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Star Trek did >not< use CGI.....
(click on the names to see responses)
9 May 2006 03:18:45 -0700
rec.arts.tv
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videonovels...
Ken from Chicago...
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But that would mean that Kal-El ... procreated!
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.....at least not for the majority of its run. It seems to be a
popular myth on the forums that Star Trek used nothing but CGI for its
shows. But that's not true. Since Trek was revived in 1987, it used
MODELS on 14 of its seasons.
fruitbat...
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Popular myth? It's pretty much common knowledge they used models. There
have been countless featurettes and behind-the-scenes pieces involving
said models, actually...
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- TNG used models (same as TOS).
- Voyager and Deep Space Nine also used models. Voyager switched to
CGI in season 3, and DS9 switched in season 6. (Yes it's true, the
climactic episode where the Klingons attacked DS9? All models. Very
impressive.)
Mike Dicenso...
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Not completely correct. There was some use of CGI in Voyager and DS9.
Odo's morphing FX is all CGI, for instance (some of the phaser and
weapon's FX was digitally painted in). But by far the most regular
Brian Thorn...
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Also, the comet in the opening credits of DS9. I think the wormhole
was CG, too.
videonovels...
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In 1992? I don't believe that. It looks too detailed for computer
technology at the time (<66 megahertz... only a few thousand colors).
I think that is yet another hand-drawn animation, same as TNG's
opening.
80 Knight...
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Go check out Terminator 2. The effect of the T-1000 was quite impressive.
That movie is from 1991.
Steven L....
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But in any given year, movie special effects were way more advanced than
TV special effects, because a movie's FX budget could be much larger
than a TV episode's FX budget. When movies were using giant mainframe
computers or banks of many workstations to do FX, TV shows were still
slogging along with personal computers or a couple of workstations.
In fact, it's only been in the last few years that TV special effects
have finally approached movie quality.
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Bruce Stewart...
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But then they probably weren't using PCs, probably using some UNIX
workstation from SGI.
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Brian Thorn...
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As others have noted, CGI was thriving by 1992. Don't mistake popular
retail desktop technology for state of the art computer animation
technology. The first all-computer character in a movie was the
Stained Glass Knight in "Young Sherlock Holmes" in 1985 or 86.
Character morphing had already appeared in "Terminator 2" and "Star
Ken from Chicago...
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But how many people noticed the rating on a dvd? Oy, the confusion!
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Trek VI" in 1991, which led to the wide use of computer morphing for
Odo beginning with the DS9 pilot.
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If you want to see what computers could do in 1992, watch Babylon 5's
pilot episode. Hardly impressive. Pixelated. Shiny. Lacking detail.
Fake-looking.
Bruce Stewart...
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Hmm, produced using an Amiga with a Video Toaster add on.
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Brian Thorn...
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Using Commodore Amigas with the Video Toaster. B5 was on a very tight
budget while DS9 was lavished with a high budget. The Amigas were
great machines, I owned an Amiga 1000, 1985-1990 and an Amiga 2000
1990-1995. Its amazing was microprocessors can do when they're not
forced to run Microsoft Windows.
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No I definitely think DS9's opening was hand-drawn animation + models.
Brian Thorn...
Bruce Stewart...
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You can see the migration to CG when suddenly this "busy" space station had
more than 2 ships around it in the title sequence.
Bruce S.
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From the end credits of the DS9 pilot episode ("Emissary")...
Computer Animation - Rhythm & Hues, Inc.
- Vision Art Design and Animation
videonovels...
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.
Referring to Odo's morphing, not the opening.
Brian Thorn...
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Finally found a source...
http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/tree/other.html
"Santa Barbara Studios
Santa Barbara Studios (SBS) was formed in 1990 by John Grower,
formerly Supervisor of Special Effects at Robert Abel Associates,
Post-Production Art Director on Tron for Walt Disney Pictures, and
Director of Production at Wavefront Technologies. At SBS, Grower
developed the unique Dynamation software system to render a new
generation of highly realistic computer imagery. Santa Barbara Studios
has specialized in astronomical imagery while working with NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, the Smithsonian Institution and Science North
Museum. Their imagery has been featured in the IMAX space film Destiny
In Space; the 70mm 3D film Shooting Star; the six-part PBS television
series The Astronomers; Other Worlds: A Tour of the Solar System,a
featured highlight of the National Air and Space Museum's exhibit
"Where Next, Columbus?" and 500 Nations for CBS-TV, which featured
astoundingly realistic reconstructions of the great cities of native
cultures in North and South America.
They have also contributed CG work for An American Werewolf in Paris,
Spawn, Star Trek: Generations, and Star Trek - Insurrections, as well
as the opening sequences for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek:
Voyager. (Santa Barbara also did the beautiful melting comet sequence
seen in TNG's "Masks".) Some of the most hauntingly beautiful imagery
done with computers was done by SBS for the PBS Special 500 Nations.
SBS also contributed to the IMAX feature Cosmic Voyage. They worked
with Square LA on the PlayStation game Parasite Eve.
Key employees included Janet Grower, Bill Kovacs, Will Rivera, Eric
Guagliani, Bruce Jones, Phil Brock, Eric DeJong, Mark Wendell, Diane
Holland and Matt Rhodes."
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You see, while I think computers are great, I also think it's important
to give credit to the >modelers< and >artists< too. Nothing annoys me
more than hearing, "Wow that Klingon attack on DS9 was great computer
animation."
That's unfair. It's not giving credit to the >modelers< who deserve
the credit for that awesome battle sequence.
Ken from Chicago...
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Evolution theory aside, no one thinks objects create themselves. Clocks have
clockmakers. Buildings have architects. Animation has animators.
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use of CGI in Trek at that time was in Voyager was for showing the ship
sweep up it's warp nacelles and when it was at warp. That work was done by
Amblin Entertainment's CGI FX team (IIRC, the same team that did the CGI
for SeaQuest). You are correct in that the near-complete switchover to CGI
started in VOY's season 3 with Foundation Imaging often doing the work
there. For DS9, seasons 4 and 5 transitioned out of motion control model
work to complete CGI. That work from then on was divided between
Foundation and Digital Muse.
-Mike
oj...
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I had a friend who worked on the CG Voyager open sequence at Santa
Barbara Studios, so I know that whole open was CG.
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- Only Enterprise was 100% CGI from start-to-finish.
fruitbat...
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If they had made some of the actors CGI, they could have gotten work of
similar quality for much less money...
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Patrick Joseph McNamara...
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I believe there was some CG used for things such as the warp effect.
videonovels...
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- Nope. The warp effect was created by freezing the camera & moving
the model to create a "stretching effect".
ANIM8Rfsk...
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Well . . sort of. But by the time of the Generations movie, they had a CGI
Enterprise D and did a much better warp effect using it.
videonovels...
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Well, you're probably right. I don't know. But it you look at post
#1, you can see I was discussing the SERIES (tos,tng,ds9,voy,ent), not
the movies. Also it wasn't all CGI in Generations. The wreckage of
the Enterprise crashing into a planet was an actual physical model.
ANIM8Rfsk...
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LOL, it sure was, huge dumb looking saucer dumped on an HO scale train model
set. We were laughing hysterically, and a friend said he was just waiting
wdstarr...
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Has anybody ever done that sort of skidding crash effect well? For
Scooby...
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Plane crash sequence in Die Harder. Stunning model work.
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mchary...
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The Greatest American Hero, every time Ralph landed.
"Believe it or not..."
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bad takes I'm thinking not only of the Enterprise in "Generations"
but also John Lithgow's Learjet (or whatever kind of executive
jet it was) in "Cliffhanger" and the absurd bit at the start of
"U.S. Marshals" where the "con air" plane attempts a crash landing
on a highway and skids along forever, chopping telephone poles along
the way with its indestructible wings.
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for Godzilla.
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I suspect a lot of the things that we THINK are computer effects, are
really just very advanced models work. (Like when the Klingons
attacked DS9... many people think it's CGI, but effects producers have
already confirmed its all models.)
But again, this thread's focus (see post 1) was about the SERIES, not
the movies.
ANIM8Rfsk...
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I merely mentioned the warp effect. And the subject line doesn't say
anything about TV only. And threads drift, you know.
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.
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- Backgrounds & planets were created by hand-drawing.
JEDIDIAH...
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I am not quite sure I buy that. We just watched the first
Barclay episode again last night (from 1990) and the background planet
in one scene just plain looked pixelated. It really looked nothing like
a hand painted matte or glass globe.
fruitbat...
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That's not necessarily due to the look of the original effect, though.
Unless you're watching it on VHS, it was most likely digitized at some
point, and you could just be seeing aliasing or compression artifacts
or something...
videonovels...
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.
Right. When I >first< saw TNG back in 1997, I thought it looked like a
Computer Graphics-ship & planets. The reason I thought that was
because, like Jedidiah, I saw pixels.
But then I saw a behind-the-scenes "making of" video wherein they
showed how the ship was a model & the planets. So the pixelated look
that I thought was computerized back in 1987-- was probably just an
artifact of NTSC scanlines (which is low-resolution)
JEDIDIAH...
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Buck Rogers never had that problem.
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If you want to see state of the art cgi for television in 1987, go
watch Doctor Who's 7th doctor opening. Very, very poor. The Tardis is
totally squared-off with no curves. The resolution is low, extremely
blurry, and lacking in color (only a few hundred). Probably 512-color
VGA-quality. That was the best computers could do.
cstacy...
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Given the time and cost constraints, but not absolutely the best
that could be done. SIGGRAPH showed better stuff.
Invid Fan...
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One should never use Doctor Who as an example of state of the art, in
videonovels...
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Fair enough. But I can't say I'm impressed by any other 80's Computer
Animation either. Not the genesis effect (which is just ray-traced,
hardly impressive) or the Last Starfighter.
JEDIDIAH...
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The net effect was still better than what was showing up in TNG
episodes 8 years later.
videonovels...
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That's a matter of opinion. I think TNG's model effects look superior
to Last Starfighter. Most of the people I've talked to think so too.
They thinks the models look more realistic.
Ken from Chicago...
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You could tell when the flying car was cgi and enemy fleet was a little too
uniformly spaced, plus the titular starfighter had that odd "sheen" that
1980s 3d cgi had. By the 1990s the sheen was gone from inanimate objects,
and just left on skin, which tended to look somewhat plastic.
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BTR1701...
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There's a whole section in the extras section of the DVD to "Star Trek:
Generations" about how they used a model for the exterior shots of the
ship in some scenes and CGI for other scenes and the painstaking work to
make them indistinguishable from each other.
So yes, Trek did use CGI.
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What is SIGGRAPH? And what relevance does it have to the quality-level
of TV-CGI circa 1987? (just curious)
JEDIDIAH...
Bruce Stewart...
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http://www.siggraph.org/
Bruce S.
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This would be the cabal that all of the relevant programmers likely belong
to. The state of the art at any given time would be reflected in their technical
journals and presentations. This includes academia, as well as Hollywood and the
games industry.
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any timeframe :) The did great with the money they had, but they picked
shawn...
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Agreed. I can't figure out why they don't want to do any tie-in with
the existing universe they've developed. It's not like it would really
limit the stories they can tell since they are in the far future. I
can deal with the funky animation, but why not use the existing
universe? I guess they figure more people will watch if they use
Superboy instead of Supergirl.
jayembee...
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And that more people will watch it if the art is "anime style".
I have nothing against anime, but that art style seems to be the
only one that Warner wants to use anymore.
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Clell Harmon...
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She's both in the 31st and 21st century comics. Time travel is like
that I guess...
ANIM8Rfsk...
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Heh, well, that takes me back to my Superboy days. I always was amused that
he had to travel EXACTLY 1000 years (Have to leave now, Ma's making meat
loaf!) and was worried about being late, like he couldn't hang out as long
as he wanted and just travel back 999.99 years.
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Clell Harmon...
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Is it just me, or does the art make Brainiac 5 look like Beastboy?
ANIM8Rfsk...
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Yeah. I was sure thinking Teen Titans. Makes him look too young for
Supergirl to stay in the future out of love for him, unless they're doing
that creepy teacher emailing her student schtick. Shudder.
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up tech a few years after it hit the market. Effects used in Land of
the Lost, such as inserting actors into model shots on video, didn't
show up on DW until around the late 70's (I want to say The Leisure
Hive was the first time it was used, but it's been awhile so I could be
wrong).
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Bruce Stewart...
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For a start no body used PCs for CG, they were too slow, they would have
been using some kind of workstation.
Secondly we are talking Dr Who here, not exactly renowned for it's huge
budgets, and the TARDIS *is* square.
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JEDIDIAH...
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Are you kidding? When is the BBC state of the art for ANYTHING?
[deletia]
Computer graphics rendering is not limited to what a cheap
PC can do in realtime. Last Starfighter and the Genesis effect are
pretty good demonstrations of this.
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Hence the reason TOS/TNG/DS9/Voyager used models & hand-drawn art
backgrounds. More realistic.
There was probably some point around 1994 that they replaced the
hand-drawn art with computerized still images. (Don't know the exact
date.) And 1996/7 is when they retired the models & replaced them with
Computer Animation.
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- The "shields" were created by inverting a glass bowl upside down &
pouring salt over it.
Bruce Stewart...
And so on.
Most of this stuff is explained in TNG's season 1 dvd. Computers were
ANIM8Rfsk...
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that's season one. Later they went to cheap video fx.
videonovels...
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Yes, but not until 1996 (voyager) and 1997 (ds9) were the physical
models replaced with computers graphics. Did you not read Post #1 in
this thread? I already explained all of that. Even if you don't
ANIM8Rfsk...
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What's with the attitude? No, I didn't see post #1. So what? Did you
mention they went to cheap video fx when they went to the smaller clunky
Enterprise D? Although they shot film elements for quite a while, and just
comped them in video, which is why there will never be a decent looking
release of most of TNG; it was finished at video resolution.
Even if you don't
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believe me, all you need to do is check the credits. CGI houses like
Foundation/Eden do not appear until 1996/7.
ANIM8Rfsk...
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Who said I didn't believe you?
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Prior to that, Enterprise/Voyager/DS9 are actual models sitting on a
table, waiting to be filmed.
ANIM8Rfsk...
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When did I say otherwise? (Although he original good looking Enterprise
from season one and the DS9 model are sorta big to be sitting on a table)
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Computers were
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too primitive, so they used physical models, camera tricks, and skilled
hand-drawn art. Just as had been done with the original Kirk series &
the original star Wars movies.
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:-)
Trivia - Babylon 5 and Star Trek used the same company: Foundation
Imaging.
fruitbat...
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ISTR hearing back in the day that B5 effects were done using an array
of Amigas with video toasters, or some such hardware (and I think I
remember hearing that SeaQuest used something similar). I suppose by
videonovels...
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Correct. During Babylon 5's run they upgraded to later-model Macs and
IBM PCs with faster processors (from 12 megahertz amiga to ~100
megahertz motorolas/intels). I don't know what happened after
Foundation Imaging moved to Star Trek. Probably just a gradual
upgrading to faster/better processors as time progressed.
I do recall reading Foundation/Paramount used the actual physical
models to "scan" them into the computer, rather than create them from
scratch. That helped make the Voyager and DS9 ships look more
realistic-looking (like models) vs. B5's hand-drawn stuff.
I don't know why Foundation Imaging went out of business.
It happened sometime during Enterprise's run.
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I wish B5's computer files still existed. It would be sweet to see
those graphics upgraded from 640x480 to 1720x1080 for the new
high-definition TVs. Perhaps apply some smoothing algorithms so the
ships look less blocky. (Ditto the early Trek stuff.) Same hand-drawn
work; just improved rendering.
Lance Corporal \"Hammer\" Schultz...
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It would have been nice for the series DVDs regardless. Certain
shots, ones that combine CGI with live action, look horrible on the
DVDs. I think it had something to do with the anamorphic video not
playing well with how those shots were rendered, but regardless, I
remember being very disappointed in them, even though I love the
series.
P. Burrows...
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It has to do with greed in the end: The people who published the dvd
didn't want the video format to be 4:3 but 16:9. It just so happens, not
sure why, that all the live action originally was shot in widescreen.
However since it wasn't to be shown in widescreen all the graphics were
made for 4.3 So when the powers that be wanted to have a widescreen dvd
they simply digitally stretched all graphics to fit the new resolution -
hence it doesn't look too good in places. If they had stuck to the
original resolution it would have looked much better.
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As it stands now, Babylon 5 would have to re-do everything from scratch
w/ new artists.
Lance Corporal \"Hammer\" Schultz...
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I don't think that would take too much work. They did the CGI for
Legend of the Rangers (and it was starting to look pretty dated by
then). Of course, for all we know, those files may still exist in a
vault somewhere anyway.
Dave Fain...
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The magic of B5 was the writing and character development. Same with TOS.
You can special effect a show to death. I still enjoy my B5 DVD and even
Barry Margolin...
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This is certainly true. But isn't it nice when the effects are
realistic enough that they don't take you out of the moment. TOS mostly
avoided doing stories that required fancy effects, and simply made
almost all aliens look almost exactly like humans. Most non-humanoids
looked like actors in monkey suits (e.g. the Mugato), and the Horta just
seemed like a stagehand pulling a shag rug.
On B5, on the other hand, the effects were on par with the storytelling,
and didn't make you think you're watching something fake.
videonovels...
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The B5 effects look okay now, but I think when the HD-DVD versions are
released circa 2010, the jump from 1720x1080 live action, to 540x480
CGI will be jarring to viewers.
That's why I wish they still had the original computer Files, and could
go back & rerender the space shots for the higher resolution.
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the clunky Crusade shows. Enterprise was slick and pretty, but while it was
moving at Warp factor 5, the writing was on Impuse.
Lance Corporal \"Hammer\" Schultz...
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Oh, no argument there. Babylon 5 is my favorite science fiction
series of all time, and Crusade could have been my second favorite if
it was given time and not canceled before it was even aired.
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the time Trek acquired their services, their hardware was updated a
little... Or maybe not. They seem to have folded, as their website is
now one of those fake home pages with nothing but search links...
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Ken from Chicago...
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I remember in the early 90s being angry at the LACK of 3d cgi. Obviously 3d
cgi was the way of the future and could take over the chore of building
models and using VIDEO fx. Even by the end of the decade, long after BABYLON
5 demonstrated the power of a fully 3d cgi environment, the movie STARSHIP
TROOPERS waffled and while they used 3d cgi fx, they first built models and
did 3d digital scans of the models as opposed to creating the cgi from
entirely digitally.
Wunderkind...
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I remember the episode where Phlox went to a medical conference and the
shot zooming in on the conference site was in CGI, but seemed to be less
than fully rendered. What this the "Prime Directive" episode?
Ken from Chicago...
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I only saw the first 8 or so eps, then a couple of eps of S2, then a few
minutes of the first eps of S3 then the alien Nazi ep and the final 5 eps of
S4, including the great Dark Trek 2-parter.
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videonovels...
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;-)
Well building models & then scanning them >did< produce more realistic
results for Star Trek DS9 and Voyager, versus Babylon 5's fake-looking
virtual-only designs.
Ken from Chicago...
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Hey B5's ships were cool because they were NOT the same old boring
monochromatic dull metal. You just couldn't handle truly alien designs with
lots of colors.
For the record there were no actual Deep Space stations or starships
Enterprise. >=^>
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