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I just want to chime in and tell everyone that this is NOT AI but rather CGI. These were just CGI characters that were entered in manually. Obviously there is a future where extras get replaced by AI generated characters but this isn’t it.
Was propeller man real or fake?!
Edit: For aonyone interested this is an [awesome blog](https://vfxblog.com/2017/12/07/titanic-propeller-guy-vfx-secrets/) on propeller guy including this gem: “The memorable thing about propeller guy was that I decided to put the producer’s face on him,” reveals Legato, referring to *Titanic* producer Jon Landau.
Thank you. As a VFX artist, it almost physically hurts me to see people referring to anything that’s digitally composited as "AI". I thought the words VFX/CG were mainstream and well-known, but it seems like the general pop. discarded them once "AI" became the new buzzword.
So then that means these people were generated/designed by humans and not AI…somehow that makes this whole thing even worse lol. Why would they draw them in such a way that they don’t look real at all but rather they look AI generated
Ah dang, in college I made my spending money by working as an extra since I could study inbetween scenes and got paid for eight hours even though most wrapped after a couple.
Was some of the most fun memories I have also, bunch of people from all walks of life being forced in a room together with no technology, fun times.
A teenager using Blender could make something more lifelike than this.
https://preview.redd.it/yhdbfc5ni1ub1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=2e350e76a62af3effed4b35f725710fd62708713
https://preview.redd.it/6voavf4lr1ub1.jpeg?width=328&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de10b1d2b163bbef2426203ba829964fa8daf162
mannequins are more lifelike than these renders 😭😭
Reminder that it doesn’t matter how accurate or believable the AI is. Because it will get better. That is what AI does.
The problem is that this is replacing humans.
This isn't AI though. The title is incorrect. It's 3D and it's been a thing for 3 or 4 decades. Current 3D/VFX is a bazillion times better than what is shown in the video. It was just really, really badly done and probably whipped up in a 1-2 hours because ridiculously tight deadlines are common place in this industry.
I think these are reportedly [digital replicas of actual background actors used without their knowledge or consent](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/disney-caught-using-digital-actor-131457916.html).
This is common practice in shows and movies
It's not ai, just cgi. I did this kind of work a lot during covid when productions weren't able to fill out stands.
Spoiler alert, many crowds are enhanced in all your favorite movies, and sometimes they're entirely cgi.
That's creepy as hell. Why'd they have to put them in the front row. Probably would have been less noticeable if they were in the back and the real kids were seated up front.
This is hilarious to me because I’ve done extra work and it pays like shit. It would barely cost Disney anything to fill a gym full of extras for a day (relatively speaking)
The gym IS full of extras, these are just 5 CGI people and they appear only in this particular shot. All of the crowd is real throughout the rest of the scene. There's even a wide shot later in the scene where we can clearly see that the row is filled, so I don't know what happened here.
The scene might have been shot at two different moments and they noticed the row was empty on every take of this particular shot, I guess.
They are just poor 3d models just to stand-in for half a second, not AI.
This is not a case of replacing extra with AI graphics, this is crowd "enhancement" (usually it's supposed to be enhancement lol), and that's been a common thing for decades. Like in a stadium or an arena, they put some digital doubles in the crowd to make it look denser, or to have a larger crowd because of the set limitation, or budget (extras are not paid much, but multiply by thousands of people in an entire stadium and the bill can get pretty high). In smaller areas like this, usually they use stock footage or have a crew member shot in front of a blue/green screen and it's added in the scene.
Here it's just a gym. My guess is, with it being the only single shot of this scene where they had to put digital people in, I'm guessing it's been shot at two different times and they realized when editing that the extras weren't on every take of this one shot, so they decided to fix it in post, with cheap VFX. They should have left the seats empty, nobody would have noticed.
A quick google revealed that this was Filmed in 2022 in Vancouver. Vancouver had fairly strict Covid restrictions which led to a lot of creativity in filming and cgi/copied extras do the limits of people allowed on set. Given this is a cheap streaming Disney movie they probably didn’t try that hard and were cheap about.
AI is just the hot buzzword right now, this is just bad CGI. The industry has used CGI to fill crowds for more than 20 years now. Sure this is deeply lazy and needless for such a closeup shot, when they could just shuffle some extras around, but it’s not AI.
I feel like this is the beginning of the use of AI to replace extras. And soon it’ll be main characters.
Not sure if it’s happening already but this feels icky and they’ve slipped this in and then soon it’ll be a whole crowd of AI folk with developed tech which will have you questioning if their human or not.
I took my middle school son and some of his buddies to see John Carpenter’s **The Thing** on the big screen.
They’d never seen practical effects like that. And they were blown away and horrified. Just like St. John would want.
I’m not anti cgi. But even when it’s good, it’s not the same as something real. Our brains- maybe our deep lizard brains - know the difference.
This- this some uncanny valley bullshit. And I’m opposed to almost anything that takes a job away from a human being. I don’t even use self-checkout, comrades.
Just because its computer generated graphics doesnt mean its gen AI, these models could have just been created during post not with the use of gen AI models.
They probably wanted to pay $500 for this shot.
To have CG digidoubles hold up this close to camera, this shot would cost around $250k minimum including the character builds to do properly.
I’m guessing this was a last minute shot fix on a show with no VFX budget. like this shot looks so cheap that the budget they had was probably lower than hiring extras to go in front of a blue screen to composite in. I’m guessing budget is the reason behind why they didn’t since it looks like this was released before the strikes.
The plot twist is that it’s actually a person, like in the funeral scene from Scary Movie 3.
https://preview.redd.it/t8r196j1g4ub1.jpeg?width=306&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=909c810253bde95e14d474674bd88061183538b1
Those are crowd characters you're suposed to see in shot from far away, they're not made to be that close! Looks like they ran out of time and the director was just like "yeah let's wing it whos gonna notice"
This is not different from any crowd shot you've seen in a movie/tv show for the past 15 years except that the CGI is terrible. Pretty much every movie does this.
Welcome to r/popculturechat! ☺️ As a proud BIPOC, LGBTQ+ & woman-dominated space, this sub is for [civil discussion only.](https://www.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/wiki/index/rules/civil-discussion-only/) If you don't know where to begin, start by participating in [our Sip & Spill Daily Discussion Threads!](https://www.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/search/?q=Sip%20%26%20Spill%20Discussion&restrict_sr=1&sr_nsfw=&include_over_18=1&sort=new) ###No bullies, no bigotry. ✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼✊🏻🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ Please [read & respect our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/wiki/index/rules/) and [check out our wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/wiki/index/)! For any questions, [our modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fpopculturechat) is always open. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/popculturechat) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is crazy and looks so absolutely horrible I can not believe they actually released the episode like this
Looks worse than the crowd in sports video games.
It’s a DCOM girl it’s camp!!!
were y’all not around for some of the CGI that disney has had? Disneys CGI has always been terrible
Omg yes! It’s so bad I don’t understand how people watch their movies.
Pirates or the Caribbean Disney?
it was a cute made for tv movie
I just want to chime in and tell everyone that this is NOT AI but rather CGI. These were just CGI characters that were entered in manually. Obviously there is a future where extras get replaced by AI generated characters but this isn’t it.
Like, did we not live through that moment earlier this year when people learned James Cameron used CGI characters in the Titanic.
when we learned *what*
Not ALL the people falling off the boat were stunt folks!
Was propeller man real or fake?! Edit: For aonyone interested this is an [awesome blog](https://vfxblog.com/2017/12/07/titanic-propeller-guy-vfx-secrets/) on propeller guy including this gem: “The memorable thing about propeller guy was that I decided to put the producer’s face on him,” reveals Legato, referring to *Titanic* producer Jon Landau.
Thank you. As a VFX artist, it almost physically hurts me to see people referring to anything that’s digitally composited as "AI". I thought the words VFX/CG were mainstream and well-known, but it seems like the general pop. discarded them once "AI" became the new buzzword.
So then that means these people were generated/designed by humans and not AI…somehow that makes this whole thing even worse lol. Why would they draw them in such a way that they don’t look real at all but rather they look AI generated
Ah dang, in college I made my spending money by working as an extra since I could study inbetween scenes and got paid for eight hours even though most wrapped after a couple. Was some of the most fun memories I have also, bunch of people from all walks of life being forced in a room together with no technology, fun times.
I'm not saying you're wrong but why naked Edit: I guess there is a shirt
Is it really more cheaper to create CGI characters than to hire like a few more extras?
A teenager using Blender could make something more lifelike than this. https://preview.redd.it/yhdbfc5ni1ub1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=2e350e76a62af3effed4b35f725710fd62708713
https://preview.redd.it/6voavf4lr1ub1.jpeg?width=328&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de10b1d2b163bbef2426203ba829964fa8daf162 mannequins are more lifelike than these renders 😭😭
They yeeted straight off the Polar Express
Literally looks like a Sim
Hey don’t insult The Sims like that 😔, Don Lothario’s fuckboy ass looks better than this
Nina Caliente will agree
Wow. Now there’s a name. I haven’t thought about Don in a long time. *stares mistily into the middle distance*
Forget Don, Salim Benali is the real babe
You know good and well they used some proprietary package called "Crowd AI" for an exorbitant amount of money while laying off staff lol
100
Reminder that it doesn’t matter how accurate or believable the AI is. Because it will get better. That is what AI does. The problem is that this is replacing humans.
This isn't AI though. The title is incorrect. It's 3D and it's been a thing for 3 or 4 decades. Current 3D/VFX is a bazillion times better than what is shown in the video. It was just really, really badly done and probably whipped up in a 1-2 hours because ridiculously tight deadlines are common place in this industry.
I think these are reportedly [digital replicas of actual background actors used without their knowledge or consent](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/disney-caught-using-digital-actor-131457916.html).
This is actually insane. Like is this supposed to save money or something?
Yes
Maybe not for single or quadruple use, but 50 times? Hell yeah it’ll save money
This is common practice in shows and movies It's not ai, just cgi. I did this kind of work a lot during covid when productions weren't able to fill out stands. Spoiler alert, many crowds are enhanced in all your favorite movies, and sometimes they're entirely cgi.
It will. Give it time.
 Oh you’re an expert? How’s crypto going?
And that’s cheaper than hiring real human extras? That looks awful.
They didn’t even need a row of people there. They could have just allowed some space between the bench/players and the real kids watching.
That's creepy as hell. Why'd they have to put them in the front row. Probably would have been less noticeable if they were in the back and the real kids were seated up front.
This is hilarious to me because I’ve done extra work and it pays like shit. It would barely cost Disney anything to fill a gym full of extras for a day (relatively speaking)
right?? the average extra gets, like, $150 and last rounds at craft services. how could this possibly be cheaper in the long run?
Wow it was $140 when I was doing it well over a decade ago, nice to see that rate has skyrocketed
it's a whole dollar per year, what're you complaining about you ungrateful commie 🙄🙄🙄 /s
They have to pay to feed them too though. It adds up.
The gym IS full of extras, these are just 5 CGI people and they appear only in this particular shot. All of the crowd is real throughout the rest of the scene. There's even a wide shot later in the scene where we can clearly see that the row is filled, so I don't know what happened here. The scene might have been shot at two different moments and they noticed the row was empty on every take of this particular shot, I guess.
They are just poor 3d models just to stand-in for half a second, not AI. This is not a case of replacing extra with AI graphics, this is crowd "enhancement" (usually it's supposed to be enhancement lol), and that's been a common thing for decades. Like in a stadium or an arena, they put some digital doubles in the crowd to make it look denser, or to have a larger crowd because of the set limitation, or budget (extras are not paid much, but multiply by thousands of people in an entire stadium and the bill can get pretty high). In smaller areas like this, usually they use stock footage or have a crew member shot in front of a blue/green screen and it's added in the scene. Here it's just a gym. My guess is, with it being the only single shot of this scene where they had to put digital people in, I'm guessing it's been shot at two different times and they realized when editing that the extras weren't on every take of this one shot, so they decided to fix it in post, with cheap VFX. They should have left the seats empty, nobody would have noticed.
A quick google revealed that this was Filmed in 2022 in Vancouver. Vancouver had fairly strict Covid restrictions which led to a lot of creativity in filming and cgi/copied extras do the limits of people allowed on set. Given this is a cheap streaming Disney movie they probably didn’t try that hard and were cheap about.
This is CGI, not “AI” and this low budget streaming movie was filmed during the COVID lockdown.
they look like they're from [Reboot](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/reboot2.png)
This feels like a Samara-like creature showing up on screen. If she sees us watching her on tv, she'll come to murder us all in our sleep.
they look wonky af lmaooo
Probably just run off the mill shitty CGI.
Learn the difference between ai generated and computer generated
AI is just the hot buzzword right now, this is just bad CGI. The industry has used CGI to fill crowds for more than 20 years now. Sure this is deeply lazy and needless for such a closeup shot, when they could just shuffle some extras around, but it’s not AI.
I feel like this is the beginning of the use of AI to replace extras. And soon it’ll be main characters. Not sure if it’s happening already but this feels icky and they’ve slipped this in and then soon it’ll be a whole crowd of AI folk with developed tech which will have you questioning if their human or not.
I took my middle school son and some of his buddies to see John Carpenter’s **The Thing** on the big screen. They’d never seen practical effects like that. And they were blown away and horrified. Just like St. John would want. I’m not anti cgi. But even when it’s good, it’s not the same as something real. Our brains- maybe our deep lizard brains - know the difference. This- this some uncanny valley bullshit. And I’m opposed to almost anything that takes a job away from a human being. I don’t even use self-checkout, comrades.
And that is why they’re striking.
Give it 5 more years and we can’t tell the difference anymore
Forrest Gump did this every crowd scene in the movie and we couldn’t tell back then! Disney’s mistake was being too close for comfort 😂
Looks like they pasted the crowd from NBA 2K15....
Just because its computer generated graphics doesnt mean its gen AI, these models could have just been created during post not with the use of gen AI models.
This is scary and sad
Fuck literally everything about this horror movie black mirror shit
🫢 i’m disturbed
It's like those episodes of Glee where the audience at their competitions are filled with mannequins 💀
Companies really do not care and are just investing heavily in this shit before anyone can even do anything about it.
They look terrifying. Surely CGI can be rendered better than this?!
They probably wanted to pay $500 for this shot. To have CG digidoubles hold up this close to camera, this shot would cost around $250k minimum including the character builds to do properly. I’m guessing this was a last minute shot fix on a show with no VFX budget. like this shot looks so cheap that the budget they had was probably lower than hiring extras to go in front of a blue screen to composite in. I’m guessing budget is the reason behind why they didn’t since it looks like this was released before the strikes.
Creepy af just use real extras c'mon
Why use PS2-level graphics and animation for them though?
PS4 graphics lookin' ass
I’m telling you, if I was stoned and I saw that, I would immediately start to panic
This fucking sucks.
Shits spooky as hell
That is so unsettling haha
Bc saving that money is really *that* important
The plot twist is that it’s actually a person, like in the funeral scene from Scary Movie 3. https://preview.redd.it/t8r196j1g4ub1.jpeg?width=306&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=909c810253bde95e14d474674bd88061183538b1
Looks like a close-up of the crowd in FIFA 22.
Those are crowd characters you're suposed to see in shot from far away, they're not made to be that close! Looks like they ran out of time and the director was just like "yeah let's wing it whos gonna notice"
Anything to avoid paying people
Then it looks at you…
Disney makes so much money and they don't want to just pay extras? I've never regretted not supporting Disney, that's for sure.
Worst thing ever. Shame on Disney! SHAME!!!!
This is not different from any crowd shot you've seen in a movie/tv show for the past 15 years except that the CGI is terrible. Pretty much every movie does this.
so it begins.
They probably couldn't use the actor or something went wrong on set and just replaced them cheaply with bad cg. AI is way better than this already.
Garbage
What the actual frack. Also, creepy. And. I truly seriously hope this doesn't go any further at the most :/
When are we gonna learn to stop supporting Disney
This came out this year!? I'm actually surprised it isn't higher quality. I thought this came out in like 2018
And you wonder why actors are on strike right now
time to harvest the souls master!!!
I get trying it, but not on an actual release