Spheres and "The Day the Earth Stood Still"

[rcallicotte]

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4841&referer=rss

Interesting about spheres being seen as problematic.  Wonder what Matt or Jo would say about that.

[Tangled-Universe]

I also read that story this weekend.

I think the lack of internal reference for scale etc. could be indeed problematic using spheres but I just couldn't lose the impression that a lot of the story and the problems mentioned were...over-rated so to say.
I also saw the movie in the theater (unfortunately) and I've seen way better CG sequences.
Let's say I wasn't really impressed at all, and believe me there's no way I could ever do what these guys do or even get close to it, but I think much of the discussion in the article is quite exaggerated.

Though I must say that the sequences of Gort "digesting" stadiums, trucks etc. looked quite awesome.
But the spheres, no.

[Mohawk20]

From just reading the first two parts and seeing the screenshots, I'd say the way to make them in TG2 would be to use planets, with an atmosphere with clouds that move around by translating the powerfractals, and rotate seeds. That in combination with a powerfractal based surface layer with luminosity based on a powerfractal for intensity. The colour could be powerfractal based as well...

It's a lot of work setting it up, but not quite as hard to think of as the article implies.

[rcallicotte]

 

From just reading the first two parts and seeing the screenshots, I'd say the way to make them in TG2 would be to use planets, with an atmosphere with clouds that move around by translating the powerfractals, and rotate seeds. That in combination with a powerfractal based surface layer with luminosity based on a powerfractal for intensity. The colour could be powerfractal based as well...

It's a lot of work setting it up, but not quite as hard to think of as the article implies.

I agree that from what I've heard and seen around here, it might not have been that big of a deal in TG2.  I still wonder about Matt's take on it, though.