CGI in VFX – The Evolution

CGI in VFX – from the beginning until today

One of the biggest revolutions in an entire industry has been the relatively new VFX world of the last 30 years. The illusions on the large and small screen that were previously created with painstaking detail work and with the help of sophisticated and innovative technology are now increasingly being created in offices behind large-format monitors and with enormous computing capacities.

The lecture by Tobias Richter at FedCon is dedicated to the first steps, especially the science fiction genre – e.g.: Star Wars, Star Trek, Tron, etc. It shows how, despite the initially very limited possibilities of the computer tool, humans are mastering more and more types of effects in very rapid succession – and how it is now impossible to imagine modern films without them – often in places that a normal viewer would not even recognize as a visual effect. With the accessibility of the computer graphics tool, the use in movies has also increased dramatically – while in the past the number of visual effects settings rarely exceeded 100, with today’s blockbusters 2000 and more settings are not uncommon.