Heres the finalized explosion for Alderaan’s destruction scene, although I still can’t figure out how to add in the laser and make it smooth enough to fit in the rest of the sequence. It’s a bit overkill but it still lines up pretty well.
https://streamable.com/mfldg5
The scene is great, but I think the pause between “You will kill” and “Palpatine” should be a tiny bit longer, as it felt slightly jarring for me.
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.
EBSynth is pretty much a “style” transfer deepfake, wherein it animates a scene using the style of another artist, or using a scene thats been repainted to match a different style. See the video below for further clarification:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fILG1J6gMBs
Using this concept, we can pretty much transfer the “style” (which in this case is the single frame still image of ROTJ Jabba edited into ANH CGI Jabba) to the entire video and animate it using AI. Sorry if it’s a bit convoluted but after you watch the video, you’ll see what I mean.
Technically, you can do that with EBSynth.
Just rigorously photoshop ROTJ Jabba into a still frame of ANH Jabba (do this a couple times) after which you use it as a reference frame for EBSynth to slap the face on and you’ll get a passable result (after masking everything else out to maintain quality), however you may need to do those in sections, as there may be moments wherein it wouldn’t track and it would look inconsistent, but morphing and masking can do the trick (most of the time, anyway)
Heres a new breakthrough in Deepfake technology: Lip-sync and vocal synthesis and stitching done in less than a minute.
I presume this can be really useful in a lot of cases, letting the actors say what we want them to say through the use of AI.
Yeah I can definitely do that, I just need to do a lot of tracking since the shot has some camera shake.
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?
ANOTHER CHANGE: here is a new matte of the Mos Eisley wide shot, showing the SE buildings without the comical and stupid Ronto/Jawa antics.
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.
I might help with some of the editing work for the Vader Castle shots needed, but I havent backread far enough to know in what context it will be used for? (I assume its going to recontextualize the opening scene wherein Kylo grabs the wayfinder)
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.
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.)
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.
I just finished watching the edit, and I am greatly pleased with all of it. Since I forgot what the movie was since I only watched it once 2 years ago, I pretty much thought it was seamless until I checked the change list and was shocked to see how many were added/removed/switched around.
The only thing that bugged me was the last shot of when the Falcon flew away from the sunset, as I felt that it looked too slow and not in-line with the visual effects of the film. However, I give a huge thanks to those who worked on the edit and still appreciate it nonetheless. I might be getting around to learning Blender just to fix that scene in the future but it was amazing overall.
May I ask a link for this?
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?
I’m wondering if this would still work on the ANH Revisited version, as I might need to use a sequence for my fan-edit. However, I know of the way Topaz removes stars and makes them flicker on scenes, so that might not help.
Building on what EddieDean said, I suggest you should calibrate your monitor to a pretty good and somewhat accurate color-space if you are planning on color grading or color-matching shots. I feel like certain scenes make characters look really different, in the case of C-3PO, he looks more bronze than his gold colour. I’m simply giving constructive advice and hope for the best in what you will achieve for.
Updated first post as the changelog has been completely updated to fit the sources and to add some new art into the mix 😉
I will make a poster to later submit to Fanedit.org (if they approve of it, anyway)
Also, I just might have an idea to fix the Darth Vader hyper-space continuity error in the film, but I wont reveal it until later, so its more of a suprise!
JEDIT: A pending change I’d like to add is the adition of the re-done shots Adywan did for the TIE Fighter attack on the Falcon, but that would require some upscaling to 1080p (though I’m not sure it would look very good). So if anyone out there can lend a hand and upscale that scene for me, then it would be very appreciated!
Hmm, that is interesting. However I feel like it would be a better solution overdubbing Vader’s vocals to not anymore imply that they had just made the jump into hyper-space however I am not sure where to find a library of Vader’s lines from different games, TV series, etc. that can help with this, or even straight from ESB, ROTJ, ROTS or RO.
Hello there, I am looking to find a Darth Vader line from any video game, deleted scene, etc. that can be suitable to replace the dialogue that he and Tarkin have after the TIE Fighter attack on their way to the rebel base.
Governor Tarkin:
Are they away?
Darth Vader:
They just made the jump into hyperspace.
Governor Tarkin:
And you’re sure the homing beacon is secure onboard their ship? I’m taking an awful risk, Vader. This had better work.
I am removing the “hyperspace” line as it is evident that in the next shot, they can be seen flying in space and not on hyperspace.
Hello, it has been a year and I finally found time to work on this project again. I thought it would be a good opportunity to do it now as my computer has been upgraded and I can work on VFX on this movie. First and foremost, I plan to re-do the Alderaan explosion scene to add in an extra shot, in which you can see the planet in an orbital view exploding whilst ships try and flee away from the impending doom that is behind them.
I wanted this shot to somewhat look like it was done using optical bluescreen, with the hand-drawn laser beam and the planet being a matte painting, which would fit the aesthetic of the film nicely.
So I made a quick photo on Photoshop and sort-of made it look like it was shot in 77, albeit a very rough concept although I might’ve added too much grain for the record lol.
I used an unused matte painting of Tatooine that Ralph McQuarrie made for ANH, some ships I found online, and an intentionally janky looking explosion that resemble those 70% opacity explosions literred around the ships during the Battle of Endor in ROTJ.
In other news, since SkyDude over in the Star Wars Trilogy Forums has done a very good cleanup up of the Mos Eisley drive-by shot by merging in different sources including 4k77, I’ll probably use that and slightly enhance it to make the transition alot more seamless.
I actually was the dude (I’m not sure if anyone else brought it up beforehand) who gave attention to this on the Star Wars Trilogy Forums on the D+77 thread (I think?) about how badly the vaselined shot was and even took a crack at restoring it for my cancelled ANH: “Custom Special Edition” fan-edit, which I only completed like 1 second of it because of how slow my computer was (aswell as my subpar VFX skills)
I later then talked to SkyDude on PM’s about the blurry shot since he could actually fix that shot and so the final infamous “Mos Eisley wide pan” shot was made by him.
(Repost from my Fanres post):
Ever since I started my own little “Back To The Future” project back in May, I began researching on the film’s technical aspects, more specifically, the color grading.
I always found the Blu-Ray, DVD and DCP versions very “pink-magenta” looking, similar to how the Star Wars Special Editions looked, creating errors in the film itself, (Marty’s skateboard wheels colors fluctuating from yellow to pink in the Blu-Ray release) I wondered if that was always the case or was it the fault of the people who decided to DNR and “Edge Enhance” during the digital processing of the movie for home releases.
I recently came to the FanRes forums* after finding out about the “Open Matte upscale” done by PDB back in 2015 and seeing his color regrade of the film, noting about how “technicolor” it looked with pretty vivid colors and natural skin tones, so I’m not sure if thats a pretty close regrade or something more revisionist.
Since there are little to no color references to the film aside from the BBC TV broadcast, which is noted to have a green tint, I was wondering if a “theatrical regrade” of the film can be done, aside from images of 35mm film strips on eBay, but I am also not sure if that is a reliable color source.