The Art of Star Trek: Reanimated - The Sequel

Discussion in 'Fan Art' started by Ptrope, Aug 27, 2007.

  1. TrekMD

    TrekMD Captain Captain

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    Hey, this is very nice. Keep it up!
     
  2. USS Jack Riley

    USS Jack Riley Captain Captain

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    Griff - OT - Does this mean you are back in country?
     
  3. Griffworks

    Griffworks Commander Red Shirt

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    Yessir, I sure am. And still being ignored, it would appear. ;)
     
  4. Ptrope

    Ptrope Agitator Admiral

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    Sorry, Griffworks - I didn't mean to ignore you, I guess I just thought that was a rhetorical question ;). No, we probably won't see a Horta - "The Time Trap" didn't have one, and that's one of those things I can't see 'slipping' into a scene without being blatantly gratuitous.

    Welcome back!
     
  5. Griffworks

    Griffworks Commander Red Shirt

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    Thanks and thanks.

    A shame about the Horta. I had hoped, obviously, as it's one I've always liked and I figured you would definitely it justice, if anyone here could. I know they're just "a rock", but I've been sort of obsessed w/the idea of seeing one in a comic or CG form ever since reading "My Enemy, My Ally" all those years ago.

    And apologies. :o
     
  6. Ptrope

    Ptrope Agitator Admiral

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    No problems!

    And now, we wait - it's 1:37 PM, Saturday, January 19, and I just kicked off a 600-frame Poser animation of a simple walk-through of the briefing room, starting in the corridor outside. It's 400x230, full raytrace rendering, and it's probably going to be going for several hours ... :D

    UPDATE: Well, it's been running for a little over 2 hours and has completed 40 frames - at this rate, it should run about 30 hours total. Unfortunately, I won't know until it's done what it even looks like - I guess I should've made it MPEG instead of AVI ... then, at least, I could open and review it. Ah, well, live and learn! :bolian:

    I just hope it turns out decently - I'm definitely a n00b when it comes to animation!
     
  7. Rattrap

    Rattrap Commander Red Shirt

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    Griff-

    Diane Duane also wrote two issues of the DC Trek comic (can't remember the issue numbers) in a story which was basically Kirk and Company caught up in "The Mouse Who Roared", which featured our favorite Starfleet Horta, Lt Narhat.

    In it, one of the two alien races look essentially like large housecats, and one scene features one of them perched on top of him, while several more are rubbing their paws across him. In his thought balloon is, "I can just hear the Starfleet recruiter. 'Join Starfleet. See the universe. Meet interesting aliens... and have them use you as a scratching post.'"
     
  8. Griffworks

    Griffworks Commander Red Shirt

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    Oh, man! That must be one of the later issues that I ended up missing. I've got a nearly complete run of the DC Comics Trek and would definitely have remembered something like that.

    Narhat! Yeah, that's it. All I can remember is the whole "Ensign Rock" thing from the Romulan Commander. Man, I need to pull those books out again and re-read them, along w/the graphic novel, the title of which escapes me at the moment.
     
  9. Redfern

    Redfern Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I have those issues stored in the "spare" bedroom. I know where they are, it'd just take hours to dig through the accumulated "rubble" to reach them.

    An amusing story and it was a hoot to see Naraht, but the art was, alas, sub-par. Naraht came off looking more like the top half of Ben Grimm's head including glowing EYES and tentacles! Looked more like a course stone sculpture of a Wellsian Martian.

    Sincerely,

    Bill
     
  10. Sean_McCormick

    Sean_McCormick Captain Captain

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    Well, in the fan series "Hidden Frontier" you can observe an entire team of hortas in action (in CGI) ;)
     
  11. Ptrope

    Ptrope Agitator Admiral

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    Well, it's not pretty, but here is an animation; the one I initially set up bombed about midway through (not enough memory to load the textures any more - Poser is not really a great program for animation :rolleyes: ), so I ended up reshooting it with the less-capable renderer. It's ... okay ... but it got some weird yellow artifacting from the lighting in the corridor near the end of the clip. Also, I really need to learn how to control the camera! :eek:

    Briefing room animation (1.2 Mb AVI, Xvid codec)

    What it looks like with the good renderer:

    [​IMG][​IMG]

    Yes, I took a couple liberties with the table ... I just liked it better this way ;).
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2009
  12. Cephas

    Cephas Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    Very cool, but I think you need to fire your cameraman. He's obviously drinking on the job. :lol:
     
  13. Ptrope

    Ptrope Agitator Admiral

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    Yeah, he's pretty shameless about the sauce! I grabbed the camera from him and tried again, just running it through the motions without actually rendering, but just using the preview image; it's considerably smoother this time: Briefing room animation preview (1.2 Mb AVI, Xvid codec)

    It's rendering again, and hopefully it won't bomb out like last time. If it does, I guess I'll just have to render it in segments and then put them together for the final piece.

    And lest we forget, once upon a time, I also did a quick test for a title: Title test animation (1.0 Mb AVI)
     
  14. Kaiser

    Kaiser Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Someone tell me why no-one at Paromount isnt thinking about giving you a job to put this on TV? :eek:
     
  15. Ptrope

    Ptrope Agitator Admiral

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    ^^ Probably because, despite everything else, they're smarter than that ;), but thanks for the vote of confidence!

    Well, I'm getting closer ... used the Firefly renderer to redo the animation, although I had to turn off raytracing, so it's still not nearly as nice as the still renders. Other than a glitch about midway through, where a couple frames didn't render properly, it turned out much better, and the cameraman didn't look drunk! :D

    Briefing room animation - Firefly 1.2 Mb AVI

    Next one will definitely have to utilize Lightwave ... I'm looking forward to Poser Professional, which will bring in tighter integration and migration between the two applications, so once animation can be set up in Poser for the characters (taking advantage of the rigging and also Mimic for lip sync), it can be animated in Lightwave without having to set it all up again.
     
  16. Kaiser

    Kaiser Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Your Welcome :)
     
  17. Ptrope

    Ptrope Agitator Admiral

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    Okay, not really a part of STR, but it's another shot of the briefing room, this time with a character dredged up from TOS. I finally realized, when watching "Court Martial," that Jamie Finney was just wearing a sailor suit! Sure, it was in one of Bill Theiss's traditional 'futuristic' fabrics, but the cut and detailing were all standard schoolgirl/sailor suit! So I dug out one I had for Poser, made Jamie just a bit older, and put her in the briefing room, which was, after all, the same set they used in the episode. Of course, I just had to rub in the reason why they were there, as we can clearly see on the screens when Kirk supposedly cut her father loose into the storm :eek:.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2009
  18. Redfern

    Redfern Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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  19. doctorwho 03

    doctorwho 03 Captain Captain

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    God, how I hate the tentacle monster. :lol: A girl is walking around, minding her own business, then all of a sudden some weird tentacle monster comes along and :censored:

    Ok, that wasn't appropriate. 'Lord, I apologize. Be with the starving pigmes in New Guinea. Amen.'
     
  20. Ptrope

    Ptrope Agitator Admiral

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    ^^

    Ewww! :D

    Okay, I've been working on the transporter. So far, it's only the chamber itself, and I need to make better textures for the back wall, but here's the WIP:

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2009