History Main / NoFlowInCGI

* When Pixar produced ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'', they'd developed software models that could make Sully's fur look fluffy, stiff, or windswept where necessary. However, [[ToiletPaperTrail a bit of toilet paper stuck to Mike's foot]] took the longest time to get right. Even the fur came with a price; to fully render Sully's 2.3 million individual hairs, it took the software 11-12 hours per frame. That means that every second that Sully is on screen took up to ''twelve days'' to render.

* Naturally, since it was the advent of fully-rendered and usable 3D graphics, the Platform/{{Nintendo 64}}[=/=]Platform/PlayStation[=/=]Platform/SegaSaturn [[UsefulNotes/TheFifthGenerationOfConsoleVideoGames era]] of gaming fell victim to this. Although the Nintendo 64 had the strongest potential graphical power, its utilization of cartridges instead of CD-[=ROMs=] among other things actually made it ''less'' able to render things realistically, so the [=PlayStation=] was the system that showed off this trope the most (most Sega Saturn games were TwoPointFiveD).
* The [=PS1=] (as well as the UsefulNotes/SegaDreamcast game ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilCodeVeronica'') ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' games fell victim to this, save for the first game, whose cutscenes were made of live-action footage instead. The only thing that ever flowed in the early games was Claire Redfield's ponytail.

** In ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBrosWii'', a second Toad (officially known as "Blue Toad") was used as the fourth playable character instead of Princess Peach in order to avoid programming the physics for her dress, as well as to have every character play the same way. This carries over to ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBrosU'' (which, ironically, replaced him in its UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch update with Toadette, who can transform into a facsimile of Peach).

** Even though there is little flow, there are ways to fake it, at least in the UsefulNotes/PlayStation[=/=]UsefulNotes/{{Nintendo 64}}[=/=]UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn era. If something was supposed to flow, like a dress, the designers would at least have it warp a little to show some animation, like Zelda's dresses in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime''. Ganondorf's cape also animates quite well during the fight against him, although it clips through his defeat animation.

* From the UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 era and onwards, Creator/SquareEnix have been pretty good at averting this trope, at least in terms of what's capable with their game engines. Their games feature character with long hair, or flowing robes that aren't simply inert lumps of polygons. In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', Creator/TetsuyaNomura made a point to challenge the visual programmers with Lulu's [[TooManyBelts dress]]. It works out in real-time, but in pre-rendered scenes the camera would avoid looking at her from the waist down, or have her not present at all.

* Naturally, since it was the advent of fully-rendered and usable 3D graphics, the UsefulNotes/{{Nintendo 64}}[=/=]UsefulNotes/PlayStation[=/=]UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn [[UsefulNotes/TheFifthGenerationOfConsoleVideoGames era]] of gaming fell victim to this. Although the Nintendo 64 had the strongest potential graphical power, its utilization of cartridges instead of CD-[=ROMs=] among other things actually made it ''less'' able to render things realistically, so the [=PlayStation=] was the system that showed off this trope the most (most Sega Saturn games were TwoPointFiveD).

* Most human women that appear in early Pixar films wear pants or some other form of tight clothing. [[WesternAnimation/ToyStory1 Bo Peep]], who's one of the few exceptions to this rule, instead wears a very rigid cage skirt. A rare exception to this rule is a female patient in the dentist's waiting room near the end of ''WesternAnimation/FindingNemo'' whom Nemo and the tank gang briefly mistake for Darla.

* ''WesternAnimation/DonkeyKongCountry'' altered King K. Rool's long cape from the games into a comedically short one that goes just past his shoulders. Besides that, Dixie's ponytail was shortened, Candy's shoulder-length hair was changed to an updo, and all of the Kritters' tails were removed.

* The ''Series/DoctorWho'' webcast ''Dreamland'' falls squarely into this trope.

** However, the [[PandaingToTheAudience Pandaren]] which are now playable avert this. While compared to other games they're still rather static, looking at the capes or hair on a Pandaren compared to any other race is quite impressive for such an old engine.

* Creator/{{Laika}} seems to make a point of averting this trope [[DoingItForTheArt just for the hell of it]], despite the fact that they operate primarily in stop motion, which is, if anything, even ''harder'' to animate realistic flow than in CGI. The animators seem to love incorporate lots of heavily mobile flowing elements like flowing hair or moving fur and feathers. Their movies tend to look good as a result.

* The CGI animation of ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' was initially unfortunately notorious for this. A common line by critics was that the characters' hair looked like it was chiseled out of wood. Especially visible on Obi-Wan, whose beard is so rigid it looks like an extension of his jaw. Aside from unmoving hair, the Jedi all wear gauntlets so the animators don't have to animate the flowing sleeves presented in the live-action theatrical films. The Jedi robes also have no sleeves and are basically hooded cloaks. The animators thought that it was very difficult animating Ventress with her skirt on during fight scenes. As ''The Clone Wars'' progressed, new models for the characters were introduced that did have flowing hair and clothes. By the time of the second season, the animation of ''The Clone Wars'' actually looked better than how it looked back in its pilot film.

* Similarly, Kim Kaphwan's 3D model from ''Videogame/TheKingOfFighterXIV'' was criticized for failing to replicate the smooth, flowing fabric animation of his pants from the older 2D installments. Thankfully, this was corrected for ''Videogame/TheKingOfFightersXV''.

* The animators loved working on ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' because the animals they had to create were either scaly or had only short fuzz -- however, they did get slammed quite a bit by the paleontologist community for [[RaptorAttack not feathering their raptors]] ([[ScienceMarchesOn something now known for certain]]). The only feathered CGI animal is ''Iberomesornis'', which never appears in closeup. When fuzzy mammals needed to appear, hand puppets and even a live coati were used. Then came the sequel, ''Series/WalkingWithBeasts'', about prehistoric mammals, and they didn't laugh anymore. In the end, they settled for using guide hairs, single strands of hair whose animation the computer copied over and over until the entire animal got fully covered by it. This way, they only had to animate fewer hairs. The results may not be super realistic, but it at least spared them from crashing their systems.

* The CGI animation of ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' was initially unfortunately notorious for this. A common line by critics was that the characters' hair looked like it was chiseled out of wood. Especially visible on Obi-Wan, whose rock beard has such a sharp edge to it he might be able to kill someone by chin-butting them. Aside from hair, the Jedi all wear gauntlets so the animators don't have to animate the flowing sleeves presented in the live-action theatrical films. The Jedi robes also have no sleeves and are basically hooded cloaks. The animators thought that it was very difficult animating Ventress with her skirt on during fight scenes. As ''The Clone Wars'' progressed, new models for the characters were introduced that did have flowing hair and clothes. By the time of the second season, the animation of ''The Clone Wars'' actually looked better than how it looked back in its pilot film.

* This is the reason for the hairstyles of Alyx Vance and Judith Mossman in ''VideoGame/{{Half-Life 2}}''. Despite being a graphically impressive game, rendering flowing hair was not feasible in 2004.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'':

* ''WesternAnimation/BarbieAsRapunzel'''s braid looks okay, but when she wears her hair ''loose'', it looks like it's made of rubber. Semi-justifiable because, not only was the film released two years before [[WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles Pixar perfected hair]], but when Creator/{{Disney}} did their [[WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}} telling of the story]], it took [[SavedFromDevelopmentHell years and years]] to perfect the technology for all that hair.

* You can see the technology improving in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Shrek}}'' movies. In the first movie, it took them a lot of effort to make Fiona's hair sway, and Shrek is bald. The second movie used a new engine for handling hair, and they lampshade it by having a shot where Prince Charming takes of his helmet to show his incredibly smooth and wavy hair. ''Shrek 3'' added the ability to model longer flowing hair, and they used that to render the different hair styles of the princesses. In ''Shrek 4'', there is a scene where Fiona appears as a warrior and you see her long curly hair swaying in the wind. [[http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/shrek/the-whole-story-evolution-of-hair Here's]] a video that shows the evolution of Fiona's hair. One of the outtakes for the first movie showcased an animation error where Donkey's fur looked less like a donkey's and more like an absurdly-fluffy bunny.

** In ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'', their main flow-related challenge was rendering heavy cloths such as velvet and wool in such a way that they still billow and swirl with appropriate grace. Elsa's glorious dress of ice flows quite well, especially with the giant trailing translucent snowflake cape behind her. Both Elsa and Anna wear their hair in braids, which also required some new programs on the part of the animators -- namely, making braids that were clearly composed of three interwoven strands, instead of braids that are just lengthened, tactile blocks of hair (like Fiona or [[WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon Astrid.]]) However, one short scene proved to be nearly impossible to animate: during the song "Let It Go," [[http://media.tumblr.com/e6db9d915972a04d592baca3e6730884/tumblr_mxeikjElqh1s3s22so3_250.gif where Elsa takes down her hair and pulls her braid over her shoulder]]. The only way they could do the scene without having the model break was to cheat and have the braid phase ''through'' Elsa's arm instead of over it. The animators did a good job of making it barely noticeable, and those that did notice seemed to agree it was WorthIt.

* Even though the characters are mostly mechanical cyborgs based on plastic toys, the first three DirectToVideo ''WesternAnimation/{{Bionicle}}'' movies opted to dress up the Turaga with tribal robes that had floppy ribbons on the front. Roodaka in the third movie was given mechanical-looking braids with several individual strands that hung down to her shoulder-line. Again, this is not a feature seen on the toy, which instead had short, solid "pigtails". They also turned her originally short robo-ponytail into a large, metal-plated bendy "flap", but at least kept it as a single piece. The fourth movie had none of this, and gave its characters unmoving, metal loincloths... even on those characters whose toy designs already had their groin covered up.

* The animators loved working on ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' because the animals they had to create were either scaly or had only short fuzz -- however, they did get slammed quite a bit by the paleontologist community for [[RaptorAttack not feathering their raptors]] ([[ScienceMarchesOn something now known for certain]]). Then came the sequel, ''Series/WalkingWithBeasts'', about prehistoric mammals, and they didn't laugh anymore. In the end, they settled for using guide hairs, single strands of hair whose animation the computer copied over and over until the entire animal got fully covered by it. This way, they only had to animate fewer hairs. The results may not be super realistic, but it at least spared them from crashing their systems.

This is because accurately simulating flowing hair and fabric requires two extremely computationally expensive things: a very high polygon count that can translate into smoothly curved surfaces and individual strands of hair, and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_fluid_dynamics computational fluid dynamics]] to accurately simulate the material's motion as well as the air itself. As a result, early CGI software and hardware limitations made anything other than clunky, [[UnintentionalUncannyValley uncanny valley]]-inspiring graphics impossible. Even when technical limits and costs are slowly being pushed back, it's still hard and costly to simulate nowadays, especially in video games, where maintaining 60 FPS means there's only 16 milliseconds to calculate all that.

* While ''WesternAnimation/{{Cars}}'' is a perfect example of the practical applications of this trope -- it's much easier to render shiny cars than natural human skin and hair -- it's actually a spectacular aversion on the whole, with shots of flowing waterfalls and riverways in Radiator Springs, and the tearaways near the beginning of the movie producing various realistic flames, which are especially impressive to anyone who knows how difficult realistic particle animation is.

* The animators loved working on ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' because the animals they had to create were either scaly or had only short fuzz -- however, they did get slammed quite a bit by the paleontologist community for [[RaptorAttack not feathering their raptors]]. Then came the sequel, ''Series/WalkingWithBeasts'', about prehistoric mammals, and they didn't laugh anymore. In the end, they settled for using guide hairs, single strands of hair whose animation the computer copied over and over until the entire animal got fully covered by it. This way, they only had to animate fewer hairs. The results may not be super realistic, but it at least spared them from crashing their systems.
* In ''Series/TheFutureIsWild'', some hairy mammals are featured early on, but they quickly go extinct in the later segments, resulting in the world being populated by computer-friendlier creatures such as fish, insects or cephalopods.

* Girls and women would have short hair and wear skintight gear. When they did have long hair, it would be done up in buns or heavily "moussed", becoming an immobile block. Now, there are some low-priced and freely available feminine hair props for use in Poser or DAZ Studio that can be realistically animated with wind and gravity effects: for example, [[https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/?ViewProduct=33204 Egypt Hair by 3Dream.]]

* ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}'' averts this, with Inklings' and Octolings' tentacle hair bobbing and bouncing around with every step they take (most impressive with the default MegaTwintails on the girl). Clothing is rather tight and stiff when worn, but special attention is given to the animation of your character's shirt crumpling to the ground after you're [[NonLethalKO splatted]].