The OFFICIAL STNG-R general discussion thread!

[Sho]

And no, it's not really possible to re-render the CGI at HD resolutions either. For one, the meshes and textures they created back then would never hold up under HD resolutions unmodified - instead making apparent low polygon counts, seams, UV mapping flaws and the like - and secondly, archiving for these digital assets is usually not done as diligently as with film negatives. The files are most likely largely lost to time, with companies involved having gone out of business, etc.

So they'd have to redo the CGI from scratch. As I've said a couple of times in this thread when this topic came up (it's always fun how these long threads keep circling the same issues as people move in and out of them), I'm happy they went with reusing the original model photography for TNG-R instead of going CGI, but the one advantage of doing the latter would have been ramping up a CGI pipeline they're eventually going to need for DS9 and Voyager. But then again I don't want them to train on TNG.

I'm fairly hopeful that in 5 years or so when they'd start remastering DS9 it will be cost-effective to do the CGI work though.

 

[ATimson]

I'm happy they went with reusing the original model photography for TNG-R instead of going CGI, but the one advantage of doing the latter would have been ramping up a CGI pipeline they're eventually going to need for DS9 and Voyager.

I have a pipe dream: that when they redo DS9 and Voyager, they get Gary Hutzel, Doug Drexler, Mojo, and others who were on the series the first time involved again. Maybe they wouldn't be interested - but maybe they would, especially if they're given leeway to run with the shots instead of merely recreating the originals.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I'm hoping when they get around to ENT, they decide to leave out TATV...

 

[ATimson]

I'm hoping when they get around to ENT, they decide to leave out TATV...

There's nothing to leave out, the entire series is already in HD. (And even if they eventually redid seasons 1-3 in some higher-def format, season 4 was shot on video and is stuck at 1080p.)

 

[TheSeeker]

I was just thinking about F/X they'll need to recreate for TNG and the second season episode "The Dauphin" came to mind. It will be interesting to see how they recreate the morphing. I'm sure it's going to look much smoother than the original.

 

[Sho]

I actually liked TATV because I was never all that big on Enterprise, and it was fun to see my old TNG friends again and TNG sets even ... I agree structurally it was a bad episode and I can see why fans of Enterprise felt cheated by it, but I could see and appreciate the "let's bookend 24th century Trek" idea they were going for. Anyway, off-topic of course.

 

[Tosk]

Does anyone else think the starfield shot from "Sins Of The Father" looks odd? Looks poorly overlayed or something?

Hmm. Not really? I'm not seeing what you're seeing.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Yes, that's what I'm suggesting. The problem with both DS9 and Voyager is their extensive CGI work, which was only rendered for SDTV resolutions; any CGI would need to be either upscaled (and thus not HD) or recreated from scratch.

For TNG this isn't a problem, as there is minimal or no use of CGI. Or Enterprise since it was rendered at HD resolutions from the start.

You are aware, aren't you, that CGI or not, all of TNG's FX minus the model shots have to recreated -- phasers, torpedoes, planets, stars, transporter FX -- in CGI.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Does anyone else think the starfield shot from "Sins Of The Father" looks odd? Looks poorly overlayed or something?

Hmm. Not really? I'm not seeing what you're seeing.

In reality, the glare from the planet would render all but the brightest stars invisible (think of how the full Moon has the same effect), stars don't usually show visible discs, and aesthetically, one might argue that they've overdone the prominence of the star field.

 

[Jefferies]

I'm fairly hopeful that in 5 years or so when they'd start remastering DS9 it will be cost-effective to do the CGI work though.

Where is this 5 year number comming from? Surely, the remastering will not take that long? 1-2 years maybe, but not almost the whole time it took to produce the series in the first place. After all, all they have to do is re-edit the episodes and redo the video only FX. In total that must be less than 10% of the original production work.

 

[Flake]

Does anyone else think the starfield shot from "Sins Of The Father" looks odd? Looks poorly overlayed or something?

Hmm. Not really? I'm not seeing what you're seeing.

In reality, the glare from the planet would render all but the brightest stars invisible (think of how the full Moon has the same effect), stars don't usually show visible discs, and aesthetically, one might argue that they've overdone the prominence of the star field.

This is true but it has always been ignored by all sci-fi. We expect to see stars in space even though they should be hidden by the glare of planets & ships. We should not be able to see stars through the ready room window because its brightly lit but we do and it looks much better than a black window with no stars. So its ok with me.

 

[ATimson]

You are aware, aren't you, that CGI or not, all of TNG's FX minus the model shots have to recreated -- phasers, torpedoes, planets, stars, transporter FX -- in CGI.

Yes, I'm aware of that. But those strike me as relatively trivial compared to the number of model (or later CGI) shots. *shrug* Maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Flake]

Maybe the CGI wizards saved the animation, texture and model files so that in future they can re-visit them and render them again at a higher resolution? Perhaps part of the deal made with these FX companies was that they had to archive everything they did in such a way that it can be updated in the future because HD was much closer on the horizon in 1995-96 than it was in 1987.

 

[ATimson]

Maybe the CGI wizards saved the animation, texture and model files so that in future they can re-visit them and render them again at a higher resolution? Perhaps part of the deal made with these FX companies was that they had to archive everything they did in such a way that it can be updated in the future because HD was much closer on the horizon in 1995-96 than it was in 1987.

I'd hope that the archiving wouldn't be the responsibility of the effects company, because most of the ones that worked on Trek are out of business now.

Even if they had the files, there would still be stumbling blocks: the fact that the files are fifteen years old and probably can't just be opened in the newest version of Lightwave, and what Sho mentioned above regarding "shortcuts" in the originals that would be evident in an HD rerender.

 

[Tosk]

Chances of there being "Plug them in and presto!" copies of all those files? ...1 in a million. (IMO)

My bet would be that they're all long gone, just as Babylon 5's were when it came time to make the DVDs.

 

[bullethead]

Chances of there being "Plug them in and presto!" copies of all those files? ...1 in a million. (IMO)

My bet would be that they're all long gone, just as Babylon 5's were when it came time to make the DVDs.

IIRC Doug Drexler has a lot of the CGI models, since he produces new orthographics of them.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I think they're gonna need more than just Doug's files...

 

[trekker670]

I'm fairly hopeful that in 5 years or so when they'd start remastering DS9 it will be cost-effective to do the CGI work though.

Where is this 5 year number comming from? Surely, the remastering will not take that long? 1-2 years maybe, but not almost the whole time it took to produce the series in the first place. After all, all they have to do is re-edit the episodes and redo the video only FX. In total that must be less than 10% of the original production work.

Well technically, each episode took roughly 2 weeks in post production. So theoretically that 6.7 years. Granted, they have all the production notes, but I wouldn't think 5 years would be out of the question. I'm sure they've figured out some sort of pipelining, and who knows how long they've actually been working on this project already. I'm hoping it would be much shorter than this as by that time we're probably looking at a new video format again.

 

[Squiggy]

Does anyone else think the starfield shot from "Sins Of The Father" looks odd? Looks poorly overlayed or something?

Hmm. Not really? I'm not seeing what you're seeing.

In reality, the glare from the planet would render all but the brightest stars invisible (think of how the full Moon has the same effect), stars don't usually show visible discs, and aesthetically, one might argue that they've overdone the prominence of the star field.

Not really. You can see stars in orbit, most cameras however don't show it.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74mhQyuyELQ[/yt]

The ISS has some new HD equipment that show the stars. Older SD cameras lacked the ability.

 

[JarodRussell]

Yeah, but the night side is extremely well lit (probably by moon light). So these shots are greatly overexposed as well.