STO looks better then that in the lighting department.
Visual Effects in Discovery
- Thread starter Galaxy
- Start date
Sad but true.
Maya 3D software for modeling/texturing/shading/animation and Vray for rendering. Nuke for compositing.
Um...same showrunners = Don't hold your breath...
Fun fact - the STO Dev Team confirmed they got the actual Discovery Ortho files (used by the VFX houses for the show) to create the Walker Class and Crossfield Class ship models for the game.
Um...same showrunners = Don't hold your breath...
They'll probably have another million an episode, so the effects will likely get worse.
Discovery texturing & shadows: Now only 340,000 Zen.
Shame they're not using Lightwave. Pixamondo used to have a significant number of Lightwavers five or six years ago; I used to know a bunch of them from work who all packed up and moved over there at about the same time.
I am unfamiliar with Vray and Nuke. Nuke is for inserting VFX into video frames?
They actually got every ship model from from the first half of the season, not just the ones they've released so far.
Vray is an industry standard rendering software. It produces the final CG images out of the 3D software. It calculates the light, reflections, shadows, etc. Yes, Nuke is often used for inserting the CG renders into real footage. Such as Ripper with shots of Michael. It can also be used on fully CG shots to tweak the color, brightness, etc of elements generated by Vray.
You might find it a safer bet if you prepare for season 2 by smearing grape jelly on your TV screen whenever you watch any of the older Trek series. Then the purple murk of DISCO won't seem unusual.
TOS-R had the same issue. The ground-level stuff and a lot of the subtle set tweaks (love that magic clock!) were great, but the space stuff was very raw and rough, both in lighting and camera work (I can't stand that one shot where the Enterprise zooms past with the camera clearly set to "follow object" rather than doing any kind of remotely plausible panning motion).
At least in this case, there's the simple answer that "someone likes it that way." Not sure what was going on at CBS back then.
I saw this going around on Twitter, and it's 100% right.
It'd definitely more traditional, and there's nothing wrong with that. I always found Trek shots tricky because they need a bit more artifice to look right than Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica and their more starkly realistic styles (and DSC, of course, blows way past stark realism and out the other end). Your shot also reminds me of the complaint I saw from time to time here, that we hardly ever saw the ships of DSC "flying," they were always just sitting somewhere. I think the finale may have had the first traditional establishing-shot flyby of the ship in the entire show.
Well, new STO. First-gen STO, before the big visual revamp, actually did look a lot like DSC, come to think of it. Especially the gamified ships, with extra glows and subtle-as-a-brick texturing and whatnot.
My issue with the visual effects are thus:
Totally unrealistic formation of the ships. In earlier shows tight budgets explain lining up all your ships on the same screen. That doesn’t fly in 2018 to me: real ships in real fights sail on a prearranged tactical pattern. They should do so in Trek;
Two,totally unrealistic depictions of damage. Powers low and forcefields are holding the ship together; but ya got power for every light on the ship? If you’re in enough trouble that power supply is a concern, I’d expect a darkened ship. Heck why keep the lights on at Red Alert? It’s not like the bridge has a giant window shining light right into space giving away the position of the officers or anything.......Note that on both actual warships and previous Trek works ships in combat have reduced or red-only bridge lighting.
Last : USS Discovery looks brand-new clean in the last episode as she does in the first. Real life ships get worn with time, but Starfleet in STD has apparently cured dirt.
Totally unrealistic formation of the ships. In earlier shows tight budgets explain lining up all your ships on the same screen. That doesn’t fly in 2018 to me: real ships in real fights sail on a prearranged tactical pattern. They should do so in Trek;
Two,totally unrealistic depictions of damage. Powers low and forcefields are holding the ship together; but ya got power for every light on the ship? If you’re in enough trouble that power supply is a concern, I’d expect a darkened ship. Heck why keep the lights on at Red Alert? It’s not like the bridge has a giant window shining light right into space giving away the position of the officers or anything.......Note that on both actual warships and previous Trek works ships in combat have reduced or red-only bridge lighting.
Last : USS Discovery looks brand-new clean in the last episode as she does in the first. Real life ships get worn with time, but Starfleet in STD has apparently cured dirt.
Yes, I'm sure in such a situation lights are a noticeable drain on your energy supply...
Voyager never had that problem...
Paris was utterly uninspired. Let's just cram a buttload of futuristic buildings around the Eiffel Tower. Big whoop. No aesthetics whatsoever.
Disagree. It was exactly what I expect Paris to look like in few hundred years.
Indeed. This really seems like a stylistic choice, rather than just crappy work. They want this sort of ethereal look to the space stuff, because when they don't want that, they are perfectly capable of crisp, nice looking shots. It's an odd choice, but I'm guessing a deliberate one. Either that, or there just isn't enough direction in general from above on the VFX - so mistakes like 100AU creep in.
harsh but fair.
It's not at all what I expect Paris to look like in a few hundred years. TOS managed to do better with its old school matte paintings (cf, the two looks at Starbase 11).
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