posted
The energy beam shot is reputedly a matte painting, which might explain why, for instance, the saucer deflector and other windows on the "-teen" decks of the saucer have no notch-outs, but are instead just slapped on.
It's the lighting on that one that kills me, though. Yeah, I realize some of the lighting is the beam, but where is the saucer shadow on the neck?
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
God...that looks like ass. Looks like beginer's Photoshop- the windows look the same as they curve around the saucer too... That definitelt NOT how the diecut windows on the model look.
I really think most of these pics we're looking at are pure bullshit to promote the release- not the actual product but just stuff some art department churned out to generate hype.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
From what I gather - that is the original shot - the 4' model of the Enterprise with the space probe. I guess whatever is 'wrong' with it was done back in the 90s and they've just cleaned up the footage?
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
As I'm looking at this project more, I am loving and hating it. I love when the original is enhanced with the greater resolution and cleaner compositing, but it seems to me that so far every attempt on their part to replace an old shot or old effect is a failure, with the exception of the saucer sep insertion that seems to work fairly well.
And Trekcore calls this "more realistic". Than what? It's more realistic than a firecracker taped on to the model, but not more realistic than a highly complex and more viscerally destructive atomization of the Batris as existed before, with a blast of particles and superheated ejecta. The Batris blew much like the Enterprise-D stardrive in "Generations", but instead we get freighter-flambe in this supposedly-HD effort?
The destruction of a Star Trek ship should be extremely destructive, whereas it looks to me as if the Batris should come out of that fireball whole but with scorching.
My fear now is that the old Star Trek "spinblast" as I call it is going to disappear. That is, if you pay attention, oftentimes in TNG when a ship blows up they actually rotated the thing around, so that in the moment they're overlaying the explosion effect along with the ship, the ship seemed to suddenly go all pulsar and rotate at super-speed. DS9 also had this sometimes, too.
But now if they have to replace the explosion effect, I have a concern that they're gonna ditch that, too, and that'll annoy me greatly.
I hope this mess is just some sort of supplementary canon and not to be considered the real deal.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
Yeah, I was about the say the same thing. That's the actual 4 footer... which is why it looks like ass. If I had my way they would have replaced all footage of that model with CG.
Richter's CG model is a mix of details from the 6 and 4 footers. It wouldn't look anything like the model in that screenshot.
posted
And that pisses me off...I never liked the 4 foot model, but I understood what they began to use it due to difficulties with the 6 footer. But rather than use the 4 footer exclusively, they incorporated stock footage of the 6th footer. So now the E-D was this shapshifter that seemingly changed the shape of its deflector dish, grew a thicker saucer, and changed surface texture at random. So now there's the CGI model which is the illegitimate son of the two, so more shapeshifting crap. Whoopie!!!
Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
I wish I could believe that I never exhibited this level of ridiculous nerdrage in my day, but, sadly, I know that's not true...
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Mars Needs Women: And that pisses me off...I never liked the 4 foot model, but I understood what they began to use it due to difficulties with the 6 footer. But rather than use the 4 footer exclusively, they incorporated stock footage of the 6th footer. So now the E-D was this shapshifter that seemingly changed the shape of its deflector dish, grew a thicker saucer, and changed surface texture at random. So now there's the CGI model which is the illegitimate son of the two, so more shapeshifting crap. Whoopie!!!
No offense, but is it really that big of a deal? I don't think it's any different from TOS, when they would sometimes use stock footage of the pilot Enterprise.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
Yeah, but in TOS Remastered this was changed. The CGI model retained the same look throughout all the episodes save for the two pilots, where the CGI model was changed to reflect the physical model's appearance early on (with the bigger bridge dome, deflector dish, etc.) I mean if we're going give TNG the redo treatment, why not go all the way.
Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Perhaps they have made the CGI model a halfway house because they decided to use it in all the episodes. Frankly I’d prefer they erased the 4-footer entirely and replaced every shot of it with a newly filmed version of each shot using a new model based on the original the 6-foot model, only using CGI where absolutely needed. But they were never going to do that, nor were they going to use the CGI model to replace the 4-foot model, especially as it was important to them (apparently) to try to use as much of the originally filmed model shots as they could.
As a Star Trek fan, and therefore a pedant any solution is going to get me frothing at the mouth, but it’s nice that they are doing it at all, and hopefully they will address the worst SFX crimes of TNG and keep the good parts (i.e. most of it). It would be nice to see a Norway or an Ambassador instead of a Miranda an Oberth/Grissom/Whatever. It would be nice to see the Hood at different angles.
But, I don’t get the impression they want feedback on these sorts of issues. This is a sampler of what they are doing – a sort of ‘well, I’ve not finished my project but here are a few bits done really quite well so you can get off my back and be reassured that it will be done at some stage’. Are these episodes on the new disk exactly as they will be on the full season releases? I think so, I mean, I doubt that they would go to all this effort just to get the fans to critique their efforts and ask what they’d like.
And this is why, in my rather jaded eyes, they will never be able to get it right for everyone. And that’s a real pity, but we all know that no matter how lovingly it’s done by people who care, it’s still just a product. It’s never going to be perfect: there will be a point at which some manager or producer or director or whatever has said ‘that’ll do’.
Which does of course mean that it will happen, because if all the fans were running the show, by committee, it would take about 100 years for a project like this to see the light of day.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Mars Needs Women: Yeah, but in TOS Remastered this was changed. The CGI model retained the same look throughout all the episodes save for the two pilots, where the CGI model was changed to reflect the physical model's appearance early on (with the bigger bridge dome, deflector dish, etc.) I mean if we're going give TNG the redo treatment, why not go all the way.
Probably because it'd be WAY too expensive.
Consider that 1) TNG probably has (on average) several orders of magnitude more effects shots per episode than TOS and 2) There are *seven* seasons instead of three. This is exactly the reason why a BluRay release for B5 is nigh impossible. Doing everything over from scratch would be almost as expensive as doing it all the first time.
Re-compositing as much of the existing miniature footage as possible is, I think, a genius move. Budgetary concerns aside, this is a real act of preservation and I personally couldn't give a shite if the models don't match up exactly from one shot to another. I suspect you could count on one hand the number of people who would even notice.
posted
I now watched the Mission Farpoint episode and it looked great - even if I have to admit that I was never a fan of that particular episode I have to say that watching was actually fun.
I'm pretty sure that CBS used a digital model for the Enterprise even more often than expected. For example I found a scene were the Enterprise is dropping out of warp and passes by the camera. The light reflexes on the ships engineering hull are not quit right and the deflector dish looks to CGI-ish as well.
But actually I don't want to complain to much because TNG in HDTV look just fantastic.
Registered: Oct 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Reverend: I personally couldn't give a shite if the models don't match up exactly from one shot to another. I suspect you could count on one hand the number of people who would even notice.
But if they're doing the shots anyway, why not at least scale everything correctly this tme?
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I see it as a warts-and-all approach rather than a revisionist one.
For the sake of argument though, if you're talking about the BoP shot then I think rescaling the KBoP down to a more appropriate size would make it look *miniscule* next to the E-D. While that might be technically accurate, it rather detracts from the scene in which the ship is meant to look genuinely menacing (I'm assuming this is the Riker exchange episode?)
Of course the alternative would be to replace it altogether with a K'tinga, which is larger but still relatively small. A Vor'cha is a better size, but it doesn't really fit the context of the episode, plus you're straying into revisionism.
Regardless, the bottom line is still money. If they were to redo *every* shot that had some kind of scaling or labelling error, then the cost will increase. Plus the more shots they replace with CG, the more out of place they look next to the cleaned up miniature footage.
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If I had my way they would have replaced all footage of that model with CG. 
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