Star Wars Episode I: The Rise of Naboo (v3.5 released) — Page 11

GMatias said:

I think the bottom is my fave of the three as well. It certainly has the most detail revealed. It almost looks a little too green (or well in the yellow range and heading towards green) that I’d keep an eye out to make sure it didn’t go any further in that direction. Nearly-yellow green has a kinda sickly feel to it that something closer to the bluer end of the spectrum doesn’t, at least for me.

The bottom one is different from the previous grade in that it’s done via adjustment layers instead of timelines. This makes the bottom grade more time-consuming, but on the plus side, it means that the grading is customized for every scene. So in this instance, the greenish effect you’re referring to is only during the droid control ship scenes.

Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on the rest of the scene just in case it does get too green. But other than that, I’m glad to see that this new grade is getting a good response.

Eyepainter said:

The bottom one is different from the previous grade in that it’s done via adjustment layers instead of timelines. This makes the bottom grade more time-consuming, but on the plus side, it means that the grading is customized for every scene. So in this instance, the greenish effect you’re referring to is only during the droid control ship scenes.

That’s what I was hoping!

Time for me to give a very special thank you to ArtisDead for doing the poster artwork! Here’s what he’s done!

Got some more artwork from ArtisDead! Which one is your favorite?

1-3-2

GMatias said:

1-3-2

1’s my favorite too!

1 is my favorite, as well.

Alright, time for a couple small updates! I’ve been collaborating with ArtisDead on the poster art, and we have a consensus on Poster #1! He’s currently working on making it a running theme for all three edits (as well as some poster artwork for my Eyes Wide Shut edit) at this time!

Also, I’ve continued to work on the audio commentary, and I’m almost at Coruscant! I’m now more than halfway there on the commentary!

Just chiming in to add my voice to the consensus on the grade and poster!

Thanks, Cap! It’s been a wild amount of work for myself and ArtisDead! Hope things are getting better for you!

Time for another update on the color grading! I’m at the halfway mark, and I’m about to start work on Anakin and Padme’s scene on the spaceship. I decided to use this time to showcase how things look for the first half right now. Here’s what I’ve graded thus far:

Looking good!

Just finished working on the second half of color grading! Here are some more examples:

revel911 said:

Did you ever try any of the alien voices vs the bad accents? When I see those edits, though not perfect, it comes off closer to a more mature experience.

First off, thank you for the kind words regarding the color grading! v3.5 is going to be the first time I’ve ever utilized Resolve’s FX features for the grade (The second one is my upcoming fanedit of Eyes Wide Shut), and I’m happy to see such an overwhelmingly positive response from a stranger!

Anyway, I’m not 100% sure what you’re trying to say, but I think you’re asking if I’ve ever used AI-generated voices to replace the voices of the Gungans or Neimoidians (or just replaced the voices altogether). If that’s the question, the answer is no. I’ve gotten by with cutting out the worst lines and sound effects. However, I have seen quite a few editors try to change Jar Jar’s voice with both overwhelming, but also underwhelming results. I once stumbled onto a video where someone got an australian to voice Jar Jar instead, and the results were surprisingly wonderful (Sadly, I don’t remember the video, but it’s somewhere on YouTube)!

I also just recently watched a fanmix of the Rambo franchise called Three F—ing Bears by Gieferg, which used a Sylvester Stallone AI-generated voice for the narration of the edit. I could tell that the voice was fake, but it’s an interesting example of how far voice replacement in fanediting has gone, and if you’re not afraid of some very adult content, it’s a fun watch that I highly recommend!

All this is to say that while I haven’t done it, I’m interested in the possibilities and which direction it’s going. I also have some secret plans for all six of my Star Wars fanedits in the far future which I won’t go into for now (I’m more concerned with polishing them up for fanedit.org), but I think changing the voices might be an interesting endeavor to try out in the future!

revel911 said:

I think what the version that worked that I have seen were using another language track (German / Japanese) and running through some kind of “alien filter”. Was curious if it was something you had tried vs a reply that you should do it.

Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that before! In answer to your question, no I’ve never tried it. However, there’s another faneditor who did. I don’t remember who, but I’m certain that edit does exist somewhere.

Thanks Mario! I hope the edit meets your expectations!

Just finished commentating about the Coruscant senate hearing.

I have some bad news on the color grading.

Over the course of the last week, I’ve been trying to export my edit so that I can test the color grade on my 1080p HDTV. Trying, because every time I’ve attempted to export the file, my editing software keeps crashing in the middle of the export. I’ve tried a lot of things. What’s even weirder is that it’s only crashing when I export Episode I. I did an export for my Eyes Wide Shut fanedit, which is a much larger file than my Episode I edit could ever hope to be (in GoPro Cineform, no less), and it exported the file without any problems. I’ve tried exporting my Episode I file to my external hard drive. It crashed. I tried exporting it using a brand new USB flash drive. It crashed. I looked up a bunch of YouTube tutorials to stop the export from crashing. It crashed. And I’m at that point where I believe the culprit is one of the Resolve FX features I used for the color grading. I don’t know which one it is (I have a faint suspicion that it has something to do with the luminance), but this means that I’m gonna have to go back and work on the color grading again.

I will do what I can to keep the color grade from being changed a lot, but I can’t guarantee that until I’ve figured out why Resolve keeps crashing for “this” specific edit, and none of my other edits. My apologies for the inconvenience this may cause. If anyone has some troubleshooting know-how, I would appreciate it very much at this time!

I think I’ve made a breakthrough on my current editing woes!

So, after my announcement that I was going to change the grading again, I bought Jeff Bartsch’s book, Edit Better, and I skipped over to the chapter on color grading. I took some of the advice and set on grading the edit using only the shadow, midtone, saturation, and contrast and pivot options on Resolve. I also added in my favorite film LUT onto the timeline.

Well, after I graded the whole thing again, I tried exporting the file, and it still crashed. Then I realized that the only other possibility is video track 3, which contains my film grain overlays. I disabled that track, and presto! The file exported! Then, I thought to myself, what if it’s the film grain overlays? I went back, changed the color grading back to my previous grade, and while it did crash the first time, it got to 96%. I tried again, and it worked! 😄

So, it looks like the main culprit is the film grain overlays. I’m not sure why Resolve is having a hard time, because my Eyes Wide Shut fanedit also has film grain overlays. My best guess is that I used dirtier overlays for my Eyes Wide Shut edit, and for some reason, my computer can take those grainier, dirtier overlays better. The overlays I’ve been using so far for Episode I are cleaner.

So this leads to my biggest issue right now. What to do about the film grain. I could choose to get rid of the film grain entirely. This option would probably be easiest on my computer, but the drawback is that the grading suffers from looking so soft and clean. The other option? Go for grainy and filthy. Now admittedly, I like that kind of aesthetic. However, I’m not sure Star Wars fans would agree, especially since a lot of fanedits opt for a cleaner, light grain look. HAL9000’s edits are a perfect example of this. I should also note that as of this post, I haven’t gone back to do anything with the film grain yet. So I have no idea if I’m right about dirtier grain overlays being easier to export. It’s currently a theory.

I guess I’ll ask for others opinions on this. What do you think? Should I skip the film grain, or go all the way with it?

I’d vote to skip rather than overdoing it. But, if your pipeline is near-lossless you might be able to render it all twice - once for everything BUT overlay, then a separate project to add film grain?

EddieDean said:

I’d vote to skip rather than overdoing it. But, if your pipeline is near-lossless you might be able to render it all twice - once for everything BUT overlay, then a separate project to add film grain?

I wish I could say that this’ll work, but alas, I already tried something like this with my Last Jedi fanedit. The quality deterioration was visible, and I never took the second project any further than reviewing it myself. It’s a nice idea on paper, but I don’t think my work is near-lossless enough.