Oh, ooo oo oo
Don't tell me that camera
- How do they do that it seems impossible to me
- The black hole they actually built a rendering engine
- Just for this.
- Can you guess why?
What's up guys
Welcome back to VFX artists react, and today is a very special day because we have a very
- special guest.
- the Blender Guru himself.
- Hey, everybody,
My name is Andrew Price. I'm from Australia. I've been using 3d software for about 12 years
- My channel is called Blender Guru big fan of the show. Happy to start reacting.
- Let's do it.
- I've been wanting to talk about the Lego movie.
- It's so beautiful,
- I feel like I can just touch every piece.
- Is every Lego piece like an official Lego piece in this movie?
- Yeah. Yeah
That's the thing that it was,
consist- every little piece is consistent. All the colors are actually the real colors that they can print at the Lego factory as well.
Honestly, like this movie kind of put the nail in the coffin of stop-motion movies.
It's like when your animation looks this real-- because this is indistinguishable from like reality stop-motion. It's so detailed
Yeah, yeah
So something about this movie makes the lighting
way more realistic than has previously been done in animated movies. Can you guess why?
They filmed it practically, and then deepfaked it.
So the reason that this looks so realistic is
because the Lego movie was the first major animated movie to use the Aces
color encoding system. A like cheap compact camera has dynamic range of about
11 F-stops, right a DSLR has about 13 F-stops. And the Arri Alexa, which is the best camera has
14.5 F-stops. The best device is actually your eye which has 20
F-stops. Previous animated movies couldn't do something like this because
if they exposed for the Sun then everything else would fall into darkness. They were reducing the power of the sunlight
- because they needed to expose for everything else.
- Just like the Sun wouldn't have to be forced into that
- Exactly. Yeah, which doesn't make any sense.
- high dynamic range.
So what they did is they switched it to Aces which allowed them to use an F-stop of up to 30.
So they went from five F-stops to 30. In this scene, we have in the background
we have some people having coffee in a shadow, and we can still see the detail:
we can see that he's wearing glasses, we can see the color of his hair. And as well as that we have
extremely bright sunlight which is hitting those coffee cups
bouncing off his head there, and that is the
real value of the Sun relative to everything else. By having this at the correct thing
they can actually have like the real values that look and feel that way. It can actually capture the full color spectrum as well
So it's not just high dynamic range. It's a wide color gamut.
But what's interesting is how that applies at certain exposure ranges. When something is overexposed the colors
desaturate as things get brighter, and previously they weren't doing that. When you turn it on for a 3D scene,
it's just like everything works the way it should.
The the light is the correct value, things are washing out as they should, you can actually use the true value of light as it
- should be.
- There's a couple other really subtle things that all play together to make this stuff
look really photorealistic. One is when you're filming stuff in miniature,
your depth of field gets really, really shallow. Imagine taking a telephoto lens and zooming in on something
that's only this big. If you shot this in real life for like a wide-angle lens like a 28 millimeter lens of a real person
on the couch, you wouldn't have that shallow of the depth of field,
but if you shot a miniature you would. So they're actually mimicking the real life
parameter, light wrap, and light bloom HDRI, but the other huge thing was the imperfections.
You could even see like the seam line when he when he was like
shaving you could see the seam line in his hair.
Details, that's so cool. I can feel my fingernail running over the top of it. Yeah, exactly
The Lego movie I think it was very successful because it made me want to play with my Legos
after watching it.
- The Mist. The Mist is a good one.
- Oh dude, I love this movie.
- Watch your head boy. Oh no, don't get dragged into the Mist.
- This guy's looks way too chill for what's going on.
- Frank Castle? What's his name?
- Wait, is that the Punisher?
- Yeah!
The great the practical effects are totally like
- Up selling the visual effects.
- Yeah, exactly. Oh, man
- You know, he's gone. Just let him go, right. Oh, yeah, so this is--
- "Mama!"
- That looks a little rusty.
- And he was never seen again.
- See like they don't-- ahh, the tentacles. 
- They don't look that--
- It's weird.
- I hate that that that does not look good to me.
I think part of it is the texturing is unmotivated.
Yeah, like that shit like it looks kind of like just a uniform-- like they got-- what's the name, like, not a caterpillar?
- What's the one that's like, oh- 
- A worm? Or a centipede?
- In Australia, we have them witchetty grubs
It's a real thing, a witchetty grub, and it reminds me of that and it's just kind of like this
it's got like little blood vessels going through it,
but it's like-- the actual creature itself has got like bones and like things in it,
so it should have like, in my opinion, like parts that are clean and then other parts that are like more fleshy.
- It's all one texture. It's all uniformly slimy.
- Another thing
I'm noticing there is that the lighting is also a little bit of that like
weird movie lighting. Look at the character in the front
Yeah, like his face the side of his face is really bright
but the other side of his head is basically black, same with a guy's baseball cap.
But that worm the left side of it isn't black. It's still kind of a glowing
- medium dark gray.
- I feel like this is something that's kind of directors fault.
Probably the artist lights it with accurate lighting the scene, then the director goes,
"You know what? It's too dark.
"Add some more lights," and the VFX artist goes like, "But you didn't have lights there on set," and the doctor goes, "I don't care!
I can't see it make it brighter," and then now suddenly the CG object is just not really lit correctly.
Look at the lighting again. Look at the lighting on his face and look at the lighting of the tentacle
- Oh, yeah.
- The tentacle's just uniformly lit and his face is very clearly dark on one side.
- Where's this edge light coming from?
You see that? Yeah, like well, you don't see the edge light on Frank Castle over here
- you know.
- One last thing to point out: one of the most challenging things you can ever give to a
compositor is a
shot with smoke. You say, "Please put the CG object in the middle of this smoke."
Imagine for a minute that I give you a picture of Clint and I gave you a picture the Grand Canyon and I ask you
to cut Clint out and put him in the Grand Canyon
Oh, and for extra realism, here's a bush to put in front of Clint. Okay, great
I'm gonna need an exacto knife and a couple hours to cut out that bush,
but I can do it and it looks alright. Now let's say I have a picture of a wisp of smoke
I say, "I want you to cut this out and put that over Clint."
How do you cut out a wisp of smoke? Like sure, there might be defined edges, but the smoke's transparent.
That's the challenge you're facing when you're trying to cut out smoke and put it over a CG object.
But they're having to do fake smoke on top of that real smoke for the tentacles to blend them in, and then you end up
- with a non looking real shot, right?
- So the the director-- I think it was Frank Darabont who directed this?
He actually released a black and white version of this movie and apparently that's the way to watch this movie.
Is the black and white version it probably helps tie in the CG a lot better
- What's this?
- Panic Room.
- 2002.
- Wait, a camera can't fit through those banisters. 
- How did he do it?
- They're still not done yet.
- He's still going! Don't tell me that camera-- No, no!
This like a trench run but for cameras, oh
My god, he's ain't done yet. He's still going dude soloing so hard
- Whoa, whoa!
- That's amazing. He didn't need to do this, right? 
- Yeah, like you can just had regular cuts who's had regular cuts
Well, it really gives you a sense of the space, which you need to have for piece about space.
It's also a real time breakdown of what is actually happening,
so it puts you in the vibe of these characters who are hiding from these guys.
- So can you guys guess which parts are CG?
- Those railings are probably CG.
- So they just didn't have the railing there. I think
- everything is CG.
- There's probably a hidden cut here.
- Even the door. Banisters for sure.
- Definitely the banisters.
All of that is CG? What'd I tell you guys! What'd I tell you guys!
Full green screen on this window here.
- I think so. Look at this green screen. 
- That's crazy.
- They're gonna wipe it
It's not green screen, it's not green screen.
All of this is CG. That coffee thing is CG, and the chair is CG. Yeah, cause you don't the camera in the reflection either. That's entirely fake or green screen.
- 3d counter, there it is.
- Everything is CG?
- Hats off to David Fincher's team on this one man.
- That's a master class.
Chaffee this is okay. This is like right alongside with the lego movie in terms of I feel like I can touch it
Okay, interesting because they were also at around the same time. This was when aces was happening
I know one of the first people to try aces that's for something. Yeah, look at that
Look how embedded that is in the frame. It's it's there the hand off you guys noticed the hand off. No, what was that?
He handed him a knife
Is that guy holding a CG knife or is it a real knife that the actor actually because they used sharlto copley, right?
Sharlto, copley was actually insane from what I've gathered
They just kind of filmed it and they're just like all right VFX artists you figure it out
One of the guys that worked on the film emailed us and
Everything was hand tracked
artists had to go in there and by hand just
Line up their skeleton rig with what his motions were and just eyeball it and they did such a good job
The other thing is all the paint outs like same deal like they're sitting there
rebuilding a bunch of the background a bunch of different elements because you have to remove a human being from the shop first before you
Can put a robot back into it. That is the hardest part. Yes. It's pointing out that background
I heard there are artists that would work on one shot for like three to four months
Just you get that one shot and for the next like summer
that's the only thing you work on painting out ninjas chest chappies hand is going across and they just chest so
Originally sharlto copley is proudly reaching out and grabbing the knife meaning they had to rebuild
That part of his chest so that they can't erase Charles or Coakley's hand and put a robot hand there
What a nightmare and you can't tell how do they do that? That it it's super time-consuming work. It's just painful watch it
Watch this moment. I'm getting flashbacks -
Yeah, so what do you guys think they did?
that that helped it look as good as it as it doesn't we had to replicate this with which arguably we kind of did with
The Boston Dynamics video the way you do it is this real reference for the motion real actor onset interacting with people
So people like eye lines match and motions match and rhythms match getting actual light samples from set aka getting a 360-degree HDR
I of the set if you're CG is built in a photo realistic manner that should all come together and give you a rather
Photorealistic lookin end product apparently what they did was they started with the CG model
Then they sent the pops off for printing 3d printing and then they sent those to wetter and wetter actually built scale
Practical models of chappie and they built 11 of them in different damaged states
Obviously he's moving so they didn't use that in the film, but they used it as reference
So the lighting was actually they had something to compare it against that's that's amazing
So like in in the mist, they probably didn't have reference of a tentacle thingy
But here they have reference of a robot and you can actually match it one to one if you can match them up
It's gonna look perfect if they couldn't build it and it wouldn't function in real life
And that means you're dealing with something that's impossible and couldn't actually work. So it also helps it feel authentic. Yes. Yes
The black hole cell are we good this this shots critical imax was like
Interstellar is actually one of our most requested
videos in the comments
I'm glad we're finally getting to it and if you have any scenes shows, whatever you would like us to react you
Please do leave a comment. We read them. They're great inspiration
there's like a difference between the David Fincher effect or chappie where it's like, oh, that's something that I know and
Versus this which is like it's it's beyond us. Right? No one has seen something like this you can see wow
It's a physical model, right? Yeah, that's the Apple the reflections in the window. Perfect a black hole
You can't photograph it I kissed a black hole. Yeah
There's nothing there right? It's literally just a the like super mass of gravity which everything is sucked into
So how would you possibly depict that on film? There's the concept of an accretion disk. The power of the gravity is so
Amazing that basically it's sucking like a universe around it. So this is an accretion disk
Now the reason that you're getting this halo effect there. It's kind of interesting
So for this instead of starting with an artist concept, which is what they would typically do, right?
They actually started with a physicist and they said hey tell us how black holes work it throws some maths at us
They gave that math to the render engine guys, and they actually built a rendering engine
just for this
So and what happened was they had this accretion is they had the thing on it and then they sold this weird
Halo effect and they go it must be a bug something
this isn't this isn't right and then they showed it to Kip and then he went oh, of course and
What you're actually seeing is what would physically happen yours because they typed in numbers. Yeah enter and got that
Yeah, and it surprised everyone because physically that would actually would happen with an accretion
Yes, so you're seeing that same accretion disk like a Saturn ring, but you'll see the other side of the black hole
It's it's reflecting around it which is like so like the black hole's gravity is so intense
It's basically lensing light from the other side and like pulling it up and around
it's a black hole that is saying that that is
math
And I'm sure they came in and like added some clouds and some cool particles and they tweaked it up a little bit
But that's that's amazing. They actually got two research papers out of this really
Yeah, it actually like they contributed to the scientific community. Isn't that crazy? That's awesomely a Hollywood movie?
We'll have to come back the interstellar again to talk about the robot and subscribe if you want to see that
I loved your insight on the lego movie and a lot of these other like 3d things that you brought to the table
Is that just all from your group learning?
If you want to learn 3d if you're watching this and you're like hey
Maybe I have a career in VFX waiting for me. Come to blend a guru. You'll learn how to make it a donut
I've multiple friends. I've done that done it to do. Yeah. Yeah, it's free guys, like one displays are free and blender is free
Yeah, zero and yet barrier to entry anyone with a connection it works on everything. So give yep
Thank you guys for your suggestions and please leave some more. Also. We have a subreddit our slash corridor
We all go there all the time
So if you ever want to talk to us a little bit more
Closely than like say the wash of YouTube here consider hidden on over there. There's a link in the description below
I'm so happy that we get to
Share our passions with you and turn more people on to what's honestly such an essential part of filmmaking
But often kind of just gets left behind the curtain
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