Star Trek - Motion Picture Reimagined

[experimation]

Really great stuff!

[Harbinger]

Managed to find time to return to this project. Below is a picture of my latest effort.

I'll do an initial test animation at 1280x720, and if I'm happy with it will re-render it to 1920x800 with higher levels of AA.

[Harbinger]

Just finished the test animation: Enterprise Drydock.mp4 (33.5 mb)

I still need to make adjustments to the primary light source, remove the bloom effect, increase the resolution, and of course increase the AA levels (it's really noticeable around the deflector dish and the underside of the saucer section).

Overall, it came out better than I was expecting.

[Rigel]

I just had a look at this and I think it turned out very well indeed, other than the AA problems you noted.

One thing you definitely want to add to your software arsenal is a little program called Handbrake. I can massively reduce the file size of your animations without losing the image quality; that makes them easier to upload and download.

For example: the animation I downloaded was 33.5mb. I ran it through Handbrake and the end result was a file of 11.5mb in size.

[Harbinger]

I have Handbrake, but prefer TMPGENC Express - I just need to encode it at a much lower bitrate next time.

Thanks for your comment.

[Rigel]

Originally Posted by Harbinger

I have Handbrake, but prefer TMPGENC Express - I just need to encode it at a much lower bitrate next time.

Thanks for your comment.

If they have a Mac OS version, I'll check it out!

[Harbinger]

Originally Posted by Rigel

If they have a Mac OS version, I'll check it out!

I've just checked, and I'm afraid it's for PC only.

[Rigel]

Originally Posted by Harbinger

I've just checked, and I'm afraid it's for PC only.

Ah well. I win some, I lose some.

[Kerem]

These are really stunning renders!

[Viking4_USA]

No question this is my new wallpaper!

[Harbinger]

Originally Posted by Viking4_USA

No question this is my new wallpaper!

Tell me your monitor resolution, and I'll do a special one just for you...

[Marty Miller]

Man I really like this. Lovely renders of the Enterprise. The only thing letting it down ( a little ) is the drydock. For me it just not hold up against the beautiful detail on the ship itself. I would love to see a more detailed version of the unique drydock model. All round mate, beautiful work. The animation was nicely done...........damn shame about the AA. Sort all those things out and you will be cooking !

[Harbinger]

Originally Posted by Marty Miller

Man I really like this. Lovely renders of the Enterprise. The only thing letting it down ( a little ) is the drydock. For me it just not hold up against the beautiful detail on the ship itself. I would love to see a more detailed version of the unique drydock model. All round mate, beautiful work. The animation was nicely done...........damn shame about the AA. Sort all those things out and you will be cooking !

OK - I've replaced the drydock with Prologic9's TMP one (http://www.foundation3d.com/index.php?categoryid=38&p13_sectionid=224&p13_file id=991) - is this any better?

[Marty Miller]

Indeed it is. Although the newer drydock is a nice piece of work. It needs to be more detailed I feel, so this older one does look better. Maybe remapped it with greyer materials to see if it looks even better. How long are the renders ? Do you do it in sperate passes or one. If they are not to long in time, try bumping up your setting to get rid of that AA issue.

You have really done a nice job with this man. Keep on tweaking

[Harbinger]

Originally Posted by Marty Miller

Indeed it is. Although the newer drydock is a nice piece of work. It needs to be more detailed I feel, so this older one does look better. Maybe remapped it with greyer materials to see if it looks even better. How long are the renders ? Do you do it in sperate passes or one. If they are not to long in time, try bumping up your setting to get rid of that AA issue.

You have really done a nice job with this man. Keep on tweaking

The 2560x1440 render took around 20 minutes, and I used a perspective camera with up to x16 AA (the 720p animation used up to x4 AA for speed - the average rendering times were under 2 minutes per frame).

I may look at changing the colour of the drydock to match the colour scheme of the Enterprise, as you suggested.

The animation is done as just one pass - the background is a picture I downloaded from somewhere, and it was simply mapped onto a two-dimensional object, rotated and positioned so it's parallel to the camera.

I'll try and work on this either later tonight or sometime tomorrow - I'm watching Murray vs Federer as I'm typing this...

[Harbinger]

Murray wins the first set...!!!

[Harbinger]

One set all...!!!

[Harbinger]

Phew, that match was intense!

Anyway, back to the project - here's a modified version with the drydock's colour scheme altered, plus a few red light flares added to the front:

[Harbinger]

Just a quick update:

I've managed to solve the issue of the poor AA by switching from the perspective camera to the classic camera, and applying classic AA (enhanced low). I'm in the process of re-rendering the scene at 1280x720 - should have about 20% done by this evening...

[Starbase1]

That's worth remembering - I have sometimes found MUCH reduced render times flipping back to the classic camera, you can't assume the newest is always the best.

Nick

[Harbinger]

Here's the first 200 frames of the animation - it definitely is much better! I might see about increasing it to enhanced medium, but that's going to almost double the rendering time.

Enterprise Drydock, Part 1.mp4

[Harbinger]

OK - the animation has now been rendered. I won't be posting it just yet, as I'm working on the next part of the animation, and it's looking pretty awesome!

Should have it rendered by the end of the week...

[Rigel]

That's okay. Keep us in suspense. We don't mind!

[Harbinger]

OK - just finished the render a few minutes ago, and it looks pretty good. I'll continue tinkering with the second half, especially the very last 100 frames.

Enterprise Departure.mp4 52.2 mb

[Rigel]

If you're going to continue to update this thread, especially updating it with an animation, I'll need to move it to the animation w.i.p. section.

[Harbinger]

OK, that's fine.

[CAClark]

Originally Posted by Harbinger

OK, I've delved into the surface settings for 'HULL_SAUCER_SECTION', ' HULL_SAUCER_SECTION_2', 'HULL_SAUCER_SECTION_3', 'HULL_SAUCER_SECTION_4' and 'HULL_SAUCER_SECTION_LOWER'. There's two bump maps (crumple and turbulence). I've rendered four frames with them enabled/disabled.

From left to right, the original scene, crumple disabled, turbulence disabled, and crumple and turbulence disabled. It seems to me it's a combination of both that's causing the issue.

To be honest, I'd leave both enabled if I was rendering a static image (as it gives a nice film grain effect), and have them both disabled if rendering an animation.

Personally I don't think they add realism, though they do kill the plainness, and with that in mind, I don't see why you can't render them out as a flat texture to use as a map rather than having the procedurals. Of course if it's that 'noise' that is driving the renders up simply by AA required. For my money, it's too 'beaten' a look for panels that big, so I'd just loose them

Cheers!

[iczer]

Great Job!!

My only crits are, there is a noise like events going on at the rear of the nacelles, the blue glow area; looks like snow from a TV. And the warp out at the end, should be faster; almost like as soon as the nacelles glow in the back to warp should be like, glow... BOOM! no more ship. if that makes sense

[Harbinger]

Originally Posted by iczer

Great Job!!

My only crits are, there is a noise like events going on at the rear of the nacelles, the blue glow area; looks like snow from a TV. And the warp out at the end, should be faster; almost like as soon as the nacelles glow in the back to warp should be like, glow... BOOM! no more ship. if that makes sense

I recently found the reason of the 'snow' - I have to increase the number of light samples to reduce the effect (the first part of the animation uses 16 samples, and the second part uses 64), but this has a knock-on effect with rendering times.

And yes, I'm not all that happy with the warp effect either. I've been experimenting with fog in conjunction with 16-pass photoreal motion blur to create the effect - as you rightly said, I need to shorten the sequence to make it faster. I think I'll make the camera less dynamic in the second half, so the 'sun' stays mostly in the visible frame.

[Afalk]

The ship is gorgeous and the animation is quite breath taking