The Tech Behind Man of Steel's Metropolis 74
angry tapir writes "Much of the urban vistas of Man of Steel, Cars 2 and the horrible remake of Total Recall were not modelled by hand. Instead they relied on a product called CityEngine, which is more typically associated with local government bodies' urban planning and urban design. The software procedurally generates cities using scripts written in a Python-like language. The next version of CityEngine, coming out next month, will incorporate an SDK so third-party developers can use parameter-defined procedural generation of urban environments in their own applications. CityEngine's product manager talks about the upcoming version, how it's being used at the moment, and plans to incorporate augmented reality in it."
Critic? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not much of a fan of the Total Recall remake myself, but is a thread's description the appropriate place for such opinion?
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I'm not much of a fan of the Total Recall remake myself, but is a thread's description the appropriate place for such opinion?
no.
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Agreed, people only hated Total Recall because it ruined the purity of the original. And we'll see the same when Robocop comes out too.
That said on it's own, I enjoyed Total Recall remake quite a bit. By no means a perfect movie, it could have been a lot worse.
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Agreed, people only hated Total Recall because it ruined the purity of the original. And we'll see the same when Robocop comes out too.
That said on it's own, I enjoyed Total Recall remake quite a bit. By no means a perfect movie, it could have been a lot worse.
Did they keep the dumb part where Arnold is on an atmospheric-less Mars with his eyes bugging out and he somehow survives long enough for the atmosphere to be fully created by the magic martian machine?
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Nothing dumb about hollywood magic spectacles (I'm sure you prefer your sci-fi hard, but I'm not picky), however if I recall, they did pretty much kill that plot line.
I think you forget, not much in "Recall" was ever 'real'. Saying Total Recall (modern or original) is not realistic as per your definition of reality is pretty meaningless since they are implanted memories/experiences meant to provide excitement to the consumer (and you, the viewer).
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I never realized my dreams were relegated to the physically-known universe. I mean, even REM-me found it laughable that Mila Kunis would ever be interested in me personally, but I suppose it is speculatively possible. But the time I lucidly FTLed the unknown Universe, that was still very realistic to REM-me.
Recall's point was never to plant speculative non-real memories. It was to provide a unique, impossible experience for the consumer at a variety of scenarios for a reasonable cost of admission. K
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I always go flying when I lucid dream but FTLing would be cool.
I used to have to use other objects and it was fairly slow but I pushed my flying speed until now it can be quite good. I usually lucid dream for a couple minutes before I wake up tho one time I was able to avoid waking up for a little while and go back into a deeper sleep before continuing to dream.
Dreams always make sense while we are in them. We don't question why there are roses the size of sunflowers in our backyards- why three are modern
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You're right the point is lost on me. I have no debate beyond TR being unrealistic as a premise.
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The instant atmosphere was only there to provide some excitement at the end. The bad guy is dead, the mysterious machine has been turned on, all questions answered, and essentially the movie is over. But the good guys have to be sucked out to the surface for one last set piece.
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Agreed, people only hated Total Recall because it ruined the purity of the original. And we'll see the same when Robocop comes out too.
That said on it's own, I enjoyed Total Recall remake quite a bit. By no means a perfect movie, it could have been a lot worse.
Did they keep the dumb part where Arnold is on an atmospheric-less Mars with his eyes bugging out and he somehow survives long enough for the atmosphere to be fully created by the magic martian machine?
.
Um, no. They didn't have that part. The remake was silly in different ways.
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The original was pretty shoddy in many places. Awful special effects, bad acting, implausible science, etc. However the old one had both nostalgia in its favor as well as a sort of tongue-in-cheek attitude (it didn't take itself seriously). The new movie was much more polished with effects and acting and the look of the whole thing, with a better social commentary (a strongly divided class system as opposed to the original's which was one rich guy versus deformed mutants). The tunnel through the earth w
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Awful special effects? Aside from the implausible eye-bugging scenes, the effects are pretty good, at least for the time. It won a Special Achievement Oscar (this was the last time there was no "Best Visual Effects" category) in 1991 for its effects, beating out the runners-up Back to the Future III, Dick Tracy, and Ghost. Not terrible use of miniatures, one of the last big effects movies to not make extensive use of CGI.
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I just rewatched it two weeks ago and it really stood out as awful in many places. But at least it didn't have lens flare.
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it just sucks and is stupid.
the martian plotline was less ridiculous than the hole through the earth for no good reason. all the environments were fake anyways so why the fuck not have mars..
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Agreed, the opinion was not worth adding it to the summary let alone the opening sentence.
Personally I don't agree with the opinion: I didn't think it was spectacular, but I don't think it was horrible either. I just felt the original was better.
But in any case, it's out of place. It would be one thing if the article was about the movie itself and how it was received poorly by critics or whatever... but it's an article about the tech used in a couple of scenes.
It's like introducing your team to a client,
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For what it's worth, I actually enjoyed the remake more than the original. It was closer to the book, and had decent acting and pacing. The original is great in a 'campy-old-school-meathead-actor' kind of way, and for nostalgia, but the actual acting and plot were pretty bad.
The future (Score:5, Funny)
That's one step closer to only needing scriptwriters for making a movie.
What's funny is trying to imagine whether one step after that there will still be movies or not.
i.e.: Once AIs are advanced enough to create movies for us, will they want to watch movies?
My vote goes for : "Yes. And the first big hit will be the movie about how they exterminated us."
P.S.: The second big hit will be about a lone AI that learned to live in peace with the humans and to adapt to their strange ways. It will be called "Dances with cars".
Ob. XKCD (Score:3)
We will eventually make machines be better than us at everything we do [xkcd.com].
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You mean the turgid shit Hollywood churns out is produced by actual script writers who get paid and not accountants?
Damn the slide into the new dark ages is further advanced than I thought.
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This isn't great for the foreground bits. It makes great background filler, though. There have been a lot of pieces of software that generate background imagery like this - it would never be in-budget otherwise. Massive is used to generate large crowds of moving people/creatures (like Orcs in LOTR). Tsunami to generate realistic water (e.g. Titanic). Before this, you just couldn't get the complexity. Few movies, like Ben-Hur, would get the resources to have 100,000 extras just for the background of a
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i'm pretty sure real writers who could think of a story were phased out. rehasing old ideas is the norm, and can be trivially done on a computer, Artificial Retelligence
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an AR wont't "Kill the Humans" but might run for public office or go into management
Python (Score:1)
The software procedurally generates cities using scripts written in a Python-like language.
Why not just use Python?
Re:Python (Score:5, Funny)
They did the best they could after discovering that all the pythons had been used on that movie about a motherfucking plane.
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Vendor lock-in. Using a standard language means you can easily take your scripts to a competing product.
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Yes, but for a non-open source language, that would be a copyright violation.
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Well, I was forgetting the overturned the terrible Oracle v Google decision. Point retracted.
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Once you extend the language to add the functions they need, it would no longer be Python. It would be a Python-like language. I don't get it - it's not like you're going to port in a Python program and it's suddenly going to generate cities instead of whatever it used to do.
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Why not just use Python?
I assume it's because they wanted to use a language that wasn't total garbage to write their scripts?
and movies will be better? (Score:1)
yep and with this technology they will continue to make the crappiest movies ever because like all CGI they throw away good acting and script design to focus on semi realistic city backdrops and fast paced unrealistic action.
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You do know it was a super hero film?
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I think he was talking about Cars 2.
Re:and movies will be better? (Score:5, Funny)
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The avengers was a good example of both CGI done right (supporting the story but not trying to impress us since we know it isn't real) and done sneakily... (okay it turns out some scenes I thought were real were actually completely CGI.).
Sometime over the last 5 years, the CGI has gotten so good that they can render humans convincingly for short periods (by mapping them down to the individual pore and nose hair level.)
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I don’t think it is a troll.
Just because you can write a script and generate a city does not mean you can generate a good city. You might generate a badly functioning city.
Or things may happen that cause you to rebuild a city. Tokyo was a great city but then Godzilla happens. Detroit was a great city but then the auto manufactures happened. What should be rebuilt on the bones of the old?
You still make choices but it is the simulation which is more accurate.
This was done before on "King Kong" (Score:5, Interesting)
Procedural city building like this was done back on the Peter Jackson "King Kong" back in 2005 by Joe Letteri.
They called their system "CityBot - Urban Development System"
Using this system they were able to create "...over 90,000 3D digital buildings..." out of "...22 million components..."
Article by Chris White @ Weta Digital:
http://staffwww.itn.liu.se/~andyn/courses/tncg08/sketches06/sketches/0147-white.pdf [itn.liu.se]
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Yup, procedural cities are nothing new.
Here is an cool open source "night time city" project using procedural textures + buildings
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=3237 [shamusyoung.com]
Index ... scroll down to "Pixel City"
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?page_id=16458 [shamusyoung.com]
Yet another Slashvertisement (Score:4, Insightful)
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Maybe. Still I enjoy learning about how these things are used well.
For example, I own a license to Terragen 2. But my own creations are far, far away from the stuff they make as movie backgrounds using the very same software. I love reading about it and watching images and vids, because it shows me just what is possible and gives me aspiration to improve my skills.
City Engine is another thing that I've had on my radar for a long time. It's just way, way too expensive for a small indie developer.
So, basicall
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That explains a few things... (Score:2)
Instead they relied on a product called CityEngine, which is more typically associated with local government bodies' urban planning and urban design.
You mean local governments don't actually think about their urban development, but just let it be generated by the computer? That would explain those impossible-to-navigate suburbs that make no [google.nl] sense [google.nl] at [google.nl] all [blogspot.nl]
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If they were computer-generated, they'd make sense if the rules made sense. But when the laws don't make sense, even humans can't generate good output. And when the cities grow organically, you can give up on them having a logical overarching plan.
Sim City (Score:2)
What would happen if we found a way to tie a Sim City engine to its output?
Practical application (Score:2)
Tie its output to a skyscraper-sized 3D printer and let it go to town... or rather make the town.
melding of NYC, Chicago & L.A. models (Score:2)
Video game levels (Score:3)
Been waiting for this for years. I want randomly generated levels for CoD-style FPS shooters. The levels might not akways be perfectly tuned for game flow etc., but that should be mitigated in large part because they would only be seen once i.e. people couldn't replay the maps endlessly and learn to exploit them.
Would really liven up those games, and would put the emphasis more on deep game-play skills like exploration rather than shallow skills like map knowledge.
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I'm pretty aweful at that game; I knew I was playing it wrong.
Sure beats my method: Minecraft (Score:2)
I just hired a bunch of Koreans to build me a city in Minecraft. By the end of day 1 I had something resembling Rome. So I guess Rome can be built in a day? However nothing works, making it much more like Detroit.
Seamless CGI (Score:3)
I was astonished watching the making-of reel for The Avengers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnQLjZSX7xM [youtube.com]. Almost all the city scenes were shot on green screen stages, with rendered city-scapes in the background. CGI is now so well done it's almost impossible to tell what's real and what's CG.
The reviews for Gravity http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/gravity_2013/ [rottentomatoes.com] make it sound like a tour de force of technical achievement. I'm looking forward to seeing it, and the making-of should be well worth a look, too.