Oh man, sweet! I can't wait to see what you make!
So, I made this.
- Thread starter Professor Moriarty
- Start date
"Scott to bridge."
"Spock here."
"Mr. Spock, the ship feels wrong."
"Feels, Mr. Scott?"
"I know it doesn't make sense. Instrumentation reads correct but the feel is WRONG. It's something I can't quite put into words!"
Kinda feeling like Scotty right now. This video is my first attempt at employing a linear color space workflow from start to finish, but there is definitely some work to do. I love the wider dynamic range of the end result, but the lighting obviously still needs work. But there's also something else that's... off here, and I can't quite put my finger on it.
The depth of field? I tried that, but that only made the ship look like the 11' studio miniature. The Enterprise is supposed to be 947 feet long! When we go on vacation and I take pictures of our cruise ship while in port, I walk on the dock away from the ship far enough to where I'm as far away from the bow as the camera is away from the forward edge of the Enterprise in this video. And when I do that, I can get the entire ship bow to stern in focus... shouldn't that also be true here?
I think that like Scotty, I'll need to take another look at my instrumentation.
(Oh and P.S., for what it's worth, Spock was a bit of a jerk to Scotty and the bridge crew in "That Which Survives". Just sayin'.
)
"Spock here."
"Mr. Spock, the ship feels wrong."
"Feels, Mr. Scott?"
"I know it doesn't make sense. Instrumentation reads correct but the feel is WRONG. It's something I can't quite put into words!"
Kinda feeling like Scotty right now. This video is my first attempt at employing a linear color space workflow from start to finish, but there is definitely some work to do. I love the wider dynamic range of the end result, but the lighting obviously still needs work. But there's also something else that's... off here, and I can't quite put my finger on it.
The depth of field? I tried that, but that only made the ship look like the 11' studio miniature. The Enterprise is supposed to be 947 feet long! When we go on vacation and I take pictures of our cruise ship while in port, I walk on the dock away from the ship far enough to where I'm as far away from the bow as the camera is away from the forward edge of the Enterprise in this video. And when I do that, I can get the entire ship bow to stern in focus... shouldn't that also be true here?
I think that like Scotty, I'll need to take another look at my instrumentation.
(Oh and P.S., for what it's worth, Spock was a bit of a jerk to Scotty and the bridge crew in "That Which Survives". Just sayin'.
)
It can definitely be an adjustment getting used to linear, but it's absolutely worth it.
I'm a little surprised things seem to be darker for you. When I switched, a lot of stuff ended up brighter than I was used to, especially areas that had a lot of bounce light, like interiors, or on the TMP Enterprise, the area behind the saucer. On the other hand, I went to linear before I could go to PBR, and I still have very little experience with PBR and space shots, but I know I got used to being able to have more than 100% reflectivity in surfaces between reflection and diffusion when things looked too dark. Maybe try cranking the exposure up in your compositor?
I'm a little surprised things seem to be darker for you. When I switched, a lot of stuff ended up brighter than I was used to, especially areas that had a lot of bounce light, like interiors, or on the TMP Enterprise, the area behind the saucer. On the other hand, I went to linear before I could go to PBR, and I still have very little experience with PBR and space shots, but I know I got used to being able to have more than 100% reflectivity in surfaces between reflection and diffusion when things looked too dark. Maybe try cranking the exposure up in your compositor?
You may be right on the exposure. I just re-subscribed to Adobe Creative Cloud and after a nine-year absence from Premiere Pro and After Effects my head is spinning. They seem familiar at first, but I'm getting tripped up on all sorts of little gotchas that have changed since CS4. I'll figure it out eventually.
But yeah, since I'm already trying to go for a more realistic lighting scheme, I'm usually not flooding the Enterprise with light from multiple angles like I am in this video, so I'm still having trouble getting the look just so. I think at this point I have my crap monitor to blame; that's next on the upgrade list but I have a twentieth anniversary present to buy first... priorities!
But yeah, since I'm already trying to go for a more realistic lighting scheme, I'm usually not flooding the Enterprise with light from multiple angles like I am in this video, so I'm still having trouble getting the look just so. I think at this point I have my crap monitor to blame; that's next on the upgrade list but I have a twentieth anniversary present to buy first... priorities!
Perfect is literally the enemy of the good when it comes to CGI. I can tell from my linear tests that I’m going to have to rejigger more of the materials and rethink the “space weathering”. OctaneRender procedural dirt was fine when I was rendering in sRGB (and washing out all my colors). But now that the veil has been lifted, so to speak, at the very least I’m going to need to tweak settings. At worst, I may have to rethink how I’m doing this.
I probably should also think about doing a sweep of the work area… It’s getting a bit, er... cluttered.
I probably should also think about doing a sweep of the work area… It’s getting a bit, er... cluttered.
Warp nacelle "Christmas lights" effect finished. It still doesn't look quite like the original effect but I am declaring victory and moving on. 
I went a little overboard on the detailing for the warp nacelle pylons -- 84,000 polys per pylon for ductwork and little bitty maintenance crawlway tubes that you can just barely see through those "portholes" on the outboard side. Yeah, I'll be optimizing those a bit!
But hey, I finally figured out why my star fields were getting bleached out. Behold!
I went a little overboard on the detailing for the warp nacelle pylons -- 84,000 polys per pylon for ductwork and little bitty maintenance crawlway tubes that you can just barely see through those "portholes" on the outboard side. Yeah, I'll be optimizing those a bit!But hey, I finally figured out why my star fields were getting bleached out. Behold!
Loved that flash of light illuminating the ever-so-slightly gridlines on the hullWarp nacelle "Christmas lights" effect finished. It still doesn't look quite like the original effect but I am declaring victory and moving on.
But hey, I finally figured out why my star fields were getting bleached out. Behold!
I'm loving the camera work on these videos. I'm really loving the subtle updates to the ship though, like the airlock on the side of the saucer, the warp conduits going up the struts....would love to see some kind of closeup footage of that in the future! Looking forward to the next vid! 
Oh, I'm just getting started on the warp nacelle detailing. 
Me and the missus are getting ready for our twentieth anniversary vacation next week so there won't be much time for additional updates, but here's a quickie closeup of some of the new detailing. I did a lot of optimization over the weekend and drastically lowered the poly count. Even super close up the grillework obscures much of the visible detail, so all that's needed is enough to give an impression of what's beneath. You certainly don't need 84,000 polygons for that!
Thanks!! Looks fantastic!
How do those ducts behind the grates line up with the three pylon windows on the other side? I've always imagined that those windows marked the locations of small service rooms that are used to repair/uncouple conduits between the nacelles and engineering hull, but your plasma ducts probable eat up most of the space behind those windows.
Funny that you should ask.
The Enterprise is not a TARDIS; I am striving not to "fill in the details" anywhere that won't work space-wise.
The mechanical bay that takes up the middle of the pylon is just slightly wider than the four inboard grilles. The bay has an L-shaped cross-section because the conduits/pipes on the forward half of each pylon are much smaller in diameter than the warp plasma conduits on the rear half. That leaves just barely enough room to allow for stairs that rise up from the secondary hull to the warp nacelles, and a series of inspection platforms directly behind the small-diameter conduits (albeit with only 1.9 meters of headroom at any point thanks to the constant 47-degree slope of the pylons). I imagine there are probably multiple instances of these maintenance and inspection platforms, but the only three that we can catch a peek of are the ones sited where the outboard portholes are located. There are probably many more that we cannot see, so that our favorite (slightly overweight) Starfleet engineer can take little rest breaks while climbing those hellacious stairs.
You can't see them in this image, but there are inspection portholes at each of these platforms (which are only a bit larger in area than the landing on a flight of stairs in an apartment building) that point inward, where Scotty and his engineers can visually inspect the ductwork and conduits in the pylon mechanical bays. If the ship is flying by the camera at the right angle, it's possible to look through the outboard portholes into the maintenance platforms, look through the inboard portholes, and catch a fleeting glimpse of the warp plasma conduit closest to the inspection platforms (the conduit with orange-colored plasma). (BTW, I'm not planning on having orange and blue plasma; the two different colors are there now only so that I can decide which color I like better. Leaning towards the orange; glowy blue sh!t is the domain of the refit Enterprise.
)And with all of this, there's still plenty of room for the pylon superstructure itself, just beneath the duranium casing on the fore and aft semi-rounded edges of each pylon.
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