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Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
2001 · Film · 106 min
Directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi
ActionAdventureAnimationFantasyScience Fiction
Led by a strange dream, scientist Aki Ross struggles to collect the eight spirits in the hope of creating a force powerful enough to protect the planet. With the aid of the Deep Eyes Squadron and her mentor, Dr. Sid, Aki must save the Earth from its darkest hate and unleash the spirits within.
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27 comments on Hacker News
> Go watch CGI in a movie theatre and it's worse than 20 years ago
Objectively this isn't true as CGI technology has improved by leaps and bounds (think e.g. subsurface skin scattering in new vs old Gollum), however there's a lot of other factors at play; old CGI used film tricks to make it blend better, new CGI uses full CGI and digital whatsits and doesn't care anymore. It also depends on budget and what studio takes care of it. Good CGI is invisible, and there's a number of non-superhero films where the CGI just isn't visible / you're not even aware of it. Anyway, what 20 year old CGI are you thinking about, and what are you comparing it with? I'm thinking The Spirits Within (2001) or Beowulf (2007); the former did not age well, the latter was already panned as having poor CGI when it came out. Avatar (2009) pushed the frontier again I think.
> go home to play video games and the new releases are all remasters of 20 year old games because no-one knows how to do anything any more.
This is a blinkered view of reality; there's thousands of game developers outside of this bubble, from single person developers making modern classics like Stardew Valley or even Minecraft when it first came out, to teams of developers that are bigger than those that made the games of 20 years ago.
Also, your opinion isn't fact; in the top 20 best selling games of 2024 [0] there is only one arguable remaster (GTA 5, which is on its 3rd remaster) and two complete remakes (FFVII Rebirth and CoD 3), with the former being a completely different game compared to the original. I share your cynicism about the "top of the line" video game market today, but you're not correct.
(meanwhile I'm playing 2007 video game (Supreme Commander))
[0] https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/2024s-best-selling-games-in-the-us/2900-5106/
> it is very refreshing to see such a generous take.
Thanks. I agree with what you've said. Creating at a high level IS hard. We should all strive to begin online interactions from a default position of grace, charity and generosity - especially when it comes to 'hot take' opinions on creative work. As creators ourselves, it helps to remember we don't know the constraints, budgets, time frames, tools or client direction other creatives were working under. It also helps to have been around long enough to have one's once strongly held opinions gradually become obviously wrong over time :-)
As for evaluating CGI Tarkin in particular, I think the only fair way to assess that work is by first putting it in historical context, as it was created nearly 10 years ago now. It needs to be interpreted as a significant step in the long evolution of trying to create photo realistic CGI digital humans. Starting with, for example, this humorous 1988 Siggraph video which plays even the idea of Synthetic Actors for laughs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzRluq7_45c). Watching that clip today, I realize it's almost impossible to see it with 1988 eyes - even though I was in the audience at that Siggraph Film and Video Show and remember being very impressed by the quality achieved. The progress over just a dozen years when I saw Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within on opening weekend was remarkable to my 2001 eyes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrzIRXJNXkM). Although that film is best known today as the most widely seen poster child for the term "Uncanny Valley", it also deserves respect for being the first major feature film to achieve the level of quality necessary to 'discover' the uncanny valley. Given this historical rate of progress, it shouldn't be too surprising that 2016's pre-rendered CGI Tarkin is already matched by the best of 2024's real-time games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpsRNCKiVCk).
To me, film CGI should be evaluated no differently than other types of CG creative works, as they're all based on new, rapidly evolving technologies and tooling. For example, arcade and console games. Back around 20 yrs ago, I can remember some guys I knew bagging on 80s console and arcade games as "low-res, pixely crap" compared to their then state-of-the-art PS2s. Yet today notable examples of early pixel art are considered pure and beautiful, with the look of many of those classic games now being revered by millions of gamers - not for their perfection but for their artistic excellence in spite of their technical limitations. Fortunately, while my early-2000s friends were busy dissing low-res 'crap', I was busy finishing my collection of well over a hundred different 80s and 90s home computers and gaming consoles (including every model of Atari, Commodore, Radio Shack, Sinclair, Amstrad, Spectrum, etc). And I acquired them either for free or for less than $25 at thrift stores and eBay. So, occasionally maintaining historical perspective in the face of trendy hot takes can even pay off... :-)
I think there's a historical rhyme here in that there was a weird fad around the turn of the century during which several companies tried to push the concept of "virtual" models/actresses, presumably wanting to amortize the astronomical costs of high-quality modeling/texturing/rigging (at the time) across multiple media franchises. And the media at large actually seemed oddly on board with that project as long as it grabbed eyeballs.
The most well-known example was probably when Squaresoft founded a whole-ass CGI film studio in Hawaii and pushed remarkably hard to promote "lead actress" Aki Ross of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within as a "Hollywood it girl" [1].
Who could have predicted that what the collective id was actually crying out for was massive advancements in the fields of realtime computer vision and cel-shaded rendering so that people could transform themselves into quirky parasocial anime waifus/husbandos?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy:_The_Spirits_Within#Reception_of_Aki_Ross
I did early work in mass-spring dynamics while at MIT (1985). My system was developed on a Symbolics Lisp Machine:
https://medium.com/@kaveh808/7-how-to-make-3d-jello-6935075171b8
I did simple fabric simulations, as well as 3d soft object dynamics.
Followup work in the early 90's on SGI workstations:
https://medium.com/@kaveh808/24-rubbery-cloth-and-numerical-instability-b49e0d6e39d2
All of this cloth and hair development culminated during my tenure as R&D lead on the feature film "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within". The commercial Syflex system was an offshoot of that development.
But also, only a few years after Wolf3D we got Toy Story in 1995, the first major CGI full feature film. Six years later in 2001 we got The Spirits Within, the first attempted full-feature photorealistic film (it hasn't aged well and it bankrupted the company at a cost of $137 million at the time). And now we live in an age where realtime graphics look better than pre-rendered CGI films from 20 years ago... which also includes Lord of the Rings come to think of it.
Older developer here (I started my career by writing 3D graphics software in the mid-80's).
I recently spent a number of years in semi-retirement, concentrating on my photography [0] and filmmaking [1] and thinking I was done with (and too old for) software development.
Professional software development had lost its lure for me as the CG and VFX industry had grown into a massive factory-like industry. Though I had worked on some satisfying projects -- writing the animation code used in "Jurassic Park", leading the R&D team for "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within", working on "The Hobbit" movies -- I had lost the desire to write software.
Then about a year ago a friend asked me to teach him some Common Lisp online. So I wrote some tutorials and as we did our sessions [2] I got increasingly enthusiastic about developing for fun, especially if I could use the tool of my choice (Common Lisp) for the domain of my choice (computer graphics). So I started a new 3D graphics project and made it open source [3]. Even started a blog about the journey [4].
Although I don't consider myself to be up on the latest buzzwords and web architectures and the only scrum I'm familiar with is from my rugby-playing days, I have found -- rediscovered -- the pleasure of designing and implementing software. Surprisingly (to me at least), I don't feel over the hill. Yes, I probably can't do the marathon programming sessions I used to do, and all-nighters are a thing of the past, but I don't find my mind being any less sharp than it used to be.
[0] https://www.kardanphotography.com
[1] https://vimeo.com/kavehkardan
[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTA6M4yZF0MzsMlNL0N67tIU12OLQ-R5K
[3] https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9
[4] https://medium.com/@kaveh808/once-more-into-the-breach-a-new-common-lisp-3d-graphics-project-d401bfa083d
MIT mathematics degree.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS - Developed 3D animation software used to animate the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park”. - Software R&D lead for CGI feature “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within”. - Senior Software Developer on “The Hobbit” films.
INFO Location: Honolulu, HI Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Possibly Technologies: 3D Graphics & Production, VFX, Software Development, Common Lisp Résumé/CV: Upon request LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaveh-kardan/
Extensive experience in computer graphics development and production.
MIT mathematics degree.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS - Developed 3D animation software used to animate the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park”. - Software R&D lead for CGI feature “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within”. - Senior Software Developer on “The Hobbit” films.
INFO Location: Honolulu, HI Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Possibly Technologies: 3D Graphics & Production, VFX, Software Development, Common Lisp Résumé/CV: Upon request LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaveh-kardan/
Extensive experience in computer graphics development and production.
MIT mathematics degree.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
- Developed 3D animation software used to animate the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park”. - Software R&D lead for CGI feature “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within”. - Senior Software Developer on “The Hobbit” films.
INFO
Location: Honolulu, HI Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Possibly Technologies: 3D Graphics & Production, VFX, Software Development, Common Lisp Résumé/CV: Upon request LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaveh-kardan/
Extensive experience in computer graphics development and production.
MIT mathematics degree
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
- Developed 3D animation software used to animate the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park”. - Software R&D lead for CGI feature “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within”. - Senior Software Developer on “The Hobbit” films.
INFO
Location: Honolulu, HI Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Possibly Technologies: 3D Graphics & Production, VFX, Software Development, Common Lisp Résumé/CV: Upon request Email: my user id at gmail
A good watch indeed. Mechanical film production is all but dead. It's all a digital pipeline now.
Curiously, all the new technology has failed to make the creation of VFX movies less costly.
We made "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" 20 years after Tron, and the results were also a movie ahead of its time. I guess that happens when you push the technology forward in a big way. Takes a while for audiences to catch up.
I had a similar experience, doing my first 3D graphics development on Symbolics Lisp Machines back in the 80's [1], and then spending my career developing 3D CG code in Fortran, C, and C++, missing the Lisp experience the whole time.
Some of the milestones along the way: - Developed 3D animation software used to animate the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park”. - Software R&D lead for CGI feature “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within”. - Senior Software Developer on “The Hobbit” films.
Now I have returned to Common Lisp with a new open source 3D system [2], and it feels really good. As I deliberate over innumerable design decisions, the one thing I have told myself I will not consider changing is the choice of language. New, popular, hot, trendy languages (Clojure, Julia) may monopolize the conversation, but I am content with what Common Lisp allows me to do.
[1]: https://kaveh808.medium.com/late-night-lisp-machine-hacking-d22a0e2d83fa [2]: https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9
I should re-read the Norvig paper...
While leading the software R&D team at Square USA (we made the "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" movie and one of the "Animatrix" shorts) our team got to develop some cool software both for the PS2 and the little known GSCube experimental machine.
The GSCube was 16 GS processors in a box, and could be configured to access the frame buffer as a 4x4 tile format or as 16 layers composited in real time.
For Siggraph 2000, we showed a demo of a shot from the movie running in real time, allowing the user to interactively change the surface materials of the character. The scene was Aki floating in zero gravity, and included individual hair strands.
My own memorable piece of geekery involved implementing Perlin Noise entirely on the VU1, and demoing a field of tall grass blowing in the wind.
Fun stuff.
I'm trying to think of where I've seen this in TV and movies. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (IIRC) and there was a TV show where some Asian man had a plasma gun embedded in his wrist or something. Aliens were involved, and their cell phones all had roll up screens.
I thought this was funny
> • wrote 3D animation software used in “Jurassic Park” • software R&D lead on “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” movie • senior software developer on “The Hobbit” films
> But I don't consider myself an expert
Looks like a cool project though!
Released in 2001 after a budget of $137m, and $85m revenue.
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy:_The_Spirits_Within
> The movie was created using a 3D CG tool called MAYA as well as original tools created in Honolulu.
> By the time the final shots were rendered some of the earlier ones had to be redone because they did not match anymore. Also, the software used to create them had become more advanced (and hence more detail was possible).
I personally believe that the gap to a life-like virtual experience will be closed with the use of neural networks generating the experience. I also believe that's a long way off.
Reminds me a bit of 'photorealistic cg'. The gap between close and indistinguishable has an exponential curve of effort required. I remember when Final Fantasy the Spirits Within was released in 2001[1], and it was said to be extremely photorealistic. It was good for it's time, but you wouldn't think it was anywhere close to believable by today's standard. That was 20 years ago and still I don't think I've seen a full CG movie that I thought was real.
So my take is that, without the help of AI filling in the exponential curve in ways we've not yet seen, it's longer than we think.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaI7ZPA9I1c
I've been doing vfx for 20+ years. So...
- watch a movie :
2020 Upside Down Magic
2017 The Fate of the Furious (visual effects artist)
2015 San Andreas
2015 Avengers: Age of Ultron
2013 R.I.P.D.
2011 Happy Feet Two
2011 Mars Needs Moms
2009 A Christmas Carol
2008 The Tale of Despereaux
2007 Enchanted
2006 The Shaggy Dog
2005 Constantine
2004 Hellboy
2003 The Matrix Revolutions
2001 Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
- or a more recent TV show:
Another Life
Gabby and the Unsittables
Charmed
There's certainly other things I've worked on, but they're lost down the memory hole for good.
> Is it really silly though? The author of trace.moe has to label and store each anime episode somewhere, and use CPU power provided for free to search through these indexes. Adding regular TV series and movies to this dataset could really dirty what gets returned when the service is just about letting someone find out what anime some screenshot is from.
I simply quæstion the sanity of delimiting the search to animated works from a single country, and as I pointed out since it can't find something from Nils, it isn't really about that.
> The FAQ says they've indexed most of post-2000 anime and very little of 80s and 90s anime. It mentions you can even use a similar drawing of the scene to get a match, due to the method they're using!
It also couldn't find anything from The Spirits Within and Advent Children, so it's really not about “animation from Japan” but about specific art styles, it seems.
He also wrote a few [1][2] papers on how they used Scheme for movie production. One of those movies is "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" [3]. This movie was released 2001 and had one of the most advanced animations at that time.
Gauche scheme should get more attention because of stability and lean design. It is also actively maintained for last 20 years.
[1] http://practical-scheme.net/docs/jlugm2000.html
[2] http://practical-scheme.net/docs/gdc2002.html
[3] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0173840/
> is it really reasonable for a games company to fire a director for a game that may not live up to hype yet meets sales goals and gets named game of the year?
I'm curious; even if someone's last game was a bit of a dud sales-wise, is it really reasonable to vehemently punish someone that has a proven stellar track record that you've depended on for years?
Example: Hironobu Sakaguchi
Sakaguchi is the father of Final Fantasy; but after the movie "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" was a complete flop, his career at Square-Enix (then Squaresoft) was over, and he was relegated to the back office. The last FF he created was FF9, and you can see how things progress from there.
It would be much more logical to have said "ok Sakaguchi, we have learned from this mistake. Let's try and do better on the next one", and continue onwards. But maybe I have the benefit of hindsight shrug
This is already happening. In Disney™'s Rogue One™: A Star Wars™ Story, they had Grand Moff Tarkin played by a recreation of Peter Cushing. Disney claims they won't use computers to resurrect Carrie Fisher, but I'm not sure I believe The Mouse.
I remember back when Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within came out, Square was saying that the Aki Ross character model would be like an actress. "While Square ruled out any chance of a sequel to The Spirits Within before it was even completed, Sakaguchi intended to position Aki as being the "main star" for Square Pictures, using her in later games and films by Square, and including the flexibility of being able to modify aspects such as her age for such appearances."
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy%3A_The_Spirits_Within#Character_design
> What's needed is a movie based on a video game that's truly good even if you don't understand the source material.
There is one. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within[1]. IMHO, it's the best video game-based movie so far, and arguably the only actually good one.
[1]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0173840/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Nice, nice. That's a start. I also recall in the original Final Fantasy movie that they landed by shooting gel packs that did exactly that. It spread out and up a certain distance. Then, they hit it with immediate slowdown. I wonder if that was forward thinking or leveraging something someone already heard about.
I'd worry about suffocating in the gel solution. If it's thick enough, you'd probably get stuck. So, something with give like other examples is better.
The smart ones have asset management systems, big databases that track what gets used where how.
The Scheme hacker Shiro Kawai has, as one of his claims to fame, having written an asset management system for Squaresoft (now Square Enix) -- not for any of their games but for the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
Great to read such an in depth analysis. I had read about Cameron's integration of CGI with live action at production time, but had not found anything that explains this different kind of 3D as well as you just did.
I've had this hunch for a while that there are show biz executives out there hoping against hope that Cameron's new 3D technology - which as you say can only be fully appreciated in the cinema - will magically save the industry from the evils of content piracy. Will be amusing to see how that pans out.
As much as I'm looking forward to seeing Avatar, a lot of the conversations that I've had with people about the movie revolve around the concern that the movie its self will be overshadowed by the technology. E.g. when Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was released, my friends and I went to see it solely because the CGI looked so state of the art (we're geeks, what can I say), and it surely had pretty graphics. But the story (what there was of it) and just about everything else sucked pretty hard. It seems like they were really counting on the CGI to carry the movie. Either that or they were just in denial of how crap the other aspects of the movie really were.
So I'm really just hoping that they've ended up putting more into Avatar than the new technology alone. A story line more original than that which has been hinted at would be good.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I saw it during a company outing to the cinema when it first came out. Lots of fun. Not a hacker movie per ce, but very cool animation, set in the future,etc. Also my first introduction to "gaia theory" which was interesting though actually I am on the reductionist, "selfish gene" side of that debate myself.