3D Master it is a TV show. The producers and CG artists take some creative license to it can show us well on NTSC TV which only works within a limited dynamic range. If you even have to wonder if a show's producers must have perfect science check out the posts on this thread “Defying Gravity" 13-episode ABC sci-fi astronaut space series with how many things are not scientifically accurate. Scientific accuracy and a science fiction TV show do not go hand in hand. It is entertainment. When you make a $250 million film like Star Trek XI you would expect the visuals to look much better lit though than a TV series.
Re: CG ENT-D model What? I'm staring to believe you're playing pranks on us with your opinions on good VFX work, because if you think this: Looks like a "real object" then... I can't even imagine what you're thinking. It didn't even look real ten years ago, let alone now. It would make good modern TV CGI, but it still looks like CGI and certainly doesn't escape that painting-like appearance you've criticized so often elsewhere.* *(This is the result I got when I Googled "Matrix docbot," so if that's not the model you're referring to, I apologize.)
Uh... 1. I wasn't talking about any TV show, I'm talking about SFX in general. Movies, tv shows, it doesn't matter; you got a show with space ships, they all light them too brightly, which bleeds out depth, which reduces it to a 2D cartoon. And this is true for BOTH CGI as well as model work. It's just that a Model is a genuine 3D object, so even if you overlight it, you still keep the 3D. However, even so, TOS original SFX made the Enterprise look like a genuine object. It was lit and made to move to higlight the depth of the model, to fool your eyes/brain into rendering it as a genuine object. TNG on the other hand, looks flat in comparison. 2. We're talking about re-making the show for HD here, not NTSC. 3. As TOS having more real 3D objects as ships as opposed TNG shows, dynamic range, and bad TV standards has got NOTHING to do with it. In fact, to properly light a ship to highlight it's 3 dimensional properties, you need LESS light. More light bleeds out shadows, and shadows are a heavy indicator of 3D features. Thus, it takes LESS dynamic range to properly make an object (whether CGI or model) look like a genuine 3-dimensional object, than it takes for brightly lit, bleed all depth out, look how shiny and cool, but 2D and cartoony lighting of an object. 1. nowhere did I speak about scientific accuracy. We are talking about SFX. 2. Budget matters not when it comes to properly lighting a ship. In fact, with models improperly brightly lighting the ship requires massive lamps burning away electricity. In CGI, it also matters very little. Time-constraints on the other hand, have an impact. In CGI, it's just fiddling with software dials and setting the proper lighsources. The more time you have, the more different settings you can try out and re-render the scene, the better the result you get. 3. I watched Defying Gravity. And the scientific inaccuracies were first little things that made me frown, but I could get past. But they got bigger, and more, and more; we get the scientists at the classic, and disgusting, superiority complex, "The normal folks can't deal with it, as opposed to us serious race, so we hide it with a conspiracy, look how magnificent we are... ugh." Then when it finally turned into "you must have faith, even though the objects are trying to, and previously have succeeded in killing us" I quit watching. I didn't even finish the episode. No, no faith. No "trust the figments of your imaginations, your gods and what not," that is disgusting. To boot, they are scientists, performing a scientific mission. They're not supposed have faith, they're supposed to be logical and following the scientific method. Something that's trying to kill you isn't something to have faith in, it's something to ignore if not outright destroy. Defying Gravity started interesting and then degenerated into a bad, bad, bad show.
Okay then back on topic. Re-doing the TNG visual effects for high definition would require using a CG model of the ENT-D as most of us will agree would be the most cost effective solution should TPTB decide to do any TNG-R of ANY episodes. Why don't we compare the last Star Trek TV series visual effects CG model work? 2005 had "Enterprise" 4th season for around 2 million per 43 minutes. Is the CG ship models and lighting up to your quality level that TNG-R would require? Specifically in ENT season 4. For season 1 it has been mentioned in detail that in 2001-2002 the season 1 ENT visual effects were rendered in standard definition. If CBS Digital did the work for a TNG-R Blu-ray we know it would not quite be up to the level of ENT or do you think CBS Digital would totally step up their game and deliver 2011 quality visual effects for a 1987 TV series?
:sighs: I don't care for 2011 quality visual effects, I don't even care for 2009 visual effects, I want 1980 TMP model level visual effects. In other words: I want it to be LIT right, and made to move right, that it actually LOOKS like a real OBJECT. The year of the computer power, and resolution used matters not. It's the LIGHTING that's the problem. And this has nothing to do with the year it is made in. 1987 model work was completely lit wrong, and moved wrong as well, making it look heavily cartoony and 2D. And lighting the models, CGI or actual objects, right, and moving them right (in multiple plains) has no impact on the budget, at least no significant impact. How often you redo it to get it right, how high the resolution and detail of the render, those will impact the budget. Lighting the objects does not. You light the objects anyway, you put up light-sources anyway, you move the ship anyway, there's only a question of whether you do it wrong, or right. This requires a paradigm shift; instead of brightly lit in your face, "look how cool", and thus cartoony and 2D, not present looking visual effects (hearkening back to 1977 Star Wars), to much less bright lightning scheme that highlights the 3-dimensional, true object nature of the ship in space.
Memory Alpha mentions: For easy reference a video of ENT work done by them: http://www.edenfx.com/PROJECTS/Enterprise/index.html#3 3D Master what is your opinion on ENT CG ship models and lighting specifically in Enterprise season 4 where the company was doing the effects had at least the pilot to get the ships looking as good as they could in the time contraints since that was the last Star Trek TV series.
The same opinion of every other ship visual effect of the last 20-25 years: it's too brightly lit, flat and cartoony. I've been telling this whole time it's only 2D, and it's time we finally go back to 3D. Could you please explain how that translate to hating 3D?
Re: CG ENT-D model That's it, and I still think it looks terrific. There's very little whole-cloth CG that I can say this about (I'm very much in 3dmaster's corner on this subject, his posts look almost exactly like my thoughts), maybe the bug in MEN IN BLACK, but the docbot is still a quintessential example of how exploiting the full dynamic range is instrumental in making CG work properly (just as the hovercraft in the same film is an example of everything working wrong in CG.)
Re: CG ENT-D model Everything done with 3D CGI you hate. Unequivocally. I don't know what you mean about all the stuff you hate being "2D," since CGI uses XYZ coordinates to generate a model; it's 3D graphics. That's what it's called. Then I can only say I disagree. ETA: Wasn't the Nebuchadnezzar a model? I recall a collector on another board owned one of the small screen-used ones, though for the life of me I can't find any info on it. ETFA: Ah ha. There's a page here by one of the film's model shop employees with a picture of the studio miniature.
Re: CG ENT-D model that is NOT a pic of a studio miniature, that is a pic of the CG model (and yeah, it looks better there than in the movie, just like it did in every mag that ran that same pic, such as SF & FANTASY MODELS.) EDIT ADDON: I just read the page and it is a reprint from that mag, so it makes sense that the same pic is shown. The physical model mentioned was only (as the title implies) for the sentinel invasion, and it was just a small crosshatched hull piece, not anything like a full representation (about like building the window outside Picard's ready room full-size in relation to building a fullscale -d.) THAT image on the page you cite is of the CG Neb. There may well have been miniature nebs built for the sequels, but I don't know or care on that part of things. I talked to damned near everybody on the first MATRIX on the fx end of things, and if there was even a decent sized study model, anything physical, it would have turned up in the ART OF book, too. No sir.
Re: CG ENT-D model I know I've seen a really tiny model of an entire hovercraft that was supposedly screen used, posted over at The RPF. Wheather it was from the original or sequels is an open question.
Can't you read? Of course it looks flat and unrealistic. It's not a finished model. It has no textures and/or no properly set-up surface/material settings. Oh, and here is a very good example of great looking modern CGI:
Re: CG ENT-D model Yeah, but it didn't look like that in the movie – somebody painted the extra red illumination and the yellow pipes all over it. What I meant was where this particular image file came from.
Re: CG ENT-D model :smashes head in table: :smashes head in table some more: And what have I been saying all this time? That through bad lighting it looks flat, 2D, and cartoony! Unffing believable.
Re: CG ENT-D model Ah, no wonder it looked that bad. I haven't seen the film in a while, but in that pic you linked to here it looks really good though.