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

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.

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!

"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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

0:26 "Th-"

Nine months for one sequence is nuts! I've single-handedly made about ten animations in that time. Hats off to the pioneers of CGI, it must have been a real slog.

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.

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."

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.

An idea I had, you often try to recreate old things using new technology, how about trying to recreate something new using old school VFX tech? Alternatively, maybe you could see how accurately you can reproduce a scene from a modern movie using ONLY free software and assets found online/made yourself (With free software, also, of course)?

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.

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

Really enjoyable homage to a fab sequence, thanks! I still have very strong memories of seeing this at the cinema, aged 15 and being blown away by the effect, like nothing I'd seen on film before. Young Sherlock Holmes is a much underrated movie. When it came out on VHS, I'd play that scene again and again, like they did at the start of this video, marvelling at the details. I loved not only how the glass was transparent and reflective, but that each piece was also convex, bowing outwards a little, just like very old stained glass does in real-life. PS - when looking back at pioneering CGI, don't forget the Genesis sequence from Star Trek II, again something that really stood out in the cinema for me back in 1982 - I still replay that part where the camera zips between two rising mountain peaks in my head! Funny how certain VFX scenes just stay with you as strong memories.

I’d love to see a recreation of the barn owl from the opening titles of Labyrinth. Pretty sure it was the first photorealistic animal in a film.

It's amazing how well the original shot holds up.

I'd love to see you guys "remaster" the back to the future 2015 scenes to make it more realistic to what 2015 actually looked like

Aside from the science and scale of everything, this is one of my favorite series, looking at old movies, figuring out how they made them, and then trying to remake them using a modern take. There are a lot of things we do and learn but we take them for granted until you really take a deep dive and see how special they were and still are to this day.

The actual scene with Jordan at the end is one of my favorite things I've ever seen. He is great.

I mean considering that the way you built the character is this shattered man, I think adding in the Emission filter is quite intuitive. The glass would refract light in ways that would be hard to simulate so having it just glow a little bit is a good way to emulate that I think.

Its funny how this is the first CGI character ever created and yet we have never seen any hommage to him. I certainly didn't know about him or this movie before this video. Screw the jumping lamp, pixar should have this dude as their mascot

This gave me some serious PaRappa the Rapper Vibes! I love how you dive into the history, geek out, and pay homage to it. The passion for your craft and related crafts is palpable.

4:50 which is called 'forward kinematics' in robotics land. Inverse kinematics is where you have a constraint, like the tooltip or gripper needing to be in a certain position and orientation, or following a certain path, and then need to work out the set of joint angles that can fulfill those constraints.

Wren first mentioning Stormlight Archive is what got me to start reading it. I’m now half way through the 4th book. I would love to see Corridor’s take on a shardblade in a short film.

Now that State Farm sponsored them I want to see Jake from State Farm and Jake from Corridor to do a sponsor segment together

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.

I saw YSH in the theater as a teen and that scene was truly something new! Watched it with my kid recently and thought it held up better than I would have expected considering the level of tech available back then

I see Wren talking about Stormlight so much. I would love to see an animated shardbearer duel! Or even the Dalinar vs Chasmfiend fight!

Jim Henson's Labyrinth has a lot of practical effects, but also some advanced (for its time) visual effects: - The red fox dancers against the black background - The CGI owl during the opening credits

So good. Every time I watch one of your "history of VFX" videos, I wind up with something else on my watch list. Thanks for the post!

What is incredible is that the original graphic looked just as good, if not better than in some cases, as Wren's render. It definitely shows the level of detail they went into to create this shot back in 1985. But Both shots looked great.

Whenever you think of stained glass, you always think of light beaming in through a huge church window. Light is always washing through stained glass. I think it makes perfect sense for the 3d character to have an emissive property, since the glass was magically taken from the bright window.

The Last Starfighter was one of the earliest films to use CGI to make "realistic" space ships in 1984. I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

It’s awesome seeing you guys give so much love and respect to the pioneers of your craft.

So fun! I love this channel. I'm sure that all of this takes wayyyy more work than you make it seem, but I still get the vibe that you all have so much fun most of the time, and it really comes through. What an ideal gig

It really does hold up in many ways, can't wait to see the full recreation shot

To think, without this moment of CGI history, special effects wouldn’t be were it is today.

I love when two or three people from the Crew work on a project together like this, it succeeds in telling a pretty enjoyable narrative

So Wren talked about how he needed the glass to emit light as well to look right, and this makes perfect sense based on the method. See, light doesn't just go through glass, like it would with a transparency mode. With imperfections, cuts, bubbles, smudges, etc., the light would bounce around. This can lead to the light making the glass seem to 'glow', because its not being emitted directly from the source. Similar to how scratches in class can cast glares, or how a shattered glass effect (which Corridor Crew recently talked about) requires a different method. Also, if you've ever looked at/through old or thick stained glass, its hard if not impossible to see through, its translucent more than transparent. If you are using glass as a material, translucency (or transparency as well) might be a material property and not as easily changed as emission, which would be a direct effect.

Idea: Make a 20-second fake 'remake' of your favorite 90s video games using whatever 2D, 2.5D, 3D rendering you want. It's going to be hilarious.

What an awesome video! I'd love to see you create the morph scene from Willow.

The Red Shoes - the dancing towards the mid/central part with the various shoes dancing on their own and the woman dancing with the shoes "magically" snapping on from the reflection and such

It's amazing how the Stained Glass Man holds up so well even today. You guys did a great job of emulating the look, too! I would love to see more of these "history of VFX" videos, it really is useful to see the foundations of how this stuff developed and what techniques and technologies have still persisted to today.

There IS a shardblade described as straight, long with a waved blade and cross guard. So It pretty much is a shardblade

That image of young Steve Jobs really does look like Ashton Kutcher looking back now that was really good casting for that movie.

You guys are great. The historical deep dives are my favourite. The one with the little people from about a year ago is very memorable. I think this might be my fav video that you have published.

Dude that skit was so good! The model looks awesome, love the process as usual, great vid!

A note about using the emissive channel, remember that while glass is see through it does reflect the surrounding light while also filtering the color, so having it "emit" light is not unrealistic

I just love these wren side projects. His enthusiasm in his approach to everything just makes me grin wideee. Keep up the good work..

massive love for you guys being 100% transparent with your sponsors, everyone's gotta eat, great vid, cheers :D keep up the great work

Proof that a Corridor video doesn't have to pull out all the VFX stops to be _exceptional_ - the fantastic breakdown of the original shot's composition already made this a special episode. But then, the deep dive into the ILM/Pixar history of developing the technology in the first place - who would have known rigging started here? - and learning about the abilities of DeepMotion (can't thank you enough; this might even have solved a potential creative barrier at work) - I mean, what more can you ask for? History and exceptional new tech all in one. Definitely one of my ALL TIME favorite Crew videos. Bravo!

Now recreate the bullet time effect. One of you do it like they did back in 19999,the other could try a modern approach and see what turns out best

I'd love to see a deep dive on the demonstration of the "Genesis Device" from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. You guys never touch Star Trek stuff despite those 80s movies having some real CGI firsts in them.

I just love how Wren always shows excitement and enthusiasm about every project he works on, it's really inspiring.

My grandfather has been a State Farm agent for over 50 years. Thanks for taking them on as a sponsor lol. He'd appreciate it.

Scratches bounce light in real life. They are imperfections or changes in a surface which have their own shadows and highligts. What you did with the emitter is what miniature painters often do to paint scratches in armor. Such a cool video!

Love your videos. You guys have taught me so much when it comes to animation, special effects, stuntmen/women and much more. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

I think this has been my favorite video. Had me in stitches. Great job! :D

I remember seeing Young Sherlock Holmes when it came out. That scene was awesome back then. I’ve probably seen the movie a handful of times since and always have appreciated that knights animation.

Somebody please forward this video to the folks at *Skydance Animation* - that's where most of the former-Pixar creators (including John Lasseter and Edwin Catmull) and animators are now.

I have edited myself into movies and TV shows using some of your advice, tips and tricks so thanks!!!

Literally made a fun fact Presentation of CGI History 2 weeks ago to my coworkers! Seeing this now validates all the sleepless work put into it. You guys were the influence for me to do that front of a bunch of people I barely know.

As someone who saw this when it was released in theaters, I was blown away. First, the movie was a ton of fun. But when this scene came on screen I could not figure out how they did it. We were aware of computer-generated images, but no one has ever seen this. I figured it was just incredible animation somehow made to look "3-D".

I knew EXACTLY what this was when I read my notification. Epic times. Just watched it with my wife. Scared the shit out of her.

Would love to see more of these. Great job guys.

What I think is amazing is that, although I had forgotten that this moment was in Young Sherlock Holmes -- like, I remember this shot. Seeing the clip and that moment where the camera swings around behind the figure and you see it's reverse image through the glass.... soooo cool. And I remember, even as a child, being immersed in the moment while watching the movie and not really until after when we were all talking and someone was like... how did they do that. And we were all amazed (except for Peter who wanted us all to know that he didn't think it was scary enough. Peter was like that.)

I'm currently in a great 3D school, first year, and it's amazing how, after having followed you for about two or three years now, I'm starting to completely understand everything you're talking about without you having to explain it. Sometimes, I can even think "oh hey... given enough time and a bit of practice, I guess i could do that !"

Funny, I'm brand new to 3D modelling, I have been working on a ps1 esque retro game and I ran into exactly the same issue as wren, without adding some emission, often the lighting would not look right on some materials. Even when it doesn't make sense for the object to be emitting light, tweaking emission just helped nail the overall look.

This shot is what I remember most about this movie. I saw it in the theater, and maybe once later on VHS. I need to watch it again.

Seeing you guys explain why that scene was so impressive while being so excited was the most interesting and personally I think it’s the best part of this video, because it’s teaching us how far we have come in CGI, sort of reminds me of how the process of animation had progressed from going from using small contraptions all the way to digital 2D, and even 3D (CGI included!)

i love these types of historical videos! Suggestion: maybe a video looking back at the technological advances Corridor has had. I remember watching you guys go from GoPro's and self-stick's to using RED's and Ronin's now being combined with the apps making production easier. i think you could have a great series talking about your own journey through media production/evolution, let alone talking about famous movies that shaped effects, but how your use of effects, assets, and apps has changed and adapted over time on RU-vid and through your own content like the Son of a Dungeon series or these shorts

The fact that literal STATE FARM sponsored these guys is absolutely Insane. This just goes to show how amazing the corridor crew is.

That CGI creation at the end is incredibly good! It really looks like it's there. Nice work!

So good, and the final vid looks amazing!!

I loved the render, but I was expecting the sound of breaking glass when he tossed the sword aside

I wonder how much less "State Farm" had to pay to just get "a portion of this video was sponsored by State Farm". I also wonder what impact that has on the impressions from the viewers

You guys definitely should continued to break down historical CGI shots and remake them. It’s really awesome to hear and see the process that they went through to get all of those iconic shots.

Wow, that short looks amazing!

Young Sherlock Holmes is such an underrated movie.

Could y’all PLEASE do the chronicles of riddick? Specifically the interior of necromonger ships and the lava/ash planet. I Love that movie and feel like it’s underrated !

No joke, the comedic timing of "Thank you milord!" @ 12:32 is absolute gold.

Guys you are coming such a long way on producing some incredible vfx. I can't wait to see Corridor in the credits of all my favorite future films.

As the first cgi in a film, its not too bad for the technology when it was made surely

Wren and Jordan are always a great duo

That was awesome! I think one of the things missing is the clank of glass as he fell from yhe ceiling and assembled. Need some clinking and glass grinding sounds. But for something done so swiftly, it's awesome!

When you're talking about lighting characters and scenes separately I'd like to point out how in modern games if you detach the camera during cutscenes you can see that even in the same scenes in the same locations, when the camera is on different characters the lighting will completely change independent of the overall environment in order to make that individual shot of that character look as dynamic and slick as possible. Once again in artistic filmmaking, realism is not as important as stylistic believability.

It really is incredible when you think about it. They did what took 9 months to do and did it in a week. Its really amazing when you think about how far the technology has come

Stained glass man still looks HELLA good in my opinion

Really cool stuff. Love seeing the history, and then the process to recreate. Fun to learn this as the first cg in a film, I had no idea. Growing up, I remember Lawnmower Man and Max Headroom as pretty early examples (along the time of The Minds Eye and Beyond the Minds Eye).

15:15 I love Wren's energy 😆 it always makes these videos so much better

I’ve actually posed models by moving the vertices to the correct positions, because I didn’t have much time and haven’t done rigging before that point at all (also, the topology was an absolute mess, so rigging was made even harder by that). It’s definitely a lot less complicated now than it was back then, because I imagine the tracking within a 3D program has become a lot easier to manage, so now you can just select a bunch of vertices and pivot them on your chosen axes and choose a pivot point for them, whereas back then, you probably had to do some very fine and focused work to achieve the same effect.