Progress report:
I am about 50% thru the film, some things that I have noticed, is that from a VFX perspective it is very interesting that they really tried to appeal to fans of both the PT and OT. There would be laser blasts that reflect the PT and then a few frames later the laser effect would look like it did from the 1980’s OT (from the same blaster). Similar to how the lasers were done in SW Rebels… I am working to make most of the effects uniformly match. If you had to ask me the percentage of changes to the Lasers in general I would say only about 15% I am making changes to. In the end it will all look good. Keep in mind I am not saying the original was bad, but I am just adding my slight personal taste to it.
There were some lasers that were improperly screened during the daylight action sequences I am assuming this was done on purpose because the studio was concerned the audience would not be able to see it that well. I plan on smoothing those out a little, nothing too drastic.
THE FALCON:
Moving forth I am about 50% with the tweaking of the engine glow effect to try to give it a little more continuity from the OT. I basically created a mask over the original and slightly extended the bottom portion of the mask to make it slightly bigger. I previewed my changes and while it is not overly obtuse as with the OT engine look, I found a good medium where if you were to watch EP VI-to VII there would be less of a sense of Falcon looked more CG’ed then from what I felt was overly detailed (and too small) from team Disney did.
RAY/FIN Light saber sequences.
When I examined the shots put together It looked to me as the saber shots was done by more than one roto artist, in which lacked consistency with the amount of glow from shot to shot. (Could have been a result from general scene color correction). I am aware they tried to recreate the 1981 saber look, but there are other shots where the saber looked as if it was from the PT trilogy and then from the OT. I am working on a partial roto restoring correct glow levels on the shots that lacked there of… (NOTE) This is only for the Night sequence in the Forest. There is not a lot I can do with the daylight sequence because over all those shots look pretty good, and there is little I would be able to do with it to warrant my time.
That’s it for now. It is moving forward faster than I thought, just wanted to share my progress.