quote:Originally posted by iam2xtreme: Whoever said that the Defiant was CGI in FC was wrong.
That was me.
An extremely reliable source had been in contact with Gary Hutzel (the main designer of the Defiant) and Hutzel revealed that the FC Defiant was entirely CG. Hutzel even expressed his dislike for the model because he thought it wasn't faithful to the physical miniature (although I personally always thought the FC Defiant looked pretty damn good). Anyway, if you have a keen eye for detail you can tell that FC doesn't use the physical model e.g. the dome on the bridge and the circles around the bridge don't look quite right.
I vaguely remember Mojo mentioning the FC Defiant too - back when he revealed that picture of the new CG Defiant model they were/are working on.
posted
Mojo never mentioned the FC Defiant, but otherwise, yes, it was CGI according to Gary Hutzel, Alex Jaeger, Mike Okuda, and Daniel Kramer of VisionArt Design and Animation.
Kramer also said that they had sent the VisionArt CG model (used in DS9 seasons 3-early 6) to ILM, but that he did not know whether it had been merely modified for FC or used as reference for a brand new model. Alex Jaeger simply said it was built by John Knoll, but it could be that Knoll merely added the battle damage. Jaeger also thinks they used the physical model for reference.
Since the VisionArt model is seems good enough already, it might have sufficed to rerender the model at a higher resolution and add the battle damage. This part is still a bit muddy, but the onscreen model was definitely CGI.
Boris
[ August 09, 2002, 03:02: Message edited by: Boris ]
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posted
Which makes one wonder what the picture in "TNG Sketchbook" is all about. Did they want to test the CGI damage texture on the physical model? Why on Earth on *that*, and not on the final CGI ship? (It must be the physical model in that photo, since nobody would model that missing bridge bit and the marks left by it on the rest of the model...)
Or was this an early test of how things would look if a CGI-painted physical model were to be used - and the test resulted in abandoning the use of a physical model?
posted
That was probably another one of Alex Jaeger's Photoshop tests, designed to see where the battle damage should be applied. Check out his Borg Queen death sequence using a fellow co-worker's picture -- same thing.
Considering that everything else in the scene was CGI to our knowledge (isn't this the only place you'd want to use a CGI Enterprise which they did build?), I would discard the second option from the start. It would've been a waste of time to wait for Knoll to finish his model (or VisionArt to deliver theirs) to merely sketch out some battle damage that would be added later. Or maybe they never built an undamaged model, and the battle damage *had* to be tested on something else beforehand.
Boris
[ August 09, 2002, 03:49: Message edited by: Boris ]
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posted
I vaguely recall Mojo mentioning a CGI Defiant for FC as well -- in that long thread about "The Unseen Frontier" about six months ago. I might be wrong, though.
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posted
I agree, that photo looks like a concept test for the battle damage, probably given to the 3D artists as a guide.
As for all the ships in that scene being CG; I'm pretty sure that both of the Borg vessels were physical models, at least for the close ups. Also it seams likely that the Oberth, Nebula & Miranda were the same models left over from "Generations".
Regarding the CG version of the Enterprise-E, I remember reading somewhere that this was only really used for the "going to warp" scene because it can be stretched out to a greater effect than using optical distortions on a photographed miniature. I can'tsay where I read this but I'll look into it and let you know if I find the reference.
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: I vaguely recall Mojo mentioning a CGI Defiant for FC as well -- in that long thread about "The Unseen Frontier" about six months ago. I might be wrong, though.
That's exactly what I was thinking but I'm just too lazy to go back and check.
The FC Borg battle is a bit of a head scratcher. We can be reasonably sure the Defiant was CG, we know Jaegar's inventions were CG, the Borg ships should be physical because we know they exist (why otherwise build such detailed miniatures), and it's been mentioned that the Ent-E was CG during the battle. Now where does this leave the Miranda, Nebula, and Oberth? None of the three were seen up close so CG models aren't out of the question IMO, but it's impossible to be sure either way.
The question remains - where did all these detailed CG models end up? The ILM CG Defiant, Norway, Ent-B, and possible others all seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth.
posted
I'm not sure what happened to the Norway-class -- Stipes mentioned unspecified technical problems. Otherwise, part of the reason existing models are often not used is software incompatibility. We know that the reason all the models had to be rebuilt for "Sacrifice of Angels" is that Vision Art did not use LightWave, so the models would become scrambled during the conversion process.
posted
I had a theory I presented in another thread, that I reckon at least one person would have seen the Norway model IN DETAIL other than the ILM people - and may even still have a copy...
Doug Drexler.
He had to have SOMETHING to create the two view diagrams for the Encyclopaedia did he not?
If someone could contact him, they could ask him. He might even have a piccy still on his computer!?!
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posted
Not strictly relevent, but I'm suddenly curious. What SFX companies did what on modern Trek? ILM did Farpoint, who did the rest of the series? At what point did Foundation Imaging start working for Trek? And what about VisionArts? And did they share models, or what?
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posted
ILM did Farpoint and some stock footage that was to be recycled throughout the series. The plan changed and new footage was needed, so Legato and Hutzel started shooting motion control at Image G, which earlier had done only commercials.
DS9 used the same facillities for most of the series, with VisionArt doing an occassional CG sequence such as Odo morphs, the gas giant sequence in "Starship Down", part of the "Call to Arms" fleet shot, etc. The latter episode overwhelmed the existing system, which resulted in DS9 starting to gradually move towards an almost pure-CGI show with the help of newly enlisted Digital Muse, but also Foundation Imaging (which already was doing CGI for Voyager since "Basics" and would continue to primarily work on that series).
Muse and Foundation shared models (in fact, Foundation built the bad guys while Muse did the rest), but they couldn't do so with VisionArt, which used Houdini according to David Stipes. He was the main proponent of the move to CGI, whereas Gary Hutzel continued to shoot models as late as season six, although he, too, would gradually move towards CGI. Only the DS9 station wasn't CGI-ed until the final episode.
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