Charged Magazine

Day: December 11, 2023

  • Real or CGI? How Technology is Used in Netflix’s Life on Our Planet

           

         

    Life On Our Planet. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023

          The image above features two Cave Lions, beautifully captured looking out over the icy foothills of Madagascar. The lions look pristine, and the photo would fit right in inside the latest edition of National Geographic. Except for the fact that this picture isn’t real, and Cave Lions have been extinct for around 14,000 years. This photograph is screen captured from an episode of Netflix’s Life on Our Planet, and the Cave Lions are completely computer generated.

          Now, maybe you guessed that these animals were made with CGI. The fur looks a little but too soft and perfect, and their expressions look just a smidge too human. There are certain tells that can give away whether something is real or computer generated, and human eyes are great at spotting them, usually.

         The other day, I was watching an episode of Life on Our Planet, and I found myself completely unable to distinguish between real and computerized animals. Even prehistoric animals, which I knew were long extinct, looked and moved so realistically that I thought the producers could have filmed some real, unique and unknown creature, and edited the scale and colors to make it look like something new. The way the animals moved, the way they interacted with their environments- my brain could not comprehend the notion that these animals were simply rendered and animated computer models. This coupled with the fact that the real wildlife shots from Life on Our Planet are so beautiful, detailed, and crisp, that even the real animals appear fake at times, had me questioning the authenticity of every scene that I saw.

         Most of the animals depicted in this docuseries are completely real, and breathtaking videos are produced from the tireless work of on-site videographers, who can spend months on location just to get that perfect shot. It is only when depicting dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, that the production team relies on CGI.

         It was shocking to me how realistic CGI models have become. One way to see how this technology has improved is to compare the CGI rendering of dinosaurs from Jurassic Park, created in 1993, and Life on our Planet, created in 2023.

          Watching these two clips makes the differences over 30 years even more clear. The contrast in texture, movement, and overall quality has gotten remarkably better since the days where CGI was still in its experimental stages. CGI was not truly integrated into movies until the early 70s. Jurassic Park was a trailblazer in CGI, and considering how early it was made, the computer-generated dinosaurs look pretty good. Jurassic Park utilized RenderMan technology, the same program that was adopted by Pixar and used to create Toy Story and Avatar. Since then, RenderMan has evolved with technology, maintaining its position as one of the most advanced rendering technologies by adopting features like raytracing, which could light animated scenes better than ever before by simulating the behavior of actual light. 

         Life on Our Planet works with a variety of technologies to create their hyper realistic, 3D animations. Their process is primarily done through Industrial Light and Magic, or ILM, a visual effects company founded by George Lucas in 1975 to create effects for the original Star Wars film. ILM utilizes the 3D modeling program, Autodesk Maya, and renders with RenderMan.

        The process for creating these hyper-realistic, CGI creatures for Life on Our Planet is quite extensive. As is documented in behind-the-scenes content for the series, it begins with filming the scenery. Taking beautiful shots of nature is no longer enough. The film crew has to plan every detail of the final scene before they even start filming. Where will the animal stand? What path will it move in? Every twig and leaf in its path must be removed or otherwise accounted for in order to produce a believable animation 

         But animals don’t simply glide over the ground; they affect their environment. How can film-makers create the illusion that an animal is interacting with its environment without it even being there? In cases where the animal is making drastic, visual changes to the environment, like a dinosaur eating a branch off a tree, filmmakers will greenscreen (or more accurately, “bluescreen”) themselves into the scene, modifying the environment with a visible hand that will be edited out later. Smaller and less noticeable environmental interactions can be completely done in post-production, but before we can understand that, it’s important to know how the environment is rendered with this type of CGI.

         In Life on Our Planet, the first step of post production takes place within the Layout Department, and it involves baking in images taken on site into a digital environment in which the animation will take place. With CGI this advanced, the entire environment must be rendered before a character can be placed in it. Simply editing an animation into raw footage would not be able to produce the environmental interactions that are needed to make a character truly seem part of a scene. The animal will need a physical terrain to move across. It will need to be placed behind objects in the foreground. The best method to achieving this is a complete environmental rendering, which, as can be seen in the docuseries, is completely indistinguishable from regular footage.

         Once the digital environment is formed, animators can create believable environmental interactions. Slightly adjusting the terrain can give the appearance of a footprint. An animal can scratch a tree, turn up some foliage, or unearth dirt.

         The process for creating CGI animations is complex, and it varies across studios, production companies, and type of work. Life on Our Planet provides us with a view into the potential of CGI so create true to life animations and visuals, and believable environmental interactions. By melding the real world with the computerized, this series has created some of the most realistic and beautiful animations we have seen yet. Considering the fact that CGI has only been meaningfully used in film for around 50 years, it is exciting to imagine the possibilities as technologies advance even further.

     

    Works Cited

    Life on Our Planet | Filming Dinosaurs in The Real World | Netflix. (2023, November 3). Www.youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKRP2Zc6udA

    Nast, C. (2019, April 10). “Our Planet” filming locations: where was the Netflix series shot? CN Traveller. https://www.cntraveller.com/gallery/our-planet-filming-locations

    Petychakis, M. (2020, June 29). How Technology Evolutions changed Animation. APILama. https://apilama.com/2020/06/29/how-technology-evolutions-changed-animation/

    Schrodt, P. (2023, November 9). What Did Dinosaurs Really Look Like? “Life on Our Planet” Filmmakers Explain. Netflix Tudum. https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/life-on-our-planet-what-did-dinosaurs-look-like

    Tyson, J. (2000, November 14). How Industrial Light and Magic Works. HowStuffWorks. https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/perfect-storm.htm

     

  • Agriculture Overseas- An Examination of Floating Sea Farms

          There is a new technology on the horizon that claims to have the potential to solve two of the biggest global issues: world hunger and freshwater supply. These two problems are, of course, inextricably tied together, as 70% of the world’s freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture. Professor Haolan Xu and Dr. Gary Owens have developed a design for a “floating sea farm” which would address this problem by producing agriculture without the use of freshwater. In short, the farms sit on top of the ocean, collecting and evaporating seawater that is then used to water crops. The entire system is powered by solar energy, and can potentially be self-sustaining, requiring little to no intervention during crop growth.

         The ability to grow crops over the ocean unlocks a vast potential of usable agricultural space, as oceans make up 70% of the Earth. Moving agriculture overseas could immensely relieve the pressure we are putting our land under and allow us to designate agricultural areas to other purposes. Additionally, these stable systems would reduce farming labor, and drastically reduce global freshwater usage.

         So how exactly do these floating sea farms work? The current model of the double-layered vertical solar sea farm (or DVSSF) is divided into three subsystems: the bottommost solar evaporation chamber, a water condensation and transfer system, and a greenhouse-like plant cultivation chamber on top of the structure. The solar evaporation chamber consists of photothermal evaporators which convert sunlight into heat energy, powering the evaporation of sea water. These devices are partially submerged under the surface of the sea and are supported by floating polystyrene foam. Condensed water vapor is then absorbed by vertically-oriented strips of bamboo paper and transported upwards to the upper soil chamber, where plant irrigation will occur.

         Floating sea farms sound like a utopian dream, but how feasible are all of these promises? Floating sea farms are still in their early stages, and it will likely be years until we see this technology implemented on a large scale. In May 2022, large, open-air experiments were conducted using lettuce, broccoli, and Pak Choi. The growth of all of these plants was successful, demonstrating a real potential of the technology, but also highlighting areas in need of improvement. For instance, these experiments revealed that a surplus of clean water was being produced, and efforts are now being made to design a system that will store this water and use it for other applications. Additionally, the current prototype has only been tested with these three common crops, and much more testing would need to be done to integrate the diversity of agriculture that would be necessary to truly make an impact on global food production. As of right now, the DVSSF has a strong proof of concept, but is still in the experimentation stages. As more work is done improving the prototype and scaling up the project over the next few years, it is certainly possible that this technology could lead to a complete shift in agricultural production as we know it.

    References:

    Floating sea farms: A solution to feed the world and ensure fresh water by 2050. (2023,      September 11). ScienceDaily.                      https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230911141045.htm

    Pan, W., Wu, X., Yu, H., Zhao, J., Wang, Y., Pi, K., Owens, G., & Xu, H. (2023). An interfacial     solar evaporation enabled autonomous double-layered vertical floating solar sea farm. Chemical Engineering Journal, 473, 145452–145452. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2023.145452

    The AIM Network. (2023, September 11). Floating sea farms: An ingenious solution to feed the world and ensure freshwater by 2050. https://theaimn.com/floating-sea-farms-an-ingenious-solution-to-feed-the-world-and-ensure-freshwater-by-2050/