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When (if at all) will it be feasible for a bunch of kids in a garage to make a feature-length realistic-cgi movie? Assume computing on the public cloud, movie budget $1M.

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The big cost driver in making animated movies isn't in the software or tools anymore and hasn't been for some time now; the big cost driver is now in authoring all of the assets and content that you actually need. It takes a ton of really talented people to create all of the photorealistic detailed models and animation and whatnot that you need to make a CG movie look convincing. Artists are way more expensive than computers.

> Artists are way more expensive than computers

YC disciples totally need to Disrupt The Heck Out Of That Niche

"realistic" is the killer word, which opens your question up to entirely too much interpretation.

Toy Story was very realistic for the time.

And I think people are routinely generating CGI that looks as nice as Toy Story... they just don't have as good a writing, acting, etc.

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