New Redesigned Starship Enterprise Revealed ?
- Thread starter ralph
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ST-One said:
Maybe you should at least watch those movies before you condem their VFX efforts.
That would prove inimical to the general "contempt prior to investigation" that's necessary in order to maintain a lot of this anti-CG criticism.
And not working during the 1988 strike.
North Pole-aris said:
And not working during the 1988 strike.
Ok so I dont have my Art of Star Trek book to hand as its about 40 miles away at home and Im in my Uni flat. Im sure it was that book in which it is said Shatner said the film did poorly due to ILM dropping out and the writers strike meant he had to do the story.
EDIT: this review of the soundtrack seems to back up this too
EDIT2: had a thought and its likely either
1. The strike caused Shatner to write the script
or
2. Shatner wrote the script (part wrote) the film dived and he blamed it on the writers strike. Its not like we havent seen him try and protect his ego in the past, on the STII directors DVD he was still holding a grudge that he wasnt let in on the Spock "remember" bit
Uptightgirl
Lieutenant
Oh no!
You ruined it for me Tk421.
I will never be able to look at the Enterprise without thinking of those 2 mounted peneseses with holes in the middle with the foreskins.
Who can circumcise the Enterprise peneseses?
But that was back in the late 1990s... things have changed massively since then.
In most of the 1999 releases of note you generally had CG artist doing their work on Silicon Graphics (SGI) workstations with final rendering being done on render farms using systems from Sun Microsystems (Sun). SGI workstations were very expensive back then (an O2 or Octane workstation would have set you back between $10,000 to $50,000 back in 1997), and Sun systems weren't that much cheeper. The Software (Maya for the workstations and Renderman for the farms) was way out of the range of anyone who was less than the highest end professional (a single system license for Maya was running as high as $20,000, and a site license for Renderman dwarfed that).
Now compare those systems and software to the top Macs of that period. 1997 brought the release of the first G3 based systems (not a big boost for floating point processing over the previous high end Macs using the PowerPC 604eV processors running at 300 or 350 MHz), and the G4 based systems (the first to bring a real boost in floating point and vector processing) didn't see the light of day until long after Phantom Menace had hit the theaters. There wasn't a version of Maya for Macs at the time, most of the CG artist had Macs on their desks next to SGI workstations so they would have access to tools like Photoshop 5.0/5.5 and Illustrator 8.0 (the IRIX version of Photoshop never went past 3.0.1, and Illustrator never went past 5.5, both of which I have in stalled on all four of my SGIs... and which I never use). The best 3D software for Macs back then (in my opinion) was Strata Studio Pro, but none of the software for Macs held a candle to the quality of Maya.
I have much of the tools that were current in that period. My Sun workstations are from the early 1990s (and I don't actually use them much, my SPARCstation 10 is used for running OPENSTEP 4.2), my SGIs include systems from the early to mid 1990s (the highest end SGI I own is an Indigo 2 IMPACT from around 1996 running an R10000 processor at 195 MHz with 1 MB of L2 cache), and I have two Power Mac 8600/300s (1997) and two Power Mac G3s (1997/98).
A year ago I decided to see what could be produced using vintage Mac software on vintage Mac systems. The culmination of that experiment was this...
But remember, all of this is addressing the technology of 10 years ago.
By 2003 Virginia Tech linked 1,100 PowerMac G5s together to make one of the top 5 supercomputers in the world at a cost of $5.2 million. Those G5s are antiquated now in comparison with the current top of the line Macs 4 years later, but they were many times faster than the highest end equipment by either SGI or Sun from 1997-99.
If you are still thinking of CG support structures in terms of late 1990s technology, then you are very much out of the loop on how this stuff has evolved and is done today. Both SGI and Sun have nearly disappeared (SGI went bankrupt) because the average personal computer has surpassed the abilities of workstations.
And this wasn't something that had popped up after the turn of the century... people saw that the workstation market was disappearing starting in the early 1990s. The Apple Quadra 950 (sold as a desktop computer) was as fast as an SGI Indigo (R3000) or a Sun SPARCstation IPX... and the Quadra had more expandability (6 expansion slots total) and could handle more memory (a maximum of 256 MB) than either the SGI or Sun. If you replaced System 7 on the Quadra with A/UX (which would have added about $900 to the price tag) you ended up with a very good UNIX workstation for less than what the low end systems by SGI and Sun were selling for. The workstation market's future was pretty clear for anyone following computers back in 1991, desktops were on their way to replacing workstations in just about every area that workstations were being used.
Today, the average desktop computer is far ahead of anything of around 1999. Dump Windows from a current desktop PC and put either Solaris or Linux on it and you have a truly powerful computer that can handle most of what was done with high end workstations and render farms 10 years ago.
All this stuff changes very fast, if you are holding up late 1990s techniques as your measure of how things are done today then you really need to dive back into this field and brush up on what is current. None of this stuff is in my area of expertise (and I would never consider myself qualified enough to write for Cinefex on this subject), but what little I know leads me to believe that your stuck on a preconception formed almost 10 years ago.
Again, it really strikes me as odd that someone who is supposed to be in-the-know on this subject hasn't even seen many of these films.
Both the trailer and ads for Kong were done as separate effects development according to the DVD extras. None of the effects in the trailer were used in the movie, and none of the movie effects were finished enough to be used within the trailer. This is exactly what I mean by not giving any of this stuff a chance... you didn't take the time to learn (or even see) what was happening and seem to have frozen all of your technical references back in the 20th Century.
The world has moved on, but not so much so that you couldn't catch up on things if you decided to put a little effort into it.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
I believe you need to check some facts (look up the word facts first.) The falling puppet in a big 80s movie was ROBOCOP's Dick Jones, the falling guy at the end of DIE HARD was actor Alan Rickman, who actually did a fall against bluescreen, a real person, not a 'puppet.'
trevanian
Rear Admiral
North Pole-aris said:
ST-One said:
Maybe you should at least watch those movies before you condem their VFX efforts.
That would prove inimical to the general "contempt prior to investigation" that's necessary in order to maintain a lot of this anti-CG criticism.
That's exceptionally stupid, even coming from a disinformation artist like yourself. How many times did I have to watch SERENITY in the theater before I could say yeah or nay on its fx? Or did I not even bother? You MUST be able to tell without asking me, right. Or is THAT contempt prior to investigation?
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Shaw said:
But that was back in the late 1990s... things have changed massively since then.
In most of the 1999 releases of note you generally had CG artist doing their work on Silicon Graphics (SGI) workstations with final rendering being done on render farms using systems from Sun Microsystems (Sun). SGI workstations were very expensive back then (an O2 or Octane workstation would have set you back between $10,000 to $50,000 back in 1997), and Sun systems weren't that much cheeper. The Software (Maya for the workstations and Renderman for the farms) was way out of the range of anyone who was less than the highest end professional (a single system license for Maya was running as high as $20,000, and a site license for Renderman dwarfed that).
Now compare those systems and software to the top Macs of that period. 1997 brought the release of the first G3 based systems (not a big boost for floating point processing over the previous high end Macs using the PowerPC 604eV processors running at 300 or 350 MHz), and the G4 based systems (the first to bring a real boost in floating point and vector processing) didn't see the light of day until long after Phantom Menace had hit the theaters. There wasn't a version of Maya for Macs at the time, most of the CG artist had Macs on their desks next to SGI workstations so they would have access to tools like Photoshop 5.0/5.5 and Illustrator 8.0 (the IRIX version of Photoshop never went past 3.0.1, and Illustrator never went past 5.5, both of which I have in stalled on all four of my SGIs... and which I never use). The best 3D software for Macs back then (in my opinion) was Strata Studio Pro, but none of the software for Macs held a candle to the quality of Maya.
I have much of the tools that were current in that period. My Sun workstations are from the early 1990s (and I don't actually use them much, my SPARCstation 10 is used for running OPENSTEP 4.2), my SGIs include systems from the early to mid 1990s (the highest end SGI I own is an Indigo 2 IMPACT from around 1996 running an R10000 processor at 195 MHz with 1 MB of L2 cache), and I have two Power Mac 8600/300s (1997) and two Power Mac G3s (1997/98).
A year ago I decided to see what could be produced using vintage Mac software on vintage Mac systems. The culmination of that experiment was this...For only investing 4 months into learning the tools (which has to be taken into account when considering quality) and the period of the hardware and software used, not a bad result... but no where near what was being produced for effects footage for films around the same period.
But remember, all of this is addressing the technology of 10 years ago.
By 2003 Virginia Tech linked 1,100 PowerMac G5s together to make one of the top 5 supercomputers in the world at a cost of $5.2 million. Those G5s are antiquated now in comparison with the current top of the line Macs 4 years later, but they were many times faster than the highest end equipment by either SGI or Sun from 1997-99.
If you are still thinking of CG support structures in terms of late 1990s technology, then you are very much out of the loop on how this stuff has evolved and is done today. Both SGI and Sun have nearly disappeared (SGI went bankrupt) because the average personal computer has surpassed the abilities of workstations.
And this wasn't something that had popped up after the turn of the century... people saw that the workstation market was disappearing starting in the early 1990s. The Apple Quadra 950 (sold as a desktop computer) was as fast as an SGI Indigo (R3000) or a Sun SPARCstation IPX... and the Quadra had more expandability (6 expansion slots total) and could handle more memory (a maximum of 256 MB) than either the SGI or Sun. If you replaced System 7 on the Quadra with A/UX (which would have added about $900 to the price tag) you ended up with a very good UNIX workstation for less than what the low end systems by SGI and Sun were selling for. The workstation market's future was pretty clear for anyone following computers back in 1991, desktops were on their way to replacing workstations in just about every area that workstations were being used.
Today, the average desktop computer is far ahead of anything of around 1999. Dump Windows from a current desktop PC and put either Solaris or Linux on it and you have a truly powerful computer that can handle most of what was done with high end workstations and render farms 10 years ago.
All this stuff changes very fast, if you are holding up late 1990s techniques as your measure of how things are done today then you really need to dive back into this field and brush up on what is current. None of this stuff is in my area of expertise (and I would never consider myself qualified enough to write for Cinefex on this subject), but what little I know leads me to believe that your stuck on a preconception formed almost 10 years ago.
Again, it really strikes me as odd that someone who is supposed to be in-the-know on this subject hasn't even seen many of these films.
Both the trailer and ads for Kong were done as separate effects development according to the DVD extras. None of the effects in the trailer were used in the movie, and none of the movie effects were finished enough to be used within the trailer. This is exactly what I mean by not giving any of this stuff a chance... you didn't take the time to learn (or even see) what was happening and seem to have frozen all of your technical references back in the 20th Century.
The world has moved on, but not so much so that you couldn't catch up on things if you decided to put a little effort into it.
So I'm supposed to make my moviegoing choices based on animatics or temp shots? If the stuff they showed in tv ads for KONG wasn't actual final shots (and I cannot imagine why they would not be), what business do they have doing that kind of false advertising, especially given that you're not putting your best foot forward?
The reason I was limiting my comments to stuff from less than a decade back was because it was where I had a lot of expertise that I could point to in print. Go back and look at my comments about stuff done on Macs at home a la John Knoll -- that is some of the best stuff in TREK movies, and a lot closer to looking like a good miniature than other higher-powered efforts.
I'm quite impressed by your accomplishments in so little time (kinda makes me wish I'd stayed partners with a guy who wanted to go in with me on buying an Amiga and the Toaster to do low-end stuff back in 93 or 94), but I assume this work was not done in the timecrunch turnaround of commercial production (which I HAVE to assume is part of the reason for low-end results from high-end companies.) I seem to remember that a lot of houses that were all digital (and this was between 95 and 2002 or so, so it is still a few years out of date) had daily requirements of at least 2 shots per animator, REGARDLESS of complexity, so that would mean seaQuest quality at best for a lot of the stuff out there.
You also seem to think that because I don't see everything out there, I'm not fit to comment on it. You're entitled to that view, but I just won't catch many things theatrically (especially given the state of projection) unless I WANT TO.
And very few major films have caught my interest in the last few years. I was pleasantly surprised by some of the flying wing guy stuff in the last XMEN, only to find out later that it was done by flying a real guy on wires outside, which kind of indicated to me that real-world stuff still worked better for me than other techniques.
You're clearly well-informed and smart, so again I'd say look at my posts and the fact that I don't say only use one methodology over the other, just to use what works best for a particular shot. And my view is that a hero miniature, well-photographed, would be the best way to put over any new/old Enterprise in beauty views, though it is a foregone conclusion that they'd use CG for wide views and dynamic spin/flip stuff.
But you might also not consider that view of mine valid, cuz I have no interest in seeing this movie and certainly won't catch it in the theater. Not because of fx, but because I think trek works on actor chemistry more than anything else, and that chemistry is not going to be the same with new actors. That's a self-limiting view, and one I totally stand by.
Can't a new group of actors also have chemistry? Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley were not conjoined twins who emerged bickering from a womb, as it were. They were hired, all premiered in different episodes and, from their performances and the writer's scripts, a dynamic formed.
So, a hypothetical question: Reviews praise the excellent chemistry of the cast. Do you go see the movie?
Absolutely they can have chemistry. But it'll never be quite the SAME chemistry. That's impossible to reproduce.
What I keep seeing in these conversations is sort of a pathology. It's like the guy who had a girlfriend in high school who he lost... and for the rest of his life he keeps finding girls who look, act, even sound just like her, hoping to find the exact same relationship all over again. Thing is, it'll never work, and as a result the new relationships will end up in disaster, every time.
You can have a NEW relationship, with a new type of "chemistry," and it can be great. But you can never have the SAME chemistry.
That's what bugs me about the supposition on the part of some fans about this being "all-new adventures in the 5-year-mission." If set prior to that, and only for a movie (or maybe two or three... though I personally hope not), you can get by with the actors "coming close," under the argument that they're not quite the folks we'll eventually know. We should see "seeds" of what'll grow into what we already know. That can work.
But any suggestion of "new missions in the 5-year-mission" or of a "reboot" for that matter reek, to me, of the same sort of sad desperation as those guys who keep dating girls named Heather who are 5'4", slim and blonde... so they can pretend that it's the one who got away.
Me, I'd rather find someone new and try to make something new. And for this film, while I'm fine with a one-off "trip down memory lane" so to speak, expecting it to feel like the original is at the same level as the above. Sick, really...
All "in my opinion," of course.
But it could be a similar chemistry which is just as good. Hypothetically, that is.
Like different interpetations of Hamlet. You can have Laurence Olivier, you can have Mel Gibson, if you're feeling a little outre you can even have Toshiro Mifune in a loosely based, plain-clothes adaption.
Or as you put it:
Of course, you also raise the point of this being more new and different than some defenders give it credit for.
I see this as the biggest change to happen to the franchise since 1987. It's a back to basics, but it's not a turn back the clock. This isn't TOS, Nimoy's involvement to one side.
This is a 're-invigoration' and a 're-vitalization', as O&K call it, which is a remake, only not, because it's ambiguous. Give me a good kinda-sorta remake, including actor chemistry, and I'm happy.
I love the amount of "I will never see this movie ever!" going on, in spite of the fact that the only thing that's gotten out are a few pictures of Spock and what is rumored to be Kirk. Is anyone going to change their minds once we have something real to judge?
Remember that a lot of what I've said is in direct regards to the economic argument that you made earlier. And that I am absolutely not in the all-CG-all-the-time camp, I firmly believe that when artist have all of these tools at their disposal that excellent work can be done within reasonable time and budgetary constraints.
Further, I am a story first, effects second type of film goer. I saw Kong because I was curious, I bought Kong because the story was worth seeing more than once for me. What role did effects play in that? Well, for me this was the first time that the character of Kong was presented in a way that carried his part in the movie. And that was a direct result of the effects work. From a critical viewing of the film, yes, there were a number of scenes that seemed to be effects for effects sake and didn't add to the story... I would have cut nearly 10 minutes of effects laden shots if I were editing (and I generally fast forward through them now anyways).
I am not arguing that you must see this movie, just pointing out why I happen to really like it.
But yeah, it does provide some flavor of what could have been done back in the early 90s... the software I used was from 1994, and a number of platforms (Apple, Amiga, NeXT and Be to name a few) were starting to make this type of stuff available to mere mortals. But back in 1994 I was far more interested in visualization of mathematics (and we used Apple, NeXT, SGI and Sun for our work) than photo-realistic effects. So other than seeing what was showing up in the movies, I wasn't paying that much attention to other applications of this type of stuff back then. And in all actuality I was in possession of software I used for a majority of what I did since 1998... but had never attempted to use it before last December.
From my perspective, seaQuest is an example of the same type of shortcomings that the early web faced... that is, the people who were technically able to do the work didn't necessarily have an eye for the work. It wasn't until people with an eye for detail started entering the field that CG effects started feeling photo-realistic. And even today I wouldn't go so far as to say that everyone who is technically able to do CG work has the artistic talent to produce quality CG work.
Further, I am a story first, effects second type of film goer. I saw Kong because I was curious, I bought Kong because the story was worth seeing more than once for me. What role did effects play in that? Well, for me this was the first time that the character of Kong was presented in a way that carried his part in the movie. And that was a direct result of the effects work. From a critical viewing of the film, yes, there were a number of scenes that seemed to be effects for effects sake and didn't add to the story... I would have cut nearly 10 minutes of effects laden shots if I were editing (and I generally fast forward through them now anyways).
As for why they presented what they did in the trailer... quite simple, the trailer was made and released long before the movie was finished. They could have waited until the movie was done, but that would have meant that the trailer would have been out only a few weeks before the release of the film (I'm sure that you can understand why they didn't do that).
I am not arguing that you must see this movie, just pointing out why I happen to really like it.
The constraints I was under was that I was doing all this in my free time while working projects that I actually got paid for. Granted a majority of what I do for a living is consulting and any type of research that adds to my knowledge (and depth) for advising clients can always be considered a work related investment of my time... but I wasn't directly paid for that time and had to squeeze it in where I could.
But yeah, it does provide some flavor of what could have been done back in the early 90s... the software I used was from 1994, and a number of platforms (Apple, Amiga, NeXT and Be to name a few) were starting to make this type of stuff available to mere mortals. But back in 1994 I was far more interested in visualization of mathematics (and we used Apple, NeXT, SGI and Sun for our work) than photo-realistic effects. So other than seeing what was showing up in the movies, I wasn't paying that much attention to other applications of this type of stuff back then. And in all actuality I was in possession of software I used for a majority of what I did since 1998... but had never attempted to use it before last December.
From my perspective, seaQuest is an example of the same type of shortcomings that the early web faced... that is, the people who were technically able to do the work didn't necessarily have an eye for the work. It wasn't until people with an eye for detail started entering the field that CG effects started feeling photo-realistic. And even today I wouldn't go so far as to say that everyone who is technically able to do CG work has the artistic talent to produce quality CG work.
And as I pointed out earlier, I believe in keeping all options open. I have never believed in a one-size-fits-all approach to any solution, and love all aspects of the effects trade craft.
One of the aspects of starting out this far forward of the original series is that we are talking about a period before the chemistry would have been there between the characters. That is one of the reasons I'm willing to give this movie a chance (that and the fact that I think Shatner damaged the original Kirk character by his input from season three on, and would like to see a return to the Kirk of season one and two).
But I do object to the idea of Trek needing a "reboot", or that people with ideas for a new type of adventure along these lines need to even use Trek as a source for that matter. If people want to reimagine Trek why not use what was really the foundation of most of what Trek was... use Forbidden Planet instead!
It had nearly all of the major elements of Trek and no one has attempted to revisit it in over 50 years. 10 years before the writers of Star Trek added the United Federation of Planets, the original opening of Forbidden Planet talked about a Federation and introduced us to a United Planets cruiser on it's way to investigate a missing survey expedition. The stories of both Forbidden Planet and The Cage have tons of parallels, and if anything (contrary to the wagontrain to the stars ideal) The Cage seemed like a proof of concept that a television series could bring Forbidden Planet quality stories to audiences.
So yeah, I don't see any reason to reinvent Star Trek (which has done quite well) when you could do something that would produce the exact same results by "rebooting" Forbidden Planet (which has languished all these years).
trevanian
Rear Admiral
No.
Maybe alchemy is a better word than chemistry, because it isn't scientific and it isn't even always immediate. Shatner and Nimoy had it right off, but how long was it before the big three clicked? Probably not till after Coon came on and saw it and wrote for it and made it happen, and then Fontana and whoever else built on that.
But this probably belongs in another thread. Maybe next week, when I'll have more time? Or reply here and I'll try to check in in a couple days.
You ask good questions.
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