Okay...
Visual Effects in Discovery
- Thread starter Galaxy
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Okay...
Yeah. In Discovery space feels small and crammed when it should feel vast and endless.
The shots are so messy and over processed I can't even tell what some of the ships look like. Maybe the Klingon designs were really cool. Too bad I can't actually see them.
Yes I was taken aback by how Babylon 5 this weeks episode looked at times. At 8 million an episode it should be a lot better than this.
God the VFX this episode was some real video game level stuff. The close ups of the Palace ship were hot garbage. The texture work my god.
That is bad.
No one will remember any shot from Battle of the Binary Stars in ten years time, it's all generic, blurry, over contrasty shakey-cam mess of pew pew bullets and lacklustre camera angles. Certainly no one will remember any of Eaves' designs that are on screen for half a second if you don't blink.
Sacrifice of Angels or Way of the Warrior though, wonderful shots and compositions. Movements are deliberate, weapons fire is purposeful and the starships stand out like the oil tankers in space they are.
It's the same reason the Return of the Jedi space battle is still held up as one of the best ever, compared to generic modern fluff like Guardians of the Galaxy which isn't memorable in the slightest.
Sacrifice of Angels or Way of the Warrior though, wonderful shots and compositions. Movements are deliberate, weapons fire is purposeful and the starships stand out like the oil tankers in space they are.
It's the same reason the Return of the Jedi space battle is still held up as one of the best ever, compared to generic modern fluff like Guardians of the Galaxy which isn't memorable in the slightest.
I think for the most part the "quality" of the effects is pretty good but I'm not digging the "make everything dark and blue" vibe, it just seems a bit unnatural. Not that I know how natural a space ship pew spewing lasers at a much larger spaceship with a flaming ball in between them is supposed to look....
yeah at some point it's less about the total quality of effects and more about the pacing, the danger and suspense of it. as you say, the purposeful nature, the deliberate movements that work with the surrounding scenes to create that sense of drama.
I know the effects in Wrath of Khan leave a lot of room for improvement but the battles were paced so well with the acted scenes, it's just much more entertaining
God the VFX this episode was some real video game level stuff. The close ups of the Palace ship were hot garbage. The texture work my god.
Which I don't understand because Pixomondo is completely capable of doing photorealistic work. Maybe I should work on Season 2. Heh.
The space battle with the Gagarin reminded me of the awful forgettable Nemesis battle. People seem to adore the latter but I've never seen what all the fuss is about, at least when it comes to camera angles and ship movements. It's the same generic, shakey cam, a million bullets on screen mess that Discovery seems to suffer from. It's all just too video-gamey. I can't remember any spacebattle shot from either whereas I can remember plenty from First Contact, Sacrifice of Angels, Generations etc
Compare with Black Mirror's Star Trek parody. The CGI for the parody is better than the real thing...
Ordinarily the space shots in Discovery look kind of bad because they're way over-saturated and there's too much bloom, but the latest episode is a whole different kind of bad.
I imagine the horrible over-saturated look was an order from someone on the production team, but this weeks episode looks bad because the CGI guys maybe ran out of time or had to scrap some of their preliminary work on the episode? It doesn't look stylised this week, it looks cheap.
I imagine the horrible over-saturated look was an order from someone on the production team, but this weeks episode looks bad because the CGI guys maybe ran out of time or had to scrap some of their preliminary work on the episode? It doesn't look stylised this week, it looks cheap.
You know what's most telling how shockingly bad DIS' vfx are?
Even for a one-off episode from another show they bothered with putting details behind the windows.
Seriously. The windows on the Discovery (and even the much more detailed Shenzhou) are simple white rectangles! Like we saw last since TNG. The 15 year old NX-01 Enterprise, hell, even the Voyager model, ALL had windows where you could see inside.
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When the Discovery is charging towards the core you can definitely see some details in the windows.
Speaking of that sequence, I was very impressed by the shot composition and animation. I understand and agree with those who criticise, say, the messy composition of the Battle of the Binary Stars. However, Discovery also has instances of skilled effects work.
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