Donny's Late TNG Era Interiors

[Spaceship Jo]

Flat!

Donny's wonderful CRT "imperfect" recreations on the older bridges suit the designs of those monitors very well, and in no way detract from their aesthetic to my eyes.

Or to put it bluntly, the CRT imperfections on the older bridges don't look like errors, whereas they do very much look like mistakes with this era of LCARS.

It's because the TNG LCARS aesthetic has thick, matching, intentionally aligned linear bits.

 

[Donny]

Flat!

Donny's wonderful CRT "imperfect" recreations on the older bridges suit the designs of those monitors very well, and in no way detract from their aesthetic to my eyes.

Or to put it bluntly, the CRT imperfections on the older bridges don't look like errors, whereas they do very much look like mistakes with this era of LCARS.

It's because the TNG LCARS aesthetic has thick, matching, intentionally aligned linear bits.

This is exactly how I feel as well. The CRTs of my TWOK and TUC-era efforts fit aesthetically with those sets and I had no qualms employing them in those cases. However, it just feels....off in the TNG-era to still use them, as greater efforts were taken in TNG onward to conceal the fact that they were indeed using CRTs. As stated before, many of those insert or close-up shots of the monitors were replaced with flat-panel graphics either on set or in-post. So it feels more correct to abandon the CRTs in favor of flat-panels here.

It depends on your goal - are you replicating the sets or modelling the ship? I've always understood it to be the latter.

My goal was always to "model the ship" but I've historically treated on-screen accuracy as canon in regards to my sets. So, in my head-canon, if there was a CRT used on-set, in-universe they were using a 23rd century analogy to a CRT monitor, for whatever reason.

But here, as I venture into the TNG-era, I want to go with what was aesthetically intended, especially wanting to preserve the flow of the brushed gold details into the monitor displays. As an artist who knows that Okuda and Co were probably bothered that the intended flow was broken by the constraints of the time, it just feels good to see that intended flow fully realized here.

While the nostalgic part of me loves the CRT look, doing it flat panel seems like it will make your life somewhat easier, so let's go with that.

It's really no harder to depict them as CRTs now that I've done the preliminary material setup and modeled the mesh. I was going to make some additional refinements to the CRTs if I went forward with them, but the bulk of the work has already been done to employ them.

There is a third option here, as @Lt. Washburn suggested: do both. I could set up a toggle that allows me (or an eventual end-user ) to switch between displaying the monitors as flat or CRTs. And that would just require a small bit of data setup on my end.

 

[batboy853]

I'd say save yourself the headache and do the flat panel style of LCARS.

I think you are the only person that I have ever seen go so far as to model in the CRT LCARS screens. It looks cool for that added sense of realism in the sense that these were how the sets were constructed, but when taking into account how they were intended to look, they would all be flat.

 

[Rekkert]

You know how I feel about this one, I'd go flat as that's how the "real" bridge would've looked like.

For TMP era interiors the CRT adds a certain charm and character (like they do on Alien: Isolation), but for the TNG era they look out of place given we're far more used to seeing flat panels, even for moving graphics when they were added in post.

 

[cardinal biggles]

And then you get action scenes with fast camera movements that result in stuff like this.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Yeah, I'd go with flats as well. We all get the real-world necessity for why things were done this way back in the 20th century, between budget and available materials. No such constraints need exist in the 24th.

There is a third option here, as @Lt. Washburn suggested: do both. I could set up a toggle that allows me (or an eventual end-user ) to switch between displaying the monitors as flat or CRTs. And that would just require a small bit of data setup on my end.

I responded before I saw this - I would be in favor of this option as well, if you think it's not too much trouble to set up. In short, compromise! Yes, do both!

 

[Workbee]

I looked through screencaps of the TNG movies for instances of graphics being added in post like they sometimes were in TNG but couldn't find any. It seems strange that they seemed to go all-in with the CRTs and LCD screens for the films when they had a process that seemed to work effectively in the series. Even the "plot relevant" graphics that got camera focus for a second were still with a CRT (see here and here). Seems like a choice made for expedience over form. Which seems like it would be less necessary for a large budget move (well larger than the TV show at least). I get most of the stations it gave a bit more life and animation, but why not do inserts for the couple that they got the camera up close to so they had a cleaner look. Even back in Generations, they seem to have moved away from that process.

Maybe there is another screen that they substituted in post in the move. My thought was if they did that, it would be a clear signal of intent by the film makers that that's how they want the screens to appear.

That being said, I still prefer the flat look of the graphics added in post. It really annoyed me when those CRT and LCD screens started showing up in the movies. I know they used some CRTs in TNG, but it was like in the movies they weren't even trying to hide that they were CRT and LCD screens anymore.

 

[David cgc]

I'd imagine that the longer pre-production period and more relaxed shooting schedule for a movie made it easy to create graphics in advance. On-set playback has a lot of advantages compared to adding them after the fact.

 

[UssGlenn]

I remember the visible pixels when Troi is tracking the Scimitar in Nemesis being especially distracting in the Theater.

 

[Mytran]

I'd imagine that the longer pre-production period and more relaxed shooting schedule for a movie made it easy to create graphics in advance. On-set playback has a lot of advantages compared to adding them after the fact.

Good for the actors maybe, but for static closeups why not bring your A-game?

 

[David cgc]

Good for the actors maybe, but for static closeups why not bring your A-game?

It draws attention to the shot due to visibly different graphics quality and direction. It limits the angles and on-set interaction, both in the sense of the actor touching the screen, and in the sense of reflections and such. It requires another visual effects composite on top of the cost of creating the graphic itself, costing potentially thousands of dollars unnecessarily (since they have the ability to just play the graphic on the monitor when they're shooting), multiplying that if you want the graphic to be visible in multiple different shots. It creates visual inconsistency with the set in other shots, since you can only composite the screens in hero shots so other animated screens have to be on-set, unless you have the normal screens be static or have minimal animation except in a plot-relevent close-up, which they only did for the TV shows where they couldn't afford the monitors and tape players (or rather, the time and people to keep them all running and synchronized during filming).

At the time, it was actually more of a production show-off to have all the graphics play live rather than edited in after the fact as some sort of visual effect.

 

[Lt. Washburn]

Of course, if you only do the flat screens, then you know at some point somebody will do the bridge with CRTs and they'll claim to be the first to accurately model the set. So, just to be safe and protect your legacy, you should do both. Just to be safe.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I remember the visible pixels when Troi is tracking the Scimitar in Nemesis being especially distracting in the Theater.

I remember it was the fact they had her guide Worf's hand instead of pressing the controls herself that distracted and annoyed me.

 

[cardinal biggles]

I remember it was the fact they had her guide Worf's hand instead of pressing the controls herself that distracted and annoyed me.

Obviously John Logan thought targeting quantum torpedoes is like working a Ouija board.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Obviously John Logan thought targeting quantum torpedoes is like working a Ouija board.

I honestly don't know what's worse - that or Riker's pop-up helm joystick from Insurrection.

 

[cardinal biggles]

I'm biased since I have kind of a soft spot for Insurrection — it's like one of those mid-season two-parters they started doing on TNG in the later years, but with a big budget and nice location work — and utterly loathe Nemesis.

 

[Tomalak]

Agreed. Insurrection is not the best Star Trek movie, but it's a great episode of TNG.

 

[Spaceship Jo]

Agreed. Insurrection is not the best Star Trek movie, but it's a great episode of TNG.

In our house, we frame it this way: Insurrection isn't the best movie featuring the TNG crew, but it's the best 'TNG movie'.

 

[137th Gebirg]

I can see some validity in this concept. While horribly flawed in many respects, TMP is probably one of the most TOS of the TOS movies. So much so that it was almost a direct redux from "The Changeling", albeit with better visuals. You have the "thing" that needs to be explored and investigated. Some human condition-type stuff ensues in between dialog, all culminating into a resolution. TOS did that all the time.

To really kick it into the next gear, TFF was the only one of all the TOS movies that really showed how close the broship was between the Big Three, in a way (again) not really seen since TOS in such detail.

So yes, it could be said that TMP and TFF were the two best TOS movies, but by far not nearly the best movies featuring the TOS crew.

 

[Donny]

Insurrection also is similar to Search For Spock in a way. Not the best movie, but gave us some incredible designs. In TSFS, we get the BoP, Spacedock, The Excelsior, and the merchant ship at the beginning (often overlooked, but a great design nonetheless). All of which more or less went on to be staples of Trek. And although Insurrection's designs didn't go on to be featured more, we get the Type 11 shuttle, The Scout Ship, The Captain's Yacht, The Son'a Ships, the Collector, all of which were fantastic.

Anyway. I'm doing that thing where I'm derailing my own thread a bit.