Coming Christmas 2008...

[Professor Moriarty]

I know I keep saying it, but I am going to finish this, dammit. I have to finish this or it will bug me forever.



Coming Christmas 2008 to an Internet browser near you.

 

[ThomastheCat]

Well done! The Enterprise is gorgeous!

 

[Forbin]

Are you crazy, going into an asteroid field?!

 

[PlanetMudd]

They'd be crazy to follow us ...

 

[FrontLine]

You're Gonna finish it?

 

[Venardhi]

The video was a bit choppy on my end, but I love the way it looks like it was made with old technology. The tracking is a little off, the ship doesn't look quite right in with the asteroids, etc.

Looks like the sort of thing I imagine the model guys back in the 60s would have done if they had the time and money to do it.

 

[USS Mariner]

There's no color in the space shots. That's more distracting than anything.

 

[Ziz]

Forbin said:
Are you crazy, going into an asteroid field?!

PlanetMudd said:
They'd be crazy to follow us ...

Spock: Sir, the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field are approximately 3,720 to 1.

Decker: Never tell me the odds!

 

[doctorwho 03]

And here I almost thought you gave up after the remastered DM was aired.

Oh, well. At least we'll be getting something for Christmas this year.

 

[lennier1]

Amazing pic.
Will the final version include the shoe in the background?

 

[ST-One]

Looks great :thumbsup:

Am I glad that I can be such a nuisance

 

[Professor Moriarty]

ThomastheCat said:
Well done! The Enterprise is gorgeous!

Thanks.

Forbin said:
Are you crazy, going into an asteroid field?!

Hey, I'm not the one giving the course heading orders! (And I think we all know what the mental state is of the fella in gold in that preview... )

PlanetMudd said:
They'd be crazy to follow us ...

Bingo! This is my answer to the question of how the Enterprise never seemed to stray very far away from the damaged (and at this point, still powerless) Constellation while she was being chased by the Planet Killer... almost the entire episode takes place inside the asteroid remains of System L-374, and the Enterprise couldn't go to warp to evade the doomsday machine while still inside the debris field.

FrontLine said:
You're Gonna finish it?

Got to, man. I've been working on this since occasionally since I "officially" stopped at the end of 2006, but the breakthrough occurred a month or so ago when I finally figured out a "recipe" for consistently and quickly creating and rendering the asteroid fields that are a constant background component of the entire episode (and take longer to render than the Enterprise herself). Before my eureka! moment it would sometimes take me days to "build" an asteroid field for each scene, and they would never look the same from one scene to the next... very discouraging.

Venardhi said:
The video was a bit choppy on my end, but I love the way it looks like it was made with old technology. The tracking is a little off, the ship doesn't look quite right in with the asteroids, etc.

Uhhh, thanks?

Mariner Class said:
There's no color in the space shots. That's more distracting than anything.

Hmm, not sure what you're talking about. There's lots of color in that asteroid field and in the dust clouds in the background. Maybe your monitor needs adjustment...?

doctorwho 03 said:
Oh, well. At least we'll be getting something for Christmas this year.

Which is why I gave myself a deadline of Christmas. It gives me enough time to finish this without rushing, and it'll give me and my frields something Trekish to watch on Christmas Day.

lennier1 said:
Amazing pic.
Will the final version include the shoe in the background?

If you see some sort of shoe-shaped pattern in the debris field, I assure you it's completely random... the LightWave plugin I built to generate asteroid fields just spits out rocks at random points within the field of view of the camera... no built-in patterns that I know of!

ST-One said:
Looks great :thumbsup:

Am I glad that I can be such a nuisance

(ST-One's been bugging me for a while now to see a new sneak preview.)

 

[Redfern]

I think Lennier1 was making a reference to "Return of the Jedi" when we saw the battle above Endor. According to several fans, a shoe was composited into one of the more frenzied shots (dozens of "snub" fighters buzzing about) as a visual joke. Too fast to register on the conscious level, with slow-motion and freeze-frame playback, it can be caught.

Thus, Lennier1 may be wondering if you'll "sneak" in a digitally modeled shoe among the numerous asteroids.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[S'kai]

Wow. And you can even see through the windows with stuff inside moving past the field of vision as the ship turns. <thumbs up smiley>

 

[Ptrope]

I've heard that Professor Moriarty's "Doomsday Machine" has actually been pushed back to May 2009, even though it will be finished for Christmas; something about competing with the other fan-made Trek blockbusters ...

 

[Kaiser]

Wow! this looks even Better than the Reimagined Trek to me

:thumbsup:

 

[GreenBlood]

Per this shot...things are looking mighty iffy for the Enterprise.
Must be alot of Red Shirts aboard.

 

[USS Mariner]

I'll rephrase my comments.

All I'm saying is that the color palette for your space shots seems limited to the blue-violet end of the color spectrum. It's really distracting when you switch from the vibrant live-action to a very "cold" space sequence. The other nagging problem is that the ship is hard to see when it's lit that dimly.

For better or for worse, the way the original was filmed and lit shows up on film with the same "warm" impression as the live stuff. Your work isn't sub-par by any means; I just feel that it doesn't work with the live-action as filmed.

I really can't guide my commentary any further, because it's your work and it's up to your own judgment on what looks "right."

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I see exactly what Mariner is referring to.

The problem, I think, is that the asteroids are very monochromatic. The real question is... are REAL asteroids all a very common, muted (moon-dust-like) grey tone, or are there variations in color, just like there are with earthbound rocks?

I do not want to see "Technicolor asteroids" by any means, but I do think you'd see a lot more variation in rock color. If these were just granite, fine... but if they're ANY iron ore, for instance, there should be rust-coloration in there. If there any copper, you'll probably see some green. And so on...

 

[Professor Moriarty]

Ah. Got it. The rocks actually do have quite a bit of color variation, but it's kind of hard to tell in this particular shot because of the angle of the key light. The L-374 star (primary light source) is above, to port and behind the Enterprise (and most of the debris field) when she starts her 180 degree turn, so much of the visible surface of each rock is in semi-shadow from this particular camera angle.

Everything else you can chalk up to artistic choices I made. You may recall I actually did have "Technicolor asteroids" from earlier attempts to "remaster" this episode where almost all of the asteroids appeared to be glowing, fiery rubble... I decided it just looked too busy. There's still lots of color here in the dust clouds and rocks, just not as much as before. It may not match up precisely with the garish interior color scheme of the Enterprise, but I'm OK with it.