Later on, NVIDIA Real-Time Graphics Research: The GeForce 8 Demo Suite and Game Technology 2007 showed how far we have come in 30 years of advances in realtime rendering. Using GPUs for realtime effects and physics simulations, these two pieces of the show demonstrated the jaw-dropping realism of next-generation games. Realistic rendering of human skin, waterfalls, complex character rig and deformation, interactive, destructible environments and physics simulation are now becoming well established features of modern realtime entertainment.

Looking at the lush environments of Crysis or the grittier Gears of War, it is difficult to believe that, only a few years ago, these effects required several hours of calculations. This breakthrough is welcome news for impatient gamers. Once photorealism becomes the norm, creativity in gameplay and storytelling will finally become important again as demonstrated by Valve's Portal and its mind-bending use of physics puzzles, teleportation and anti gravity devices.

Children of Men displays photoreal CG and its integration with film powerfully. Courtesy of Framestore-CFC. © Universal Pictures.

Reality Movies
While realtime effects are the new frontier of Computer Graphics, visual effects in movies are becoming more mature. This year's selections from major studios show how these visual effects can serve storytelling in multiple breathtaking moments.

The birth sequence in Children of Men is a stunning example of perfect integration between CG and film, rendering a powerful moment in the story with an incredible level of details. If watching that sequence the first time in the movie was an intense surprise, it was nothing compared to witnessing how Framestore CFC actually tracked a plastic prop and replaced it with a credible, wet, cold and screaming newborn.

Visual effects were also a key storytelling tool in Pan's Labyrinth. Without them, blending the cold reality of Spain's civil war and the fantasy of a little girl would have been impossible. CafeFX provided the foundation that allowed Guillermo del Toro to take us seamlessly in and out of Ofelia's dreamworld, so effortlessly that we are left wondering if it wasn't real after all.

At the other end of the spectrum, a preview of the upcoming performance capture movie, Beowulf, showed how computer graphics can shape the whole reality of a story, raising the bar beyond Robert Zemeckis’ previous attempt of The Polar Express. While some scenes from the preview looked spectacular (Angelina Jolie as a shape shifting demon, in particular), I couldn't help thinking that the main character still looked a little stiff. The preview left me with the impression that completely virtual photorealistic actors still have a way to go. It will be interesting to see how far we are from leaving the “uncanny valley” when the movie is released on Nov. 16.

Maybe the difference between the two performances was that the water creature had some fantastic element to it while Beowulf tried hard to look natural. After all, Spider-Man 3 is filled with a gallery of virtual actors, which, because of their fast paced action (Spidey, Sandman, Venom, New Goblin), come out perfectly credible. The fact they were masked most of the time didn't hurt either. The other two characters from Spider-Man 3 illustrate another recurrent theme in this year's edition of the Electronic Theater, and in SIGGRAPH in general -- as techniques mature and computational power increases, it is becoming possible to represent complex natural or supernatural effects such as the sentient goo of Venom or the living dust of the Sandman.

Smoke on the Water
It is easy to run out of superlatives with this year's selection of movies, in particular when it comes to vfx involving fluid simulations and volumetric smoke. In U2 and Green Day's video The Saints Are Coming, the interaction between virtual objects and water in news footage was recreated to show what might have happened in an alternate reality. Layers of dust, smoke and debris were used by Double Negative in World Trade Center to visualize what actually happened with startling realism. This was an even greater challenge, as these images have been extensively documented by live news footage and left no room for mistakes.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End was represented by two reels. The first was ILM's 2007 creative trailer in the form of a vfx factory, in which digital pirates shared an assembly line with robots from Transformers, before plunging into a giant vortex of simulated water. The second reel showcased Digital Domain's voxel based STORM system -- from waterfalls and mist at the edge of the world in At World’s End to smoke and dirt at Iwo Jima in Flags of our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Still in the liquid element, Surf's Up: A Practical Guide to Making Waves showed waves simulations with both a stylish and realistic feel, worthy of the best surf documentaries. Finally, Scanline VFX followed up with the Flow movie from last year with their fantastic work on 300's Liquid Battlefield. Their high-definition fluid simulation helped invoke one of the highlights of 300, a lyric scene that communicated the fury of an ocean storm with the breathtaking details of an animated painting.