Why is CGI so expensive?

[TechnoWraith]

Sorry, my bad then. Seemed like you were dismissing it maybe. What you're thinking of is called SLI (at least in Nvidia's version, ATI will have their own and will require their own motherboards, etc; it wouldn't work with an SLI Nvidia board AFAIK).

Thanks I knew it had a name.

I'll have to see if there's a dual chip board that supports SLI capabilities with ATI cards. I've been an ATI user since getting my old dinosaur ATI Radeon board way back in the days. Or does anyone have another suggestion?

[Giantevilhead]

but back then, they had no where near the sophistication and power that we have now.

Yes but the effects in T2 have held up pretty well over time.

[O'Neil]

Just about everyone software and hardware company out there says, "We have revolutionized that market with our new rendering system". For example, I use Cinema 4D. The Maxon site says that Cinema 4D has one of the faster render engines out there. To be honest, I think everyone says that about their rendering capability. Now the Advanced Render Module for Cinema 4D can only do so much. Ive been playing around with it alittle, but wanted something that could do more, so now we've got Final Render 2, and Maxwell Render. Both of those render engines (plugins) are capable of doing alot more with scenes, and of course they claim its faster and works better. I recently saw some work done by a guy who test the Maxwell Render and one of the images he posted took 15 hours to render out. 15 hours?!?!?

Enough blabering.... to shorten it all up.... I dont believe any of this "We will revolutionize the market" hype until I see the results for myself.

Pixar uses a 90 server render farm (I think its 90, might be thinking of another company) and they said that 1 frame from a scene they made took 90 hours to render. No wonder it takes years to make a good movie.

[TechnoWraith]

Just about everyone software and hardware company out there says, "We have revolutionized that market with our new rendering system". For example, I use Cinema 4D. The Maxon site says that Cinema 4D has one of the faster render engines out there. To be honest, I think everyone says that about their rendering capability. Now the Advanced Render Module for Cinema 4D can only do so much. Ive been playing around with it alittle, but wanted something that could do more, so now we've got Final Render 2, and Maxwell Render. Both of those render engines (plugins) are capable of doing alot more with scenes, and of course they claim its faster and works better. I recently saw some work done by a guy who test the Maxwell Render and one of the images he posted took 15 hours to render out. 15 hours?!?!?

Enough blabering.... to shorten it all up.... I dont believe any of this "We will revolutionize the market" hype until I see the results for myself.

Pixar uses a 90 server render farm (I think its 90, might be thinking of another company) and they said that 1 frame from a scene they made took 90 hours to render. No wonder it takes years to make a good movie.

Well of course everyone's gonna say their program renders faster than anyone else's. Just like every radio staion you listen to is #1.

[Orange Crush]

As far as the cost of a CGI company doing shots goes, equipment and hardware are a very minor expense per job. All the equipment and software are treated as investments and the cost of financing/depreciating it all are rolled into fixed costs. In the end, this makes computer time very very cheap.

Think of traditional hand-drawn animation. Those big movies cost millions to make but the cost of paint, ink and art supplies is pretty insignificant--the real cost comes from the artists' painstaking detailed work. In the end it's human-time that creats the real expenses and good CGI takes a tremendous amount of human work to pull off.

-Nick

[Gaterholic]

CGI costs the amount power the computers, its the people that do it that need the money