okay, new clip. three days work. you wouldn't beleive the balancing issues in this sequence.
starfield has been brought up tremendously, tried to balance the colours between the scene cuts as much as I can but its hard, some of them are almost monochromatic.
I know there's still a few odd bits but the majority is there
Tellen, i hate to be the bearer of bad news but it looks like you have your monitor set too dark. The new clip you have posted have some terrible black level problems. In some shots you have the levels jump from totally black in one shot to almost grey on the next bringing out some terrible video noise. in one shot also you have the red levels way too high and very oversaturated. Here's a couple of examples:
Bad black levels & very bad matte of the death star & top section of the cockpit
oversaturated reds
Brightening causing blue screen video noise
I'm not criticising you, Tellen, but i would hate for you to have done all this work only to find that there are a lot of problems that you may be unaware.
hey it's fine. what's the point of a forum if people can't point stuff out to you. we're a community right. as long as crits are fair I got no problem with them. flame wars I can do without.
I already know about the red shot. I couldn't be arsed to rerender is all.
the black side of things though is a concern.
the blue screen bit I can cure easy enough. I think I left a layer turned on by accident for that one.
hmmm, rebalanced the section.
gonn have to dig out my calibration tool here. looks like the settings for the monitor have drifted a bit.
PS. there is no new 2004 DVD stuff here. it is all LD rips, including MOTH3R, Citizen, EDITDROID and the GOUT release.
masking, and fiddling with the transparencies on this remarkably managed to fudge out a lot of the grain normally visible on the stormtroopers.
PS. sorry for the mask letter overlay but a version of ANH on ebay recently included a lot of my shots which have come from an old pre release test disc I (stupidly/naively, you pick) sent to someone I had previously trusted a great deal.
not a member of this forum by the way, but once stung, you get the idea.
let me be clear on this
I have no problem people incorporating any of my work into their own projects, none at all. its flattering that people think my work is up to snuff that they want to use it. but I'd like it if people asked permission, and gave credit where credit is due. in this case, the so called friend was passing it off as his own work with no recourse to whose work he was using.
That clip looks great, Tellan. very good work there.
I don't blame you marking the video file. i've just seen my trailer on youtube that someone has uploaded saying its their work and they even had the nerve to call themselves adywanuk. I love the way they are avoiding the questions about how people are going to get to see the finished result though.
anyway, i'm really looking forward to seeing this project. Are you any closer to giving us a timeframe for release?
progress is good. now the monitors calibration has been double checked I am flying again. the next job is to double check the kenobi vader sabers, then its mainly laser bolts at the end battle plus another check of everything and a few odds and sods tweaks. that is then the video done. now I have a 5.1 speaker setup on the computer it makes the sound mix a lot better to sort out and I don't imagine that taking too long, then the menu's which I again am thinking of jigging.
I've got another week off work, so provided I don't get distracted by RL, good chance the video side of things will be done this week.
two things though I'd love to do but am having difficulty.
I want to re-do the fighter take off from yavin and the flyby. now for the yavin take off, I'm looking to emulate the original release version. ie guy in tower in foreground, fighters taking off in far distance. can do. no really an issue, it's just a new comp plate. but I'd love to lay paws on a good 3D mesh in LW of an xwing and a ywing so I can recreate the shot from the 2004 SE but without the pan. ie turn it into a two shot like the original film.
remember my philosophy, picture quality! and in the spirit of the original.
took a break from sabers. they do my head in, they really do, more than anything else in the film.
so I started work on what for me, is the biggest shot replacement of all.
the swing flyby of yavin. I'm going for the feel of the original, ie a straight two shot.
one reverse, one frontal.
but with the detail and quality of the 2004 DVD. the problem is that I can't just pinch the shot from the DVD because one they turned it into one sweeping shot, when you cut out the middle pass, there aren't enough frames left. I've tried slowing things down etc but it doesn't quite work.
it's a WIP and I'll post a test movie once things are ironed out, for now, a still to whet appetites.
textures on the xwing are only temporary at this time.
I'm happier with this shot. the background is still temp, but I've made the textures better on the xwings and they now match the actual filming miniatures.
up front, red 1. to the left, red 3, then red 5 and behind red 1 red 3.
The CGI ships and textures look good - at least as good as what lucas gave us in '97. But an action shot to see how they move would be much better to critique. Are you replacing/recreating both the flyby shots with your CG versions, or just the one from the front?
Maybe it's just me, but the tips of the lasers with the "scoopey" parts (that look like a cross section of a radar dish) look a little big.
I'm actually getting a bit more ambitious as I get back to grips with Lightwave.
I did a gunstar from the last starfight 4 years ago but haven't touched lightwave since. so it's taking a bit of head scratching.
shots sketched in so far.
1./ liftoff from yavin. new shot replacing the god awful close in thing from the SE's with a long range shot of ships lifting off into the sky from the temple. I am also toying with putting in the falcon lifting off and going in a different direction to the fighters. ie this is when Han and Chewie bail before coming back to save the day.
2./ the two shot I've already announced, both angles. because you just can't slow down the film sufficiently to provide enough frames.
I also noticed a continuity error with the SE shot anyway. the Death Star is having to go round Yavin's gas giant to get a clear shot right? well how come in the panning shot, in the background is Yavin IV. and when we pan 180 degrees, there's the death star. hold the phone, that means they already have a straight shot, why haven't they fired? so my shot will show the death star and maybe a peak of Yavin IV from round the back of the gas giant.
3./ a few TIE's during the falcon TIE escape duel.
4./ certain death star battle shots are going to get spruced up as well. there are a number of original movie static shots where ships could be inserted into the background to add depth and action.
5./ the intial dive on the death star has surprisingly few fighters in view. more are going to be added in the background.
well I'm back to work tomorrow so a small taster of what I have been working on.
this is purely a test shot. it is not a finished shot by any means.
motion blur needs sorting. speed of ships needs sorting. their placement needs sorting. colour matching etc etc etc but it gives you lot an idea of what I'm doing at the moment.
Are you going to be using Your CG rendered Death Star for that shot? I would use a matte of the original DS because it looks a bit out of place. Also i would lose the iris wipe between shots (but you've probably just put that in temporary anyway, haven't you?)
the DS is going to be much further away, hence I'll probably keep the original one. I need better motion blur and that in turn causes an engine glow problem due to plugins clashing so I need to sort that out as well.
it's more a taste to show what can be done.
I think it holds up okay, it's just a matter of good lighting and motion rig.
the finished shot will be much higher res to give the necessary detail.
in addition, the distance shots I have planned won't have the detail issue because they are merely background.
In your latest clip, it looks like the shot from behind is your CG version, whereas the shot from the front is the original DVD version. Is that correct?
I know you said you'll go back to the original DS, but I just wanted to point out that the shadow on the DS you used doesn't match the shadow on the planet.
And I'm curious, can you recommend a program to view your clips at the correct aspect ratio?
Maybe I missed it elsewhere in this thread, but I'm not sure why you're using a wipe between the two shots of the rebel fleet - wipes generally infer a passage of time, and these are two back to back shots from the same moment.
I think a wipe here is inconsistant with the usage of wipes from the rest of the fims.
The new CG shots looks good, but that first shot looks odd being completely static and locked off until the first ship flies in - I thought I was looking at a still frame.