Felt the same way. Big fan of WoW though, a great game that shows, especially in PvP that skill is king and that gear only comes into play when its players on equal skill level.
Uhh what? I've never in my life heard WoW's PvP being praised. And I played that game, and all MMOs I've played actually, just for the PvP. Never did raiding in my life.
But WoW's PvP was always really lame. It's the most unbalanced thing I ever seen. It shows especially with the arena. There's always a flavor-of-the-season setup, especially in 2v2, and each class will have a must-have spec, and that's it. You happen to play the wrong classes? Tough luck, can't make any progress. I remember the season we decided to quit the game was when I tried playing my Priest with my friend's Warlock in the arena. We went from being 2200 the previous season, to barely making it out of the 1600 bracket.
And on the gear thing, really it's the most gear-dependent game I ever played. They actually use gear as a barrier to entry for a lot of their content, PvP especially.
I was there on Day 1...and it was great for 400 hours, but then reality set in, I took a break, went back for a few months for Cataclysm...then left for good...with GW2, I'll never look back.
I'm going to head into the GW 2 thread and proclaim how WoW is better and how glad I am I could finally quit GW 1 :P
I'm getting the CE from a friend and already paid for the annual pass, so I'm excited. I like WoW, I take occasional breaks for a few months and pop back in. With the recent changes in the game I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything or not experiencing content too, so it's honestly a pretty fun multiplayer experience.
You don't have to grind for anything anymore, unless you want too. At this time grinding in WoW is a choice thing, you don't HAVE to do it to stay competitive in PvE or PvP.
And with Mists this will further be changed with the inclusion of differently styled dailies, scenarios, challenge modes and other ways of acquiring the currency needed for the normal tier weapons and armour. If a player wants to go do high level heroic stuff, well, find a guild and do so, but you don't have too, nothing forces you to do anything in WoW, you can have a ton of fun and get progression by playing alone.
At least play WoW and try out the beta before bringing up the same old and completely untrue complaints so prevalent by ex-wowers :P
Trailer was beautiful, as per blizzard standards. Might have to start playing WoW again when it comes out, just so I can be the Troll monk i've always dreamed of.
If Blizzard were to start a Kickstarter where they said their cinematics crew were going to make an entire Warcraft movie, they would get millions and millions.
If Blizzard were to start a Kickstarter where they said their cinematics crew were going to make an entire Warcraft movie, they would get millions and millions.
That was absolutely awesome.
Blizzard's cinematics department is actually larger and apparently better equipped than pixar's so it shouldnt be a surprise.
Also there is a Warcraft movie in the works, live action though. Supposed to be a trilogy. Legendary Pictures has the motion picture rights.
If Blizzard were to start a Kickstarter where they said their cinematics crew were going to make an entire Warcraft movie, they would get millions and millions.
That was absolutely awesome.
Blizzard make a 3D Animated Film, real action won't cut It I don't think at least try It down the road.
Blizzard's cinematics department is actually larger and apparently better equipped than pixar's
I hope you meant that as a joke.
Pixar is far bigger, works on multiple movies in parallel and also develops Renderman and a lot of other internally used software.
I hope you meant that as a joke.
Pixar is far bigger, works on multiple movies in parallel and also develops Renderman and a lot of other internally used software.
Nope. Not a joke. Pixar isnt as big as you think it is. As for how big blizzard's cinematics department is, I was told it was larger by a few inside sources.
Until I see otherwise I will take them for their word. Blizzard as a studio is just massive.
The quality in art between pixar and blizzard are night and day. If you watched any of their movies you will find a lot of cheap tricks or not very detailed environments. They use a subd smoothing type on their meshes. They dont need to be large to do what they do.
Anyways, both are great companies but dont be so surprised if Blizzard has a larger cinematics department.
The quality in art between pixar and blizzard are night and day.
Their styles are so completely different, it's kind of hard to compare. Just because it doesn't have any overly complex detail, doesn't make it of lesser quality.
Nope. Not a joke. Pixar isnt as big as you think it is.
I think it's nearly 1000 people at Pixar vs. 130-150 at Blizzard Cinematics.
Until I see otherwise I will take them for their word. Blizzard as a studio is just massive.
Most of it is administrative staff for WOW. That game has more players than there are of us hungarians in the entire world. You need a small army to manage the network and the subscribers and all.
The quality in art between pixar and blizzard are night and day.
If you watched any of their movies you will find a lot of cheap tricks or not very detailed environments. They use a subd smoothing type on their meshes. They dont need to be large to do what they do.
You must be very, very young, obsessed with "MOAR detail!"... This entire idea I quoted is wrong on so many levels that I could talk an entire day about it...
Nope. Not a joke. Pixar isnt as big as you think it is. As for how big blizzard's cinematics department is, I was told it was larger by a few inside sources.
Until I see otherwise I will take them for their word. Blizzard as a studio is just massive.
The quality in art between pixar and blizzard are night and day. If you watched any of their movies you will find a lot of cheap tricks or not very detailed environments. They use a subd smoothing type on their meshes. They dont need to be large to do what they do.
Anyways, both are great companies but dont be so surprised if Blizzard has a larger cinematics department.
Nope. Not a joke. Pixar isnt as big as you think it is. As for how big blizzard's cinematics department is, I was told it was larger by a few inside sources.
Until I see otherwise I will take them for their word. Blizzard as a studio is just massive.
The quality in art between pixar and blizzard are night and day. If you watched any of their movies you will find a lot of cheap tricks or not very detailed environments. They use a subd smoothing type on their meshes. They dont need to be large to do what they do.
Anyways, both are great companies but dont be so surprised if Blizzard has a larger cinematics department.
this is the only sentence in your entire quote that is remotely true, but it's used in such a terrible, false context, that I can't even think of how to respond to it.
Blizzard's cinematic dept doesn't do just pre-rendered, they do realtime cutscenes too and pretty much everything else that's not direct gameplay animations. So not all of the people are really working on pre-rendered goodness. But, yes, they're big too from what I Heard and Blizz is indeed huge.
Let me clarify since I think I didnt articulate my post well enough and some of you are running off in a completely different direction I intended for it to go.
I was told, by quite a few people, those who have taught and or worked with those who went on to work in Blizzard's cinematics department, that the very same department is larger than Pixars in regards to the actual cg & animation team.
Regarding the subd, yes I was referring to the one found in modo and at the time I really couldnt recall what to call it exactly, its not a major point but an after thought.
The point I was trying to make between blizzard's cinematics and pixars is that they are worlds apart. Not worlds apart in say capability or level of tech, but art style and expectations. Whats goes into making a film like UP might not necessarily go into making a diablo 3 trailer for example. This also implied that the size of the team needed for what went into reaching those goals /expectations might not be exactly the same either, as it might not have to be. For example if Pixar needed more artist to do what they do, then they clearly have the resources to get the number of artist needed.
Some how you guys thought it would be a good idea to take, while I admit to not being articulate enough initially, what I said to a whole new level and for lack of a better word, belittle me as a poster (implying I am young, making jokes or stupid)...or at least thats the impression I am getting from some responses.
I also said IF, in regards to the size of the cinematics department. At that point I am not making a 100% absolute claim... but held open the possibility I was told wrong.
I would appreciate it if those responding would recognize that from the get go. By responding to someone calling my post a joke, it looks like I got the short end of the deal on this one.
Pixar movies are way more complex than a Blizzard cinematic. The size of the cast, the amount of (keyframed!) animation, the size of the environments, and so on...
And Pixar is definitely much bigger than the Blizzard movies department. Several times bigger. You clearly have no idea about the kind and amount of work that actually goes into this stuff, both the Blizzard movies and the Pixar ones.
Pixar movies are way more complex than a Blizzard cinematic. The size of the cast, the amount of (keyframed!) animation, the size of the environments, and so on...
And Pixar is definitely much bigger than the Blizzard movies department. Several times bigger. You clearly have no idea about the kind and amount of work that actually goes into this stuff, both the Blizzard movies and the Pixar ones.
Are you sure they are not just rendering out plates for use in Nuke?
How much of this is objective and how much of it is subjective? Lets try not to mix the two up.
Also dont start the whole "you clearly have no idea..ect" types of comments, you dont know my back ground or my education. You can disagree with me, and I welcome that, but lets keep it objective, constructive while leaving the belittling types of comments out of this discussion please.
When i watched the trailer, i remembered Kung Fu Panda, the villages, the pandas fighting, all.
Vargatom, FYI, pixar didn't create the subdivs as you said, they improved and created a new algorithm for subdivision and they called it "pixar subdivision" (modo uses it and for me is a SHIT, cuz i can't subdiv x1 the model with the edge weights), that's all. And Square-Enix have done their work with another one you may don't know.
The subdivision modelling exists since ms-dos, and the first 3ds-max...had it as a modifier. When i was 17 (1997), i was using truespace 2 and i was customed to use the subdivisi
The subdivision modelling exists since ms-dos, and the first 3ds-max...had it as a modifier. When i was 17 (1997), i was using truespace 2 and i was customed to use the subdivisi
I have Herp Derp installed, it converts all youtube comments to "herp derp derp derp herp derp derp derp herp herp derp"
Pretty sure I don't have that plug-in installed... but I see the exact same thing! Weird! :poly136:
And dataday... no; just no. For the reasons everyone else has covered exhaustively.
I liked the cinematic a lot, pity it's not representative of MMO gameplay, or rather should I say, it's a pity MMO's aren't that exciting to play (IMO). They don't serve up that kind of excitement anyway, a different kind I guess.
Are you sure they are not just rendering out plates for use in Nuke?
How much of this is objective and how much of it is subjective? Lets try not to mix the two up.
Pixar is (or was) notorious for rendering full images with no compositing. In any case, I believe they're over 1000 people now (and DreamWorks is even larger), and both of those campuses are much bigger than the cinematic department at Blizzard. It doesn't make any sense that Blizzard's cinematics team would be larger than a feature studio with multiple movies in development, and besides, to match Pixar's size, cinematics would have to be 1/5 of Blizzard's global work force. It is far more likely that they do good work with much less people (albeit their projects are much shorter than features).
The subdivision modelling exists since ms-dos, and the first 3ds-max...had it as a modifier. When i was 17 (1997), i was using truespace 2 and i was customed to use the subdivisi
You with this idea that Pixar is somehow inferior to Blizzard's stuff seem to be thinking that only the hyper-real, overly detailed model and texture art style is complicated and work intensive. That is where you're very very wrong.
I'm glad your pointing this out Tamas. It drives me crazy, especially with game art. It's always about more detail and more doodads. Pixars designs may appear simple, but they are in no way easy. Making good cartoony work is difficult because of it's simplicity.
You also have to take into account how big their projects are. Blizzard's cinematic team are sure as heck not pushing out hour and a half films every year.
Anyways, Blizzard is still great at what they do. Beautiful cinematic.
Catmull and Clark did their work in 1978. On Unix based systems mostly, as far as I know. MS Dos graphics were a joke.
Toy Story 2 airport scene. Monsters door storage scene. Toy Story 3 trash scene. Jungles, cities, pedestrians. Should I go on? Stretchy character with hair and cloth sim.
You with this idea that Pixar is somehow inferior to Blizzard's stuff seem to be thinking that only the hyper-real, overly detailed model and texture art style is complicated and work intensive. That is where you're very very wrong.
Have you worked in any kind of large scale movie production? Sets, characters, effects, simulation etc. - because it might change your mind. I've been doing this for a decade and I still can't even try to imagine how complicated a Pixar movie has to be...
As far as we all know, with wikipedia, i also know all started in 1978... but as i already said, we didn't see it within apps until very late with the first 3d apps. And one more thing, the subdivision modelling apps like modo/silo/hexagon are pretty new.
You assume too many things i didn't say, where did you leave your reading comprehension?. All the cgs has their work, but... cartoons are simpler to do, with less work time, compared with "realistic" characters.
Dataday have posted a great comparison. For me, the shader work, the lighting work, the rigging, the fx, the scenery, all is far superior than pixar's, much worked and detailed, with much love. And ok, it's only a short cinematic and not a full film... but imagine a film with that quality per frame. More Detail is always more work and nobody can't argue that (like that "next next gen" games takes more years of production).
Some of the members of blizzard's cinematic team are from pixar and from other great studios.
Avatar is a great example of quality/heavy work, and you also have the uncanny beowulf movie. Blizzard did a great job with this cg, it's not very realistic, but it's very appealing, cool, with a semi-cartoon essence. This work is in a higher level, and if you work at digic pictures, you SHOULD see it.
All the rest is just pure ENVY imho.
BTW for your interest, i'm a generalist, specialized in characters/shading/texturing and hard surfaces, and i perfectly know the work behind a movie production, all the work is almost done by specialists, Lighting TDs, Character artist's, texturers, Riggers, Fx Artists, compositers, etc.
I love the Digic cinematics, so now that i answered you to a personal question, I'd love to know which is your position at Digic, or if you have a real portfolio, showing your lighting work, shading, rigs, or characters or whatever you do there.
BTW, cartoon characters for me are simpler and easier to do.
Are you sure they are not just rendering out plates for use in Nuke?
How much of this is objective and how much of it is subjective? Lets try not to mix the two up.
Also dont start the whole "you clearly have no idea..ect" types of comments, you dont know my back ground or my education. You can disagree with me, and I welcome that, but lets keep it objective, constructive while leaving the belittling types of comments out of this discussion please.
Just chatted with a coworker who worked at pixar on two separate occasions. They are about 1000 strong at peak of production with 2 films in the pipeline.
Blizzard cinematic department is not nearly that large.
You went from having "inside sources" to a "a guy who knew a guy". I am here relaying information from an actual Pixar animator. Besides, half the veterans on this forum are from Blizzard so they may be able to give you some clarification on that as well.
It is not subjective, you were just making things up or were misinformed. It's allright, it's not illegal to be mistaken. Happens to all of us.
I don't understand what do you understand about "level" LOL. But i say again, cartoons CAN'T be compared to Blizzard's CGs or Keloid.
Pixar fanboy, maybe?
The animation isn't that great at times and in sections some of the materials don't look that great - it would probably lose a lot if they removed the camera shake and post process grunge.
I'm not a Pixar fanboy actually, I haven't even seen all of their movies. Thanks for accusing me of fanboyism and calling out vargatom's artistic skills, that shows a lot of maturity on your part.
The size of Blizzard Film Dept is pretty easy to guage from the Cinematics credits. But, as someone who works in the Dept, I can assure you it is nowhere close to 1000. It's less than 200 (don't have an exact number). Some of that is devoted to real-time cut-scenes as well.
As far as we all know, with wikipedia, i also know all started in 1978... but as i already said, we didn't see it within apps until very late with the first 3d apps.
What has it got to do with who invented subdivision and when? And FYI Pixar has plenty of custom 3D software that we have no idea about. What the developers of widely available apps did at some time is irrelevant.
Anyway, this whole issue is completely tangential to the original topic of comparing Blizzard and Pixar...
cartoons are simpler to do, with less work time, compared with "realistic" characters.
Why do you believe that it's always the case?
As someone already pointed out it can often be a lot harder to design and build a strong stylized character. Just take a look at Merida's hair or think about the scene where her clothes are getting ripped.
For me, the shader work, the lighting work, the rigging, the fx, the scenery, all is far superior than pixar's, much worked and detailed, with much love.
That is just an opinion and does not make it a fact... there are people who can appreciate both styles and the work behind them.
And again, remember that every Pixar movie had some truly insanely complex scenes - the NASCAR races in Cars with a hundred thousand cars, or the Monsters door storage scene where they also had to build portals to move the characters and the camera around, all with the hair on Sully and on the kid and so on. Oh and did I mention Wall-E with an entire city full of ruins and trash?
These are so utterly complicated problems that very few studios can even start to think about how they could be solved, and most prefer to avoid such challenges completely.
but imagine a film with that quality per frame. More Detail is always more work and nobody can't argue that
Yes, noone denies that an entire animated feature with the art style of Blizzard's work would be incredibly complex and work intensive.
But here we were comparing a Pixar MOVIE with this short TRAILER, and how large the teams producing them have to be. That was the original statement, that Blizzard's movie team is larger than Pixar - and that somehow lead to people actually dismissing Pixar's work as simple and easy, which I still have a hard time to comprehend.
Understand that a short trailer can cheat environment work with matte paintings, avoid complex problems with clever staging and framing, chose which battles to fight and so on.
But when you make an entire animated feature, you have to do a lot of these things the right way, which means insane amounts of work.
This work is in a higher level, and if you work at digic pictures, you SHOULD see it.
Again, art style has nothing to do with the quality of the execution, and little with the amount of work required.
And don't get me wrong, I'm a great admirer of Blizzard's work, I've always been, and I think it should have been apparent - but I'm not blinding myself to any other kinds of achievements.
All the rest is just pure ENVY imho.
Who am I supposed to be envying here??
BTW for your interest, i'm a generalist, specialized in characters/shading/texturing and hard surfaces, and i perfectly know the work behind a movie production, all the work is almost done by specialists, Lighting TDs, Character artist's, texturers, Riggers, Fx Artists, compositers, etc.
If anything, that only narrows the understanding of specifics IMHO. There are very few generalists at either Pixar or Blizzard because the work they do is so complex that it requires full dedication to a simple discipline. Knowledge of these aspects of CG is not the same as being part of a large scale production.
I'd love to know which is your position at Digic, or if you have a real portfolio, showing your lighting work, shading, rigs, or characters or whatever you do there.
At first, in 2004 when we were about 12-14 people, I did lots of different work through the production - modeling, rigging, scene assembly, rendering, lighting, even some animation.
Then I started to focus on modeling, then as we started to grow I became lead modeler, now I'm lead character modeler only. Even with this reduced scope, half my time is spent on managing my team and attending meetings and the rest is facial rigging R&D and actual production work.
Oh and I haven't really done much personal work since I've started here.. there's always enough to do or to try to do better.
BTW, cartoon characters for me are simpler and easier to do.
Try your hand at something like the two leads in Up... Not nearly as simple IMHO.
Replies
Uhh what? I've never in my life heard WoW's PvP being praised. And I played that game, and all MMOs I've played actually, just for the PvP. Never did raiding in my life.
But WoW's PvP was always really lame. It's the most unbalanced thing I ever seen. It shows especially with the arena. There's always a flavor-of-the-season setup, especially in 2v2, and each class will have a must-have spec, and that's it. You happen to play the wrong classes? Tough luck, can't make any progress. I remember the season we decided to quit the game was when I tried playing my Priest with my friend's Warlock in the arena. We went from being 2200 the previous season, to barely making it out of the 1600 bracket.
And on the gear thing, really it's the most gear-dependent game I ever played. They actually use gear as a barrier to entry for a lot of their content, PvP especially.
You can have the Panda's.
I'm getting the CE from a friend and already paid for the annual pass, so I'm excited. I like WoW, I take occasional breaks for a few months and pop back in. With the recent changes in the game I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything or not experiencing content too, so it's honestly a pretty fun multiplayer experience.
You don't have to grind for anything anymore, unless you want too. At this time grinding in WoW is a choice thing, you don't HAVE to do it to stay competitive in PvE or PvP.
And with Mists this will further be changed with the inclusion of differently styled dailies, scenarios, challenge modes and other ways of acquiring the currency needed for the normal tier weapons and armour. If a player wants to go do high level heroic stuff, well, find a guild and do so, but you don't have too, nothing forces you to do anything in WoW, you can have a ton of fun and get progression by playing alone.
At least play WoW and try out the beta before bringing up the same old and completely untrue complaints so prevalent by ex-wowers :P
PS: pre-ordering GW 2, so yeah
This trailer better gets one of those art books
That was absolutely awesome.
Blizzard's cinematics department is actually larger and apparently better equipped than pixar's so it shouldnt be a surprise.
Also there is a Warcraft movie in the works, live action though. Supposed to be a trilogy. Legendary Pictures has the motion picture rights.
Last I heard the script is getting a re-write.
SUDDEN BLIZZARD CINEMATIC!
"SIGN ME UP!"
Blizzard make a 3D Animated Film, real action won't cut It I don't think at least try It down the road.
Loved the trailer!
I have Herp Derp installed, it converts all youtube comments to "herp derp derp derp herp derp derp derp herp herp derp"
I hope you meant that as a joke.
Pixar is far bigger, works on multiple movies in parallel and also develops Renderman and a lot of other internally used software.
Too be honest I've lived here my entire life and i havn't seen that many kung fu pandas around
And holy crap that's an awesome cinematic!
Nope. Not a joke. Pixar isnt as big as you think it is. As for how big blizzard's cinematics department is, I was told it was larger by a few inside sources.
Until I see otherwise I will take them for their word. Blizzard as a studio is just massive.
The quality in art between pixar and blizzard are night and day. If you watched any of their movies you will find a lot of cheap tricks or not very detailed environments. They use a subd smoothing type on their meshes. They dont need to be large to do what they do.
Anyways, both are great companies but dont be so surprised if Blizzard has a larger cinematics department.
You mean the technique for smoothing meshes developed by Pixar? What's that have to do with anything anyway, Blizzard doesn't subdivide their meshes?
Their styles are so completely different, it's kind of hard to compare. Just because it doesn't have any overly complex detail, doesn't make it of lesser quality.
I think it's nearly 1000 people at Pixar vs. 130-150 at Blizzard Cinematics.
Most of it is administrative staff for WOW. That game has more players than there are of us hungarians in the entire world. You need a small army to manage the network and the subscribers and all.
You must be very, very young, obsessed with "MOAR detail!"... This entire idea I quoted is wrong on so many levels that I could talk an entire day about it...
Dear god, what on earth are you talking about.
no
this is the only sentence in your entire quote that is remotely true, but it's used in such a terrible, false context, that I can't even think of how to respond to it.
I was told, by quite a few people, those who have taught and or worked with those who went on to work in Blizzard's cinematics department, that the very same department is larger than Pixars in regards to the actual cg & animation team.
Regarding the subd, yes I was referring to the one found in modo and at the time I really couldnt recall what to call it exactly, its not a major point but an after thought.
The point I was trying to make between blizzard's cinematics and pixars is that they are worlds apart. Not worlds apart in say capability or level of tech, but art style and expectations. Whats goes into making a film like UP might not necessarily go into making a diablo 3 trailer for example. This also implied that the size of the team needed for what went into reaching those goals /expectations might not be exactly the same either, as it might not have to be. For example if Pixar needed more artist to do what they do, then they clearly have the resources to get the number of artist needed.
Some how you guys thought it would be a good idea to take, while I admit to not being articulate enough initially, what I said to a whole new level and for lack of a better word, belittle me as a poster (implying I am young, making jokes or stupid)...or at least thats the impression I am getting from some responses.
I also said IF, in regards to the size of the cinematics department. At that point I am not making a 100% absolute claim... but held open the possibility I was told wrong.
I would appreciate it if those responding would recognize that from the get go. By responding to someone calling my post a joke, it looks like I got the short end of the deal on this one.
And Pixar is definitely much bigger than the Blizzard movies department. Several times bigger. You clearly have no idea about the kind and amount of work that actually goes into this stuff, both the Blizzard movies and the Pixar ones.
Are you sure they are not just rendering out plates for use in Nuke?
How much of this is objective and how much of it is subjective? Lets try not to mix the two up.
Also dont start the whole "you clearly have no idea..ect" types of comments, you dont know my back ground or my education. You can disagree with me, and I welcome that, but lets keep it objective, constructive while leaving the belittling types of comments out of this discussion please.
Vargatom, FYI, pixar didn't create the subdivs
The subdivision modelling exists since ms-dos, and the first 3ds-max...had it as a modifier. When i was 17 (1997), i was using truespace 2 and i was customed to use the subdivisi
Pretty sure I don't have that plug-in installed... but I see the exact same thing! Weird! :poly136:
And dataday... no; just no. For the reasons everyone else has covered exhaustively.
I liked the cinematic a lot, pity it's not representative of MMO gameplay, or rather should I say, it's a pity MMO's aren't that exciting to play (IMO). They don't serve up that kind of excitement anyway, a different kind I guess.
Pixar is (or was) notorious for rendering full images with no compositing. In any case, I believe they're over 1000 people now (and DreamWorks is even larger), and both of those campuses are much bigger than the cinematic department at Blizzard. It doesn't make any sense that Blizzard's cinematics team would be larger than a feature studio with multiple movies in development, and besides, to match Pixar's size, cinematics would have to be 1/5 of Blizzard's global work force. It is far more likely that they do good work with much less people (albeit their projects are much shorter than features).
Ms-dos or pc-dos is from 1981... so 1978, meh
I don't understand what do you understand about "level" LOL. But i say again, cartoons CAN'T be compared to Blizzard's CGs or Keloid.
Pixar fanboy, maybe?
I'm glad your pointing this out Tamas. It drives me crazy, especially with game art. It's always about more detail and more doodads. Pixars designs may appear simple, but they are in no way easy. Making good cartoony work is difficult because of it's simplicity.
Anyways, Blizzard is still great at what they do. Beautiful cinematic.
As far as we all know, with wikipedia, i also know all started in 1978... but as i already said, we didn't see it within apps until very late with the first 3d apps. And one more thing, the subdivision modelling apps like modo/silo/hexagon are pretty new.
You assume too many things i didn't say, where did you leave your reading comprehension?. All the cgs has their work, but... cartoons are simpler to do, with less work time, compared with "realistic" characters.
Dataday have posted a great comparison. For me, the shader work, the lighting work, the rigging, the fx, the scenery, all is far superior than pixar's, much worked and detailed, with much love. And ok, it's only a short cinematic and not a full film... but imagine a film with that quality per frame. More Detail is always more work and nobody can't argue that (like that "next next gen" games takes more years of production).
Some of the members of blizzard's cinematic team are from pixar and from other great studios.
Avatar is a great example of quality/heavy work, and you also have the uncanny beowulf movie. Blizzard did a great job with this cg, it's not very realistic, but it's very appealing, cool, with a semi-cartoon essence. This work is in a higher level, and if you work at digic pictures, you SHOULD see it.
All the rest is just pure ENVY imho.
BTW for your interest, i'm a generalist, specialized in characters/shading/texturing and hard surfaces, and i perfectly know the work behind a movie production, all the work is almost done by specialists, Lighting TDs, Character artist's, texturers, Riggers, Fx Artists, compositers, etc.
I love the Digic cinematics, so now that i answered you to a personal question, I'd love to know which is your position at Digic, or if you have a real portfolio, showing your lighting work, shading, rigs, or characters or whatever you do there.
BTW, cartoon characters for me are simpler and easier to do.
Just chatted with a coworker who worked at pixar on two separate occasions. They are about 1000 strong at peak of production with 2 films in the pipeline.
Blizzard cinematic department is not nearly that large.
You went from having "inside sources" to a "a guy who knew a guy". I am here relaying information from an actual Pixar animator. Besides, half the veterans on this forum are from Blizzard so they may be able to give you some clarification on that as well.
It is not subjective, you were just making things up or were misinformed. It's allright, it's not illegal to be mistaken. Happens to all of us.
Also, don't backpedal. We're not out to get you.
The animation isn't that great at times and in sections some of the materials don't look that great - it would probably lose a lot if they removed the camera shake and post process grunge.
I'm not a Pixar fanboy actually, I haven't even seen all of their movies. Thanks for accusing me of fanboyism and calling out vargatom's artistic skills, that shows a lot of maturity on your part.
le sigh,
you're right.
Wuv ?
What has it got to do with who invented subdivision and when? And FYI Pixar has plenty of custom 3D software that we have no idea about. What the developers of widely available apps did at some time is irrelevant.
Anyway, this whole issue is completely tangential to the original topic of comparing Blizzard and Pixar...
Why do you believe that it's always the case?
As someone already pointed out it can often be a lot harder to design and build a strong stylized character. Just take a look at Merida's hair or think about the scene where her clothes are getting ripped.
That is just an opinion and does not make it a fact... there are people who can appreciate both styles and the work behind them.
And again, remember that every Pixar movie had some truly insanely complex scenes - the NASCAR races in Cars with a hundred thousand cars, or the Monsters door storage scene where they also had to build portals to move the characters and the camera around, all with the hair on Sully and on the kid and so on. Oh and did I mention Wall-E with an entire city full of ruins and trash?
These are so utterly complicated problems that very few studios can even start to think about how they could be solved, and most prefer to avoid such challenges completely.
Yes, noone denies that an entire animated feature with the art style of Blizzard's work would be incredibly complex and work intensive.
But here we were comparing a Pixar MOVIE with this short TRAILER, and how large the teams producing them have to be. That was the original statement, that Blizzard's movie team is larger than Pixar - and that somehow lead to people actually dismissing Pixar's work as simple and easy, which I still have a hard time to comprehend.
Understand that a short trailer can cheat environment work with matte paintings, avoid complex problems with clever staging and framing, chose which battles to fight and so on.
But when you make an entire animated feature, you have to do a lot of these things the right way, which means insane amounts of work.
Again, art style has nothing to do with the quality of the execution, and little with the amount of work required.
And don't get me wrong, I'm a great admirer of Blizzard's work, I've always been, and I think it should have been apparent - but I'm not blinding myself to any other kinds of achievements.
Who am I supposed to be envying here??
If anything, that only narrows the understanding of specifics IMHO. There are very few generalists at either Pixar or Blizzard because the work they do is so complex that it requires full dedication to a simple discipline. Knowledge of these aspects of CG is not the same as being part of a large scale production.
At first, in 2004 when we were about 12-14 people, I did lots of different work through the production - modeling, rigging, scene assembly, rendering, lighting, even some animation.
Then I started to focus on modeling, then as we started to grow I became lead modeler, now I'm lead character modeler only. Even with this reduced scope, half my time is spent on managing my team and attending meetings and the rest is facial rigging R&D and actual production work.
Oh and I haven't really done much personal work since I've started here.. there's always enough to do or to try to do better.
Try your hand at something like the two leads in Up... Not nearly as simple IMHO.
You're right, sorry about the derailment. I'll drop the issue now.