VFX Artists React to Bad & Great CGi 76 

I think the biggest reason she-hulk looks weird to me is that the Hulk, like you said, doesn't look human. Whereas she-hulk look like a normal actress with a green tint after effect applied (granted expertly done). Also she is so perfect, no skin imperfection, no peach fuzz, meanwhile the hulk is gruff and has tons of minor details. It's so strange seeing her and the hulk standing next to each other, b/c they seem like completely different styles.

7:51 one thing that stands out is she doesn't blink. it's actually a rule in animation to make characters blink when they turn their heads because most people do that irl.

For me, (She Hulk) what is triggering my mind is that her eyes have no micro movements. She is just deadpan robo-staring into things. That starts the uncanny rollercoaster. Especially the dinner date and the phone swipe scene.

The problem with She-Hulk at least for me that her movements are too smooth for a human, she moves with a smooth 60fps while everyone else is just around 30-45fps making her look out of place. All the fuss about the trailer quality is that, this is a trailer, finely picked scenes that Marvel chose to show the world what the series is capable of, so even if some of those finely picked scenes are flawed, what guarantee that even more scenes are just as if not more flaw than those trailer scenes.

Love, Death and Robots Volume 1: "Beyond the aquila rift" has some absolutely bonkers facial animation. Very photo realistic imo. They managed to capture the subtle tics of the facial muscles near perfectly.

No mention of how Jibaro avoided clipping with all that jewelry and armor? It was an amazing technical accomplishment

Sam: You don't need to tell people that cgi is bad. Also Sam; proceeds to his job of criticising good or bad cgi to the general public.🤡 Thanks for the likes.

I'm so happy they talked about Orphan Black. It's SUCH a good show and you 100% forget that Tatiana plays practically 90% of the characters. She's just amazing in that show and I remember the fandom praising the body double because she did as much work as Tatiana on the show to make it turn out so great. Kinda wanna rewatch the show, it's amazing.

I suggest you guys take a look at Prehistoric Planet by David Attenborough - possibly the most realistic looking dinosaurs filmed through the perspective of a documentary. Just gorgeous

You guys should look at the VFX of _Everything Everywhere All at Once._ Apparently, all of the VFX was done by a small team of 5 people, some of which were done by the directors themselves. They even built a very low-budget version of Mandalorian's virtual set for the universe-jumping scenes.

She hulk doesn't look that great that it deserves this much defending. People aren't criticising the work and effort that goes into creating a TV show budgeted CGI character, because a full CGI character for a TV show is tough. But even none Visual Effect Artists can see how wrong it looks, I don't see why they couldn't have just mixed and matched CGI shots with the actual actress rather than bogging themselves down with having to go full CGI. I like Practical effects with CGI elements to bolster a shot. Full CGI rarely and VERY rarely works for me to get immersed.

The best CGI I’ve ever seen is the Love Death and Robots episode: Beyond the Aquila rift When I first watched the episode it was really hard to tell if it was animation or not until later in the episode with subtle tells (like hair) and other characters. But the main character is done so well it’s almost scary.

I didn't see the She-hulk trailer and had no priors on whatever controversy it drummed up. But the thing I IMMEDIATELY noticed in that one shot of her looking over her shoulder is that her clothes look so fake. Her suit and shirt look like they are made of rubber, and they don't move realistically as she turns which gives such a bizarre look. I don't think the character looks that bad actually.

I feel that her shades of green, while comic accurate, make her stand out more as a cgi character than she would otherwise (MCU's Hulk-green is especially muted by comparison). I do think it's easier to suspend the disbelief with Hulk for reasons mentioned (such as skin texture and hours of work done on him by now). I also think people saying this is ps2 cgi need to go boot a ps2 tho.

Are we going to pretend that the animation of SheHulk's hair is convincing? Really good point about compression and stuff, but Her hair looks lifeless to me. (not a VFX artist)

6:29 "What is triggering their minds [...]?" Easy: Her facial animation is too smoth. You know perfectly well that this shot should've been stacked with "jittery" micro expressions, yet it was rather stiff and rubbery, too + the green/s is/are debatable = uncanney valley. Could've worked, didn't work. Missed by a few inches.

"You don't have to tell everyone it's bad." *literally has a youtube channel dedicated to telling people what's good and bad cgi*

The episode Bad Travelling from the most recent volume of Love, Death, and Robots is stunningly beautiful. It verges on photorealism while also having elements of stylization as you referenced in this video, with their characters all being modeled to have elements of caricatures.

She hulk looks like a filter made on Instagram, where the tracking of the actual face is just a split second delayed. Like, as long as she’s still it’s okay. But yes the CC make a good point in the blurring with compression. Plus it’s probably not complete yet, so she’s only 3/4 baked? It’ll likely be better by the time the show releases.

Out of all the LDR episodes Jibaro was the one I kept forgetting it was CGI - I even looked the episode up afterwards to double check. Such an incredible show, a true celebration of art

It’s the tone of green that stands out to me. Idk if it’s comic book accurate or not, but I know that Hulks tone fits better and looks more realistic

"The very pulse of the machine" and "Bad Traveling" are some good animation and cgi classics. Honestly I think LDR can have two episodes one for CGI reactions and one with Animators react. A nice 2 part series package. Also an indepth animation reaction for "Jibaro" and "The witness" stylized animation would be amazing.

The art design of Jibaro was absolutely terrifying to me

For all of LDR they were hyper fixated on how real it looks, and not the 1000 astounding things they did with CGI. And it does look very real, stunningly, the stylization is on purpose of course, however it’s definitely UE5 or something brand new. We never have seen graphics this “Real” looking up until very very recent times. So to knit pick on that is insane.

All the She-Hulk CGI shots looks great when they are frozen yes... when in motion it tickles the uncanny valley way too much. It's genuinely hard to watch for me specially next to Hulk's expressions and the movement of the character overall that even with it's flaws looks absolutely perfect in comparison.

The main body double for Tatiana was a student of mine from the University of Toronto Mississauga. We chatted about how this was done and how they worked together, but not in detail due to time. You are mostly right about the fact that they filmed the same scene a minimum of twice, swapping actors. Kathryn had to mimic Tatiana down to the minutest details that only people like you folks might notice. They became very good friends, and got to "feel" how each other moves. She did get to be a character later in the series that wasn't Tatiana.

15:35 it's called looking at the shot so much you're not seeing it anymore cause u're so sick of it 😂

‘people on the internet just want to dunk on things’ - person on the internet who dunks on things

Definitely Bad Traveling as an LDR episode to review. That short was spectacular not only in it’s storytelling but also in it’s visual language.

about Orphan Black- I remember thinking when I watched the show that despite having not the biggest budget for VFX, they actually did pretty good job with the effects but I wouldn't be possible without great performance of the main actress. If I remember correctly, she got some awards for playing that many characters- and she deserves it. Awesome acting, good tv show.

One of my more fundamental rules, guidelines, is... if you don't have the budget to do something fully... you can replace budget with style... especially if you are consistent... the audience can see the lack of budget... but won't care if the style is consistent... it's about story telling... you can do it for real or you can do it with style... either is acceptable... you can even mix them... and not loose the audience... The only way you loose the audience is if you have no story...

"You don't have to tell people it's bad, they'll make their mind up to it" Well the thing is that, replace the word "bad" with "good" and the sentence still works

Love, Death + Robots - Season 1 - Sonnie's Edge. How did they manage to generate such a sustained feeling of tension and a dark sense of foreboding with full CG characters? I often find myself losing the ability to maintain the suspension of disbelief with animation. You're channel is fantastic. Never miss a new episode.

for the entirely dedicated love, death and robots episode, I think you should review the "bad travelling" episode. Also you guys are so cool, keep it up!

Some of the issues with She-Hulk are the rough green screen too. That office shot looks like a bad Photoshop cut-out.

The foot replacement shot was roughhhhhhh once you slowed it down, and then I couldn't unsee it. At this point I have to think that show doesn't have cast shadows anywhere in the episodes.

I think the main issue with the She-Hulk trailer, besides the smoothing, is the green skin itself. It's a BIT too vibrant, and it's way too uniform! Real skin is splotchy and comes in tons of different shades. She has the same color all over! And I'm willing to bet the vibrancy was boosted by whoever put the trailer together, and the uniformity is a result of unfinished CGI. I'm sure it'll look great on release!

She hulks movement is just scuffed. If you freeze frame any of the shots that look bad, the cg is awesome. It's rubbery movement of the face, the fluidity of her body movement, and her hair bounces with every damn action she takes.

4:48 ^this shot looks incredible ^ While showing the creepiest hand holding a glass in whole CGI record

I think the one in shorts is a marvel fan boy

I am happy to see more Love Death and Robots. Please do more when you can!

Love death and robots episode. The three robots, sonnies Edge, the secret war, shape shifters, automated customer service, snow in the desert, all through the house, masons rat, night of the mini dead, bad traveling. Tho I wish I could see them all

6:02 If I want to voice my opinion of something, I'm going to voice my opinion on it, I'm not going to stay quiet just because you think it's good. This is literally a show about *BAD CGI* you can't tell me not to talk about bad cgi

This video shows us that you can work at certain area of work, you can even appear on a highly popular youtube video, and still not be an expert (regardless if it says so in the video...)

When I first saw the She Hulk trailer I had no problems with the CGI, but it was a few moments of her face falling into the uncanny valley which evoked a strong reaction so I remembered those moments the most out of all other shots in the trailer. Every time you showed the shot of her reacting to her phone I physically cringed and had to look away.

I think more of the problem with she-hulk is in the actual design and in the choices they made about how to present her. Yes, the compression and funniness exaggerate it, but the color of green they went with, the exaggerated beauty, the hairstyle and length, etc. all kind of make her look like a sim and like they still wanted her to be pretty.

On she hulk I think it’s that they always had to composite out her hair, I can tell on certain frames, it keeps reminding you that it’s an effect

Tbh I feel like it doesn't matter if it's technically very good, if lots of people say that a CGI effect looks bad then it has failed at its job and does look bad. People don't need a technical run down to justify why they do or don't like looking at something

6:41 As a content creator I always tell people this. RU-vid compresses the hell outta videos with their janky bitrates. In order to bypass this the video would have to be uploaded in 4 to 8k. Which is what movie companies need to start doing so people can see trailers in their truest fidelity.

6:15 The segment of comparing RU-vid with how powerful Disney+ can stream insane levels of quality detail is a super critical segment to talk about.

Hello everyone! I was the Qtake operator on The Pentaverate, so I’m happy to take anyone through the on set VFX process for the comps and multiple character scenes that we did on the show.

Super happy you guys finally did Orphan Black! :D Such a great show, and Tatiana Maslany is just amazing!

jibaro is one of my favorite 3d animated short films ive ever seen. its like nothing ive ever seen and its just such an cool art style. i dont think the people are supposed to be made realistic at all and it makes it so much more interesting looking, its beautiful af

I'm a roto/paint artist and I know exactly what they did for the leg shot. I had to do the exact same thing a couple of times in Moon Fall. What you do is that you clean frame the leg, you then hold it and you animate it by hand. In nuke I would use either a gridwarp or gridwarptracker. Afterward it's a matter of matching grades and recreating shadows. Full on recreation.

You guys are usually really consistent with calling out bad cgi.

6:10 that's the whole premise of this show tho

My personal feeling on the one shot where she's looking back while walking is the green is just a tad too saturated compared to the other shots. It's like the original Hulk movie, the green is a bit too strong and so she seems off.

Secret War from Love, Death and Robots Volume 1 gets my vote!

I think it's tough to see Marvel put so much time and effort into something like Infinity Wars Thanos then turn around and (seemingly) phone in the work on She Hulk. That said, seeing the RU-vid / Disney Plus side by side comparison did help ease my concerns. I just want them to give as much love to Jennifer Walters as they do their other characters, cus she deserves it

Absolutely love ld&r with everything in me. Such a brilliant show, the concept for having a different art style in each episode was so fresh to me. I am very partial to a good animated show.

On the topic of VFX mistakes in shots that were missed, there is in fact a scene from the first hellboy movie where hellboy has his final fight with kroenen, just before the giant cog crushes kroenen, hellboy looks like he does a T-pose due to a mistake in the rotoscope in one of the frames and returns back to normal in the next frame. Its pretty neat and weird if you catch it.

Jibaro was just jaw dropping for me, not just for the visual but also the body movements. As a dancer, seeing those moves in animation makes me want to see more of this in future works.

Thanks for getting me into Orphan Black, that show is amazing. Thankfully when I started watching it, I completely forgot you guys were discussing the fight scene too, so I've got no spoilers, lol

Orphan Black was such an amazing show, Tatiana Maslany absolutely deserved her awards but the effects of clones were not recognized enough

Sam: You don't need to tell people it's bad like everyone will make their own mind up. While in a reaction video called Bad & Great CGI... >_

"If you don't like the CGI, keep it to yourselves", one a show that consists of talking about how GOOD and BAD some CGI is.

Ah, the Orphan Black dance scene. For those of us watching that show at the time, it felt like we as an audience & they as characters had earnt this beautiful little moment of celebration & it was just a lovely showcase of how distinct those 4 characters the actress had created were. That the effects were sufficient to display that without taking us out of the moment was a win. Looking forward to her in She Hulk & yeah, I think you're right, in attempting to display she hulk in accordance with our society's approach to women, in order to be beautiful, must have flawless skin/features it might be why it gives it a feel of being unreal. But once people are watching it, getting involved in the story & performance & seeing those scenes in context to the overall narrative, I agree, people will quickly not notice the things they are currently bitching about. And with the Love, Death & Robots episode, yeah, it's where they strive for a realistic environment to ground & match the camera movements & PoV, but then tone the characters with a degree of stylisation to match the fairytale/mythology aspect of the narrative, using approaches to the animation to serve the story telling & better tell the tone of the story through their animation choices. Love your videos on COVID & planetary universal distances (& the pixar Up balloon vid), anything that visually illustrates a point that is difficult to explain verbally is always a winner in my book, keep up the good work). :)

Thank you for reviewing orphan black!! it’s an AMAZING show I’m so happy!!

She is so good in Orphan Black. Each one of the clones walks talks and has a different posture its amazing.

My problem with the She Hulk cg, is that the movements look almost...too fluid? That, and the skin is like, TOO green? Like, it almost feels like they ripped a character from a slightly more cartoony looking cgi movie, and tossed her into this real life world and backdrop. And she just doesn't fit in. Even Hulk himself has a more natural looking faded green. Where as She Hulk is just a straight up cartoony green. Might also be down to there not being a lot of variation in her skin tone. I know she's a bright green comic book character, but real skin tone isn't just one color. It's a whole bunch of colors. Let's take a lighter skin face for instance. Might have that general peachy skin tone, but then you might see a bit of red around the checks and nose, some almost grey/blue around the eyes. Then add in the way the sun shines slightly through the skin, adding brighter reds here and there and stuff. Meanwhile She Hulk just looks...green. like Kermit the Frog green. No taking into account the blood under her skin subtly changing it's hue or anything. She just looks like a fake cgi character. Even when they do a great job of making her feel real, it still feels off.

Did he really just preach that we shouldn't say which CGI is good or bad and people can make up their own mind when they have an entire Channel centered around it?

Alberto Mielgo is a mad genius on the level of Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry, and his Jibaro is easily some of the most aesthetically pleasing animation I’ve ever seen. The story itself is fantastic but it’s also no surprise that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Still, it surprises me how often people seem to get annoyed when they’re confronted with ambiguity and a message that’s open for interpretation.

I don't know on the She-Hulk stuff, a lot of the visuals look good when you sporadically pick a spot to look at, but the overall motion still has that Iron Man in Civil War effect where I can just immediately tell it doesn't line up or have proper motion in sync with the face.

Guys the problem with She-Hulk isn't that the effects are bad. There are two main problems I have with the visuals: 1) unlike Bruce her proportions are pretty normal, she's just tall. This leaves me feeling like she trips into the uncanny valley pretty often because they're never going to get her photo real, but nothing about her proportions reads as exaggerated enough to keep her from feeling like she's supposed to look photo real even when they're not going for it to begin with. 2) there are a number of shots in that trailer where the animation and/or how she interacts with other things in the scene isn't necessarily bad but does feel slightly unnatural. Though really those two problems I have with it come from one underlying issue: her design isn't very good. In terms of her proportions she just looks like a tall green woman who's kind of fit. She doesn't feel like a She-Hulk. In terms of proportions she's smaller than a lot of actual women bodybuilders out there. She doesn't feel like a character that's better rendered in CG than just getting a tall bodybuilder and engaging in some LotR style trickery to make her look even bigger and use CG when it's actually necessary. And part of the reason this is a problem is because Disney didn't have the balls to let the artists make her more muscular, even though they wanted to and it would have helped keep her more stylized so that not looking photo real wasn't a handicap anymore. The issue was never a case of people just wanting to trash things or "CGI bad," but non-artists kind of struggle to articulate that stuff because they don't know what they're looking at. They just know it feels off to them. And because of her design she frequently feels very off in that trailer. Hopefully it's better in the final episodes.

I love this content enough that I owe it to Vessi to try them for bringing me this joy

Even after what you said, the She Hulk trailer looks bad in a worse than uncanny way. What I mean is it is the CGI looks like uncanny uncanny CGI.

Love, Death & Robots recommendation: "Beyond the Aquila Rift" and "Sonnies Edge" from volume 1 are two of my favorites and have amazing art/animation.

As one of the VFX artists who worked on the leg shot, it’s quite an interesting story actually I have to talk about that one. Geoff Scott the VFX supervisor came up with this. We did one shot where her leg was in the left position, so it would be behind the body, then we did a second shot where we chopped off her leg and placed it carefully to where it could be crawled over as seen in the shot. Really crazy stuff, luckily she got the leg reattached a couple hours after! Now you know how it was done!

These close up shots of She Hulk look great! Okay, now what about everything else.

I feel like these shots of She-hulk look extra weird because it seems like she's often animated like a pixar character, not like a real person. There's a bit of a squash/stretch principle playing into it that feels cartoonish

The effects in SheHulk Trailer remind me a lot how Alita from Alita: Battle Angel looked like. From the smoothness, which the guys said might come from compression, but also in regards to animation / facial expressions and, kind of, the proportions? Hard to find the right words, but I feel like while Alita was meant to look like that, very much like a doll and comic character, it seems they aim for some kind of realism for SheHulk (like they do with the Hulk), yet it looks like Alita.

Also, for She-Hulk, what we're getting for a "show" is pretty incredible to think about. However, I think where the uncanny valley part comes in isn't in the textures or shaders, but rather in the animations of the face and body itself. The scene where she's in the office and she twists her torso, it looks like they just pivoted her whole torso rather than adjusting her shoulders (she doesn't lead with her shoulder, instead it just seems... flat as it twists, and unattached bio-mechanically to the head as it turns too.) The same goes for some of the facial expressions too... some of the facial movements are missing micro-expressions, or are just a little to mathematically smoothed, IMO. Again, though, for a series-show, going with a fully CG (mostly) human face is pretty ballsy and its possible that those were some early renders that will be fixed/finished when the show airs too.

I've become a recent Corridor fan, incredible work from the whole team! That being said, did you intentionally call Gemini Man "Gemeenee Man?"

16:18 the way sam said gemini man cracked me up for some reason

Jibaro is the most unique animated short film I think I've ever seen. Nice to see Yun Ling's background paintings get the attention they deserve too. So good. I think the style in this one pushes it even further into the realm of a fable - which is what I see this story as being. I'd love to see more thoughts on this episode, but for other reactions I'd say. - night of the mini dead - bad travelling - Mason's rats - In vaulted halls entombed ( I think this would be good for ya'll to review since it's done entirely in UE5) cheers

The problem with She-Hulk is that the chracter is absolutely deep in the uncanny valley. You have to do her look nearly perfect für the real world or modify the whole look so that it fits her's. LDR episodes to talk about: - The Witness - Life Hutch - Snow in the Desert

I will never unsee that Mike Myers clipping shot

Sounds like they might have a friend who worked on she hulk or something lmao

From what I'm seeing the She-Hulk effects look decent enough- it's the movement that ruins it. The Hulk is still mocapped to an extent from a real actor, which lends to much more natural and fluid motion, meanwhile fully rendered and animated She-Hulk feels very video game-y. Her movement feels stiff, her pauses are too dramatic and overall it feels more like a blend of scenes than a big long natural moveset.

Actually the first time I'm seeing the She Hulk footage, and I gotta say, I think it could look better too. For a few reasons; - Her skin is too saturated, even compared to Bruce. I think it should match his a bit closer maybe? - There's little to no subsurface scattering on the skin and hair. On that note... the lighting all together seems off. - The animations feel animated and too loose and not very realistic. - I also think her hair looks way to stiff and it being the shade of green it is, makes it "feel" wrong too. I realize there's a good chance some of these were choices made to keep her in line with the comics. However, I think it only served to make the effects look "worse".

I want to see a full short episode of Love, Wren & Robots

Tatiana Maslany is a brilliant actress. Orphan Black was absolutely amazing. She played over 8 different characters and each of them had vastly different personalities. The costuming department definitely helped sell it, but without the changes in mannerisms, speech and attitudes performed for each one by Maslany it would have failed. The episodes where she played a clone pretending to be a different clone were phenomenal. You would think she would just act as the other clone, but no. You can actually see the mannerisms of the original clone she is currently being, beneath the 'act' of pretending to be another clone entirely. She specifically doesn't just act like she would be if she was portraying the secondary clone. She keeps the persona of the first and adjusts to how that clone would attempt to act like the other one. It's simply amazing and she deserved so many awards for her roles.

Sam: “I don’t get why people have so many opinions about watching content.” Also Sam: “Let’s get back to giving opinions about content we are watching.” 🤣

I think the reason why the she hulk character doesn't feel totally real is the hair. It feels very stiff and locked into place. Seeing the other clips of the actress shows how lively hair can be and the she hulk character feels like it has action figure hair.

Sonnie's Edge, Bad Travelling, The Witness, Good Hunting, Snow in the Desert, In Vaulted Halls Entombed, and Swarm are great in terms of animation and VFX. Please look at those!

Feels like these people are fully terrified of losing any access to Disney and/or they (or friends) did some of this CGI - This is nowhere CLOSE to an honest take on the end product. Also, seems they fixate on the trailer and differences with a potential RU-vid upload - did they ever follow up on the actual show? It's atrocious.. the lip sync is off, the odd motion blur, uncanny valley galore, it's just so painful to watch. They seem to be purposefully spinning and avoiding an expert's take on the CGI versus the state of the art - which is exactly their charter if I'm not mistaken? No integrity here.

Cannot wait for Love, death and robots episode, I highly recommend the following: •The witness • The secret war • Snow in the desert • Ice • Bad travelling • The very pulse of the machine I feel each episodes has such a varied art style, across each season I believe these styles are present but this is what I feel the very best of every art style across all 3 seasons, Love the videos guys please keep up the amazing work! ❤️

I think the real contention with She Hulk is that the audience is used to seeing Gamora, a fully green female, and her character looks amazing. And that's due to intense special effect makeup, but it looks more realistic than a fully CGI character. In the comics She Hulk is supposed to be a normally proportioned, tall female who's green, so it makes sense that the audience was more expecting a practical effect with makeup as opposed to CGI.

When you realized that the audiences have higher expectations than real VFX artists

As someone who worked in that field for years, and has work you've likely seen, let me give you the REAL answer on why some CGI scenes are shitty. Time and Clients. Pretty much NO CGI artist WANT to present crappy work for millions to see. I was once given the task of doing a standard-for-the-show effect task and told it was needed for "a couple of shots." This was around 11am. The shots were being uploaded. I called our LA branch at 1pm and asked where the shots were and they said they were coming...I called around 3pm because I saw 6 shots being uploaded and it was clear there were more...I confronted the lead at 5pm and said "DUDE...HOW MANY SHOT ARE THERE???" His response? 14. And then he tells me needs them by morning. This was on a VERY popular show at the time. Not the exception, the rule. Trust me, the CGI industry is NOT what you think...