So, I made this.

[Redfern]

Of course, Vimeo gives the superior image, but the YouTube upload allows for some additional fun. Try playing the sequence at different speeds. At one quarter, the Sol Kaplan score slowed but artificially maintaining its pitch sound like some 70s independent film (I keep thinking of "Phase IV" about the ants rapidly gaining sapience). At twice normal speed, the ship is blasting away "Star Wars" or "Abramsverse" style and the "cantor" of the bursts almost sound like the opening beats to Fred Steiner's "Amok Time" fight music.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

Try playing the sequence at different speeds. At one quarter, the Sol Kaplan score slowed but artificially maintaining its pitch sound like some 70s independent film (I keep thinking of "Phase IV" about the ants rapidly gaining sapience). At twice normal speed, the ship is blasting away "Star Wars" or "Abramsverse" style and the "cantor" of the bursts almost sound like the opening beats to Fred Steiner's "Amok Time" fight music.

I've sometimes played back low-rez visualization clips in my NLE at different speeds when trying out different scene cadences, but for some reason it never occurred to me to watch my finished videos like this.

 

[Atolm]

You two make up your minds!

lol in that context I can see what you mean...lol
Still pretty damn epic

 

[Professor Moriarty]

BOOM!

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There are still some tweaks I want to make to this sequence, but it's pretty close to what I was trying to achieve so I thought I'd go ahead and post it. The exit from warp is basically the exact reverse of the sequence seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture when the Enterprise is jumping to warp, with one change: in my interpretation, the camera starts and ends the sequence in normal space, whereas in ST:TMP the camera leaps into subspace behind the Enterprise (look at the background stars... they're flying past the camera at warp speed after the Enterprise disappears in a flash).

This effect took a lot of trial and error to figure out, and like I said I'm still fussin' with it. My experiments with phasers actually helped; now that I know how to use LightWave's "morphing" feature, the stretchy lights part of this sequence (the hardest part of the effect) will be a lot easier to replicate. (Yeah, for someone who's abandoned LightWave for new projects, I'm finding I'm still having to learn a lot about it to keep using my Constellation and Enterprise models!)

C&C appreciated. Thanks!

(Edited 4 March 2020 to add a frame grab that I accidentally left out.)

 

[Psion]

BOOM!

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There are still some tweaks I want to make to this sequence, but it's pretty close to what I was trying to achieve so I thought I'd go ahead and post it. The exit from warp is basically the exact reverse of the sequence seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture when the Enterprise is jumping to warp, with one change: in my interpretation, the camera starts and ends the sequence in normal space, whereas in ST:TMP the camera leaps into subspace behind the Enterprise (look at the background stars... they're flying past the camera at warp speed after the Enterprise disappears in a flash).

This effect took a lot of trial and error to figure out, and like I said I'm still fussin' with it. My experiments with phasers actually helped; now that I know how to use LightWave's "morphing" feature, the stretchy lights part of this sequence (the hardest part of the effect) will be a lot easier to replicate. (Yeah, for someone who's abandoned LightWave for new projects, I'm finding I'm still having to learn a lot about it to keep using my Constellation and Enterprise models!)

C&C appreciated. Thanks!

I love your use of the Motion Picture warp effect! The space wind ... not so much. Maybe if you instead ramped up a brief snippet of that wind a second or two before the warp blast as a way to signal something is about to happen; like it's a warp field precursor that precedes the extra-luminal bow shock?

Alternatively, I liked the navigation "ping" used for space shots at the beginning of the 2009 Star Trek movie. It implied space very nicely. The camera pans across the star field slowly as a quiet pinging slowly grows louder, then BOOM! There's the Connie and the navigation ping is suddenly loud, too.

 

[scifieric]

I absolutely loved it! Wow!

 

[SCE2Aux]

Stunning. Beautiful lighting and animation.

 

[Santaman]

That looks great, very crisp and vibrant both the effects and the ship itself.

 

[Michael]

I love the coming out of warp effect! I don‘t think I would change a thing about it.

 

[Donnewtype]

OMG!!!!!! That was amazing!!!! I have only just figured out how to do a beginning render with Twilight Render for Sketchup. That level I can only dream of achieving. The warp deceleration clip never looked better.

 

[Psion]

I love the coming out of warp effect! I don‘t think I would change a thing about it.

OMG!!!!!! That was amazing!!!! I have only just figured out how to do a beginning render with Twilight Render for Sketchup. That level I can only dream of achieving. The warp deceleration clip never looked better.

Oh yeah? What if he did that and then the Connie immediately started firing phasers?! Huh? HUH?!




Sorry. Just getting excited!

 

[Donny]

That’s pretty dope! What did you render those in?

 

[Professor Moriarty]

I love your use of the Motion Picture warp effect! The space wind ... not so much.

I figured this would be a love-it-or-leave it aspect of the clip. Chalk it up entirely to artistic license; I was going for a spooky/ominous vibe. We know the Constellation's fate; the somber, lonely sound of the "space wind" was meant to evoke a sense of foreboding.

Alternatively, I liked the navigation "ping" used for space shots at the beginning of the 2009 Star Trek movie. It implied space very nicely. The camera pans across the star field slowly as a quiet pinging slowly grows louder, then BOOM! There's the Connie and the navigation ping is suddenly loud, too.

I know it's heresy in some circles but I really loved the 2009 Star Trek movie and that opening in particular. Thing is, I've already seen several excellent homages to that opening scene on the internet, and I'd rather try to do my own thing here. Thanks for the C&C!

That’s pretty dope! What did you render those in?

Thanks! The modeling was done in LightWave, but the rendering was done using OTOY OctaneRender. The "warp rainbow tunnel" streaks of light were just glowing cylinders rendered in a separate pass with bloom and glare cranked up to 11, not entirely dissimilar from how the phaser effect was achieved. The starship light streaks (while the ship is flying through the warp rainbow tunnel) were done by placing all of the Constellation emissive materials into their own layer in the model so that they could be rendered in a separate pass with 100% motion blur. In post, I used an effect that combines the light streak frames together to simulate what you'd see with a time exposure of freeway traffic at night (you know, where all that you can see are the white streaks of the headlights and the red streaks of the taillights). The warp rainbow tunnel and starship light streak layers were then linear-dodged onto the starship pass.

This technique has some drawbacks, not the least of which is that it takes a lot of painstaking setup. The main problem is that the camera must be perfectly still relative to the Constellation while the starship light streaks are being rendered; otherwise you'll get a weirdly skewed path when the frames are combined in post. (Yes, the camera is rolling a little during this shot; that was done by shooting the whole thing at a greater resolution than 4K and tilting the scene in post.) I think I figured out a better way to do this, though, and it leverages the LightWave "morph" technique used to animate the length of the phaser bolts--morph the light streaks! If the light streaks really are kilometers long (instead of the length being simulated in post by combining dozens of frames), the camera won't have to be locked down relative to the ship, which will make for a more dynamic composition.

Thanks for the feedback y'all!

 

[David cgc]

I’ve been thinking about how to do TMP warp streaks with a moving camera for a while, and doing it with modeled light streaks is definitely the easy, fast, flexible way around it. I’m just ever so tempted by doing it the tedious way with actual frame-by-frame animated long exposures.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

One thing I didn't mention is that the technique used for this shot was somewhat forced by the renderer I'm using. OctaneRender does not support a motion blur greater than 100%, which led me down the path of simulating a long exposure by combining the motion blurred light streaks in post. I should also mention that post-process effect was achieved in Adobe After Effects by using the "Echo" plugin plus pixel motion frame blending... and let me assure you, the combination of those two effects results in a painfully slow render of the final composition. That's another reason why (besides freeing up the camera motion) I think the morph route is a promising alternative--I'll take a look at just about anything that lets me avoid having to endure AE's sluggish rendering performance!

 

[Psion]

I figured this would be a love-it-or-leave it aspect of the clip. Chalk it up entirely to artistic license; I was going for a spooky/ominous vibe. We know the Constellation's fate; the somber, lonely sound of the "space wind" was meant to evoke a sense of foreboding.

I understand completely! But ... if you're gonna make Trek-related materials, you've gotta put up with know-it-all Trekkies who can't keep their opinions to themselves, too! It's in the contract somewhere.

(And if I ever get back to producing my own stuff again, I know those words shall doom me!)

I know it's heresy in some circles but I really loved the 2009 Star Trek movie and that opening in particular. Thing is, I've already seen several excellent homages to that opening scene on the internet, and I'd rather try to do my own thing here. Thanks for the C&C!

That opening shot was possibly the best in the franchise so far; J.J. conveyed a great sense of confused "which way is up?!" introducing the Kelvin. And that navigation ping was instantly recognizable as Starfleet.

 

[The Lensman]

BOOM!

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There are still some tweaks I want to make to this sequence, but it's pretty close to what I was trying to achieve so I thought I'd go ahead and post it. The exit from warp is basically the exact reverse of the sequence seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture when the Enterprise is jumping to warp, with one change: in my interpretation, the camera starts and ends the sequence in normal space, whereas in ST:TMP the camera leaps into subspace behind the Enterprise (look at the background stars... they're flying past the camera at warp speed after the Enterprise disappears in a flash).

This effect took a lot of trial and error to figure out, and like I said I'm still fussin' with it. My experiments with phasers actually helped; now that I know how to use LightWave's "morphing" feature, the stretchy lights part of this sequence (the hardest part of the effect) will be a lot easier to replicate. (Yeah, for someone who's abandoned LightWave for new projects, I'm finding I'm still having to learn a lot about it to keep using my Constellation and Enterprise models!)

C&C appreciated. Thanks!

(Edited 4 March 2020 to add a frame grab that I accidentally left out.)

AWESOME STUFF!!!

 

[publiusr]

Nice work. Those phaser beams look INSANELY hot!

Some sort of tech boost clearly.

 

[fireproof78]

YouTube 4K:

Boom. That's beautiful. Also, the Vimeo link wasn't happy with me Anyone else have an issue?

 

[Atolm]

That was Crazy! It ties into TMP so perfectly!