Treks not taken:early cgi in STNG
- Thread starter RAMA
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There's a short clip of it floating around but this is much longer.
I agree, but if you look at one of the company's tests of 1701, it's actually pretty astounding for 1987. It rivaled what was seen on the big screen, if not surpassed it. The only problem is, as Mike Okuda suggests, they couldn't have sustained that level for a whole season in 1987.
A little exponential development in computers, and just 5 years later in 1992, the video toaster was ready to make passable (if plastic looking) CGI ready for prime time on babylon 5. By 1994 Voyager was using 300,000 polygons for it's Voyager model, which is more than Jurassic Park's dinosaurs.
RAMA
Nothing about Babylon 5 was ready for primetime, especially the CGI.
Nah. Rendering times, efficiency as well as motion, angles, etc were all ready. Texture mapping and polygons less so, but within a year that was a moot point as well for the technology.
A nice reminder of a time when CGI was still "cutting edge", unexplored territory, before it became mainstream/affordable enough for a weekly TV budget.
Doctor Who also experimented with CGI for the first time in the 1987 version of that show's title sequence. It's of a similar quality to the above, but again, they could never have afforded to use it as part of their regular effects work at the time.
Doctor Who also experimented with CGI for the first time in the 1987 version of that show's title sequence. It's of a similar quality to the above, but again, they could never have afforded to use it as part of their regular effects work at the time.
In 1987 "photo-realistic" seemed so far away. Nothing shocked me as much as Jurassic Park's dinosaurs. When I saw that, I knew the corner had been turned.
It depended on the practitioner, of course. 
"Jurassic Park" was epic, but (for example) the Scorpion King as seen in "The Mummy Returns", made nearly a decade later, was laughably cartoon-like and amateurish. Even at the time. 
It's really only recently that photorealism has become widely used/affordable. But what can be achieved with special effects now truly does take my breath away.
"Jurassic Park" was epic, but (for example) the Scorpion King as seen in "The Mummy Returns", made nearly a decade later, was laughably cartoon-like and amateurish. Even at the time. It's really only recently that photorealism has become widely used/affordable. But what can be achieved with special effects now truly does take my breath away.
Yes true, but the tech was there and improving. I thought DS9's and Voyager's CGI was superior to the pioneer on TV: Babylon 5. They waited just long enough for it to be viable and realistic on TV. For every Jurassic Park there was a cheap knock off, but we still saw some good use out of it. It wasn't till the late 2000s that it became commonplace to see good CGI across the board, and not till this decade that it's been close to "perfect" in most films.It depended on the practitioner, of course.
It's really only recently that photorealism has become widely used/affordable. But what can be achieved with special effects now truly does take my breath away.
Yeah that premiered in Sept 1993. Babylon 5's pilot in February 1993 with the 1st season debuting in January 1994. Voyager's high poly Voyager model debuted in January 1995.
Seaquest's first season had some good FX and it went downhill from there.
RAMA
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B5 started out shaky (which was still state of the art at the time!), but its effects very quickly became as good as anyone else's. Don't diss the pioneer who started it all.
And - hey! Those early ILM shots of the 1701-D model had cool light patterns going on in the bussards!!
And - hey! Those early ILM shots of the 1701-D model had cool light patterns going on in the bussards!!
Those early test shots kind of remind me of the Discovery ship reveal teaser, only the the TNG tests used a much better looking ship.
Hell, I still can't tell the difference between the physical and animated models in the Voyager intro.
There are some articles online about that. It's not a perfect model, but in my 27" CRT TV viewing back then I didn't notice. They redid the model for episodes later on.
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In 1978, during production of Empire Strikes Back, ILM & Lucasfilm Computer Group(later LucasArts) said they could render parts of space battles with cg. This is the sample they created. They custom built the computers and this short clip took so many weeks and was so expensive to make that the idea was set aside. The quality of the clip makes it difficult to see, but according to the artists involved, it looked just as realistic as the miniatures.
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