Inspiring 3D Movies

[podperson]

It occurred to me that there are certain movies that blow my mind w.r.t. the 3D special effects, and we might have fun comparing notes and listing them.

At the top of my list right now would be:

• Tangled — insanely good hair (obviously) and water, wonderful animated acting, also the "look" is magnificent, it's like an animated painting.
• Ratatouille — fluid sims, wet fur, crowd scenes; just a wonderful (too many wonderfuls?) movie altogether.
• John Carter — raising the bar, again, set by LoTR and Avatar for convincing digital actors (actually more convincing than the humans in some cases, because the wire effects for low gravity sucked).

Some older movies include Final Fantasy (terrible movie, great 3D for the time, also their contribution to Animatrix was even better and shorter. The Appleseed movie looked great but was also terrible.

I'm sure there are a ton of films I've never even heard of (especially shorts).

Thoughts?

[filip c]

Some 3D movies I find inspiring:

• Horton hears a who: nice smooth flexible animation
• How to train a dragon: super fire effects!
• Robots: great mechanical stuff with a retro look. great textures!
• Legend of the guardians: best realistic bird animations I've seen
• Meet the Robinsons: superb acting / character animation (bowler hat guy!)
• Finding nemo: nice (underwater) lighting
• over the hedge: great fur
• Wall-E: nice clutter, dust, ...
• ...

[podperson]

I didn't want to list every Pixar movie / Disney movie since Lasseter took over But hey, Bolt is great too. You're right to highlight the underwater stuff in Nemo.

The fur in Ratatouille is amazing — wet fur, damp fur, fur in water, scruffy fur, fur on ridiculous numbers of rats.

[GardenSpider]

Let me just say that while the fur on the rats in Ratatouille was great and should definitely be appreciated, it really started with Monsters Inc., where they had to figure out how to render something like a hundred thousand or more hair strands.

Tangled, definitely. There's just so much they got right with that film.

And as long as you're going for inspiring, how about the Transformers movie franchise? The story may stink, but the robots are incredible! I've been trying to model Optimus Prime for a good two to three years, and if that doesn't say something about how inspiring those robots are I don't know what will.

-- GS.

[KurtF]

Here are some recent web finds that are inspiring for 3D work:


The Chase:

http://vimeo.com/38247727

and

Ruin:

http://vimeo.com/38591304

Both action packed with terrific lighting, camera moves, animation, effects, and dynamics.

[Andreu]

Some suggestions:
http://www.andreucabre.com/p/my-favo...nimations.html