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I definitely find it hard to doubt the veracity of the project, being that the team and Xprize foundation are both well known. However, I had to watch the video
by geuis 17y ago
I definitely find it hard to doubt the veracity of the project, being that the team and Xprize foundation are both well known. However, I had to watch the videos a couple time and there's just something about them that seems... fake. Its really hard to put my finger on, but very subtle details like the shine off the metal and the structure of the flame seem like high-grade CGI. Another thing that bothers me is the shaking of the camera itself as the vehicle is in the air. I've done some work in the past few months with After Effects and one of the nice features is called "wiggle()". You can attach wiggle to cameras, null objects, and even lights and simulate a very realistic camera shake. The movement of the camera in both videos seems like it was done like this.
I'm probably dead wrong, but I feel its important to at least state such thoughts publicly. I guess that we're finally getting to a meeting point between high-grade camera systems and cgi effects that they're starting to blur enough to fool the eye, or last confuse it. Guess its similar to the uncanny valley effect.
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- JabavuAdams 17y agoYou're doing it wrong. Look at what's hard to simulate, not at what's easy to simulate. Metal shading is easy to simulate, so look elsewhere. Look for the engineering details that a non-rocket-engineer animator would get wrong or not know about. I guess, though that you don't know about these. Instead, you could look at the density of information and secondary effects in the shot. Typical CGI shots, as engineered intentional artifacts, lack the level of detail and chaos / serendipity of reality. E.g. the spalling of the concrete, the smoke/steam dissipation, the fully volumetric flame with mach-diamonds. CGI smoke is rarely done right. If you've seen enough particle systems, you'll start to recognize their signature. CGI flame (your comments aside) doesn't usually correctly capture the features of a rocket exhaust plume. Note the colour changes and mach diamonds, as well as the subtle thrust gimballing. Also, look for non-rendering details. E.g. the rock in one video that's just canted on its side, being supported by the back-blast of the plume. If this were CGI, then someone would have had to decide to do that. But, who would think of that? Every CGI shot has a budget, and usually only enough work is done to "sell" the shot, within budget. If you look frame-by-frame at most CGI animations, you'll see that it's just a veneer of reality. Usually when you compare to photo or video reference, you notice all kinds of missing effects. What may be confusing you re: the metal is that the oxidizer is LOX, which is super-cold, and causes frost to form, altering the metal's reflectivity.
- geuis 17y agoThanks for debunking me. Everything you pointed out is absolutely correct. Also, I didn't know about the oxidizer, which is very cool to learn.
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