CGI or Models.
Movies are getting big and better by the year. We saw the death of good old Yoda and reborn as a CGI character. Which is strange as on the Episode I DVD there is a special feature mentioning that Yoda won't be replaced with CGI...
But how good is CGI? Sure it looks nice, but does it look more real? I have been watching the Red Dwarf DVD's and recently bought Batman DVD (Tim Burton, before CGI). I must say that models look so much better. The look more "real". CGI often falls down on texturing but bump mapping is picking up. Large models are indistingishable from real life. Take the Lord of the Rings: Two Towers. The big battle being waged, that's done on a model. If you look closely at the characters on the battle mounts you can see they are CGI, but you can't as easily spot the model as being significantly smaller than the real size.
CGI is probably the way to go, but it has a long time yet. It's lacking that real feeling.
But how good is CGI? Sure it looks nice, but does it look more real? I have been watching the Red Dwarf DVD's and recently bought Batman DVD (Tim Burton, before CGI). I must say that models look so much better. The look more "real". CGI often falls down on texturing but bump mapping is picking up. Large models are indistingishable from real life. Take the Lord of the Rings: Two Towers. The big battle being waged, that's done on a model. If you look closely at the characters on the battle mounts you can see they are CGI, but you can't as easily spot the model as being significantly smaller than the real size.
CGI is probably the way to go, but it has a long time yet. It's lacking that real feeling.