We Remake the FIRST EVER CGi Character to see if it’s Gotten any Easier.

THIS EPISODE ►
Wren and Jordan sit down to delve into the history of one of the most important VFX sequences of the 80's in order to learn its secrets!

SUPPORT ►

OUR GEAR, SOFTWARE & PARTNERS ►

MUSIC ►

[CraigGood]

This is nice, but a few historical details aren't quite right. I was part of the crew that made this - and I'm in that group photo you showed.

John did not go to England to measure the set and record where the lights were. Someone else got that info for us. Motion blur was invented in the Computer Division, and we were never part of ILM.

We rendered the highlights as a separate element so that ILM Optical could tweak them, and if you look carefully all of the floating bits of glass are slightly convex, which allowed a more pleasing reflection of the environment. (When Barry Levinson asked in dailies for it to look "more religious" we all panicked, but Dennis Muren just had Optical add 2 more clicks of diffusion to the glow pass.)

A detail you might like is that the candles and stands in the foreground of that tracking shot are all CGI.

That rack focus shot was so expensive to compute that I spent 2 weeks at CCI headquarters in Orange County rendering just the last 2/3 of that shot on borrowed computers overnight. Meanwhile, Bill Reeves (the bearded guy in the photo with John) rendered the first third. I had to fly down with two giant disk packs which each could hold about 300 Mb.

You should definitely read Alvy Ray Smith's book, "A Biography of the Pixel" to get this, and the rest of the history of computer graphics. It's terrific.

[exanimo]

i'd love to see a video where every member of the crew recreates their first ever vfx shot with the knowledge and skills they've gained over the years!

[calebs]

This armor is literally when you have the best stats but none of the armor is in a matching set

[vamsterr]

"Filmed it all on my phone" is such a breezed over line considering the original took god knows how many people, machines and the 9 od months of time
It's insane how far the tech has come

[atomicfault]

The glass "emitting" light actually makes sense because the glass would refract some of the light around it back out.

[platosbeard]

_" When correct doesn't feel right, go with your feelings"_ is such an important bit of advice for creative work

[Jogwheel]

Genuinely appreciated the reverence Wren and Jordan had for the "old guard" while making this video. Always important to pay credit to the guys that paved the way before us. Well done remake too! Seriously impressive for a few days' work.

[mariekedekker]

As a proffesional stainedglass maker.

Glass of course is see-through. But when it's painted, which this knight would be, the layers block a lot of the seethrough ness while still let enough light come through to get the colour.

The original knight would be from a cathedral window so this guy would have several layers of contourlines and shading.

Sir Jordan as how Griffin designed him had several pieces of glass with defined contour lines and should have different layers of shading to get the nuances. So he wouldn't have been completely seethrough as stained glass proper.


All that said, I am just nitpicking and it looks great.

[murph]

Has the Corridor Crew covered ReBoot yet? It's credited with being the first fully 3d animated television series. In 1994 it was quite revolutionary.

It would be really meta if ReBoot got a Reboot.

[gregjoblove]

My uncle was the “glass man coordinator” for that movie!!

[Taurusus]

Wren: "And this was like... 40 years ago."
Me, who is as old as this footage: _"Don't..."_

[frankhall]

My wife made some of the costumes for that film. She was very upset when you said it was nearly forty years ago!

[glazdarklee]

One of the weird things about getting older is when you realize that "Young Sherlock Holmes, " which you totally remember seeing when it came out, is now considered historically significant.

[Sollace]

17:55 Adding the emissive channel kind of makes sense, if you think about it. IRL the glass wouldn't just be transparent. It would also be refracting and scattering light, so adding that bit of emitted light to the surface just helps to fill in that part of the illusion.

[Shinn_Ryusei]

Wren: The fact that two of us were able to make this in a week is incredible to me!

Griffin:

[LestatJeremy]

Love to see you guys add motion blur to some of history's most iconic stop motion characters and see how it changes the movie

[carrotman]

4:40
Wild how they were like.
"It's like, stiff bits inside a human which have like joints so it can move."
Like. a Skeleton?
"Like. a tree bro."

[VorpalStorm]

That Young Sherlock Holmes sequence is insane. It still looks incredible to this day.

[highonlife]

I like how these videos aren’t just solely about the project your making but are educational and reflective on the history of how this is possible but also the story of why. So those of us who are also learning or trying to get into animations or visual effects have a deeper and better understanding of the process and it’s origins.

[mordaciousfilms]

This BLOWS MY MIND how good the original looks for a mid-80s effect, and even looks ten+ years ahead of it's time. Something about the blurry, blooming nature of it, coupled with the rack-focusing and tracking shots really sells the effect more than - I dare say - many effects that came in the following decade even into the 2000's. Stunning.