3d Green Lantern Suit – Not So Special Effect(CGI)?
Green Lantern is a sure fire hit coming to the movies real soon. For those of you who have seen the trailer, you may have noticed a certain special effect that may put you off slightly. I’m talking about the 3d green lantern mo cap suit. The artists seem to have chosen an odd 3d animated suit that is fixed on to the actor, Ryan Reynolds. The motion capture for the suit is actually impressive. The problem I have with it is that I think in some scenes, it appears to look too pasted on.
Close up of Ryan Reynolds with the CGI Green Lantern costume
Take a look at some notable shots from the film to see what I mean. Does it look like he’s wearing a suit or does it look like something has been doctored over a photograph? I think the modelers and 3d guys did a great job with the CGI, but what sticks out to me as a 3d artist is the appearance that the global illumination appears off. If you don’t know what global illumination is, I’ll explain it a little bit. GI is the real world effect of having light from the color of one object subtly give off the hue to another. When You walk into a room there is light bouncing from every single object in there to the other objects. This is what tells your eye that something looks real or more real than other things in 3d. For some reason the GI in the Green Lantern CGI suit isn’t registering well with my eyes. In some scenes it looks like there is no global illumination, in others it looks like they have global illumination from the skin onto the suit, but not the green glow from the suit shining onto the skin. It tells me that there is something weird going on. I don’t believe this will have any affect on the movie, because it looks to be really out there in fantasy land. The CGI fish looking aliens from the beginning let you know what you are in for.
The other shot is the one of the Green Lantern holding a chaingun. There is definitely something about the suit that looks pasted on in that shot. There are a whole bunch of fairly good special effects movies out there that fall apart in certain scenes due to too much compositing going on. Humans are very good at spotting a bunch of composited elements at once in one scene. Just think of the movies that use real actors on blue screen or green screen sets. Your eye will be able to tell that it is trying to be duped.
There is a tremendous glow coming from the suit, but none on Ryan Reynolds face.
With all that lighting talk aside, it looks as though they have made strides in motion capture and tracking. The way the suit matches his movements with his skin is impressive. It looks to be a skin tight outer muscular suit, so that would only make sense in order for it to move right. How they did this I’m not sure. Did they use a phosphorus paint. They did this on other movies for 3d faces.
Anyways take a look at these shots and let me know what you think of the effects. Do they look like bad photoshop concept or fan art? In some scenes I would definitely say yes, but it’s because of the route they went for the effects not the design.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 16th, 2011 at 11:46 pm and is filed under 3d Special Effects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
