What is CGI? How does it work? let’s read

Toy Story, Avatar, Avengers, The Lord of the Rings, WALL-E, does anyone know what the five films have in common? Both Hollywood productions? Yeah right! Not only the place of production, but these films also use the same technology, namely CGI. What is CGI? This is the explanation.

Spending time at the cinema and watching your favorite movie is the most fun. Stunning images and cool effects will make you feel at home on the cinema sofa for hours. Your favorite scenes are rendered in stunning visuals like never before.

But have you ever wondered about the secret behind the breathtaking effects of the scenes in the film? All thanks to the so-called CGI technology. You must have heard this term many times. But what is CGI? How does it work? The full answer is below.

What is CGI?

Computer graphic images or CGI is a computer graphics technology used to create visual effects in videos, films, television shows, video games, advertising, print media, and simulators. CGI is a type of special effects (SFX) commonly found in the film industry.

Effects created through the application of CGI can range from dynamic or static images to two-dimensional (2D) shapes. But today’s widely known CGI effects are computer graphics used to create a scene or add special effects to movies and television.

Today, this technology is widely used in the film industry to create various blockbuster works with visual effects that can amaze the audience. You must have seen movies with scenes that present fantastic images like fantasy.

For example, in the scene where there are animals that can move and talk like humans, the appearance of monsters with super real looks, in the background scene makes you wonder, “How come, where was this shot?”.

All of this can be achieved thanks to the visual power offered by the earlier use of CGI. What you see on a cinema screen or computer does not correspond to what happens in the real world, it is just a visual trick.

How CGI works

The CGI effects that invite the admiration of the audience are created on a very complex stage and it is not so easy to see them on the big screen in the cinema. Creating a CGI effect for a video involves going through many steps to achieve the desired result.

The process of creating CGI is one of the interesting things about the whole production of a film that is sad to be missed. You can see the secret behind the scenes of your favorite films and see how the character creation process, environmental backgrounds, special effects, and various other supporting elements of the film are carried out.

The master key of CGI technology to create great visual effects is the integration of computer imagery with real-world locations and objects. The mixture of these two elements then creates an aesthetic image that you see on the screen.

CGI production occurs in several phases, starting with the creation of basic graphic shapes on a computer, which is later used as the main visual material. After that, the created images are given special effects to make them look more realistic.

Elements in the image such as lighting, texture, and color are worked out one by one to add the necessary details. These details make the CGI look more realistic and less cartoony. The cool thing is that everything is done frame by frame.

Realistic graphics that look amazing

The process of creating CGI itself can vary from film to film depending on the complexity and type of effect desired. The more detailed and real the images you want to display, the more complicated the manufacturing process becomes.

To make a movie that harnesses the power of CGI, the movie production team usually has a department that specializes in the visual effects part of CGI. This department consists of experienced designers and animators, each working on a specific part of the film’s special effects.

That’s not all, the people who work in this department are usually divided into small teams with more specific functions. For example, during the filming of Jurassic World, there was a team that specifically looked at the movement of the dinosaurs, the appearance of the skin, and their natural reactions.

The result? A super realistic ancient wildlife film that makes the viewer feel like the dinosaurs in Jurassic World are real dinosaurs from the real world. Although all dinosaurs are just computers.

Not only that, another movie made phenomenal by the CGI effects was Avatar which was released in 2009. Who doesn’t know the popular film that tells the story of the blue aliens, Navi, and their amazing world?

Avatar is a film product that emphasizes the use of CGI as a whole in almost every part of the film. Using what was then the latest in 3D modeling technology, Avatar managed to enchant every eye with brilliant and realistic visuals, earning it the top-grossing film of all time.

That was the summary of what CGI is that you often see in movies. Edits, for those who want to learn to create CGI, you can create animations first. We have animation creation software recommendations for you to try.