"What? Have I made the computer special effects I wanted? ”

Alex was very happy when he received a call from the technical director of the illusion company, because he had already funded the establishment of this computer special effects company a few years ago, with the purpose of getting the gorgeous computer special effects of the future generations as soon as possible.

If the computer special effects were good, he would be able to shoot a lot of movie shots in his head. When filming series of films such as "Planet of the Apes" and "Red Dawn", many scenes that could use computer special effects had to be filmed due to the limitations of the technical conditions at the time.

In order to put an end to this era of no computer special effects, Alex spared no expense and cost to set up an illusion company to research this technology.

A few years have passed, and Alex has finally seen the results come out!

If you are someone else, even if you have the idea and the money, you may not be able to do such a thing, because the most restricted condition of computer special effects is the hardware factor, if the computer is not fast enough and the performance is not up to it, no matter how much money is invested, it is a fate.

Only Alex has such conditions and funds, coupled with his ideas and determination, that have supported the researchers of Fantasy to get to where they are today. If it were someone else, I might have given up a long time ago, and I didn't even think about relying on computers to create special effects.

The reason is simple: the input cost is too large, and the output benefit is too small, and the comparison between the two is really disproportionate.

In order to allow the Illusion Company to have enough hardware conditions for research, Alex asked CPT to make several supercomputers specifically for this company. And it's the fastest in the world. The investment alone was enough to scare off a lot of people, and that's not all, Alex also allowed them to tap into the computing power of CPT's other idle supercomputers at any time.

It took several years of research and development to get a simple effect.

"Look," the technical director led Alex into their workplace and then had the person show it, "This is the computer special effects we do!" ”

Alex looked in the direction of the Director of Technology, only to see a person appear on the screen of the monitor. The man pulled a metal cylinder out of his pocket and made a motion. The cylinder emits a cyan pillar of light several feet long. It's like a laser knife.

The people on the screen waved the pillars of light, making actions such as chopping and blocking thorns, and the picture was very clear and smooth, and it was the same as the real one if there were no flaws.

"That's what we've spent years developing. The lightsaber effect that was made! The Director of Technique stared at Alex's face. For fear that the other party will show a dissatisfied look. He also knew that the company had invested too much in recent years, and it was not enough to just come up with such results.

Alex didn't pay attention to the director's gaze. Instead, he continued to look at the lightsaber above, compared it according to his memory, and said with a smile after the last: "Very good, very good!" ”

When the director of technology heard such praise, he breathed a sigh of relief.

"What other effects can you do besides lightsaber?"

In the face of Alex's further inquiry, the director of technology felt a sense of weakness when he heard this, so he quickly wiped his sweat and said, "It depends on the specific special effects, so we can judge whether it can be made." ”

Alex nodded, although he was not proficient in computer special effects, he still knew the limitations of the conditions of production. If there are no specific needs, these technicians don't know how much they can do.

"Tell me about the production process of this lightsaber effect, and I'll see how your skills are!"

"What a shame!"

The technical director replied, and he hurriedly asked his men to demonstrate the production process one by one.

The techniques used in this lightsaber effect are not complicated, but the whole process is a bit boring. When it was needed to shoot in the century, the actors held a prop sword hilt in their hands, and an aluminum rod was inserted in the hilt, and the length of the aluminum rod was the "blade" of the lightsaber. The hilt of the sword is made of plastic, and the aluminum rod is painted red, green, or blue. The actors dance the props like real lightsabers.

After the film is filmed, it will be sent to the special effects production department, and the film will be made in the normal way.

In this kind of ordinary editing, the actors seem to be fighting with colored broomsticks instead of lightsabers. Now, the VFX artist will be in charge of turning these broomsticks into "real" lightsabers. The VFX artist will go through each frame in turn, projecting each image containing the lightsaber onto a crisp piece of plastic film.

This plastic film is commonly known as animated celluloid film.

The special effects artist sketched the outline of the blade of each lightsaber in celluloid film. Then, use bright cartoon colors to paint the blades of each frame. At the end of the day, the special effects artist drew a large pile of celluloid film, each corresponding to a movie frame containing a lightsaber. Celluloid film is sharp everywhere, with the exception of where the lightsaber blade appears in each frame.

And so, a new film has been made.

In the processed film, each animated celluloid film is placed against a black background and shot using a diffuse light on the lens, which creates a circle of light around the blade. Otherwise, if the film were shown on a projector, all one would see was a lightsaber blade dancing against a black background.

But before lightsabers were made, real footage from the film was shot in the same film with a double exposure. The effect is magical, and the lightsaber looks so bright and lifelike!

In so much work, the most important thing is to use computer technology to redraw the color of the special position of each frame, of course, you can't draw a very complex image, but you can repaint some simple light and color.

It's easy to say, but it's actually quite demanding on technology, and it's quite a revolutionary breakthrough. Although the method is very rudimentary, you need to scan each frame into the computer, and then divide it into countless rectangular squares, color each square, and finally make the effect of the lightsaber in the movie.

It sounds simple, but it's a lot of work to do.

And if you want the effect of the lightsaber to be finer, you have to make the divided block smaller, preferably the size of a pixel, so that you don't see any problems. However, this method is very demanding on hardware, and if the computer performance is not good, it may take a long time to create special effects processing screens.

Invisibly, the cost of this special effect will become very high.

After watching the staff's demonstration, Alex felt a little bottom in his heart: "This level is estimated to be the level of filming "Journey to the West", if it is more realistic, it must be improved in both software and hardware." ”

According to Alex's thoughts, the effect he wants to achieve is at least the level of computer special effects of "Starship Troopers". It looks like the real thing, even if the picture is rough, it doesn't matter, anyway, the picture of movies in this era is not a high-definition picture, and with the level of "Starship Troopers", it is basically enough to meet the shooting needs of most sci-fi films.

Well, it's nice to be able to make lightsabers, at least Star Wars can be filmed.

Thinking of this, Alex said to the technical director, "Okay! Your task now is to reduce the cost of creating this effect, starting with simplifying the production process, preferably with a dedicated software that can be easily used by the staff. ”

The Director of Technique nodded and said, "Well, I see! However, the main cost is still the computer, and the labor cost does not account for the majority. ”

Alex smiled, he said: "With the current speed of computer development, soon the cost of this will be reduced to a very small extent, and the most important thing is that you have to save labor costs and time costs." Because the reduction of these two costs depends on the improvement of your skill level! ”

The director was dumbfounded, he didn't expect that the cost of computers was not valued by Alex, but rather paid close attention to labor and time. You must know that the illusion company uses a supercomputer every day to study special effects techniques, and the cost of each day is enough to feed all the employees of their company for a month, and such a huge cost is always circling in his mind, for fear that it will take an extra day.

However, he thought that Alex was the big boss of the CPT company, and several of the supercomputers used by the illusion company were also allocated by the CPT company, and if you think about it from this point of view, the cost is almost too low to be lower.

In other words, this kind of computer special effects can be used by Alex, and if other film companies want to use it, the production cost must be sky-high!

After leaving the illusion company, Alex began to seriously consider: "Is it going to be filmed Star Wars?" ”

From the perspective of computer special effects skills, he is fully capable of shooting this movie, as for some of the special effects in it, such as aliens, Master Yoda, spaceships, etc., these can be achieved through model props and special effects makeup.

"It's only 1966, and if Star Wars is really filmed, it will be ten years earlier than 1977!"

Alex couldn't help but think in his heart, he thought that there was no problem with the technical conditions of this movie, and the rest of the problems were nothing. He is even confident that he can shoot better than Lucas, and as for whether Lucas can become a master of cinema in the future, it is not his problem.

Clap! What don't you shoot for!

Now that there is a chance to remake Star Wars, Alex will not push it out. Besides, he also has a lot of dissatisfaction with the storyline of this movie, which can be used to change it and make the movie he wants to watch. (To be continued......)