Yes, and just think that his intentions were to make things look completely realistic.. Now we are at the point that we can, yet everything moves and looks completely fake. Look at the just the sky alone in ANY Marvel film and you can see that it looks terrible. All of the floating and flying people are not believable and while watching , you aren't swept up into the fantasy, because there is not a single thing , "Fantastic" about it.
Very nice, fellahs. I'm 64 and I first delved into 3D modeling and animation in 1993 with Lightwave 3D software. The computer we had at the college I was going to was an Amiga 2000 with no space to store thousands of frames of animation. The only way I could render an animation was to videotape, one frame at a time. I built an animated a haunted house exterior which to took several days at about 4 hours a day. To make an 8 second animation, it took me 6 hours to render each frame (about 10 minutes per frame) and capture each frame on 3/4 inch videotape using an Abner A/B-roll edit controller. It was the only frame-accurate piece of equipment we had at the time.
Technology is indeed crazy. As someone who's been invested into this type of work and technology and is now 64, how do you feel about OpenAI's Sora? AI generated video seems like magic doesn't it?
Now I can yell a couple sentences at my phone and a Language Model will literally make me an infinitely better haunted house exterior within seconds. Times have changed grey-bush.
Haha I'm with you, I tried to do the same thing on my Amiga 500 1MB with Cinema 4D, waiting hours and hours to render one image, praying that it won't go OOM/Guru Meditation. And now nowadays we have photorealism in real-time, or almost...
My parents worked on this movie when I was a kid in South Carolina. They did practical effects, so they were not involved with the scene you guys are talking about, but when Steve showed his jacket it brought back major memories of this production. They both had that jacket and I bet my stepdad still has his.
That is so cool to have a connection to people who were involved in the early days of VFX who changed cinema forever (and blood relation no less). I hope you do VFX or some kind of art IRL
@erutan108 It was great growing up in that space. I always had amazing Haloween Costumes. One year my step-dad was working on Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and brought home one of the Ferengi prosthetics. They are a short alien species so the actors heads were close to the same size as my giant kid head. My mom made me a cool wizardesqe robe and I went a a Ferengi wizard. We had a workshop in our garage filled with old zombie busts from the "of the dead" series, some Kingcong lives props, and tons of cool little things from other movies. I got to see and sometimes help with the production of all this stuff. I watch videos of people doing effects now and it just seems so easy compared to what my parents used to do. So many plaster casts, rubber molds, mold casting, hair pinning, etc. I don't work in special FX at all, but I do a TON of different hobbies like knife making, wood working, general art, and sewing. I constantly use techniques I remember them using in my hobbies.
where did you mom's jacket go? im 28 never seen this movie, only heard the name. It is extremely impressive. still looks good to this day, that could be a scene in a modern movie if you changed the clothes/hair styles haha
We could say, that James Cameron opened Pandora's Box of CGI in the late 80s so he could make Avatar 20 years later, an almost fully CG movie that is located on Pandora.
Love the V.O. @10:44 "...proprietary laser scanning apparatus" when I'm looking at two or three C-stands holding scratch-built plywood forms to stabilize the head. This is where a grip crew really comes in clutch and why all the on-set departments rely on each other to be competent, efficient and clever. The high buck effects worked because a grip knew how to set his stands and had a jigsaw on his truck.
The fact that this water effect and the mimetic poly alloy in T2 still stand up today is amazing and a testament to the visual effects artists that worked on those films. Their work from 30+ years ago is better than a lot of effects in modern films.
I would say that the liquid metal effects in the newer Terminator movies looks far more matched to the real mercury used in T2. There's that disconnect in T2 where the real mercury was used vs the CG effects, where the real mercury was far more reflective and less cloudy looking compared to some of the CGI effects.
That's like comparing a 197/80s Lamborghini Countach, created as a groundbreaking/tentpole showpiece, to a 2024 Nissan Sentra, a mass-market econobox designed to get you from A to B. They might both be cars, but they are in very different categories. Of course the 40+ year old supercar is still "better" than a lot of average cars you see on the road today.
@@locinolacolino1302 rendering 75 seconds of footage probably took over half of those 7 months with the technology they had. You also seem to forget that the software we use for 3d is just way way way more easier than what they used back in the day. Today, a 5 year old could easily sculpt a 3d model
@@crashtestdummy87 It's not way easier when artists are given mere weeks to execute complex VFX sequences, and expected to work 80+ hours a week, most of which is just fixing other peoples problems. That is the unfortunate reason this effect holds up better than those in modern films. Also, PIXAR notes that each new film takes the same, if not longer time to render than the last. As the faster computers get the more we demand for them, make reference to Wirth's law.
This is incredible content. Please make more. I love gaining an appreciation for these older ground breaking techniques. Esp the comparison on how they could be done today.
I'm pretty sure the computing power of today's smartphones are way more powerful than the computers they've used back in 1989. Yet, they've pulled this amazing visual effect. Amazing!
this blew my mind watching this is the early 2000’s with my dad as a child. i couldn’t believe that someone could liquify themselves, slide through a bar, and solidify again. oh how i miss not doubting the big screens lol
I'm pretty sure Cameron made Abyss as a technology demonstrator for Terminator 2. If the water works, so will the liquid metal -> go for the big bucks.
This was freaking amazing! I’ve watched so many videos regarding the making of the movie itself and all of the dangers/hazards that happened during filming. There are also some behind the scenes videos I’ve watched on how the water weenie was created…but nothing this in depth. The stuff you guys do to bring us viewers into these different worlds does not go unnoticed. I, for one, am highly appreciative of every video this channel has put out.
I always love these videos where they try to recreate an effect from an older movie. Always gives me such an appreciation for the people who actually created these moments.
Best one of these yet, imo! Not only does the finished product look great, but the care and respect given to the original clearly shone throughout everything.
I listen to talk radio while I'm at work, and most of the guys who worked in radio during the 90s said when they'd make commercials for the station they'd record from one magnetic tape to a spare, then physically mark and cut together the segments to make an radio spot. I know that's nothing compared to this, but it shows that even just 25 or 30 years ago the technology we had access to was wildly different than today.
Personally I think the original ripple effects looked way more realistic. They behaved like actual ripples going out in a very symmetrical pattern, unlike the random noise maps you threw in.
This, so much. The original was based on a thorough study of the mechanics of reflections in waves in water, and it shows. Throwing on some moving noise is such a weak version of that. I find it hard to believe there wasn't some closer method than that.
Exactly. Water follows rules, not random noise. But I feel that's the main reason why older effects often look better. They were created with more observational care.
I am 49 and i remember seeing this movie for the first time way back when. Floored. That water weenie has stuck with me ever since and is a core memory that helped shape my love of movies. Thank you for doing this video!
@Dylan-ir2yo I'm also 49 and I did see it in theaters! Was so inspired, thunder and lighting, rainstorm and my buddies and I played in the rain on the back deck, pretending we were in an undersea base that was coming down around us. I'll never forget.
I had a computer then and knew this was done on a computer and just was amazed at it but didn't think much of it. Terminator 2 which had similar effects really got me thinking though because it was through the entire movie. @@dzenacs2011
At that time, There was Parallax, Flint, and Flame. the latter two were for Discreet Co. before Autodesk acquired them. All were running on SGI workstations
Yeah, just imagine: if the Knoll brothers hadn't been so rushed, maybe Photoshop would actually have a decent underlying architecture instead of being the huge mess it is. :-P
@@stylis666 - I'm not. Photoshop is absolutely prehistoric in the way it does most things. I mean, they've slowly started to add more modern, non-destructive features (like adjustment layers and dynamic objects), but most people still use the old methods (which are still the default ones in the current version) that actually cause information loss every time you make a change. After Effects has a much, much better internal architecture (in fact, I'd say the After Effects team has been miles ahead of the rest of Adobe for at least a decade and a half), almost on par with the "big guns" like Nuke. Everything is undoable, readjustable and reorderable at any moment (because it doesn't replace the original data), there's never any irreversible loss of quality or information.
Out of these you've done this is the best one by far! I love how it's slower paced and really takes a deep dive into the challenges they faced back in the day. And the end result came out looking great!
Man, this was such a cool thing to watch, and to learn about those scenes from, The Abyss. I remember my little 13 year old mind being blown by seeing that movie for the first time when it came out. It felt real. I also think at 20:20 Jordan makes such an important point about technology, and how boundaries and limitations often feed creativity and innovation. As a musician I'm often thinking about how you had to come up with creative solutions at times when recording to tape, etc. In this world of every growing machine learning (A.I.), will we lose out in the end once we just have to give something a prompt to instantly, and frankly without really any effort, get a finished result? Look at the creativity and innovation that came out of this one film. Amazing!
Development of the actual algorithms took longer; most of them had been around for years (decades, in some cases). It's just that computers got fast enough to make them viable, and so a lot of theory that had been floating around could suddenly be applied to moving pictures.
@@RFC3514 Um... thats not true? As shown in this literal video, they created TONS of completely new and never before done algorithms for just this specific scene, totally in house. From animation to rendering. You're seriously undermining the immense effort teams like ILM put into completely in house algorithm development Not everything was "already around." In fact, it was the opposite. CAD programs were not rendering engines that had to be written completely from scratch, building off little to no practical engineering knowledge.
@@jonnyj. - Um... it is. Looks like you need to watch the video again. They specifically mention papers from previous years that they based their code on (and there were many more that they don't mention here but which I'm sure they'd read too). And even those were based on previous work. These are highly competent professionals, that keep up with their field and are aware of their abilities. They would never bet a movie (and, indirectly, their own career and ILM's future) on effects that they had no idea how to do. Raytracing had been in development since the 1970s. Silicon Graphics was founded in 1981. By the late 80s there were free and open-source raytracers capable of rendering reflections and refractions on most platforms (Unix, Amiga, Archimedes, etc. - and it wasn't long until DKB and POVRay became popular on home PCs too). Most of them just weren't very well integrated with _animation_ software, because they were so slow. Yes, ILM artists / engineers coded their own renderers (or at least extensions / optimisations to existing ones). So did the ones at Pixar ten or twenty years later. That still happens today, albeit not as much (I've been working in visual effects since the late 80s, and I do a _lot_ less coding nowadays). But they were using commercial laser scanners to digitise actors' faces and doing the animation in Alias workstations, this wasn't the middle ages. I recommend studying the history of SGI and Alias (and maybe reading or at least looking at some SIGGRAPH papers from that era).
The ripple algorithm they had to do from scratch but there where already movies with CGI, even full CGI scenes with animated objects and movement, the challenges where different but the tech and the tools was already there for most of it@@jonnyj.
Flight Of The Navigator and Innerspace are two underrated 80s movies with killer VFX, Flight Of The Navigator in particular. Blending the description video into the finished VFX shot Monty-Python like was cool.
You guys did a great job. The only major flaw is that the faces are not as easily seen as in The Abyss original. But that is likley because they wouldn't be if the faces were actually made out of water. I would have made the faces look more like they would if made out of clear ice instead of water.
I just started working on a solo game project recently, and the fact that we have access to all these free tools now is just mind bending. I love when you guys do these kinds of videos, would love to see more like these.
In addition to all that work, the thing that helped integrate the final effect into the shot/plate was the fact that they generated interactive lighting live on set that would be emanating from the as yet to be visualised pseudopod.
I'm always looking at your videos, being someone recuperating from years of injuries, now into this field. Always impressive! Keep up the good work Corridor Crew!
This video was really insightful on how far we've come in terms of technology and the pioneering work done in CGI for films. The explanations were clear and detailed, making it easier to grasp the complexities.
Brilliant job guys, the end result looked great and the twist was hilarious! I remember seeing The Abyss in the cinema when it came out and loving it, then watching the special edition countless times on LaserDisc - in 4:3 for the extra height! At the time I was an obsessive ILM fan and went to see anything they were involved in, and you're right, I'd never seen anything like that before - it genuinely felt like something really new, and a big step forward from the morphing in Willow a year or so earlier. PS - bonus points for the stack of Cinefex magazines! Your channel helped fill the gap they left when they stopped publishing.
The Abyss is one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time. I was 7 or 8 when it hit theaters and can still remember seeing the movie poster. Since then I've watched every edit/ version of the film, and the behind the scenes/making of documentary. All the special FX were ground breaking, but that CG water worm was definitely next level. Also, not to mention, the fact that because of this scene, they literally created Photoshop to make it work. Insane!
I love these deep dives into the old school CGI and VFX - it always brings that spark of magic back. CGI is so commonplace the sheer genius and ground breaking innovation can be so easily taken for granted.
You know I never really thought all too much about sfx until I came across Corridor's content. You guys really capture the brilliance and pioneering behind all this historical ground being laid within the industry. Its really quite fascinating being able to break down and follow each new innovation that needed to be coded from the ground up. These guys were expanding the framework of what was possible for humans to accomplish at the time and that's damn incredible.
Awesome, i love this kind of video from you guys! The Abyss is one of my all time favourite films and i've been patiently waiting for decades for it to get a HD/4k release... not long now! Well done Wren and Jordan for recreating the masterpiece and bringing the Abyss to a new audience! :)
I really like this format for challenges/movie history. It's better than the 'more fun' ones where people compete against eachother, and i like the focus more on the history of moviemaking.
Corridor - You should do something on The Last Starfighter, 1984. They filmed part of it off of Soledad Canyon Rd, just north of Santa Clarita. They used CG for their starships, pretty much maxed out their systems.
@@lordomacron3719captain disillusion made a 41 minute about flight of the navigator a couple years ago. It's so thorough and amazingly well done that the movie 's effect never need another revisit.
@@JinKeeI really loved that movie from my childhood too. To be fair though, I don't the last Starfighter's VFX were innovative in that tron did stylized CGI a couple years earlier (1984 vs 1982). And besides some motion scenes that couldn't practically done with models, going the CG route didn't look better at that time than the physical models being used by Star wars and Star Trek during that era.
This was a lot of fun and brought back some great memories for me. At that time I was working at a graphics company in NY while getting my CS degree. There was a lot of amazing stuff going on back then. This reminds me of when I was tasked to write some code that took an image and transposed it into a 3D "mesh" based on its luminosity (brightness). We were working on something using slime to help define the shape of the mesh. Morphing algorithms were used in conjunction with this to make it look like slime was oozing out of and running down an object. One thing that ILM did have a little trouble with in T2 (that my co-workers had to point out) was "grounding". When the liquid metal T2 walked, it sort of floated. The small company I worked for had the technology to make walking look more natural. This was the best job I ever had - I loved working with the combination of engineers and artists. Sadly the company shut down shortly after I graduated. The company was CGL (the Computer Graphics Lab). I was getting my degree at NYIT and the main CGL office was on campus. Fun times...
That was awesome, guys! You killed it! I was coding at the time The Abyss came out and I had some idea how difficult that shot was. I was utterly blown away. Turns out it was even more difficult that I thought.
I especially love that the issue on the top of the stack features the boss demon from SPAWN on the cover. Some of the jankiest CG ever to make a theatrical release.
Thanks for making us dudes from the 90s era CG feel old! I appreciate that you guys took the time to understand some history and tipped your hat to Spaz and guys like him. If it wasn't for Spaz there just may not be a Corridor Crew.. In 1990-95 era, everyone who used Alias / Softimage all knew each other. It was a very very small world then. Nicely done!
Well done on getting Spaz on for his insight. He is a legend. Really interesting history in the ILM documentary that is available especially the Jurassic Park stuff.
I'd love to also see you gentlemen look into more of the effects of Terminator 2, the opening war battle & nuclear nightmare scenes in particular given the amount of practical effects & miniatures required, not just CGI. The movie deserves its own video!
The faces you created look very rigid. I know you guys didnt spend a ton of time on this, but its so wonderful to see that true masters of maths+software were able to visualize and create such beautiful and artistic render and make it look believable. Although you probably did this in 2-3 days and they probably took a year or more, but still its kudos to those devs that you have these tools now..
This was just absolutely tremendously fascinating. Amazing technical knowledge and expertise from the original team, and wonderful demonstration of how far we've come by Jordan and Dean.
2:09 in the video, I think that is so cool even with modern expectations, people put effort toward the CGI and also the water splash afterward (cool atmosphere of the movie too, calm water colours throughout the clip, the lady touching the face and tasting to make sure it's actual water, etc)
The Abyss is such a good movie. There are lots of James Cameron callbacks on this. As a kid I ended up seeing Terminator 2 before I ever saw The Abyss, but by the time I DID see The Abyss I knew there was a connection between these water effects and the T-1000 liquid metal effects. Without The Abyss we may not have had the T-1000 in Terminator 2, or it may have looked completely different, or they have never done the liquid metal thing and would have just come up with another Terminator. Who knows?
One of my all time favorite movies. Seeing it for the first time as a movie obsessed kid, I remember feeling like I was witnessing the future. Thanks for the memories CC.
I saw this in theaters when I was a kid. I remember being completely enraptured by the movie. I had no idea at the time why this scene was so amazing, but it was so realistic that I simply accepted what I was seeing without even pausing to consider how it was made. This stands out as one of my favorite movies of all time.
I saw this one when it showed up on HBO a year or so after the theatrical release as a 9 year old and the only way I thought they could have done this was with a jello puppet. That made sense to my 9 year old brain. It made more sense than saying it was done with a computer.
It's so wild that you guys can meet and talk with these heros and quite litterally the founding fathers of our industry. Super good job on your take and really cool research video that really put into perspective what we owe to these genius from back then.
My parents bought a vcr and a few movies including this one when I was 10. We watched it together in the living room and the scene with the water snake vividly stands out in my mind because prior to that I had never seen anything close to that during the 80s until T2 came out a few years later in the early 90s. I’m not surprised at all that the two effects were made by the same SFX team.
That's magnificent, well done chaps. I think the first films that really wowed me with CGI were The Last Starfighter (1984), the Owl from the opening sequence from Labyrinth (1986) and Flight of the Navigator (1986). All hold a special place in my head, but I think Labyrinth had the greatest impact. It showed that photorealism was a realistic goal. Of course, none of this takes away from what they achieved for The Abyss.
I vividly remember seeing The Abyss with my friend in the theatre right when it came out. We were two 16-year old computer geeks, and the whole bus ride home we were talking about the pseudopod, trying to figure out how they did it. In the end, we came to the inevitable conclusion that it had to be CGI, there’s just no other way to make it look that good (even though we probably didn’t even know the term “CGI” back then). It’s amazing how good it still looks, and this video was educational & great fun, thanks!
Having to code most of it, and code the ripple effects. That's why I love watching "the making of" when it comes to the Jurassic Park and Cameron's 90's movies, that's when CGI was best used because it had to be carefully done. When you guys where impressed that it was real water splashing, that's the beauty with the early CGI when they combined it with real things, today they would have made that splashed water CGI as well. It's also really cool to see these veterans sitting there and essentially being the creators of programs such as 3dmax and everything else that followed. I also think it's interesting to see that even if anyone can do something similar today with just a use of a smartphone, you can still not really top the extra effort that was put into the original because there was a whole team behind it making their utterly best to create something unique, so you can tell that the original is still better cinematically.
The best part of any movie for me is learning how it was done. I love behind the scenes stuff. And to watch you guys go over effects from movies from my childhood is awesome. You did a great job with this one. I'd love to see if there are any visual effects you can go over/recreate from The Goonies.
Historic deep dive: “The Last Starfighter” (1984). I’ve been requesting it for years (!) for Artists Reacts. But a historic deep dive video (like this one) might be a better place to talk about The Last Starfighter.
Yoooo, awesome that you got Spaz in this video!! Like a decade ago I reached out to him to ask about his CG work on this and Jurassic Park and such for a film school presentation. Steve was very kind and I loved being able to share how films changed to my class. Corridor - y'all ever hear of the movie Psycho Goreman? It has some incredibly silly VFX you should cover some day.
Massive props to Corridor for bringing Spaz on the channel, he was the guy who started cg animation in movies.
Yeah but they should get some real actors 😂
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 This is not a channel about actors.
@HenritheHorse No but it is about making (short) movies. And guess what you need for movies.
Yes, and just think that his intentions were to make things look completely realistic.. Now we are at the point that we can, yet everything moves and looks completely fake. Look at the just the sky alone in ANY Marvel film and you can see that it looks terrible. All of the floating and flying people are not believable and while watching , you aren't swept up into the fantasy, because there is not a single thing , "Fantastic" about it.
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 Stunt actors are more important in this context.
Very nice, fellahs. I'm 64 and I first delved into 3D modeling and animation in 1993 with Lightwave 3D software. The computer we had at the college I was going to was an Amiga 2000 with no space to store thousands of frames of animation. The only way I could render an animation was to videotape, one frame at a time. I built an animated a haunted house exterior which to took several days at about 4 hours a day. To make an 8 second animation, it took me 6 hours to render each frame (about 10 minutes per frame) and capture each frame on 3/4 inch videotape using an Abner A/B-roll edit controller. It was the only frame-accurate piece of equipment we had at the time.
Technology is indeed crazy. As someone who's been invested into this type of work and technology and is now 64, how do you feel about OpenAI's Sora? AI generated video seems like magic doesn't it?
Ever participate in the IRTC (Internet Raytracing Competition)?
Do you still have it?
Now I can yell a couple sentences at my phone and a Language Model will literally make me an infinitely better haunted house exterior within seconds. Times have changed grey-bush.
Haha I'm with you, I tried to do the same thing on my Amiga 500 1MB with Cinema 4D, waiting hours and hours to render one image, praying that it won't go OOM/Guru Meditation.
And now nowadays we have photorealism in real-time, or almost...
My parents worked on this movie when I was a kid in South Carolina. They did practical effects, so they were not involved with the scene you guys are talking about, but when Steve showed his jacket it brought back major memories of this production. They both had that jacket and I bet my stepdad still has his.
That is so cool to have a connection to people who were involved in the early days of VFX who changed cinema forever (and blood relation no less). I hope you do VFX or some kind of art IRL
@erutan108 It was great growing up in that space. I always had amazing Haloween Costumes. One year my step-dad was working on Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and brought home one of the Ferengi prosthetics. They are a short alien species so the actors heads were close to the same size as my giant kid head. My mom made me a cool wizardesqe robe and I went a a Ferengi wizard.
We had a workshop in our garage filled with old zombie busts from the "of the dead" series, some Kingcong lives props, and tons of cool little things from other movies. I got to see and sometimes help with the production of all this stuff. I watch videos of people doing effects now and it just seems so easy compared to what my parents used to do. So many plaster casts, rubber molds, mold casting, hair pinning, etc.
I don't work in special FX at all, but I do a TON of different hobbies like knife making, wood working, general art, and sewing. I constantly use techniques I remember them using in my hobbies.
@@erutan108the early days of VFX? - you mean around 1920?
@@litjellyfish hehe, not that early… I recommend you watch Light and Magic documentary, then you’ll get my perspective
where did you mom's jacket go? im 28 never seen this movie, only heard the name. It is extremely impressive. still looks good to this day, that could be a scene in a modern movie if you changed the clothes/hair styles haha
We could say, that James Cameron opened Pandora's Box of CGI in the late 80s so he could make Avatar 20 years later, an almost fully CG movie that is located on Pandora.
I love when the channel comes back to this effect.
Yeah they hardly ever talk about it...
Who the was thrown off even RLMs best of the worst music started playing in the video as jordan talked hahaha
They missed a joke, have Jordan giving up and Wren going damnit! You never give up on anything!! Liiive! Ed harris style haha
It's an annual tradition
@@KaladinVegapunk Wren slapping Jordan over and over again, screaming at the top of his lungs...Sam and Niko looking on hopelessly...
Love the V.O. @10:44 "...proprietary laser scanning apparatus" when I'm looking at two or three C-stands holding scratch-built plywood forms to stabilize the head. This is where a grip crew really comes in clutch and why all the on-set departments rely on each other to be competent, efficient and clever. The high buck effects worked because a grip knew how to set his stands and had a jigsaw on his truck.
The fact that this water effect and the mimetic poly alloy in T2 still stand up today is amazing and a testament to the visual effects artists that worked on those films.
Their work from 30+ years ago is better than a lot of effects in modern films.
I would say that the liquid metal effects in the newer Terminator movies looks far more matched to the real mercury used in T2. There's that disconnect in T2 where the real mercury was used vs the CG effects, where the real mercury was far more reflective and less cloudy looking compared to some of the CGI effects.
Probably because CG artists in modern films don't get 7 MONTHS to work on 75 seconds worth of footage.
That's like comparing a 197/80s Lamborghini Countach, created as a groundbreaking/tentpole showpiece, to a 2024 Nissan Sentra, a mass-market econobox designed to get you from A to B. They might both be cars, but they are in very different categories. Of course the 40+ year old supercar is still "better" than a lot of average cars you see on the road today.
@@locinolacolino1302 rendering 75 seconds of footage probably took over half of those 7 months with the technology they had. You also seem to forget that the software we use for 3d is just way way way more easier than what they used back in the day. Today, a 5 year old could easily sculpt a 3d model
@@crashtestdummy87 It's not way easier when artists are given mere weeks to execute complex VFX sequences, and expected to work 80+ hours a week, most of which is just fixing other peoples problems. That is the unfortunate reason this effect holds up better than those in modern films. Also, PIXAR notes that each new film takes the same, if not longer time to render than the last. As the faster computers get the more we demand for them, make reference to Wirth's law.
This is incredible content. Please make more. I love gaining an appreciation for these older ground breaking techniques. Esp the comparison on how they could be done today.
“A water weenie that will satisfy the masses” got me 😂
Came to the comments to say this lmao
Love the little smirk he does after saying it lol. You can tell he busted out laughing 0.5 seconds after the cut 😂
I'm pretty sure the computing power of today's smartphones are way more powerful than the computers they've used back in 1989. Yet, they've pulled this amazing visual effect. Amazing!
this blew my mind watching this is the early 2000’s with my dad as a child. i couldn’t believe that someone could liquify themselves, slide through a bar, and solidify again. oh how i miss not doubting the big screens lol
Wow ur dad was a child, incredible.
I'm pretty sure Cameron made Abyss as a technology demonstrator for Terminator 2. If the water works, so will the liquid metal -> go for the big bucks.
@@I_enjoy_some_things Everyone was a child.
@@Valkonnenew, you were a child? gross
@@Andrew-md1gl It was...I would shit my diaper regularly.
This was freaking amazing! I’ve watched so many videos regarding the making of the movie itself and all of the dangers/hazards that happened during filming.
There are also some behind the scenes videos I’ve watched on how the water weenie was created…but nothing this in depth.
The stuff you guys do to bring us viewers into these different worlds does not go unnoticed. I, for one, am highly appreciative of every video this channel has put out.
I always love these videos where they try to recreate an effect from an older movie. Always gives me such an appreciation for the people who actually created these moments.
100%
I feel like the piece about the ripples being done IN CODE because you couldn’t actually display it is gonna be unappreciated by a lot of people.
@@z_Moose And they look better than the noise technique used by these guys.
That short was SO good. You guys have got to do more like that! You guys are incredible filmmakers
Best one of these yet, imo! Not only does the finished product look great, but the care and respect given to the original clearly shone throughout everything.
I listen to talk radio while I'm at work, and most of the guys who worked in radio during the 90s said when they'd make commercials for the station they'd record from one magnetic tape to a spare, then physically mark and cut together the segments to make an radio spot. I know that's nothing compared to this, but it shows that even just 25 or 30 years ago the technology we had access to was wildly different than today.
We gotta get Spaz on the couch. We wouldn’t have the Rex without him, dude is the punk rock godfather of CGI.
We need him here
I guess you've seen it but the documentary about him (Jurassic Punk) is really great.
Personally I think the original ripple effects looked way more realistic. They behaved like actual ripples going out in a very symmetrical pattern, unlike the random noise maps you threw in.
Trigonometry wins! That's why you should stay in school, kids. Clicking effects gizmo nodes only goes so far.
This, so much. The original was based on a thorough study of the mechanics of reflections in waves in water, and it shows. Throwing on some moving noise is such a weak version of that. I find it hard to believe there wasn't some closer method than that.
Exactly. Water follows rules, not random noise. But I feel that's the main reason why older effects often look better. They were created with more observational care.
I am 49 and i remember seeing this movie for the first time way back when. Floored. That water weenie has stuck with me ever since and is a core memory that helped shape my love of movies. Thank you for doing this video!
did you see it in theatre?
@Dylan-ir2yo I'm also 49 and I did see it in theaters! Was so inspired, thunder and lighting, rainstorm and my buddies and I played in the rain on the back deck, pretending we were in an undersea base that was coming down around us. I'll never forget.
I saw it on tv in early 90s and literally nobody talking aboout cgi or knowing what it is. We think its another camera trick lol
I had a computer then and knew this was done on a computer and just was amazed at it but didn't think much of it. Terminator 2 which had similar effects really got me thinking though because it was through the entire movie. @@dzenacs2011
As a VFX Artist, It would be great to know more about the digital compositing software that they used in T2. Great video as always!
At that time, There was Parallax, Flint, and Flame. the latter two were for Discreet Co. before Autodesk acquired them. All were running on SGI workstations
Did not know the Photoshop connection to this scene! That is amazing!
Yeah, just imagine: if the Knoll brothers hadn't been so rushed, maybe Photoshop would actually have a decent underlying architecture instead of being the huge mess it is. :-P
@@RFC3514 Now you're just being mean 🤣You're probably not even wrong either 🤣
@@stylis666 - I'm not. Photoshop is absolutely prehistoric in the way it does most things.
I mean, they've slowly started to add more modern, non-destructive features (like adjustment layers and dynamic objects), but most people still use the old methods (which are still the default ones in the current version) that actually cause information loss every time you make a change.
After Effects has a much, much better internal architecture (in fact, I'd say the After Effects team has been miles ahead of the rest of Adobe for at least a decade and a half), almost on par with the "big guns" like Nuke. Everything is undoable, readjustable and reorderable at any moment (because it doesn't replace the original data), there's never any irreversible loss of quality or information.
easily my favorite episode in a while. Please do more in this exact format!!!!
Out of these you've done this is the best one by far! I love how it's slower paced and really takes a deep dive into the challenges they faced back in the day. And the end result came out looking great!
Please! Please never stop doing episodes like this! ❤- Thank you Wren and Jordan for all the work you put into this one!
That effect was definitely ahead of it’s time, amazing work
Man, this was such a cool thing to watch, and to learn about those scenes from, The Abyss. I remember my little 13 year old mind being blown by seeing that movie for the first time when it came out. It felt real. I also think at 20:20 Jordan makes such an important point about technology, and how boundaries and limitations often feed creativity and innovation. As a musician I'm often thinking about how you had to come up with creative solutions at times when recording to tape, etc. In this world of every growing machine learning (A.I.), will we lose out in the end once we just have to give something a prompt to instantly, and frankly without really any effort, get a finished result? Look at the creativity and innovation that came out of this one film. Amazing!
The absolute LEAPS that these guys made, from scene to scene, to film to film, is incredible. Absolutely shocking how fast VFX evolved.
Development of the actual algorithms took longer; most of them had been around for years (decades, in some cases). It's just that computers got fast enough to make them viable, and so a lot of theory that had been floating around could suddenly be applied to moving pictures.
@@RFC3514 Um... thats not true? As shown in this literal video, they created TONS of completely new and never before done algorithms for just this specific scene, totally in house. From animation to rendering. You're seriously undermining the immense effort teams like ILM put into completely in house algorithm development
Not everything was "already around." In fact, it was the opposite. CAD programs were not rendering engines that had to be written completely from scratch, building off little to no practical engineering knowledge.
@@jonnyj. - Um... it is. Looks like you need to watch the video again. They specifically mention papers from previous years that they based their code on (and there were many more that they don't mention here but which I'm sure they'd read too). And even those were based on previous work.
These are highly competent professionals, that keep up with their field and are aware of their abilities. They would never bet a movie (and, indirectly, their own career and ILM's future) on effects that they had no idea how to do. Raytracing had been in development since the 1970s. Silicon Graphics was founded in 1981. By the late 80s there were free and open-source raytracers capable of rendering reflections and refractions on most platforms (Unix, Amiga, Archimedes, etc. - and it wasn't long until DKB and POVRay became popular on home PCs too). Most of them just weren't very well integrated with _animation_ software, because they were so slow.
Yes, ILM artists / engineers coded their own renderers (or at least extensions / optimisations to existing ones). So did the ones at Pixar ten or twenty years later. That still happens today, albeit not as much (I've been working in visual effects since the late 80s, and I do a _lot_ less coding nowadays). But they were using commercial laser scanners to digitise actors' faces and doing the animation in Alias workstations, this wasn't the middle ages.
I recommend studying the history of SGI and Alias (and maybe reading or at least looking at some SIGGRAPH papers from that era).
The ripple algorithm they had to do from scratch but there where already movies with CGI, even full CGI scenes with animated objects and movement, the challenges where different but the tech and the tools was already there for most of it@@jonnyj.
All these things are tied to James Cameron. So insane how influential he has become in the film industry throughout decades of entertainment.
Flight Of The Navigator and Innerspace are two underrated 80s movies with killer VFX, Flight Of The Navigator in particular.
Blending the description video into the finished VFX shot Monty-Python like was cool.
You guys did a great job. The only major flaw is that the faces are not as easily seen as in The Abyss original. But that is likley because they wouldn't be if the faces were actually made out of water. I would have made the faces look more like they would if made out of clear ice instead of water.
Plus his finger didn't get wet from putting it into the water weenie like it did in the Abyss
Also, I reckon the water had too much colour saturation or something? The colour looked off to me. Otherwise, fantastic job!
I just started working on a solo game project recently, and the fact that we have access to all these free tools now is just mind bending. I love when you guys do these kinds of videos, would love to see more like these.
In addition to all that work, the thing that helped integrate the final effect into the shot/plate was the fact that they generated interactive lighting live on set that would be emanating from the as yet to be visualised pseudopod.
Steve's a good friend. He's awesome! He told me he'd play the bagpipes to the SGI machines in ILM's rendering room so they wouldn't crash.
I love this documenary style format so much. Very informational but on a topic that's sort of unique and definitely interesting!
I'm always looking at your videos, being someone recuperating from years of injuries, now into this field. Always impressive! Keep up the good work Corridor Crew!
Lets just appreciate the effort corridor crew puts in all their videos
The feeling of the whole thing. You can see that they are super passionate about the project. One of the best Corridor's videos ever.
More of this please. This one is probably the best execution you guys have done for recreating an iconic effect. Looks fantastic and it was funny :)
This video was really insightful on how far we've come in terms of technology and the pioneering work done in CGI for films. The explanations were clear and detailed, making it easier to grasp the complexities.
I love how it smiled after forming the face. Someone now needs to do a full Wren edit of the original ;)
The OLD effect is better, mas the NEW idea is gold!
Brilliant job guys, the end result looked great and the twist was hilarious! I remember seeing The Abyss in the cinema when it came out and loving it, then watching the special edition countless times on LaserDisc - in 4:3 for the extra height! At the time I was an obsessive ILM fan and went to see anything they were involved in, and you're right, I'd never seen anything like that before - it genuinely felt like something really new, and a big step forward from the morphing in Willow a year or so earlier. PS - bonus points for the stack of Cinefex magazines! Your channel helped fill the gap they left when they stopped publishing.
The Abyss is one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time. I was 7 or 8 when it hit theaters and can still remember seeing the movie poster. Since then I've watched every edit/ version of the film, and the behind the scenes/making of documentary. All the special FX were ground breaking, but that CG water worm was definitely next level. Also, not to mention, the fact that because of this scene, they literally created Photoshop to make it work. Insane!
Just saw the new 4K release in the theater. It holds up extremely well. Videos like these are why I love this channel.
Watching your short while taking a dump really amplifies the experience. Great job guys
I was planning on recreating the pseudopod sequence since last December. I have to continue finishing the project test. You guys nailed it!
I love these deep dives into the old school CGI and VFX - it always brings that spark of magic back. CGI is so commonplace the sheer genius and ground breaking innovation can be so easily taken for granted.
Great job getting an interview with Steve Williams. Jurassic Punk was a surprisingly heavy documentary.
You know I never really thought all too much about sfx until I came across Corridor's content. You guys really capture the brilliance and pioneering behind all this historical ground being laid within the industry. Its really quite fascinating being able to break down and follow each new innovation that needed to be coded from the ground up.
These guys were expanding the framework of what was possible for humans to accomplish at the time and that's damn incredible.
Awesome, i love this kind of video from you guys! The Abyss is one of my all time favourite films and i've been patiently waiting for decades for it to get a HD/4k release... not long now! Well done Wren and Jordan for recreating the masterpiece and bringing the Abyss to a new audience! :)
I really like this format for challenges/movie history. It's better than the 'more fun' ones where people compete against eachother, and i like the focus more on the history of moviemaking.
Corridor - You should do something on The Last Starfighter, 1984. They filmed part of it off of Soledad Canyon Rd, just north of Santa Clarita. They used CG for their starships, pretty much maxed out their systems.
YES! DEATH BLOSSOM!
Good suggestion. I think Flight of the Navigator would be a good subject for a video of this nature. It has a great blend of VFX and practical.
@@lordomacron3719captain disillusion made a 41 minute about flight of the navigator a couple years ago. It's so thorough and amazingly well done that the movie 's effect never need another revisit.
@@JinKeeI really loved that movie from my childhood too. To be fair though, I don't the last Starfighter's VFX were innovative in that tron did stylized CGI a couple years earlier (1984 vs 1982). And besides some motion scenes that couldn't practically done with models, going the CG route didn't look better at that time than the physical models being used by Star wars and Star Trek during that era.
@@calvinl2149my first thought as well. The Captain's video on the subject is stellar... stellar... Get it?
This was a lot of fun and brought back some great memories for me.
At that time I was working at a graphics company in NY while getting my CS degree. There was a lot of amazing stuff going on back then.
This reminds me of when I was tasked to write some code that took an image and transposed it into a 3D "mesh" based on its luminosity (brightness). We were working on something using slime to help define the shape of the mesh. Morphing algorithms were used in conjunction with this to make it look like slime was oozing out of and running down an object.
One thing that ILM did have a little trouble with in T2 (that my co-workers had to point out) was "grounding". When the liquid metal T2 walked, it sort of floated. The small company I worked for had the technology to make walking look more natural.
This was the best job I ever had - I loved working with the combination of engineers and artists. Sadly the company shut down shortly after I graduated.
The company was CGL (the Computer Graphics Lab). I was getting my degree at NYIT and the main CGL office was on campus. Fun times...
That was awesome, guys! You killed it! I was coding at the time The Abyss came out and I had some idea how difficult that shot was. I was utterly blown away. Turns out it was even more difficult that I thought.
Great episode! Really makes you appreciate the pioneers of VFX!
That stack of Cinefex magazines at 3:21 makes my heart soar like a hawk
I especially love that the issue on the top of the stack features the boss demon from SPAWN on the cover. Some of the jankiest CG ever to make a theatrical release.
And, that movie was directed by Mark Dippe. @@thork6974
@@thork6974They might’ve placed it there because Spaz was the VFX supervisor on that film, and Mark Dippé was the director!
@@Daveyboy100880 Oh of course. And the issue on top of the other stack is Lost World Jurassic Park...
Thanks for making us dudes from the 90s era CG feel old! I appreciate that you guys took the time to understand some history and tipped your hat to Spaz and guys like him. If it wasn't for Spaz there just may not be a Corridor Crew.. In 1990-95 era, everyone who used Alias / Softimage all knew each other. It was a very very small world then. Nicely done!
Jordan’s acting career is popping off, First in Spider man then the Abyss good job mate can’t wait to see what movie he stars in.😅
Well done on getting Spaz on for his insight. He is a legend. Really interesting history in the ILM documentary that is available especially the Jurassic Park stuff.
The number joke killed me 💀
i expected him to say "3."
@@K__a__M__I you cant do nr 2 without doing nr 3.
I will not elaborate.
I was hoping his answer would have just been "Yes"
The fact that Ben tasted it got me
@@isaackim7675 Ben? Is that short for Jordan?
First of all, Jordan and Wren are national treasures, secondly that effects looks amazing! Great job!
If Cameron doesn't come to your couch after this, he is missing out!
They need to get Steve Williams!
I'd love to also see you gentlemen look into more of the effects of Terminator 2, the opening war battle & nuclear nightmare scenes in particular given the amount of practical effects & miniatures required, not just CGI. The movie deserves its own video!
I just realised at 18:19, it's not "Water Weenie". It's Weenie water.
Well done all around. The film quality of your project was among my favorite I’ve seen on the channel-had a nice cinematic feel 👏
The faces you created look very rigid. I know you guys didnt spend a ton of time on this,
but its so wonderful to see that true masters of maths+software were able to visualize and create such beautiful and artistic render and make it look believable. Although you probably did this in 2-3 days and they probably took a year or more, but still its kudos to those devs that you have these tools now..
How are all of these guys so talented???
It's great that you're giving these guys the credit they deserve for paving the way for all of us
Original looks better imo or just me?
just me
This was just absolutely tremendously fascinating. Amazing technical knowledge and expertise from the original team, and wonderful demonstration of how far we've come by Jordan and Dean.
I was just thinking about The Abyss today, and how that specific effect led the way to T2.
These guys were literally writing the software, that's nuts!
0:14 The uncanny poopie.
Caca
2:09 in the video, I think that is so cool even with modern expectations, people put effort toward the CGI and also the water splash afterward (cool atmosphere of the movie too, calm water colours throughout the clip, the lady touching the face and tasting to make sure it's actual water, etc)
Thanks, Wren. Great episode about one of my favorite movies. I love to watch how effects were created. You guys all rock.❤
The Abyss is such a good movie. There are lots of James Cameron callbacks on this.
As a kid I ended up seeing Terminator 2 before I ever saw The Abyss, but by the time I DID see The Abyss I knew there was a connection between these water effects and the T-1000 liquid metal effects.
Without The Abyss we may not have had the T-1000 in Terminator 2, or it may have looked completely different, or they have never done the liquid metal thing and would have just come up with another Terminator. Who knows?
The sketch omg. "It-it was number two.." LOL
One of my all time favorite movies. Seeing it for the first time as a movie obsessed kid, I remember feeling like I was witnessing the future. Thanks for the memories CC.
Wren never washed his hands
This whole thing is amazing. Thank you to the unsung heroes of early special effects.
Also "#1 or #2?" had me dying lmao
One of my favorite movies of all time!
Really enjoy the different dynamic Jordan has brought to the team since he joined. Great video.
Seriously, what's up with Luke Skywalker being in the Corridor videos??
I saw this in theaters when I was a kid. I remember being completely enraptured by the movie. I had no idea at the time why this scene was so amazing, but it was so realistic that I simply accepted what I was seeing without even pausing to consider how it was made. This stands out as one of my favorite movies of all time.
Listen to the silly Americans saying "wadder". 😄
You like wo’oh?
That was SUCH a fun way to show the finished work with an actual ministory!
I saw this one when it showed up on HBO a year or so after the theatrical release as a 9 year old and the only way I thought they could have done this was with a jello puppet. That made sense to my 9 year old brain. It made more sense than saying it was done with a computer.
This video is key to how movies were when I grew up. Thank you for all the effort you put into this project. Much much respect!!!
That is absolutely mental. I have been working in blender and it’s a hassle but it makes me appreciate what they did back then a million fold.
It's so wild that you guys can meet and talk with these heros and quite litterally the founding fathers of our industry. Super good job on your take and really cool research video that really put into perspective what we owe to these genius from back then.
My parents bought a vcr and a few movies including this one when I was 10. We watched it together in the living room and the scene with the water snake vividly stands out in my mind because prior to that I had never seen anything close to that during the 80s until T2 came out a few years later in the early 90s. I’m not surprised at all that the two effects were made by the same SFX team.
Thank you for making me feel very old, Jordan.
That's magnificent, well done chaps.
I think the first films that really wowed me with CGI were The Last Starfighter (1984), the Owl from the opening sequence from Labyrinth (1986) and Flight of the Navigator (1986). All hold a special place in my head, but I think Labyrinth had the greatest impact. It showed that photorealism was a realistic goal. Of course, none of this takes away from what they achieved for The Abyss.
All the original members of ILM are VFX legends in their own right
I vividly remember seeing The Abyss with my friend in the theatre right when it came out. We were two 16-year old computer geeks, and the whole bus ride home we were talking about the pseudopod, trying to figure out how they did it. In the end, we came to the inevitable conclusion that it had to be CGI, there’s just no other way to make it look that good (even though we probably didn’t even know the term “CGI” back then). It’s amazing how good it still looks, and this video was educational & great fun, thanks!
Having to code most of it, and code the ripple effects. That's why I love watching "the making of" when it comes to the Jurassic Park and Cameron's 90's movies, that's when CGI was best used because it had to be carefully done. When you guys where impressed that it was real water splashing, that's the beauty with the early CGI when they combined it with real things, today they would have made that splashed water CGI as well. It's also really cool to see these veterans sitting there and essentially being the creators of programs such as 3dmax and everything else that followed. I also think it's interesting to see that even if anyone can do something similar today with just a use of a smartphone, you can still not really top the extra effort that was put into the original because there was a whole team behind it making their utterly best to create something unique, so you can tell that the original is still better cinematically.
The best part of any movie for me is learning how it was done. I love behind the scenes stuff. And to watch you guys go over effects from movies from my childhood is awesome. You did a great job with this one.
I'd love to see if there are any visual effects you can go over/recreate from The Goonies.
Jordan's acting is so good!
Niklas Jonansson - I am unbreakable song in the intro. I see you corridor crew.
Historic deep dive: “The Last Starfighter” (1984). I’ve been requesting it for years (!) for Artists Reacts. But a historic deep dive video (like this one) might be a better place to talk about The Last Starfighter.
Yoooo, awesome that you got Spaz in this video!! Like a decade ago I reached out to him to ask about his CG work on this and Jurassic Park and such for a film school presentation. Steve was very kind and I loved being able to share how films changed to my class.
Corridor - y'all ever hear of the movie Psycho Goreman? It has some incredibly silly VFX you should cover some day.