I remember someone who worked on the Matrix sequels talking about how they’d gained the ability to use subsurface scattering in CGI, something that wasn’t possible earlier. Gollum also used this technology. That was the early 2000s; Jurassic Park was 1993, Terminator 2 was 1991. So if you think those embodied amazing Computer Graphics, you don’t think that you need modern techniques like SSS for that.
Unreal Engine supports SSS and has a physics-based path-tracing renderer capable of the kind of realistic SSS that you’d expect.
So it sounds like Verbinski’s talking out of his ass and blaming something he doesn’t really understand for a point of quality he can’t really put his finger on.
Here’s my take: you get the CGI you pay for with money, time, and care. (And you get more time and care if you spend more money). Not total money spent on CGI though, because films have far more CGI in them than they ever did before. Vague hand-waving about Unreal being a game-engine somehow meaning that it is incapable of producing anything that doesn’t feel like a game is woo-woo bullshit. People used to say that CGI looks inherently artificial, but they conveniently forget about the lauded CGI of organic things like in Jurassic Park or in the Lord of the Rings.
Jurassic park still has some of the best CGI I’ve ever seen. Maybe not in scale or imagination, but in realism.
Jurassic park was judicious in its use of CGI. There are places where you can notice it, but they’re hard to spot, because CGI was generally used where its limitations were hard to spot!
A comparison in my mind is The Mummy, a bit later and more developed technologically but much more obvious, because it wasn’t trying to be as judicious imo
unreal engine renders in real time oposed to a process that had days to run. verbinski pretty much laments that neither care nor time are invested.
Unreal Engine has a non-real-time renderer as well.
