TOS R: CGI Matte Lines?

[Maurice]

I was looking at some screen caps of the remastered Mudd's Women over at Trekcore and, lo and behold, there are the equivalent of CGI matte lines around the asteroids (check out the block borders):

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x06hd/muddswomenhd024.jpg

No such thing around the Enterprise. Most odd!

 

[gastrof]

Everyone knows the asteroids in that sector give off a strange low level radiation that's harmless but does appear in the visible light spectrum, sort of.

I wouldn't worry about it. It's the asteroids that are OUTSIDE the visible spectrum you should be concerned about.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

I was looking at some screen caps of the remastered Mudd's Women over at Trekcore and, lo and behold, there are the equivalent of CGI matte lines around the asteroids (check out the block borders):

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x06hd/muddswomenhd024.jpg

No such thing around the Enterprise. Most odd!

Not odd at all... just an error in compositing the asteroids into the scene. I made the same mistake myself on my own F/X project--if you click the link below you'll see those lines all over the friggin' place. Fortunately it's something that's easily corrected in post-production. Unfortunately, it will probably never be corrected on this iteration of TOS-R.

 

[backstept]

hmm . . . I don't see it . . .

 

[Mr. Fergy]

^ Me neither.

 

[Maurice]

^^^Depends on how your monitor is set. If the brightness or contrast are low you might now be able to see the difference in the blacks.

And, yes, it's a common mistake, but a big deal is made in digital compositing in that it doesn't result in matte lines...yet, lo, here they are!

It's 1980 all over again.

 

[cooleddie74]

There are also obvious and dark CGI matte lines around the edges of the Enterprise when it passes in front of Space Station K-7 in the Remastered "Tribbles." Nothing new, and I learned to try to ignore the limitations of the Remastering a while back.

 

[Trekwatcher]

There are also obvious and dark CGI matte lines around the edges of the Enterprise when it passes in front of Space Station K-7 in the Remastered "Tribbles." Nothing new, and I learned to try to ignore the limitations of the Remastering a while back.

Exactly. If you look carefully these can come out. It also depends on how your TV or monitor is set-I can almost make these invisible by adjusting the contrast and brightness on my TV.

 

[Forbin]

Does this mean the CGI isn't done as a single setup scene, but the individual objects are rendered separately and digitally composited later? That seems ... inefficient. I can't imagine any other reason for "matt lines" or fringing.

 

[Gepard]

Does this mean the CGI isn't done as a single setup scene, but the individual objects are rendered separately and digitally composited later? That seems ... inefficient. I can't imagine any other reason for "matt lines" or fringing.

That they are. It may sound inefficient, but rendering elements separately gives composites more control over the appearance of the final image since they can adjust the color, contrast and more of each layer independently in post to achieve effects that might otherwise require re-rendering the entire sequence from scratch. In really high-end productions (and on BSG ), FX houses can even go so far as to do each light source and the specular and diffuse elements as separate passes.

Also, splitting elements apart like that saves on memory and render time--there's no way to have enough precessing power on a single machine or bank of machines to handle something like, say, the battle from BSG: "Resurrection Ship" all in one pass. The computers would crash. Add in that the render times of all those objects placed in one scene together is often more than the render times of all those objects each rendered on their own and then added together, and there are real advantages to doing it this way.

 

[cooleddie74]

Even STAR WARS prequels and TITANIC with their $100-200 million megabudgets had occasional visible matte lines and bleeding greenscreen. We can expect no better from a forty-year-old TV show with a limited CGI Remastering budget and schedule.

 

[Maurice]

Yes, yes, but the funny thing is it's a fully CG image...so there's really no excuse for a big thick BLACK outline unless someone's doing something very wrong. Sure, a pixel or two thickness around the edge where the keyed color meets the object and the color isn't a 100% match , maybe...but not the thicknesses seen here.

 

[toonloon]

Take a look at the matte shots in The Menagerie. I can see a PURPLE glow around a woman in the night time digital matte. A purple glow for petesake!

 

[cooleddie74]

And in TITANIC...a $200 million movie...when the survivors are hanging off the back railing of the ship as the stern section begins to go down, the ship's chef or cook(one of them anyways)has a blue tint to him because of bleeding bluescreen from the imperfect background drop of the nighttime starfield.