo desu ga, nani ka?" is a mixed bag in terms of CGI quality but they rendered it at max framerate (except for 1 shot) because they wanted it to feel more "video gamey" due to what happens in the show... level ups and stuff.
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configspace



Joined: 16 Aug 2008
Posts: 3717
PostPosted: Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:17 pm Reply with quote
I'm not sure if "acceptance" is the right word as it's more or less a grudging acceptance. For example, I bought Knights of Sidonia 1,2 and Ajin and Blame despite being dissatisfied with the CG and wish it didn't use CG, or at least the way Polygon did. A lot of people still criticize them, but watch them nonetheless. You can't guage acceptance / entrancement of your methods just from viewership numbers.

Zerreth wrote:
i wonder what takes more time at this point as i know both are incredibly time consuming aspects of animation: Compositing 3D CG animation with higher framerates, or animating the clean and crisp hand-drawn animation of the more famous studios.

The CG isn't that bad in the trailer, but the lighting (or lack there of) is really jarring.

One common problem this and others have with the lighting / rendering is that the cell shading is programmatically designed to move or dynamically change against a real light source, except cell shaded, rather than gradient shaded. But 2D anime has its shading fixed. It's stylistic not realistic. The cell shaded regions aren't constantly shifting like it is in CG. But because of that constantly shifting cell shading, some CG artists try to compensate by reducing the lighting and light sources, which removes some of the visual flare.

One way to overcome this without sacrifiing lighting is to hand animate the cell shading in the characters and "bake" in the rendered shading. You completely remove the programatic based lighting physics and use your own non-realistic shading. Then any additional light sources and lighting in the environment won't affect your baked in shading, unless you explicitly want it to. This is the technique Arc System Works uses for their games.

Quote:
ufotable with their CG effects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3R6cf6njz4
I'm not saying they should do everything like ufotable, but they should probably run through another pass to clean up the distinct discrepancy between their environment and the objects in it.

A good example is 2:45 where it's very noticeable that the background character moving is actually CG but less noticeable with "camera" tricks and multiple layers of compositing.

Unfortunately that ufotable footage is missing the use of CG in the modeling the character animation itself, which is shown here: https://vimeo.com/77675596
Basically the motion and cinematography is fully done in CG then the drawn characters composited over follow frame by frame for the tweens of the CG motion. ufotable also isn't afraid to modulate up to the full tweens on 1s either which is evident in all of their titles. They don't stick with "choppy" just because they are stuck on the limited animation paradigm as evident from the Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel movie and most of their titles. Likewise even with pure 2D and shaft, they too are not stuck on making their animation purposely "limited" and for slow motion especially, will go for full tweens on 1s

fantaselion wrote:
I think "houseki no kuni" is a much better example as its actually fully CG (well mostly) unlike anything ufotable has done and since thats what Revision will be.... yea.

also one thing people always get wrong, Frame rate for CGI is just a SETTING you change, animated at 2 frames per second and animating at 23.976 frames per second takes the same amount of effort.

For example, the pv that recently aired for "kumo desu ga, nani ka?" is a mixed bag in terms of CGI quality but they rendered it at max framerate (except for 1 shot) because they wanted it to feel more "video gamey" due to what happens in the show... level ups and stuff.

It's not just the issue of framerate per se, but frame modulation. That is the key that is missing from animation of the CG in Shirogumi and Polygon and Studio 4C works (Berserk). An object, character or segment of a character moves with consistent, constant spacing, timing or frame rate from point A to point B. That and the lack of some distortion in the tweens also makes the CG movement obvious. What Land of the Lustrious does, and ufotable and Trigger / Sanzigen (sometimes) does is to modulate. Don't use blind interpolation for the in-between motion. See these scenes for example in Kill La Kill:
https://youtu.be/P17l7VlWBE8?t=3m50s
In the Ryuuko vs Satsuki fight scene, which was entirely CG, they first did the full 24f interpolation. Then they applied what they called "frame-skipping", which is actually a "hold" of a particular frame.

Where the others Polygon, et al. differ and is the fatal flaw for trying to emulate limited animation in CG animation / motion, as that they apply "frame-skipping" evenly, constantly spaced, across every single movement. Where as Trigger does it selectively, i.e. using modulation by hand after animating the full interpolated motion, to apply holds on select frames, not evenly.
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fantaselion



Joined: 22 Dec 2016
Posts: 351
PostPosted: Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:44 pm Reply with quote
configspace wrote:
I'm not sure if "acceptance" is the right word as it's more or less a grudging acceptance. For example, I bought Knights of Sidonia 1,2 and Ajin and Blame despite being dissatisfied with the CG and wish it didn't use CG, or at least the way Polygon did. A lot of people still criticize them, but watch them nonetheless. You can't guage acceptance / entrancement of your methods just from viewership numbers.

Zerreth wrote:
i wonder what takes more time at this point as i know both are incredibly time consuming aspects of animation: Compositing 3D CG animation with higher framerates, or animating the clean and crisp hand-drawn animation of the more famous studios.

The CG isn't that bad in the trailer, but the lighting (or lack there of) is really jarring.

One common problem this and others have with the lighting / rendering is that the cell shading is programmatically designed to move or dynamically change against a real light source, except cell shaded, rather than gradient shaded. But 2D anime has its shading fixed. It's stylistic not realistic. The cell shaded regions aren't constantly shifting like it is in CG. But because of that constantly shifting cell shading, some CG artists try to compensate by reducing the lighting and light sources, which removes some of the visual flare.

One way to overcome this without sacrifiing lighting is to hand animate the cell shading in the characters and "bake" in the rendered shading. You completely remove the programatic based lighting physics and use your own non-realistic shading. Then any additional light sources and lighting in the environment won't affect your baked in shading, unless you explicitly want it to. This is the technique Arc System Works uses for their games.

Quote:
ufotable with their CG effects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3R6cf6njz4
I'm not saying they should do everything like ufotable, but they should probably run through another pass to clean up the distinct discrepancy between their environment and the objects in it.

A good example is 2:45 where it's very noticeable that the background character moving is actually CG but less noticeable with "camera" tricks and multiple layers of compositing.

Unfortunately that ufotable footage is missing the use of CG in the modeling the character animation itself, which is shown here: https://vimeo.com/77675596
Basically the motion and cinematography is fully done in CG then the drawn characters composited over follow frame by frame for the tweens of the CG motion. ufotable also isn't afraid to modulate up to the full tweens on 1s either which is evident in all of their titles. They don't stick with "choppy" just because they are stuck on the limited animation paradigm as evident from the Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel movie and most of their titles. Likewise even with pure 2D and shaft, they too are not stuck on making their animation purposely "limited" and for slow motion especially, will go for full tweens on 1s

fantaselion wrote:
I think "houseki no kuni" is a much better example as its actually fully CG (well mostly) unlike anything ufotable has done and since thats what Revision will be.... yea.

also one thing people always get wrong, Frame rate for CGI is just a SETTING you change, animated at 2 frames per second and animating at 23.976 frames per second takes the same amount of effort.

For example, the pv that recently aired for "kumo desu ga, nani ka?" is a mixed bag in terms of CGI quality but they rendered it at max framerate (except for 1 shot) because they wanted it to feel more "video gamey" due to what happens in the show... level ups and stuff.

It's not just the issue of framerate per se, but frame modulation. That is the key that is missing from animation of the CG in Shirogumi and Polygon and Studio 4C works (Berserk). An object, character or segment of a character moves with consistent, constant spacing, timing or frame rate from point A to point B. That and the lack of some distortion in the tweens also makes the CG movement obvious. What Land of the Lustrious does, and ufotable and Trigger / Sanzigen (sometimes) does is to modulate. Don't use blind interpolation for the in-between motion. See these scenes for example in Kill La Kill:
https://youtu.be/P17l7VlWBE8?t=3m50s
In the Ryuuko vs Satsuki fight scene, which was entirely CG, they first did the full 24f interpolation. Then they applied what they called "frame-skipping", which is actually a "hold" of a particular frame.

Where the others Polygon, et al. differ and is the fatal flaw for trying to emulate limited animation in CG animation / motion, as that they apply "frame-skipping" evenly, constantly spaced, across every single movement. Where as Trigger does it selectively, i.e. using modulation by hand after animating the full interpolated motion, to apply holds on select frames, not evenly.


I'm assuming the black rock shooter (TV) anime also modulated (cause the framerate constantly changes)

also nice information, I never knew any of that.
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 17, 2018 11:22 pm Reply with quote
The sexy lady thumbnail is reason enough for me to watch this upcoming show.
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jroa



Joined: 08 Aug 2012
Posts: 536
PostPosted: Sat Aug 18, 2018 7:16 pm Reply with quote
configspace wrote:

One way to overcome this without sacrifiing lighting is to hand animate the cell shading in the characters and "bake" in the rendered shading. You completely remove the programatic based lighting physics and use your own non-realistic shading. Then any additional light sources and lighting in the environment won't affect your baked in shading, unless you explicitly want it to. This is the technique Arc System Works uses for their games.


The underlying question, I believe, would be whether it is cost-effective to do so when every production company doesn't have the benefit of being in the same position as ArcSys because, for example, there's arguably a far lower amount of cell shading and less overall footage needing to be hand animated in a fighting game than in a fully 3D TV series.

Quote:
It's not just the issue of framerate per se, but frame modulation. That is the key that is missing from animation of the CG in Shirogumi and Polygon and Studio 4C works (Berserk).


I will admit to lacking the precise technical vocabulary to fully engage with some of your finer points, but it is probably worth mentioning that different situations and productions have their own nuances.

For instance, it wasn't Studio 4C that did the newest Berserk anime. That was GEMBA.

Studio 4°C worked on the Berserk movie trilogy back in 2012/2013, which combined 2D and 3D animation. We could argue about whether or not that combination was effective, but I will readily state that the results still looked considerably better than the subsequent TV series from 2016/2017. As the link above explains, GEMBA's work on the show had its own unique problems which, in my understanding, were far more extensive.

Similarly, I will argue that Sanzigen has done some impressive work in recent years. It doesn't receive the same sort of popular/critical acclaim as Orange's work on Land of the Lustrous around here, but they have shown noticeable improvement compared to their shows from earlier years.

Ironically enough, I've always found studio Orange's 3D work to be quite advanced within the industry, but on this very website there have been reviewers who were calling it "clunky" not too long ago, before Land of the Lustrous became a hit, thus once again engaging in the same tiresome stances and dismissive generalizations about 3D animation.

Quote:

An object, character or segment of a character moves with consistent, constant spacing, timing or frame rate from point A to point B. That and the lack of some distortion in the tweens also makes the CG movement obvious. What Land of the Lustrious does, and ufotable and Trigger / Sanzigen (sometimes) does is to modulate. Don't use blind interpolation for the in-between motion. See these scenes for example in Kill La Kill:
https://youtu.be/P17l7VlWBE8?t=3m50s
In the Ryuuko vs Satsuki fight scene, which was entirely CG, they first did the full 24f interpolation. Then they applied what they called "frame-skipping", which is actually a "hold" of a particular frame.


This is interesting, but speaking from my own personal experience...the 3D scenes in Kill La Kill never stopped being obvious. They were suitable for the needs of the production, because I don't expect every single company to adopt the same approach, but I wouldn't say they had achieved the same end result as the CG in Land of the Lustrous.
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BlueAlf



Joined: 02 Jan 2017
Posts: 1488
PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 7:18 pm Reply with quote
That's some interesting insight regarding the production process.
I mostly judge on the story beats, so I'm more intrigued by the staff composition rather than anything else. For me, the CG in the trailer is good enough.
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Cardcaptor Takato



Joined: 27 Jan 2018
Posts: 4771
PostPosted: Fri Aug 24, 2018 10:55 am Reply with quote
I think CGI anime has come a long way from the old days of Final Fantasy The Spirits Within and Japan will only be able to improve their techniques by making more. We can't forget that CGI American animation also started off really janky and some of the earliest American CGI animation doesn't hold up that well with it's animation quality like Beast Wars and Reboot and even the first Toy Story movie looks kind of dated. The CGI for revisions looks fine to me. It doesn't look terrible but it doesn't look that much more impressive than any other CGI anime that's out now. It just looks fine. The plot also just looks kind of cliched with the whole thing of aliens attacking a high school and the angsty pink haired anime action girl showing up and wowing everyone with how cool and angsty she is. I'll give it a shot like I have done all the other Netflix anime to see how it is but this kind of reminds me of Under the Dog if it was done in CGI.
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