Because I like all Star Trek series except DS9.
Visual Effects in Discovery
- Thread starter Galaxy
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Because I like all Star Trek series except DS9.
As long as you like Abrams Trek, you're alright in my book.
That is acceptable.I like Beyond.
Overall, I think the VFX is very good. It's just that I'm not enamored with the style choices they have made. Too dark for the most part, over-saturated blue hues and light bloom EVERYWHERE ... Not a fan of the style choices....Might as well just chuck a shitload of lens flares into the mix too for fun...
Maybe season two will fix the modeling and rendering problems?
So does Voyager. Paramount was pretty demanding with Foundation Imaging at first - they did a lot of FX work for the show, IIRC, before ever taking on a hero shot of the eponymous ship.
Now...I got hold of "Will You Take My Hand" and watched it last evening, and I'll say that most of the effects work, such as what are apparently set extensions and certainly landscapes - is a good deal more persuasive and well done than the outer space scenes. Yeah, darkened cityscapes hide a multitude of sins, but even so the scope of some of the shots was impressive.
So why do they do space so badly? What is going on, indeed?
Somebody up the chain of command wants it to look like that. That's the only explanation I can think of.
Maybe the lookdev was rushed. Maybe they got really ignorant marching orders. Whatever happened, this is the "space" look that CBS and the producers signed off on, and if DSC works like other shows I'm familiar with, getting permission to alter an approved look is an uphill battle.
I think they may have cloned Paris to extend the City scape, I can almost make out a second Eifle Tower in the background. Though it might just be something else, maybe city streets.
The nebulae are too much in the shots, otherwise they do space just fine.
They've been consistent about the darkness. If the ship is not near a star, its extremely dark, as it should be, if its in the goldilocks zone, or close, and presumably not occulted by a nearby moon or planet, it's bright. That's as it should be.
Here we see Starman in his midnight cherry Tesla Roadster on the night side of earth. There is minor illumination i believe from a side light, as well as some illumination from the stereo, but certainly not enough to illuminate the car. You can see lightening strikes on earth for light comparison. That's what space looks like without a nearby sun to illuminate things.
Here you can see Starman driving around Earth, about to cross the terminator into night. But at the moment he's in full sun and his ship I mean sportscar is clearly lit by the sun.
I do wish they'd cut down on the nebula. I've played EVE Online so much I'm kind of just oblivious to it, but that game takes place inside a densely packed star cluster (And I'm still not sure it would look like that inside, of one, probably not), but I don't have a problem with the lighting.
I did this Shenzhou animation a few months ago. I tried to keep with the general look of Discovery's shots, hence the nebula, but also make it more realistic and believeable. I dunno, I like this look better.
Amazing work. Discovery needs more of that. Lovely majestic shot.
The biggest thing making the ships look cheap in my opinion is that they're primarily lit with specular reflections and very little diffuse illumination; that holds true even when they're in direct sunlight. And the VFX artists don't appear to be using physically-accurate reflections either, but the Phong-type cheapo stuff that looks fake. The result is that they look like mid-level '90s CGI.
Yes, I've noticed this as well. And it got me wondering if perhaps the hull plates on the Shenzhou and Discovery are only silver/copper/gold metal plates. If that is the case, it explains why they have no diffuse compenent, as metal doesn't have diffuse properties. Seems like a bad idea to make a whole starship like that, visually, in a show.
Or, if you do, at least be willing to take the render hit and raytrace your reflections off of HDR cards to get the spec hits.
I wouldn't be surprised (read: I've maybe heard through my own grapevines) if this, like all those glowy nebulas, bloom and high-contrast cruched-black grading, was a client-side decision that kind of tied the VFX team's hands behind their backs a little. If you've got a client whose notes keep coming back "more spec! more spec!" there's not a lot you can do after a certain point...
What software are they using for VFX?
STO by the looks of it.
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