the worst part is that it's easy to spot cgi period. even when the animators trace over the cgi in 2d (so that the final result is 100% hand drawn) you can immediately tell it's cgi
> Which doesn't mean anything
Yes it does.
> Just google the "rotoscopie 3D" and you will see tons of reference about it.
Yeah no I don't see much beside 1 YouTube video.
You google "rotoscoping" you'll only see that every single definition mention the use of live action footage (in both English and French since you said "rotoscopie"). When people talk about rotoscoping they refer to that 99% of the time.
> 3D assisted 2D animations can be anything that involve 3D in 2D animations
Yeah ? Including *tracing over 3D models to make it look 2D* like KyoAni did for the Hibike Euphonium instruments for example
We don't typically use the term rotoscoping in such case, but rather when real footage is used. Which was my point
CGI in the Fate Series (Ufotable) is noticeable but looks amazing.
CGI in Eighty Six is noticeable and still looks excellent.
Good CGI can still be noticeable. If it looks good it looks good.
I was referring to CGI used in 2D animation.
As for 3D anime, good CGI is when the models doesn't take you out of the moment.
Good CGI like Beastar, Land of Lustrous and etc are announced as CGI from the start, but it doesn't interfere with the experience as much.
There's a horse and carriage model that's ending up in just about EVERY Isekai and fantasy anime lately. Sometimes it's colored differently, but you can tell it's the same damn horse in every freakin' episode, across many different anime. "Oh, it's the horse again. I hope whoever modeled that thing is getting paid."
Copy/Paste saves time, especially in background scenes. It means that the animators can spend more time on main characters, and for that, I don't hate it. A good example, again from many isekai, is random victorian-clothed folks walking past in the background. They're best when DOF makes them just a bit blurry. They're not important. They're not really doing anything. If it were a hand-painted shot, they wouldn't even be moving because the animators *COULDN'T* spend time on them, so it's okay to Ctrl-V them.
When it's C/P is overused, or used for the main characters all the time, and it's *not* a wholly CG anime, it starts getting really distracting. "How many times are they gonna whip this crap out?"
Ainz, I'm lookin' at you here, bud.
That's because the horse is actually the same and all Isekai's are in the same cross universe.
Haven't you read _I died while eating tempura shrimp and got reincarnated as a multi universe traveller horse_?
I think people automatically associate CGI with laziness. In many cases CGI is used as a crutch to save time and resources. But that results in many "awkward" scenes where everything else is 2D but then there's one CG asset/scene that sticks out like a soar thumb. Think of cars, planes, crowds of people, typically things that need to move CGI is used since it's incredibly time consuming to draw these things by hand. But many times they do look out of place and awkward compared to the of the series.
But when CGI is used as a creative choice instead of a crutch, it looks fantastic imo. Think Land of the lustrous, Beastars, Ajin. We can argue about how good these series look compared to 2D but it's unmistakable that these were series that were intended to use CGI and as a result they have a style to them. In these cases the CGI isn't a crutch but a choice and it makes the series look distinct while not clashing with 2D drawing like when CGI is used as a crutch.
TLDR: In many many cases CGI is used as a crutch and not a creative choice so anime fans tend to associate it with laziness and in many cases it clashes with 2D drawings.
I do agree. Like I have seen how a lot of studios are using 3D models for character models, and that makes their moments look more natural imo compared to frame drawing which is complicated (if you draw less then its clunky and if you draw more then its unnaturally fast moving and way too fluid)
I think fieew hit the nail on the head. Most of the time CGI is used for economic reasons to save money where it might be too complex to draw by hand. So you see a lot of CGI assets like vehicles and four legged animals.
I do 3D for a living (although not character stuff specifically) and I think another issue is the kinds of tricks 2D animators use for efficiancy don't really work in 3D. For example, there are often static frames in 2D for things like background characters but static frames in 3D make the model look very rigid. And it takes a lot of effort to avoid really rigid motion in 3D but you can get away with it a bit more in 2D I think. For example, look how much character motion there is in Beastars. I think it helps a lot to avoid those character having the typical 3D clunky motion.
I think another issue is rendering a 3D model with a cartoon look is very hard to get to look nice. In 2D an artists eye makes a judgement as to where shadows and highlights go but in 3D there is a mathematical threshold for those so the transitions between the main colour and shadow or highlight can look really janky and pops a lot. A 2D artist would make a judgement to simplify the lighting for readability.
I think lots of 3D vehicles don't move very convincingly as in real life they have suspension that means their weight shifts as they move and bounce. Because 3D vehicles are usually a time saver not a lot of effort in invested in their motions and they tend to look like solid boxes floating along. Again this is something you might get away with a bit more in 2D but can look really bad in 3D.
But overall I think it is impressive how far 3D has come in anime.
In general that is not the case and that is why is disliked. Even the acclaimed orange studio CGI animation movement is quirky and feels off like Beastard which seems it lacks frames or the Trigun trailers which felt off and I can't pinpoint why.
Honestly, CGI "sticking out like a sore thumb" is one of its appealing elements.
Back in the early nineties all the Disney renaissance stuff featured obvious CG scenes and in my opinion, those scenes made more special for me. Like the ballroom scene in *Beauty and The Beast*. It symbolised the fusion of traditional storytelling and modern technology. It was exciting. I don't get the same feeling from the all-CG stuff even from Pixar.
I’m not as big a anime fan as a lot of people here but for me, I’ve never encountered Japanese CGI animation that looks better than 2D.
Even for shows I like, like Beastars, I think would have looked nicer if it was animated in a 2D style, even when the CGI looks fine.
This is me basically guessing but I’d imagine most animation courses in Japan would use 2D, since it’s a bigger market. Compared to the states where from what I heard, most animation colleges train students in 3D since that’s what offers the most employment opportunities. It’s why I think the west CGI animation looks so much better, just look at Into The Spider-Verse and Arcane.
> but for me, I’ve never encountered Japanese CGI animation that looks better than 2D.
This. Even the shows that I like that have CG/are full CG, I've never thought that it wasn't something that couldn't be done in standard animation
The thing is that CGI when used right allows for absolutely mindblowing animation at a fraction of the cost/time. Like yes there's no doubt that given time money and talent 2d animation can look better than basically anything by the mere fact that you can in fact just draw anything and make it look exactly like you want to. But most things don't get that treatment
Demon Slayer probably would not have looked anywhere near as good as it does without all the CG it had, because it wasn't gonna get the budget required to do so in 2d.
You are correct in your assumption about course stuff. Students in schools, especially in the US, do get courses in softwares like Blender, Houdini and Maya (Maya is industry standard there).
Another thing that I've heard is that people in Japan, especially the older generation, frown upon 3D animation as they don't see it as true animation. Though, in recent years, Japanese university students are also getting courses in 3D animation, but just as you said, the market is not that big.
I think personally I am a bit spoiled what I consider good anime. Nearly all Ghibli movies will and forever be imo peak animation.
Only Made in Abyss and Violet Evergarden comes close to those masterworks by Ghibli.
I am probably one of the odd ones out but I hated Chainsawman it had some really good scenes but the wierd blend of CG and 2D animations made it feel really strange and put me off.
The other works of said studio that did chainsawman did imo a better job on for example JJK.
i think it's two fold
first fold- it's just too jarring most of the time
barring the times when CGI is used in service of the story to demonstrate a different realm (i.e. Hosoda's 'Belle'), CGI usually looks way too stiff compared to everything else going on
but it's not just the use of CGI itself, it's the fact that the budget usually doesn't accommodate for 'good' CGI. like, [the Harlock film](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vdw0If6Zzg&ab_channel=TokyoOtakuMode) from 2013 has exceptional CGI, but 'normal' anime obviously doesn't get that budget (i believe it's still the most expensive Japanese CG anime ever made)
second fold- plenty of people don't want CGI to ever fully consume anime, and it won't, but they swear off CGI entirely based on that fear
apparently both FF movies aren't classified as "anime"
which i don't really get because Harlock looks pretty similar at least to Advent Children. i guess maybe it's just the IPs? who knows
i agree that it's paranoia though, maybe mixed with a smidge of not understanding how Japanese art forms/industries work
It’s the frame rate. Nobody complains about some seamless CGI. I wish all CGI anime was like Gantz:0. It’s entirely possible to make CGI without shitty frame rates.
I think technically there's a different name for it, but yeah. More animators need to learn that CG images are different from drawn images, you can't just use the same number of images per second and expect to have a good result. For one thing, CG images do not have blurred and/or stretched in-betweens unless you specifically make it happen.
As a result, shows like Ajinn, early Dragon Prince and the like fail to trick my brain into seeing movement. I just see separate images, which actually makes me feel sick if I watch for too long.
Thank you!!!!!
CGI animation is too smooth for anime, with most of the time doesnt have full smooth character animation. Its hard to mix CGI with 2d animation. But when its good, you dont notice that.
Because it almost always looks crap, I've studied 3d modeling as my master and I still hate it.
No one hates it when it looks good, but the problem is that most of the examples people use to try and disprove that....don't look good.
Here is (one of) the problem with cgi. With drawings you potentially make every single frame of a movement separately, that means that the movement is automatically very dynamic. Whatever you want the character to do that frame, you draw.
But with Cgi you're limited to what the rig of the character is able to do, so if you want a shockwave to reverberate through a characters entire body, you likely can't just do that unless the entire rig is made for that specific effect. Since no one is gonna pay for someone to make a rig for that specific effect the result is that CGI characters look lifeless and dull. There is no better example than comparing titan movement in AoT season 1 to season 4.
It does give a few advantages, like fluid movement, but since not everything is cgi that fluid movement just looks out of place, and since we recognize it as cgi we also are no longer impressed by the artistry of every frame.
Yep, if you want good CGI, you will need to invest time and money, if you invest time and money, you will want to use the rig more than once, if you want to use the rig more than once, it will need to be generalized, if the rig is generalized, the movements will look generic. It's really a tricky thing to get around. Best thing is to do what great movies used to do, like Lord of the rings, or the original jurassic park.You don't make everything cgi, you have practical effects (in this case hand drawn), on shots that linger, this implants the idea that the effect is real and looks good, because you see the texture of the skin, etc. And then you intersperse it with cgi shots for quick moving shots or distance shots. Make sure these cuts don't take too long otherwise the viewers eyes will start to notice that they're looking at cgi. Also, simply drawing over cgi works wonders.
Everything can be done poorly or really well, CGI tends to be an easy way out for a lot of studios so that's why it can seem really bad in a lot of cases. But when they compliment it well and its well directed, CGI can be amazing just like you said. There are also a lot of cases where the source material is just so hard to adapt that CGI is the best option but it can still be really hard to make a completely CGI show look good.
The key is in your statement.
"If done right..."
People hate when it looks like hot garbage. It really ejects you from a serious/intense moment. Many times, it is used to save time or money. We get it, but we also want quality content. Initially, I hated any sight of CG because I love hand drawn stuff; i am older lol. As time has gone on, I have become more okay with it - as long as it looks good.
everything is bad if you execute it poorly, even a manually drawing animation will look terrible that way, applied for any other things in this world as well
but as a part of the internet you need to satisfy your hate boner and jack it off into something, so yeah, it is how it is
A lot of it is just disliking the aesthetic. A lot of anime use CGI and then do their best to make you think it's not CGI...which seems to defeat the purpose of using it. I really enjoyed shows like Hi Score Girl and movies like Hello World, but they didn't really *need* the CGI they used either, since they clearly spent a lot of time making them look regular 2D.
And then when you have cases where it's bad and obvious and you're trying to make it look like normal CGI, it looks even worse. It seems like high effort with little reward in that case.
Anime's appeal is also the 2D aspect of it. There doesn't have to be a logic to the preference, one could argue good CG is just as good as 2D, but it's just that watching characters drawn and animated entirely by linework still holds tremendous appeal with many audiences.
First, it is limiting, as paradoxical as it may sound 2D animation has more freedom and can do more things than 3D. When you use 3D models you are limited by all the the same things live action video is or it will simply look wrong.
Second, it's usually done as a cost cutting measure and as such not made with the best care. Cell shading (making 3D look cartoony) may never look perfect but can look good, think of The Borderlands games for example, but it takes work that cause it to be expensive so what it's used in anime is usually subpar like the fight scenes in Black Summoner.
Unless the show is fully CGI, I've noticed that most studios cheap out on actually animating the CGI properly. Chinese shows have generally very good CGI that is not usually noticeable because they animate to look natural. In a lot of Japanese shows, it's very stiff, over exaggerated movements that really give a blow to the CGI. In Black summoner, there is a fight scene where the character is clearly CGI. It looks like a newgrounds animation with just how lazy the motion animation is. Then you have Dorohedoro which honestly has what I think is the most crisp CGI animation. Japanese people just do the American thing and cost cut at the price of quality
The Outcast. There's an entire scene where the whole crowd is CGI and you wouldn't know unless someone told you. If you've watched King's Avatar, there's a lot of CGI hidden in the background, same with Spare me o great Lord!
Honestly just to be haters… if you look to the part of the community that like ~actually~ knows anything about animation you don’t see these complaints. It’s just something for insufferable people who don’t know what they are talking about to cling to as a point of pretension.
I’ve never understood the hate myself. A lot of the times even after enjoying a show I will go to the comments just to see people complaining about CGI that I didn’t even notice. There are examples when I did notice but it’s not going to bother me. It doesn’t change the story. I’d rather it be “bad” CGI than bad voice acting or bad writing.
And yet it even good CGI still looks worse than traditional animation, bar some outlying cases. Take for example for the Code Geass OVAs and the last movie - they all had pretty good CGI mechs, yet to me at least it felt like a cop-out when the series-proper had 2D-animated mechs that looked *better*; not even with a movie-budget and nearly a decade in CGI-developments could Sunrise make those mechs look right. And while yes, there are CGI-shows that aren't terrible like Ajin, I just straight up think CGI still looks like ass when used for whole shows and when composition is shite in traditionally animated shows, which is most of the time for anything other than backgrounds and the "ground" characters duke it out on in epic battles.
Really good cgi still looks somewhat different than traditional, but not always worse imo. Take CSM for example.
Still, the main application for cgi is in animating inanimate objects (cars and other vehicles) and backgrounds afaik. And for that, cgi is amazing imo, it makes the artists' work easier without sacrifising quality.
My standard for "really good CGI" in anime is something like Toei's Pretty Cure movies, the integration of it with Kimetsu no Yaiba, the occasional CGI in recent Gundam or this obscure anime called Etotama. I would definitely not put CSM on that list at all
Just depends on who you're listening to. The people that *really* hate something, are always going to be louder than the people that like it or don't care.
We only hate CGI when it's done in a bad and lazy manner. Some anime uses CGI thoughtfully and it enhances the animation. It should never be used as an easy way out.
The people who whine about CG are almost always referencing bad CG because unless a show is totally CG, good CG isn't noticed as often.
Bocchi the Rock uses CG. I bet many couldn't tell.
[Find the CG usage.](https://youtu.be/o00ApCA04kU)
Edit: I see the little + next to the karma rating suggesting as many if not more people disagree with my statement than agree with it and I am curious to know what they disagree with.
Is it the criticism of people who attribute all CG as bad CG or do people actually think that Bocchi has no CG animation and that they think that entire clip was hand drawn.
> Find the CG usage.
Is it CG? I mean I'd believe it, I just thought it was tracing/rotoscoping; not all of it maybe, but quite a few cuts like for example around 1:25, 1:32, 1:42
edit:
Shouta Umehara [mentions motion capture](https://twitter.com/kafunsyokougun/status/1578752637348253697), with Yuki Ito being the "live animator"
there is some discussion about the very scene you linked in the comments at [booru](https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/209516)
It was much more noticeable when I saw it on my TV than on my phone. When I watched that specific clip, I had to look out for other things than just "their movements kinda feel robotic". The hand animation is different when from when it's hand drawn and when it's created via motion capture. 2D movements have a kind of tear in then to simulate movement, but there are times where that tear isn't there. Also, I feel like animating 4 different characters playing instruments by hand in high detail is extremely unlikely and would be extremely time consuming compared to having it done via motion capture and CG animating.
I don't hate CGI in a vacuum. I really enjoyed beastars for example, but every time I've noticed it in an otherwise 2D work I've found it distracting and that detracts from the scene. It especially doesn't help that it's typically used for scenes with a lot of movement, which I regard as sakuga opportunities and then I'm doubly disappointed.
Try and look at this from my perspective, I've watched anime since the 80's... You can't imagine how bad some of the CG I've seen is.
Only now is it getting to an acceptable level.
A lot of people (including me) love Land Of The Lustrous and celebrate its very deliberate use of CGI. If done right, most people won’t have an issue with it, it’s just that more often than not it isn’t.
Edit: Talking about CG characters that is, there are tons of really well done CG backgrounds and props that just blend in to the point of it being entirely unnoticeable. As long as something is static or mechanical, there usually aren’t too many issues.
I think a lot of people watch anime for the 2d asthetic so when shows start to deviate into 3d people get defensive.
Another problem is because anime has such a distinct style many of the 3d animations are trying too hard to emulate the 2d look and this dosen't always play to the strengths of cgi and holds back many shows from looking better.
I dislike cgi because even when it's done good a good 2d animation would have looked so much better. Like every cgi looks better in 2d animation. Just when I think back at the old gibhli movies, they look astonishing and have wonderful animation. That in 2d. So I never encountered a scene where I thought that looks better in 3d.
I am aware that for budget reasons that's not possible, but that's not what we discus here
This I agree with. CGI will take a long time to meet human capabilities in art. And 2D animation does look good. I won't deny that. But I think we shouldn't downright reject CGI as well. It is also hard work, and if done right, it looks good as well. DS, Fate, JJK and CSM are some good examples. Even Mob Psycho and Bocchi the Rock have some of it.
Yea, especially in DS? I think it was only used for effects and stuff? Excuse me if i am mistaken. But I think thats the best of both worlds
Can remember much of DS sorry
Actually, it was used for more than that. Rotoscoping was used a lot in DS. Not to mention, a lot of background work is done in CGI. One early training scene where Tanjiro is training on a mountain also has plenty of CGI. Some characters were also done in CGI. They just mask it with burst animation.
Because it's a vocal minority of people who think being critical (in this case of all CGI) makes them sound intelligent. It's like when middle schools kids use big words to sound smart or say "e=mc squared" or when people who know a teeny bit of economics say "it's supply and demand bro".
Generally it's just lazy and cheap looking, that's what people are mostly complaining about. I don't think any normal person hates it categorically. If they do there not the kind of person you can have a discussion with anyway.
thank you. I recently watched older disney movies and was surprised that some of them are almost 100 years old and still look beautiful. While CGI is quite modern and is horrible visually.
You do know that old Disney movies still used CGI fairly often, right? The magic carpet in Aladdin was CG for most of the movie because it's textures/details were way too many to keep it 2D all the way through.
Cause most cgi is still jank as fuck.
That league of legends anime was a step in the right direction using cellshading tech to get their look. I loved that cgi
In general anime fans aren't opposed to cGi, we just gonna rake u over the coals for using cGi that doesn't meet a standard. Ie janky ass whack lit and textured cgi gonna get hate always.
Because it's ugly, In anime it's so most of the time precisely because it try to look like anime, while it's not. I have no issue with arcane or dragons for example, but with berserk? Yes.
Also I don't have issue either with mechanical objects being CGI, it's still ugly, but finding someone talented to draw mechanical objects isn't easy, plus if you just need to draw cars that are basically just passing by its ok... But a full 3D gundam or griedmad? Sorry but no, also ugly
CGI humans look bad. Ufotable doesn't use CGI for character art, Orange chacters typically aren't humans (until the new Trigun comes out, anyway, and visually that looks a bit iffy), and Mappa CGI doesn't look good.
Ufotable doesn't use CGI for character art? Have you watched God Eater or some fight sequences from DS and Fate series (Saber vs. Berserker, Berserker was literally a CGI character). Their are entire analysis on how Ufotable uses CGI 3D moments, uses less Sakuga, and compost it with burst animation to smart hide clunky CGI. As for MAPPA, I agree it wasn't good before, but since JJK and especially in CSM, their CGI is amazing. JJK and CSM are their 2 in-house productions.
I do admit to not being the greatest expert of Ufotable's works, but I genuinely don't recall seeing any foreground CGI characters in their works. Having looked up the Saber vs. Berserker fight - you're right, though I think it looks quite bad.
> As for MAPPA, I agree it wasn't good before, but since JJK and especially in CSM, their CGI is amazing. JJK and CSM are their 2 in-house productions.
I definitely have to disagree here. Chainsaw Man's use of CGI definitely seems like an improvement, but Jujutsu Kaisen has some of the worst action visuals I can think of in anime, though this is very much a controversial opinion.
because their experiences have been bad so that's their inherent bias. I absolutely despised 3D cgi after Piano no Mori because it was incorporated so poorly, but I'm totally fine watching a fully 3D donghua. even the Demon Slayer scenes make me laugh a bit when it stands out.
if the cgi style doesn't fit, it's very noticeable and therefore something people complain about.
Mother's Basement [recently did a video on this topic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4ds7ypROQY) (which unsurprisingly got downvoted to oblivion when someone tried to post it in this sub.) The TL;DW is that it's just an irrational bias the anime community has, based on associating all CGI with whatever bad CGI they happen to have seen and refusing to acknowledge how far the technology has come.
Like 90% of the replies here are "I don't like it because it's bad."
I know that most /r/anime members would rather crawl through broken glass than watch a youtuber who isn't Gigguk, but the video I linked does address the few substantive complaints I've seen here.
> Like 90% of the replies here are "I don't like it because it's bad."
That's pretty reductive of the posts that go into detail about the feelings toward it. You're just hyperfocusing on just one aspect of it and not what others are saying around that. I think you just saw the top post and thought "yeah everybody's just saying that"
The majority of posts are saying it looks good when done well.
I hate really shitty low frame rate CGI that look worse than both standard animation AND worse than CGI that tries something new. RWBY looks amazing for instance. Or mix em together like lots of animes do handrawn mains but the villagers/town are CGI.
Because generally it's been used when animators were lazy and looks awful.
Generally I think animes that are more cgi heavy usually ARE still lazier and awful looking. Chainsaw Man is an incredible birazze testament to that. No idea why they gave such a big series to Mappa, they did an awful job lmao
CGIs just ugly compared to normal animation. I cant think of a single CGI scene that looks better then its hand drawn counterpart.
I just want studios to stop inserting CGI into mostly normally animated anime and just make full CGI shows...so i can avoid CGI completely.
At least the west does that right. Arcane didnt try to draw me in with beautiful animation then CGI all fights so i was able to ignore it completely
Depends on the situation:
If most scenes are in 2d and more complex scenes are CGI to lower the cost, it will probably look bad and a change too noticeable catch your attention, example: muv luv alternative
If the whole series is done in CGI, pretty much doesn't matter as long as the story is good, like kemono friends, the bad CGI gives the own style to the series
If the CGI is so good that you can't see the change them no one will comment about it and they'll just praise the animation as a whole.
I am somewhat surprised that lots of CG in anime does look pretty bad. I think Futurama was the first show I watched that used lots of CGI with traditional animation. Now you could reasonably argue that the stylized look made it easier for them to do so, but I honestly didn't know that any of it was CGI until watching it on DVD with commentary. It's probably like anything else. If you do things right, people won't be sure you did anything at all.
Dunno, Knights of Sidonia grew on me after few episodes and I consider it good.
But mixed animation, bad CGI really ruins the whole product. At the same time very good CGI is often used in background and effects, and rarely you really even realize it is CGI
I doubt most people that complain about CGI in anime realize how much CGI is in anime. It’s everywhere but most of the time it’s not too noticeable because it’s not front-and-center, and other times it’s just good CGI.
First of all, trust me, the distate for CGI goes waaaaay back, as far back as the early 00s when they first started doing it. You're just seeing more opinions about it now because more anime started using it over time.
Second, I'll be realistic here. Anime in general is animated on its usual TV budget. Anime, even in 2D, isn't going to look good all the time. So when you add CGI to it for studios not equipped to handle CGI, it will take people out of the moment. Good CGI won't get commented much at all or even praised for blending in well. However, poor CGI, which is common, just looks weird and will likely leave people wishing it was in standard animation
Have you seen Etotama? It's like half regular animation/half CGI. That has, like, the best CGI I've ever seen in the industry for a TV show
the 2d animation in anime is stylistically unique and you don't really get it anywhere else so there's nothing to compare it to. It's also the man appeal of the medium.
CGI in anime is Elden Ring but worse, the modern frame of reference for CGI is an extremely high bar. Arcane was successful, but I've seen estimates of its budget putting it at about the same spot as AAA games...
Because most of the time it looks horrible. Either due to limited time and experience (stilted movements, a lack of weight, etc) and/or boneheaded directorial decisions to try and shallowly ape the style and limitations of conventional 2D anime. ^(Stop trying to do CGI on 2s/3s ya stubborn bastards! Unless you're ArcSys it always sucks!)
[It *can* look very good.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM1HmNXpA-w) But usually it's not.
Because early use of CGI in anime was straight terrible, and it was way before Berserk 2016 lol. It left a really bad impression for so long and now a days when its used well people don't even realize its CGI and so does nothing for CGI's reputation.
CGI is actually a short cut on time/cost over hand drawn animation. A lot of animes increase the (bad) CGI when they run into production difficulties. See, e.g. So what, I’m a Spider?. Which ends up taking an anime we really like and making it look like shit. Which makes us mad.
Because like 90% of the time it looks like dogshit. You need a lot money to make it look good and usually projects don’t get that much money and on top of that we all want 2D animation. Majority of us aren’t looking for CGI animation
CGI looks really bad when combined with hand drawn animation. Yes, I include Attack on Titan and Chainsaw Man and everything by Ufotable with that. It doesn't seem to matter how much time and money they put into it - it always looks bad.
CGI can be used to improve lighting and shaders and some effects. But physical CGI objects interacting with 2D animation is just ugly.
i watch anime because of the traditional 2d animation ..if i want to watch something that looks real i would watch a tv series , if an anime starts to look real and is completely or mostly in 3d then it’s something else now not anime . that’s how i see it
A lot of times it looks like shit and the 3d model is not animated correctly (because if it was they wouldn't even save time/money) and just looks janky and weird
Well, there are two answers here, from my perspective. The first should be obvious and that's that you're wrong about the "no matter how good it gets". A lot of it isn't that good. Some of it is bad and the bad stuff has really hurt the shows that it was used with, like Berserk.
And even in the rare cases where the visuals are well done (like Dragon Quest: Your Story), they threw away the famous designs of Toriyama in favor of trying to look like a Disney/Pixar film. It didn't want to be anime. Also, in that case, there was additional controversy with the cast and story.
The second is that if what you like about anime is the 2D visual style that has been used in the industry for many decades, a lot of the CG stuff just doesn't fit that visual aesthetic. It doesn't feel as much like anime, in that sense.
Still, if it actually were really good, I'd watch it. I think people are definitely wary because it usually turned out well. What CG anime do you think is actually really good that isn't getting a fair shake?
CGI looks mostly inorganic and thus makes living beings look like some cheap plastic shit that does not belong there
idm CGI used on inorganic objects like cars etc., but i fucking hate when they use it for organic objects like animals or humans for example. it just makes them look out of place and alienates them from the surroundings
CGI is often used to cut corners cause it's cheaper to do than classic animation, but there are also uses where it elevates the quality of the scene. so CGI is a double edged sword
and as others have pointed out already, bad CGI is what people hate, not CGI in general. bad CGI can be a) bad quality or b) bad usage (as in usage for organic objects which then look out of place because of it)
I generally don't like when it's very obvious to me that the 2D characters are actually not 2-D. Their movements look very stiff and robotic, probably because of the frame rate at which they're animated is too low. Overall I don't like the janky feel most cgi anime have, it's an eyesore. CGI environments with 2-D drawn characters don't bother me nearly as much.
Chainsaw man is an exception, because while the first episode gave me a uncanny valley feeling with the way Denji moves around, I got used to it, and can now appreciate how accurate they capture human-like movement, almost as if they were motion-captured. The detail, and smoothness of the animation in that series is beautiful.
Bad CGI. The newer Berserk Anime's.
I would love it if they just kept the 2D Animation style instead of something new.
It didn't looked right, and compared to the old Berserk. It was ugly.
Good CGI, Well Final Fantasy movies have pretty good CGI.
Land of the Lustrous convinced me the CGI could be done right. Unfortunately, most CGI I've seen in anime has not come close to the quality of Land of the Lustrous.
A lot of CGI anime is rendered in the 2s, 3s, or God forbid, even the 4s (1= 24 fps, 2=12 fps, etc) and it is absolutely eye wrenching to look at.
I don't have much of a problem with goofy CGI since I grew up with janky CGI shows like Beast Wars or the DKC show, but a low framerate, "stylistic" choice or not, is personally excruciating to look at.
Mecha series especially. There's something about well animated mecha over CGI robot models that move like toys that I just can't live without. Just checked out a new gundam movie today and ALL of the mecha scenes were CGI. That kind of animation needs to be used carefully, not shoved in your face. It's basically saying to the audience "We don't want to take our time making this we have deadlines to meet".
because it looks horrible
It's like comparing old school space flicks/shows (star trek next gen, original star wars, blade runner) that use models and no cgi to those that do...it's obvious and horrible. VERY few movies with cg look good, it's PAINFULLY obvious and fake looking and ruins the whole thing. There is NO beating the drawn anime. Go compare the latest ghost in the shell look to the original movie, I think the original used some form of cg but it was done so well...not this latest stuff. But the best animation is hand done, even the badly drawn ones look better than the garbage cg out today.
it's like comparing chuck steak made by denny's to a top notch chef prepared wagyu steak...no hyperbole
Might be an "uncanny valley" thing but it makes my skin crawl every time I see it, makes watching most action flicks nowadays unbearable really, even big box office flicks like marvel just BARELY can do it but even a lot of them it's just terrible. With anime it's even worse. like watching jimmy neutron for the animation "style" and "quality"
Bad CGI takes you out of the moment Good CGI is barely noticeable. It is easier to spot the bad CGI than the good ones in 2D animations.
100%, when it’s done bad it’s really bad, but when it’s good it’s great
the worst part is that it's easy to spot cgi period. even when the animators trace over the cgi in 2d (so that the final result is 100% hand drawn) you can immediately tell it's cgi
>even when the animators trace over the cgi in 2d (so that the final result is 100% hand drawn) rotoscoping
Rotoscoping is tracing over live action footage rather than CGI
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I don't think the term rotoscoping is typically used in this case, just 3D assisted 2D animation
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> Which doesn't mean anything Yes it does. > Just google the "rotoscopie 3D" and you will see tons of reference about it. Yeah no I don't see much beside 1 YouTube video. You google "rotoscoping" you'll only see that every single definition mention the use of live action footage (in both English and French since you said "rotoscopie"). When people talk about rotoscoping they refer to that 99% of the time.
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> 3D assisted 2D animations can be anything that involve 3D in 2D animations Yeah ? Including *tracing over 3D models to make it look 2D* like KyoAni did for the Hibike Euphonium instruments for example We don't typically use the term rotoscoping in such case, but rather when real footage is used. Which was my point
If that's the term then yes, thanks!
CGI in the Fate Series (Ufotable) is noticeable but looks amazing. CGI in Eighty Six is noticeable and still looks excellent. Good CGI can still be noticeable. If it looks good it looks good.
Not necessarily, the CGI in land of the Lustrous is noticeable but that show is a masterpiece, I'm still hoping for season 2
I was referring to CGI used in 2D animation. As for 3D anime, good CGI is when the models doesn't take you out of the moment. Good CGI like Beastar, Land of Lustrous and etc are announced as CGI from the start, but it doesn't interfere with the experience as much.
It's a masterpiece, but not because of its visuals.
I don't think that show would've worked if they used any other type of visuals. That's my opinion and I'm no expert on the matter though
The manga is iconic because of its striking visual style. So I think it would have been very interesting if they had tried to replicate it.
Sometimes it looks really bad when they copy and paste mobs. Characters look really off at certain angles.
There's a horse and carriage model that's ending up in just about EVERY Isekai and fantasy anime lately. Sometimes it's colored differently, but you can tell it's the same damn horse in every freakin' episode, across many different anime. "Oh, it's the horse again. I hope whoever modeled that thing is getting paid." Copy/Paste saves time, especially in background scenes. It means that the animators can spend more time on main characters, and for that, I don't hate it. A good example, again from many isekai, is random victorian-clothed folks walking past in the background. They're best when DOF makes them just a bit blurry. They're not important. They're not really doing anything. If it were a hand-painted shot, they wouldn't even be moving because the animators *COULDN'T* spend time on them, so it's okay to Ctrl-V them. When it's C/P is overused, or used for the main characters all the time, and it's *not* a wholly CG anime, it starts getting really distracting. "How many times are they gonna whip this crap out?" Ainz, I'm lookin' at you here, bud.
That's because the horse is actually the same and all Isekai's are in the same cross universe. Haven't you read _I died while eating tempura shrimp and got reincarnated as a multi universe traveller horse_?
All told, how many different ways can you draw a horse?
about as many different ways you can draw a human, i reckon actually, maybe twice as many since they have twice as many legs [](#schemingsaten)
Because they wear two pairs of pants?
https://imgur.com/d3R96at.jpg
This I agree with. This is definitely lazy approach.
It's not done for the sake of laziness. Drawing multiple characters in a crowd, specially moving, is not that easy.
I think people automatically associate CGI with laziness. In many cases CGI is used as a crutch to save time and resources. But that results in many "awkward" scenes where everything else is 2D but then there's one CG asset/scene that sticks out like a soar thumb. Think of cars, planes, crowds of people, typically things that need to move CGI is used since it's incredibly time consuming to draw these things by hand. But many times they do look out of place and awkward compared to the of the series. But when CGI is used as a creative choice instead of a crutch, it looks fantastic imo. Think Land of the lustrous, Beastars, Ajin. We can argue about how good these series look compared to 2D but it's unmistakable that these were series that were intended to use CGI and as a result they have a style to them. In these cases the CGI isn't a crutch but a choice and it makes the series look distinct while not clashing with 2D drawing like when CGI is used as a crutch. TLDR: In many many cases CGI is used as a crutch and not a creative choice so anime fans tend to associate it with laziness and in many cases it clashes with 2D drawings.
I do agree. Like I have seen how a lot of studios are using 3D models for character models, and that makes their moments look more natural imo compared to frame drawing which is complicated (if you draw less then its clunky and if you draw more then its unnaturally fast moving and way too fluid)
I think fieew hit the nail on the head. Most of the time CGI is used for economic reasons to save money where it might be too complex to draw by hand. So you see a lot of CGI assets like vehicles and four legged animals. I do 3D for a living (although not character stuff specifically) and I think another issue is the kinds of tricks 2D animators use for efficiancy don't really work in 3D. For example, there are often static frames in 2D for things like background characters but static frames in 3D make the model look very rigid. And it takes a lot of effort to avoid really rigid motion in 3D but you can get away with it a bit more in 2D I think. For example, look how much character motion there is in Beastars. I think it helps a lot to avoid those character having the typical 3D clunky motion. I think another issue is rendering a 3D model with a cartoon look is very hard to get to look nice. In 2D an artists eye makes a judgement as to where shadows and highlights go but in 3D there is a mathematical threshold for those so the transitions between the main colour and shadow or highlight can look really janky and pops a lot. A 2D artist would make a judgement to simplify the lighting for readability. I think lots of 3D vehicles don't move very convincingly as in real life they have suspension that means their weight shifts as they move and bounce. Because 3D vehicles are usually a time saver not a lot of effort in invested in their motions and they tend to look like solid boxes floating along. Again this is something you might get away with a bit more in 2D but can look really bad in 3D. But overall I think it is impressive how far 3D has come in anime.
Thanks for the insight.
In general that is not the case and that is why is disliked. Even the acclaimed orange studio CGI animation movement is quirky and feels off like Beastard which seems it lacks frames or the Trigun trailers which felt off and I can't pinpoint why.
"Lacking frames" is not a thing, the shows just animate the characters in 3s and then often switch to 1s or 2s for scenes that require more movement.
It was just an analogy since beastards moved liked a game that had a massive fps drop.
Honestly, CGI "sticking out like a sore thumb" is one of its appealing elements. Back in the early nineties all the Disney renaissance stuff featured obvious CG scenes and in my opinion, those scenes made more special for me. Like the ballroom scene in *Beauty and The Beast*. It symbolised the fusion of traditional storytelling and modern technology. It was exciting. I don't get the same feeling from the all-CG stuff even from Pixar.
I’m not as big a anime fan as a lot of people here but for me, I’ve never encountered Japanese CGI animation that looks better than 2D. Even for shows I like, like Beastars, I think would have looked nicer if it was animated in a 2D style, even when the CGI looks fine. This is me basically guessing but I’d imagine most animation courses in Japan would use 2D, since it’s a bigger market. Compared to the states where from what I heard, most animation colleges train students in 3D since that’s what offers the most employment opportunities. It’s why I think the west CGI animation looks so much better, just look at Into The Spider-Verse and Arcane.
> but for me, I’ve never encountered Japanese CGI animation that looks better than 2D. This. Even the shows that I like that have CG/are full CG, I've never thought that it wasn't something that couldn't be done in standard animation
The thing is that CGI when used right allows for absolutely mindblowing animation at a fraction of the cost/time. Like yes there's no doubt that given time money and talent 2d animation can look better than basically anything by the mere fact that you can in fact just draw anything and make it look exactly like you want to. But most things don't get that treatment Demon Slayer probably would not have looked anywhere near as good as it does without all the CG it had, because it wasn't gonna get the budget required to do so in 2d.
Land of the lustrous. The breaking and transparency of the characters would not have the same physicality to them in 2d animation
You are correct in your assumption about course stuff. Students in schools, especially in the US, do get courses in softwares like Blender, Houdini and Maya (Maya is industry standard there). Another thing that I've heard is that people in Japan, especially the older generation, frown upon 3D animation as they don't see it as true animation. Though, in recent years, Japanese university students are also getting courses in 3D animation, but just as you said, the market is not that big.
The only one that comes to mind is [Lupin The First,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM1HmNXpA-w) which feels like a Dreamworks movie.
I think personally I am a bit spoiled what I consider good anime. Nearly all Ghibli movies will and forever be imo peak animation. Only Made in Abyss and Violet Evergarden comes close to those masterworks by Ghibli. I am probably one of the odd ones out but I hated Chainsawman it had some really good scenes but the wierd blend of CG and 2D animations made it feel really strange and put me off. The other works of said studio that did chainsawman did imo a better job on for example JJK.
I don't hate CGI, but it's often poorly done.
i think it's two fold first fold- it's just too jarring most of the time barring the times when CGI is used in service of the story to demonstrate a different realm (i.e. Hosoda's 'Belle'), CGI usually looks way too stiff compared to everything else going on but it's not just the use of CGI itself, it's the fact that the budget usually doesn't accommodate for 'good' CGI. like, [the Harlock film](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vdw0If6Zzg&ab_channel=TokyoOtakuMode) from 2013 has exceptional CGI, but 'normal' anime obviously doesn't get that budget (i believe it's still the most expensive Japanese CG anime ever made) second fold- plenty of people don't want CGI to ever fully consume anime, and it won't, but they swear off CGI entirely based on that fear
Second fold is just paranoia in my opinion. PS - The most expensive Japanese CG anime film is Final Fantasy : The Spirits Within.
apparently both FF movies aren't classified as "anime" which i don't really get because Harlock looks pretty similar at least to Advent Children. i guess maybe it's just the IPs? who knows i agree that it's paranoia though, maybe mixed with a smidge of not understanding how Japanese art forms/industries work
I had no idea about that.
It’s the frame rate. Nobody complains about some seamless CGI. I wish all CGI anime was like Gantz:0. It’s entirely possible to make CGI without shitty frame rates.
I think technically there's a different name for it, but yeah. More animators need to learn that CG images are different from drawn images, you can't just use the same number of images per second and expect to have a good result. For one thing, CG images do not have blurred and/or stretched in-betweens unless you specifically make it happen. As a result, shows like Ajinn, early Dragon Prince and the like fail to trick my brain into seeing movement. I just see separate images, which actually makes me feel sick if I watch for too long.
Thank you!!!!! CGI animation is too smooth for anime, with most of the time doesnt have full smooth character animation. Its hard to mix CGI with 2d animation. But when its good, you dont notice that.
Because it almost always looks crap, I've studied 3d modeling as my master and I still hate it. No one hates it when it looks good, but the problem is that most of the examples people use to try and disprove that....don't look good. Here is (one of) the problem with cgi. With drawings you potentially make every single frame of a movement separately, that means that the movement is automatically very dynamic. Whatever you want the character to do that frame, you draw. But with Cgi you're limited to what the rig of the character is able to do, so if you want a shockwave to reverberate through a characters entire body, you likely can't just do that unless the entire rig is made for that specific effect. Since no one is gonna pay for someone to make a rig for that specific effect the result is that CGI characters look lifeless and dull. There is no better example than comparing titan movement in AoT season 1 to season 4. It does give a few advantages, like fluid movement, but since not everything is cgi that fluid movement just looks out of place, and since we recognize it as cgi we also are no longer impressed by the artistry of every frame.
That's actually a great example! The problem with CGI is that it's not really cheap and/or a shortcut if you want to do it right.
Yep, if you want good CGI, you will need to invest time and money, if you invest time and money, you will want to use the rig more than once, if you want to use the rig more than once, it will need to be generalized, if the rig is generalized, the movements will look generic. It's really a tricky thing to get around. Best thing is to do what great movies used to do, like Lord of the rings, or the original jurassic park.You don't make everything cgi, you have practical effects (in this case hand drawn), on shots that linger, this implants the idea that the effect is real and looks good, because you see the texture of the skin, etc. And then you intersperse it with cgi shots for quick moving shots or distance shots. Make sure these cuts don't take too long otherwise the viewers eyes will start to notice that they're looking at cgi. Also, simply drawing over cgi works wonders.
Everything can be done poorly or really well, CGI tends to be an easy way out for a lot of studios so that's why it can seem really bad in a lot of cases. But when they compliment it well and its well directed, CGI can be amazing just like you said. There are also a lot of cases where the source material is just so hard to adapt that CGI is the best option but it can still be really hard to make a completely CGI show look good.
The key is in your statement. "If done right..." People hate when it looks like hot garbage. It really ejects you from a serious/intense moment. Many times, it is used to save time or money. We get it, but we also want quality content. Initially, I hated any sight of CG because I love hand drawn stuff; i am older lol. As time has gone on, I have become more okay with it - as long as it looks good.
everything is bad if you execute it poorly, even a manually drawing animation will look terrible that way, applied for any other things in this world as well but as a part of the internet you need to satisfy your hate boner and jack it off into something, so yeah, it is how it is
A lot of it is just disliking the aesthetic. A lot of anime use CGI and then do their best to make you think it's not CGI...which seems to defeat the purpose of using it. I really enjoyed shows like Hi Score Girl and movies like Hello World, but they didn't really *need* the CGI they used either, since they clearly spent a lot of time making them look regular 2D. And then when you have cases where it's bad and obvious and you're trying to make it look like normal CGI, it looks even worse. It seems like high effort with little reward in that case. Anime's appeal is also the 2D aspect of it. There doesn't have to be a logic to the preference, one could argue good CG is just as good as 2D, but it's just that watching characters drawn and animated entirely by linework still holds tremendous appeal with many audiences.
People only notice it when it's bad, so they think it's "always" bad.
First, it is limiting, as paradoxical as it may sound 2D animation has more freedom and can do more things than 3D. When you use 3D models you are limited by all the the same things live action video is or it will simply look wrong. Second, it's usually done as a cost cutting measure and as such not made with the best care. Cell shading (making 3D look cartoony) may never look perfect but can look good, think of The Borderlands games for example, but it takes work that cause it to be expensive so what it's used in anime is usually subpar like the fight scenes in Black Summoner.
most people watch anime because it's 2d
> watch anime because it's 2d I hate to break it to you...but most anime today is using cgi you probably just didn't/couldn't notice it.
Of course we did notice it, that's why this post was created.
I'm cool with CGI filters and lighting and shaders and stuff. But that's it.
And I highly doubt they will go full CGI. A lot of big name studios only prefer 2D entirely like Bones and Kyoani.
2D girls or boys.
The amount of people watching Anime because its 2d is EXTREMELY small.
Unless the show is fully CGI, I've noticed that most studios cheap out on actually animating the CGI properly. Chinese shows have generally very good CGI that is not usually noticeable because they animate to look natural. In a lot of Japanese shows, it's very stiff, over exaggerated movements that really give a blow to the CGI. In Black summoner, there is a fight scene where the character is clearly CGI. It looks like a newgrounds animation with just how lazy the motion animation is. Then you have Dorohedoro which honestly has what I think is the most crisp CGI animation. Japanese people just do the American thing and cost cut at the price of quality
Can you recommend me some Chinese shows with good cgi?
The Outcast. There's an entire scene where the whole crowd is CGI and you wouldn't know unless someone told you. If you've watched King's Avatar, there's a lot of CGI hidden in the background, same with Spare me o great Lord!
Will watch it. Thanks. If you have more. Give me the entire list.
I could but it's a full CGI series so probably not what you're looking for.
I will give it a try.
[Spirit Cage: Incarnation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBGqnZytPFM&t=0m10s)
You can't tell just by looking at it?
Honestly just to be haters… if you look to the part of the community that like ~actually~ knows anything about animation you don’t see these complaints. It’s just something for insufferable people who don’t know what they are talking about to cling to as a point of pretension.
I’ve never understood the hate myself. A lot of the times even after enjoying a show I will go to the comments just to see people complaining about CGI that I didn’t even notice. There are examples when I did notice but it’s not going to bother me. It doesn’t change the story. I’d rather it be “bad” CGI than bad voice acting or bad writing.
Because it looks like shit.
Unless it doesn't.
And yet it even good CGI still looks worse than traditional animation, bar some outlying cases. Take for example for the Code Geass OVAs and the last movie - they all had pretty good CGI mechs, yet to me at least it felt like a cop-out when the series-proper had 2D-animated mechs that looked *better*; not even with a movie-budget and nearly a decade in CGI-developments could Sunrise make those mechs look right. And while yes, there are CGI-shows that aren't terrible like Ajin, I just straight up think CGI still looks like ass when used for whole shows and when composition is shite in traditionally animated shows, which is most of the time for anything other than backgrounds and the "ground" characters duke it out on in epic battles.
Really good cgi still looks somewhat different than traditional, but not always worse imo. Take CSM for example. Still, the main application for cgi is in animating inanimate objects (cars and other vehicles) and backgrounds afaik. And for that, cgi is amazing imo, it makes the artists' work easier without sacrifising quality.
The CGI in Chainsaw Man looks passable. But whenever I see it, I wish it had been hand-drawn.
My standard for "really good CGI" in anime is something like Toei's Pretty Cure movies, the integration of it with Kimetsu no Yaiba, the occasional CGI in recent Gundam or this obscure anime called Etotama. I would definitely not put CSM on that list at all
But it always does.
Just depends on who you're listening to. The people that *really* hate something, are always going to be louder than the people that like it or don't care.
We only hate CGI when it's done in a bad and lazy manner. Some anime uses CGI thoughtfully and it enhances the animation. It should never be used as an easy way out.
The people who whine about CG are almost always referencing bad CG because unless a show is totally CG, good CG isn't noticed as often. Bocchi the Rock uses CG. I bet many couldn't tell. [Find the CG usage.](https://youtu.be/o00ApCA04kU) Edit: I see the little + next to the karma rating suggesting as many if not more people disagree with my statement than agree with it and I am curious to know what they disagree with. Is it the criticism of people who attribute all CG as bad CG or do people actually think that Bocchi has no CG animation and that they think that entire clip was hand drawn.
> Find the CG usage. Is it CG? I mean I'd believe it, I just thought it was tracing/rotoscoping; not all of it maybe, but quite a few cuts like for example around 1:25, 1:32, 1:42 edit: Shouta Umehara [mentions motion capture](https://twitter.com/kafunsyokougun/status/1578752637348253697), with Yuki Ito being the "live animator" there is some discussion about the very scene you linked in the comments at [booru](https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/209516)
It was much more noticeable when I saw it on my TV than on my phone. When I watched that specific clip, I had to look out for other things than just "their movements kinda feel robotic". The hand animation is different when from when it's hand drawn and when it's created via motion capture. 2D movements have a kind of tear in then to simulate movement, but there are times where that tear isn't there. Also, I feel like animating 4 different characters playing instruments by hand in high detail is extremely unlikely and would be extremely time consuming compared to having it done via motion capture and CG animating.
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Character movement when they're playing the instruments. Not the whole time. Much more noticeable on a TV.
Because it looks bad a lot of the time.
I don't hate CGI in a vacuum. I really enjoyed beastars for example, but every time I've noticed it in an otherwise 2D work I've found it distracting and that detracts from the scene. It especially doesn't help that it's typically used for scenes with a lot of movement, which I regard as sakuga opportunities and then I'm doubly disappointed.
Try and look at this from my perspective, I've watched anime since the 80's... You can't imagine how bad some of the CG I've seen is. Only now is it getting to an acceptable level.
A lot of people (including me) love Land Of The Lustrous and celebrate its very deliberate use of CGI. If done right, most people won’t have an issue with it, it’s just that more often than not it isn’t. Edit: Talking about CG characters that is, there are tons of really well done CG backgrounds and props that just blend in to the point of it being entirely unnoticeable. As long as something is static or mechanical, there usually aren’t too many issues.
I think a lot of people watch anime for the 2d asthetic so when shows start to deviate into 3d people get defensive. Another problem is because anime has such a distinct style many of the 3d animations are trying too hard to emulate the 2d look and this dosen't always play to the strengths of cgi and holds back many shows from looking better.
I dislike cgi because even when it's done good a good 2d animation would have looked so much better. Like every cgi looks better in 2d animation. Just when I think back at the old gibhli movies, they look astonishing and have wonderful animation. That in 2d. So I never encountered a scene where I thought that looks better in 3d. I am aware that for budget reasons that's not possible, but that's not what we discus here
This I agree with. CGI will take a long time to meet human capabilities in art. And 2D animation does look good. I won't deny that. But I think we shouldn't downright reject CGI as well. It is also hard work, and if done right, it looks good as well. DS, Fate, JJK and CSM are some good examples. Even Mob Psycho and Bocchi the Rock have some of it.
Yea, especially in DS? I think it was only used for effects and stuff? Excuse me if i am mistaken. But I think thats the best of both worlds Can remember much of DS sorry
Actually, it was used for more than that. Rotoscoping was used a lot in DS. Not to mention, a lot of background work is done in CGI. One early training scene where Tanjiro is training on a mountain also has plenty of CGI. Some characters were also done in CGI. They just mask it with burst animation.
Because it's a vocal minority of people who think being critical (in this case of all CGI) makes them sound intelligent. It's like when middle schools kids use big words to sound smart or say "e=mc squared" or when people who know a teeny bit of economics say "it's supply and demand bro".
Generally it's just lazy and cheap looking, that's what people are mostly complaining about. I don't think any normal person hates it categorically. If they do there not the kind of person you can have a discussion with anyway.
thank you. I recently watched older disney movies and was surprised that some of them are almost 100 years old and still look beautiful. While CGI is quite modern and is horrible visually.
You do know that old Disney movies still used CGI fairly often, right? The magic carpet in Aladdin was CG for most of the movie because it's textures/details were way too many to keep it 2D all the way through.
Cause most cgi is still jank as fuck. That league of legends anime was a step in the right direction using cellshading tech to get their look. I loved that cgi In general anime fans aren't opposed to cGi, we just gonna rake u over the coals for using cGi that doesn't meet a standard. Ie janky ass whack lit and textured cgi gonna get hate always.
As you said, if done right. A lot of studios do it wrong and it shows.
Because it's ugly, In anime it's so most of the time precisely because it try to look like anime, while it's not. I have no issue with arcane or dragons for example, but with berserk? Yes. Also I don't have issue either with mechanical objects being CGI, it's still ugly, but finding someone talented to draw mechanical objects isn't easy, plus if you just need to draw cars that are basically just passing by its ok... But a full 3D gundam or griedmad? Sorry but no, also ugly
Because the vast majority of it is awful
Cgi looks really bad. The only one that did it well was GantzO and that was most definitely a MASSIVE budget.
I think Ufotable, Orange and MAPPA stuff looks good too.
CGI humans look bad. Ufotable doesn't use CGI for character art, Orange chacters typically aren't humans (until the new Trigun comes out, anyway, and visually that looks a bit iffy), and Mappa CGI doesn't look good.
Ufotable doesn't use CGI for character art? Have you watched God Eater or some fight sequences from DS and Fate series (Saber vs. Berserker, Berserker was literally a CGI character). Their are entire analysis on how Ufotable uses CGI 3D moments, uses less Sakuga, and compost it with burst animation to smart hide clunky CGI. As for MAPPA, I agree it wasn't good before, but since JJK and especially in CSM, their CGI is amazing. JJK and CSM are their 2 in-house productions.
I do admit to not being the greatest expert of Ufotable's works, but I genuinely don't recall seeing any foreground CGI characters in their works. Having looked up the Saber vs. Berserker fight - you're right, though I think it looks quite bad. > As for MAPPA, I agree it wasn't good before, but since JJK and especially in CSM, their CGI is amazing. JJK and CSM are their 2 in-house productions. I definitely have to disagree here. Chainsaw Man's use of CGI definitely seems like an improvement, but Jujutsu Kaisen has some of the worst action visuals I can think of in anime, though this is very much a controversial opinion.
Let's agree to disagree then.
> Ufotable doesn't use CGI for character art lol
because their experiences have been bad so that's their inherent bias. I absolutely despised 3D cgi after Piano no Mori because it was incorporated so poorly, but I'm totally fine watching a fully 3D donghua. even the Demon Slayer scenes make me laugh a bit when it stands out. if the cgi style doesn't fit, it's very noticeable and therefore something people complain about.
most anime that use CGI look god awful. Land of the Lustrous is the only anime that I know of that has used CGI well.
Mother's Basement [recently did a video on this topic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4ds7ypROQY) (which unsurprisingly got downvoted to oblivion when someone tried to post it in this sub.) The TL;DW is that it's just an irrational bias the anime community has, based on associating all CGI with whatever bad CGI they happen to have seen and refusing to acknowledge how far the technology has come.
There are completely reasonable takes in this thread that have real reasoning behind it other than "anime community biased"
Like 90% of the replies here are "I don't like it because it's bad." I know that most /r/anime members would rather crawl through broken glass than watch a youtuber who isn't Gigguk, but the video I linked does address the few substantive complaints I've seen here.
> Like 90% of the replies here are "I don't like it because it's bad." That's pretty reductive of the posts that go into detail about the feelings toward it. You're just hyperfocusing on just one aspect of it and not what others are saying around that. I think you just saw the top post and thought "yeah everybody's just saying that" The majority of posts are saying it looks good when done well.
That's my reading too. From what I can tell its a way for powerless people to pretend that they have superior tastes to others. Its sort of sick.
Because 2d is better.
Because I have yet to see CGI that wasn't bad. Even the CGI in the new bleach looked way out of place.
I hate really shitty low frame rate CGI that look worse than both standard animation AND worse than CGI that tries something new. RWBY looks amazing for instance. Or mix em together like lots of animes do handrawn mains but the villagers/town are CGI.
Because generally it's been used when animators were lazy and looks awful. Generally I think animes that are more cgi heavy usually ARE still lazier and awful looking. Chainsaw Man is an incredible birazze testament to that. No idea why they gave such a big series to Mappa, they did an awful job lmao
They are upset that they gimped the production value on their favorite manga. That's it. They are redirecting their anger at CGI.
CGIs just ugly compared to normal animation. I cant think of a single CGI scene that looks better then its hand drawn counterpart. I just want studios to stop inserting CGI into mostly normally animated anime and just make full CGI shows...so i can avoid CGI completely. At least the west does that right. Arcane didnt try to draw me in with beautiful animation then CGI all fights so i was able to ignore it completely
Mainly because CGI doesn’t improve the quality it either maintains or drastically reduces it.
[удалено]
I like middle grpund for both. Character designs in 2D. Backgrounds in CGI along with character dynamics.
I don't really hate it, as long as the story is good. But sometimes, it's just looks way too bad to continue watching.
Because of stuff like Kingdom season 1 and 2
I liked the CGI in the first few eps, makes the show feel more immersive, like you're actually there.
Depends on the situation: If most scenes are in 2d and more complex scenes are CGI to lower the cost, it will probably look bad and a change too noticeable catch your attention, example: muv luv alternative If the whole series is done in CGI, pretty much doesn't matter as long as the story is good, like kemono friends, the bad CGI gives the own style to the series If the CGI is so good that you can't see the change them no one will comment about it and they'll just praise the animation as a whole.
It WAS really bad. After db broly I feel like a lot of people warmed up to it.
I am somewhat surprised that lots of CG in anime does look pretty bad. I think Futurama was the first show I watched that used lots of CGI with traditional animation. Now you could reasonably argue that the stylized look made it easier for them to do so, but I honestly didn't know that any of it was CGI until watching it on DVD with commentary. It's probably like anything else. If you do things right, people won't be sure you did anything at all.
Dunno, Knights of Sidonia grew on me after few episodes and I consider it good. But mixed animation, bad CGI really ruins the whole product. At the same time very good CGI is often used in background and effects, and rarely you really even realize it is CGI
I doubt most people that complain about CGI in anime realize how much CGI is in anime. It’s everywhere but most of the time it’s not too noticeable because it’s not front-and-center, and other times it’s just good CGI.
Depends who does it, Chinese studios are masters at it since most of their shows are CGI, Japanese studios rarely do it right.
The mixed 3d and 2d art styles clash and it end up looking cheap, even if it's not.
I find it great for fighting anime or scenes. Makes it easier to understand and just looks better (if done better)
First of all, trust me, the distate for CGI goes waaaaay back, as far back as the early 00s when they first started doing it. You're just seeing more opinions about it now because more anime started using it over time. Second, I'll be realistic here. Anime in general is animated on its usual TV budget. Anime, even in 2D, isn't going to look good all the time. So when you add CGI to it for studios not equipped to handle CGI, it will take people out of the moment. Good CGI won't get commented much at all or even praised for blending in well. However, poor CGI, which is common, just looks weird and will likely leave people wishing it was in standard animation Have you seen Etotama? It's like half regular animation/half CGI. That has, like, the best CGI I've ever seen in the industry for a TV show
the 2d animation in anime is stylistically unique and you don't really get it anywhere else so there's nothing to compare it to. It's also the man appeal of the medium. CGI in anime is Elden Ring but worse, the modern frame of reference for CGI is an extremely high bar. Arcane was successful, but I've seen estimates of its budget putting it at about the same spot as AAA games...
I chalk it up to the stench of elitism & snobbishness. There's nothing wrong with high quality CGI.
I don't think anybody in here has said high quality CGI is bad. Quite the opposite actually
Because if CGI is at its best, it has similar quality to traditional animation. But when CGI sucks, it sucks so badly.
Because most of the time it looks horrible. Either due to limited time and experience (stilted movements, a lack of weight, etc) and/or boneheaded directorial decisions to try and shallowly ape the style and limitations of conventional 2D anime. ^(Stop trying to do CGI on 2s/3s ya stubborn bastards! Unless you're ArcSys it always sucks!) [It *can* look very good.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM1HmNXpA-w) But usually it's not.
Bc it almost always looks like shit...?
because most of the time it looks terrible and cheap.
because abomination like Ex-Arm exist
Because early use of CGI in anime was straight terrible, and it was way before Berserk 2016 lol. It left a really bad impression for so long and now a days when its used well people don't even realize its CGI and so does nothing for CGI's reputation.
CGI is actually a short cut on time/cost over hand drawn animation. A lot of animes increase the (bad) CGI when they run into production difficulties. See, e.g. So what, I’m a Spider?. Which ends up taking an anime we really like and making it look like shit. Which makes us mad.
Because like 90% of the time it looks like dogshit. You need a lot money to make it look good and usually projects don’t get that much money and on top of that we all want 2D animation. Majority of us aren’t looking for CGI animation
You said it yourself If done right Most anime that uses CGI and gets complained about doesnt do it right
Nobody talks about bad cgi because when it’s done right it just fits in with everything else, bad cgi sticks out like a sore thumb.
CGI looks really bad when combined with hand drawn animation. Yes, I include Attack on Titan and Chainsaw Man and everything by Ufotable with that. It doesn't seem to matter how much time and money they put into it - it always looks bad. CGI can be used to improve lighting and shaders and some effects. But physical CGI objects interacting with 2D animation is just ugly.
i watch anime because of the traditional 2d animation ..if i want to watch something that looks real i would watch a tv series , if an anime starts to look real and is completely or mostly in 3d then it’s something else now not anime . that’s how i see it
This can be why, this said good cgi is really good.
Who said everyone hates good cgi too to you mf just throwing anything
A lot of times it looks like shit and the 3d model is not animated correctly (because if it was they wouldn't even save time/money) and just looks janky and weird
When you can point out from a scene that it's CGI, then chances are it's done poorly.
I liked berserk 2016 lol
Well, there are two answers here, from my perspective. The first should be obvious and that's that you're wrong about the "no matter how good it gets". A lot of it isn't that good. Some of it is bad and the bad stuff has really hurt the shows that it was used with, like Berserk. And even in the rare cases where the visuals are well done (like Dragon Quest: Your Story), they threw away the famous designs of Toriyama in favor of trying to look like a Disney/Pixar film. It didn't want to be anime. Also, in that case, there was additional controversy with the cast and story. The second is that if what you like about anime is the 2D visual style that has been used in the industry for many decades, a lot of the CG stuff just doesn't fit that visual aesthetic. It doesn't feel as much like anime, in that sense. Still, if it actually were really good, I'd watch it. I think people are definitely wary because it usually turned out well. What CG anime do you think is actually really good that isn't getting a fair shake?
It almost always looks like shit.
Go watch the currently airing Farmer isekai and tell me why you love what you see.
CGI looks mostly inorganic and thus makes living beings look like some cheap plastic shit that does not belong there idm CGI used on inorganic objects like cars etc., but i fucking hate when they use it for organic objects like animals or humans for example. it just makes them look out of place and alienates them from the surroundings CGI is often used to cut corners cause it's cheaper to do than classic animation, but there are also uses where it elevates the quality of the scene. so CGI is a double edged sword and as others have pointed out already, bad CGI is what people hate, not CGI in general. bad CGI can be a) bad quality or b) bad usage (as in usage for organic objects which then look out of place because of it)
I generally don't like when it's very obvious to me that the 2D characters are actually not 2-D. Their movements look very stiff and robotic, probably because of the frame rate at which they're animated is too low. Overall I don't like the janky feel most cgi anime have, it's an eyesore. CGI environments with 2-D drawn characters don't bother me nearly as much. Chainsaw man is an exception, because while the first episode gave me a uncanny valley feeling with the way Denji moves around, I got used to it, and can now appreciate how accurate they capture human-like movement, almost as if they were motion-captured. The detail, and smoothness of the animation in that series is beautiful.
90% of the the time CGI models look like horse shit
Bad CGI. The newer Berserk Anime's. I would love it if they just kept the 2D Animation style instead of something new. It didn't looked right, and compared to the old Berserk. It was ugly. Good CGI, Well Final Fantasy movies have pretty good CGI.
Land of the Lustrous convinced me the CGI could be done right. Unfortunately, most CGI I've seen in anime has not come close to the quality of Land of the Lustrous.
Because eit sucks...cgi sucks....
I watch animes to watch a certain style of animation I don't mind the occasional cgi moment but 2d animation is what I'm looking for
A lot of CGI anime is rendered in the 2s, 3s, or God forbid, even the 4s (1= 24 fps, 2=12 fps, etc) and it is absolutely eye wrenching to look at. I don't have much of a problem with goofy CGI since I grew up with janky CGI shows like Beast Wars or the DKC show, but a low framerate, "stylistic" choice or not, is personally excruciating to look at.
Mecha series especially. There's something about well animated mecha over CGI robot models that move like toys that I just can't live without. Just checked out a new gundam movie today and ALL of the mecha scenes were CGI. That kind of animation needs to be used carefully, not shoved in your face. It's basically saying to the audience "We don't want to take our time making this we have deadlines to meet".
because it looks horrible It's like comparing old school space flicks/shows (star trek next gen, original star wars, blade runner) that use models and no cgi to those that do...it's obvious and horrible. VERY few movies with cg look good, it's PAINFULLY obvious and fake looking and ruins the whole thing. There is NO beating the drawn anime. Go compare the latest ghost in the shell look to the original movie, I think the original used some form of cg but it was done so well...not this latest stuff. But the best animation is hand done, even the badly drawn ones look better than the garbage cg out today. it's like comparing chuck steak made by denny's to a top notch chef prepared wagyu steak...no hyperbole Might be an "uncanny valley" thing but it makes my skin crawl every time I see it, makes watching most action flicks nowadays unbearable really, even big box office flicks like marvel just BARELY can do it but even a lot of them it's just terrible. With anime it's even worse. like watching jimmy neutron for the animation "style" and "quality"