logo Sign In

Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition (V1 NEARING COMPLETION) — Page 2

Author
Time

Here’s a preliminary color regrade of the Speeder drive-by shot that was recomposited by SkyDude for his SkyMaster edition of 4K77.

Unfortunately, I tried doing a color match using Dr. Dre’s Color Matching Tool but it left some grainy artifacts on the sky. Is there anyway I can fix them?

https://streamable.com/69at6a

this post has been edited.

Author
Time

After a while, I managed to tackle the first VFX shot: The Alderaan explosion. Although I did this a year ago, it felt too weird and not dynamic enough, so I completely redid it from the ground up.

I wanted it to not look too modern, but rather make it look similar to what ILM did back in 1997 for the Special Edition which was using digitally composited explosion elements but without the praxis ring that obviously looks dated now. I also somewhat did the shot similarly to how Adywan did it with the moving starfield and slightly offset planet. For now, it is still a WIP since the large green laser beam isnt present in the footage but I will get around to adding it once I figure out how to extract it from the original scene.

https://streamable.com/89lksf

this post has been edited.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Here is a new matte (still WIP) depicting the Mos Eisley cantina exterior in the correct time of day to match the rest of the shots. I did this through manually painting in elements from frame-by-frame screenshots of the film, as well as using Aggelw’s version (albeit very low quality, so I had to upscale it through AI) to fill in the patches such as the ground elements and the circular spaceship to the right. (I might tweak it to not make it look noticeable and change the ground to better blend in the rest.)

(EDIT: Post removed, the completed matte is in the next post by me)

(Note: I didn’t want to use the SE Ronto as I felt it would be extremely difficult to track it in the shot once I composited it in, so I resorted to using the theatrical puppet.)

this post has been edited.

Author
Time

Here is the completed version of the Mos Eisley cantina exterior matte that has been corrected to fix continunity over to the next shot, although the entire sequence is inconsistent to begin with.

You can use these for your edits, just make sure to credit both me and Aggelw on Deviantart for the original image I upscaled and used here.

this post has been edited.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Here is the somwhat-finished shot, but I’ll probably replace this with the SE Dewback for more dynamic-ness of the scene. The moving puppet Ronto is animated digitally similar to how Harmy did it in his 2.5 of Despecialized.

EDIT: I forgot to add, I found Adywan’s ANHR:HD sample reel on YouTube and seeing he did a similar change to mine, I used some of his footage to improve the circular landspeeder quality so credit to him on that.

https://vimeo.com/545378766

this post has been edited.

Author
Time

One thing I just realized: The shot here shows the cantina from a distance with the added buildings but when they reach there, it turns out to be barren with no buildings in sight which directly contradicts this scene here. (which was probably why the ronto was added in the first place to cover up the obvious discrepancy)
Do I remove it for continuity sake?

this post has been edited.

Author
Time

It’s so far in the background that I wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t pointed it out. I personally wouldn’t worry about removing it for continuity.

“It’s like rhymetry. They poem.” - Leorge Gucas

TROS Novelisation: The Faraday Edit, TLJ: Stoic Edition, ROTS: The Faraday Nudge, ROTS Ultracut: Order 66, Kenobi: Faraday Cut, Godzilla Vs Megalon, Godzilla Vs Gigan, Godzilla: Final Wars, The Light Rises, Faraday Jr.'s Star Wars

Author
Time

Ahem, also, since you’re currently in the business working Tatooine, I’d like to request the opening shot of the speeder with the womp rats removed. That’s something I’ve wanted for a long(-o) time.

My stance on revising fan edits.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Another update: I’ve been toying around with an online tool called Comixify AI to remove the hand-drawn landspeeder shadow in the 139-frame shot of the speeder passing through the street heading to Mos Eisley and it seems to work quite well, albeit there are artefacts. But that can be fixed through masking and tracking anyway.

https://streamable.com/ei7wzm

this post has been edited.

Author
Time

Love it!

“Always in motion is the future” 🌌

Author
Time

That looks really good!

“That’s not how the Force works!”

Author
Time

It’s exactly what you’d want. It truly strikes a glorious middle ground between the original and SE.

I eagerly look forward to lifting this for my own project. It’s sublime.

We even tried to repurpose the Kijimi explosion but it didn’t work out.

My stance on revising fan edits.

Author
Time

I attempted to hand-animate the shadow on the bottom of the landspeeder but it turns out more difficult than I thought and it doesnt look like the shadow actually “moves”, rather it looks like it slowly pans, similar to how the TIE Fighters in the trench run were shot. I really need help on this, so any VFX help is appreciated!

https://streamable.com/x1phd3

this post has been edited.

Author
Time

Do you know whether you’ll comp in the SE Death Star for the shot in which it explodes? I recall trying to use the theatrical explosion and finding that the original model doesn’t jive with the surrounding SE shots. There’s a few frames of static model and then a frame or two in which it gives way to the explosion. I would expect it to be doable by someone in the know.

My stance on revising fan edits.

Author
Time

Beautiful!

“Always in motion is the future” 🌌

Author
Time

Another one for today: I recut the Mos Eisley opening sequence along with adding a soundtrack (that I borrowed straight out of Revisited) thats uses neither of the overly loud theatrical version or the one with the SE since it gives me traumatic flashbacks of the CGI Jawa antics (lol)

I ended up not using the new wide shot of Mos Eisley with the SE buildings since it was too short and didnt really do much but break the pace of the scene. I’m pretty pleased with the final result, albeit the SFX isnt completely there yet.

https://streamable.com/oez46r

this post has been edited.

Author
Time

Hey there, It’s been three months since I’ve last given an update in regards to this project. I have been very busy with many things in my life and just very recently I had the time to keep working on this.

And yes, its another Alderaan explosion test.

It doesn’t stray too far from the last one, but my main gripe is that it looks very low-quality + some of the explosions are in a different framerate which makes them look stuttery and weird. This is mainly due to the source material I have, which is the ArtBeats explosion pack which is also used by Adywan on his Revisited editions.

This leaves me to two options: Either A.) Redo some of the explosion material to make them more HQ/replace some footage or B.) Have it AI upscaled to match the quality. If anyone can lend their computer to upscale this explosion, I will be more than thankful.

(This is also the first time I composited in the green laser, which slightly looks off even though its the original one I rotoscoped in. It may be because of how weird the original laser was aniamted which gives it that stuttery look. I don’t know how to fix it, but for some reason it looked really good in both the SE versions and Adywan’s version, so if anyone has suggestions, please let me know!)

https://streamable.com/3q15zt

this post has been edited.