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WXM

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2-Nov-2007
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13-Apr-2024
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Post
#322433
Topic
STAR WARS V8 - A Final Attempt (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/322433/action/topic#322433
Time
Mother beat me to it! Yeah, you don't want to risk losing detail in the white or dark areas so you need to check your settings/captures for each project. In fact (although rare) there can occasions where one section of a film will need to have a different brightness setting than another part of that same film! And make sure your monitor is calibrated to at least some degree before all this of course (I know a lot of us can't afford a pro calibration; at least I can't).
Post
#321591
Topic
STAR WARS V8 - A Final Attempt (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/321591/action/topic#321591
Time
Darn, I was hoping you, Mother, or someone else knew a trick for easily wiping those dupe frames. If LD capturing does not give you that problem then Arnie.d, you absolutely should do averaging with LD capping! :D

Mother and G-Force, would you say that your scripts above are better than the "Average" dll that I use? I would guess it would just be a different route to exactly the same result. What could the diffference be?

Another Q: Is there any reason to use HuffYUV over Lagarith for capping now? Way back when, people generally preferred Huff over Lag, but since Lag has been worked on so much since, is it now hands-down the better of the two?

To show that this is on-topic enough, Arnie.d: So far it seems you should do five or six capture average, use the Largarith codec....and which AVS script is best will hopefully be answered soon. :)
Post
#321541
Topic
STAR WARS V8 - A Final Attempt (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/321541/action/topic#321541
Time
Hi all

(Edit: if this post is too off-topic for this thread then my apologies; got too carried away here maybe :) I'll trim this post if you want))

I have done a lot of averging with VHS captures, and I really can't see anyone who is trying to achieve higher end quality not at least giving it a try to see what they think. For me, the difference is usually quite striking when you take a close look at the image (zoom in!). I would recommend at least four captures. Beyond six is not necessary in my opinion except for the highest possible quality extraction. I use the Average dll for Avisynth. Notes:

- Do not capture uncompressed! Use HuffYUV (or something newer that does the same trick?) It is a waste of hard drive space to do uncompressed when you have HuffYUV (and other lossless codecs). :)

- If you are worried about hard drive space you can in a pinch, as said, do two captures and average them, then delete the two sources (keep the average) then do another capture, average that with your previous average, etc. Just remember that with this approach you will need to modify your "weighting" values in your AVS Average script as you go along (.5/.5 on the merging of the first two captures; .66/.34 on the second merging; .75/.25, etc.)

- At least with my set-up, the annoying situation happens of a duplicate frame being inserted by the capture card during longer captures, about one frame every four minutes (to keep sync I assume), the specific result being two frames that look 100% identical, which means one of them needs to be deleted. I search for and remove these duplicates by hand with VirtualDub, but maybe someone here knows an automated way to achieve this? You need your capture files to be exactly the same frame-by-frame in length and arrangement for averaging to work. If you are off by even one frame (from one of the inserted 'duplicates' let's say) then you
will get ghosting, which will look worse than using a single (non-averaged) capture. This step of cleaning and trimming the captures to have them all match perfectly is the biggest time-consumer, but I still say it's all worth it in the end! :)

- I have yet to capture from a LD so I'll leave the particulars of that to others to comment on. :)

At least this is my approach. Below are screengrabs of my VirtualDub windows from an example project. Obviously no processing was done other than the averaging on the second image. Look at her cheeks and forehead. Which of these would you rather start with for all the processing still ahead on a project?

http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/cffe4dd077.gif
Post
#319578
Topic
My top 100 Sci-fi movies.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/319578/action/topic#319578
Time
FanFiltration said:

Films that would be on my list of top 100 that are not on yours:
...
Stargate
He has this one at number 63.

To toss in my two cents (brave of you to open yourself up to a forum with such a list), I personally wouldn't consider Superman sci-fi, but maybe that's just me. :)
One film that does easily qualify for sci-fi that's not on your list is Gattaca, which is a pretty strong sci-fi film that's often overlooked as it's not very actiony, alieny, or fantasy-ishy :)

Thanks for sharing! :)
Post
#313337
Topic
The Vaultbreakers Collection - Disney Preservations
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/313337/action/topic#313337
Time
Ah. Well, you could give it a try just five seconds worth of capture and maybe see, eh? Just cap a shot snippet 5 times ever, trim the cap avi's so they all have the same start frame, use VDub to read in the AVS averaging of the five, and output from VDub. Sometimes a view compare at 200% is pretty striking, sometimes not. Depends on a bunch of stuff of course...
If you're interested I'll give you a template avs script, but I'll reiterate that for a feature film it would likely be a lot of work (not to mention time and hard drive space) so maybe even your experimenting with this would just be wasting your time. :shrug: For short stuff though, it's usually the way to go if you're aiming for max. quality given just a PC with capping abilities and an analogue home video player.

So there's all that :)

Edit: Just saw your post, and I agree about de-noise filters. I really don't like them for my chain. The only thing I actually every used AVS for (in regards to captures) is decomb/telecide and averaging. Averaging is my de-noising for captures; avoids GIGO. :)
Post
#313326
Topic
The Vaultbreakers Collection - Disney Preservations
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/313326/action/topic#313326
Time
Hi Molly

I see a bit of noise in the sky of that last shot. It's not bad, but I can't help but ask since you seem to be wanting the most out of the movie picture quality itself: have you tried doing "averaging" of multiple capture passes (via avisynth)? It is a bit of trouble, but especially where you're doing things like resizing the image, it is a nice improvement...although this method applied to a whole feature might prove too work intensive (but you can darn near reach DVD quality when you can pull it off correctly from what I've seen, assuming your capturing set-up is pretty good in the first place of course). If you've never tried it, I recommend giving it a go on really small clip capture so you can see the difference (especially when you zoom in). :)

Edit: Sorry, I see now that you don't seem to be doing the captures yourself. Nevermind. :D
Post
#312010
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/312010/action/topic#312010
Time
Originally posted by: professa adyfan
wxm thanks for taking the time to answer
although the 3D software i was enquiring about was the stuff used to make the jabba scene into stereoscopic 3D
Oops! All those posts of my DS mesh/renders right before you post... Wrong kind of 3D. Sorry; back to our regularly scheduled program...

Post
#311970
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/311970/action/topic#311970
Time
Originally posted by: OBtwosy
Here's a very quick, rough mockup of discart for those who desire it. The DS is not very good res, since I'm screen cap-ing it off the avi on my computer. Ady, any way I could get a higher-res of this shot of the DS?

this is a small, lo-res mockup, not intended to a downloadable graphic yet

http://img3.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/83a9e3a962.jpg

I wanted to go very minimalist with wording. in fact, if I used disc art I would do this without any words at all

thoughts?
That's a cool idea for the disk art!

And for those interested (professa adyfan), I'll take the question about how the 3D stuff was done as that was in my ballpark for revisited. The 3D mesh of the DS 'plans' took me over a month to model, was done in LightWave, and the various anims using that mesh on off-and-on over the next seven months!

In regards to giving 3D software a try, just letting you know that it's cool, but not something you'll pick up in a day or two. Every aspect of it is pretty painstaking, from modeling to texturing, to rendering (and animation). It's too much to go into here. If you're interested in the how-to's, just google for "LightWave" or any of the other more widely-used-currently 3D apps (3D Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, on and on). There are many forums/websites full of people doing 3D with these programs, most of the posts on those forums being WIP threads where you can see how they get to the goal (I don't want to derail this thread into the techniques of modeling in LightWave).
Post
#311216
Topic
Transformers The Movie: Resparked (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/311216/action/topic#311216
Time
Originally posted by: reave
Good catch, thanks! I sat there typing it, knew the proper way to do it, and I still did it wrong.
Yeah, as you surely know, that's the mistake that everyone makes often, myself included (in my supposedly knowing better).

Again, nice job on this this from what I can see so far, and I hope your next waves of editing go well...and it seems musicman's tip on the soundtrack might be worth giving a go on one of them.

Post
#308229
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/308229/action/topic#308229
Time
Originally posted by: ravensp
Here is a Preview of Possible Cover Work for Adywan's Work

any suggestions would be great

thank you

ravensp
I, personally, am not really into the hyper dramatic lighting of the X-Wing you have there; although I guess it is a different approach from many of the others so why not at least try it, right?

And it is difficult to see your cover with that particular image, as DarthBo said, so I'll refrain from more comments until we have an uncovering of sorts.

Post
#307758
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/307758/action/topic#307758
Time
Quote by AuggieBenDoggie
Does lightwave feature Normal Mapping? I'm a Maya user so normal mapping is a pretty regular feature I use when modeling. ... started work on a TIE attack shot, would love to show you...
I tried to send you a PM as I don't want to start talking generals of doing CG'ing here in this thread (I'll never shut up ), but it didn't go through. Are your PM's turned on?

In regards to recent posts... Maybe someone has a nice kitten picture to happier-ize the vibe? Just a thought.
Post
#307666
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/307666/action/topic#307666
Time
Originally posted by: focuspuller

Actually I had an idea about that, what about a cheat? ... what if the Deathstar is a digital mat painting? I don't see why that wouldn't work.
I suppose one could render just three frames of the modeled surface and stitch them together for a map, then place that map onto a simple plane of the right shape, and the "animation" then would take a brief amount of time as it's only rendering a simple textured plane/disk rather than all the details each frame. My problem is just getting that initial rendering of the DS surface set-up. I don't even have LW versions of the tiles!

Post
#307661
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/307661/action/topic#307661
Time
Edit, to Mojo_LA who just posted while my writing this: I put a big post in response to yours, a few pages back. (I get the sense you didn't see it as you refer to "a small team" doing Ady's CG for that shot when it was only "a guy")

... a few FX shots that are getting some heat. Nobody is going to think less of you for keeping them as they are...
Just cause I feeling like chatting some more here about this stuff. Nothing heavy, not being defensive.

I can assure ya'll that Ady would've been very happy if I gave him a "Guess what I did!" for the DS surface for that shot, a detailed-ish anim in HD for that composite layer, but that simply was/is not going to happen (without a big upgrade in resources of some sort). To do that in CG (of course making a miniature of that and really filming it is out) with anything less than a decent render farm would be insaneness. Even with very low-poly versions of the tile meshes, we'd still be talking many millions of polygons to render in the end.
(I know you know Auggie, but everyone else -> ) Think about what we're talking about rendering here: a solid mile+ of very greeble-covered surface! Even if I could use tricks to cut the rendering materials down a third for the near-same end result, or even further, that's still just not worth it to attempt with my amount of resources (one computer, low experience). I would probably trick it right back down to looking like mush again.

Just saying that it's not a matter of not feeling like giving the elements a boost now. I would love to throw those tiles down and duplicate them a thousand of times over and render them them out in a couple of days to give to Ady for an upgrade for that shot, and I'm sure he'd love to receive such a thing, but there is simply no way to do that on my end here/now. It would take not days, but many weeks to output that, and he doesn't want to wait that long -- and I don't want my 3D computer off limits to my creative playings for that long (putting aside my electric bill! ) But it is cool seeing people thinking that we have/had the capability to just wantonly produce such things as a square mile+ of Death Star surface from scratch for a shot.

Edit2: Whether Ady would welcome other contributors to create such composite layers for him is, of course, his call.
Okay, shutting up now.
Post
#307558
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/307558/action/topic#307558
Time
Originally posted by: AuggieBenDoggie
Hey WXM, it's great you hear about your contribution to this edit. ... I applaud your effort.

Originally posted by: Fuser
...but I'd like to extend this to you also for the phenomenal work you've done on the edit.

Thanks, Auggie and Fuser!
Ady and I are both pretty happy with how the TIEs turned out. Some of those frames of the anim, damn if those don't look like real filming miniatures! (<-a lot of credit for that goes to MaxwellRender though, not me )

I finally got to see the shot (Ady saw my post) and I must say that I am very impressed! For this shot to go from purely a point on Ady's wish-list to this level of actualization through his efforts (especially with what we had to work with)... stunning! Even if some people don't agree with how the shot fits into the film (slows the pace, etc.), hopefully everyone will acknowledge and applaud the mental energy and drive and cahones it took to bring such a shot about from just about nothing to this level of immersibility. Not that most everybody isn't doing that already, but I'll add my voice too in that regard (at the risk of seeming a bit biased): Rockin' job, Ady, I say! I like it!
Post
#307551
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/307551/action/topic#307551
Time
Hi Mojo_LA!

I'm going to field this first as I'm the CG guy who did the animating and rendering. I appreciate your feedback! You have good points of course; I'll just point out a few things that will probably just sound like excuses in the end, but it's what it is.

1) This shot is not only my first effects animation, but is basically the first effects shot I have ever done, still or otherwise (the DS graphics are more just "graphics" than effects in my mind). After I did the graphics we testingly slid into feeling out accomplishing this shot. I was giving it my best go doing what the said he wanted, feeding him little tests, seeing what he thought...leading to what you see in this edit (a remotely final composite of which I still have not even seen myself yet!).

2) The camera motion looking "CG": Again, this is my first effects animation, and I am not a student of anyone who does this, have not read up on the art of carrying this out. I felt I was already juggling so much just to get what you see completed. Had I the experience to show/offer Ady such an improvement, he probably would have liked it, but... To my slight credit, for the pan I did avoid just perfectly tracking the center TIE (the kind of thing I actually see movies a lot and it bugs me); the camera turning is done independently, you see the TIEs fall out of frame for a little bit... I'm kinda proud of that, even if it isn't much.

3) I had no composite materials of the shot on my end beyond my renders, did not have his edit of the battle into which I could see what was coming before and after this shot, that was all on Ady's side -- and Ady didn't have a finished, fully blurred render until about five days ago, when he wanted the project released. While I could have requested he send me the layers and such, he was undstandably *busy*, and I didn't want to come across as trying to overstep my bounds. He knew what he wanted, and truth be told it all was fine to me for the most part from what I was seeing, what he was explaining. The guy is good! Had I had the composite layers and more of the edit in my hands, maybe my "CG animator" eyes would have noticed these things you mentioned, like a better/more accurate blur length and the camera being too rock-solid -- or maybe my inexperience would have failed me, which I will honestly say is a possibilty. In fact, I picked the final mo-blur setting here, not Ady -- but it was a virtual shot in the dark for me as I was only going by playbacks in VirtualDub of the raw, uncomposited renders alone. Again, we were kind of hands-tied in a lot of ways putting this together. He's in the UK, I'm in California, I only have dial-up for e-communicating/sending... although I honestly think even just the CG side of this shot looks a bit better than a reasonable expectation for the how the end result could look given the resources and experience of the people who put it together for the kind of shot it is (or maybe not...?)

4) Deadline -- Rendering this was going to take a long time on my computer as it was a 1.3 millions poly scene (<-plus motion blurring that!); With how much Ady was juggling we simply didn't have the time to do many tests -- and besides, our tests we did complete all looked pretty good to us -- and we reached a point where it seemed like a good "go" and we went for the final render to have a hope of getting this thing done. (There's more to the story, but this is already long.)

5) As far as the DS surface looking like mush, we did try to get the jedilaw's "DS surface greeble pack" working for us, but we just didn't have the resources in the end for that to happen (converting the meshes to LW, lighting them, animating, then rendering those MANY polygons!).

Anyway, I hope that sheds some light on this, hope I didn't come off as too defensive. Honestly, it's cool to hear (for me anyway) feedback. Lastly, obviously it's not really up to me if upgrades to effects are done for this edit.
Post
#307302
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/307302/action/topic#307302
Time
Originally posted by: Kurgan
Nice job on the CG, it looks great! I thought at first I'd hate the "red" DS graphics (too much pandering to the so-so AOTC), but they've already grown on me. I suppose it's a good high contrast color for vector graphics (rather than making it say, blue or something).
When I first finished the mesh and was about to render the first anim (the "R2 download" shot), I was also thinking a color scheme other than red might be good and suggested this to Ady, whereupon he showed me Death Star graphics screen grabs from RTOJ, which were both red -- which convinced that red was probably about the best pick after all to keep things feeling the same through the films, OT as well as PT. There were very few things Ady didn't really think through/research ahead of time on this edit I think.
Post
#307262
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/307262/action/topic#307262
Time
Hi! I'm going to go ahead and introduce myself here as the "3D CG guy" who did the very few 3D created-from-scratch elements that were made for this edit, those being the red Death Star schematics mesh/anims and that one big "incoming TIEs swarm" shot.

I started working with Ady in February of last year and finished, oh, about three days ago. Modeling the red Death Star mesh alone took me probably pushing a hundred hours; definitely wasn't just a LightWave primitive sphere with an eye poked onto it. I'm kind of a detail fiend, so I poured over the very few references I had, did my best to recreate everything I could make out from those (the three fuzzy rotating DS holograph shots from AOTC). Pretty rough! But I'm glad people seem to approve to the end result. (Note that I did only the "from-scratch 3D" portions of those shots for Revisited -- Ady of course did all the frame graphics, Aurebesh text, arrow-lines, compositing, etc.)

I'll chat more later as right now I have to run off to work. Just wanted to pop here in here real quick to say hi and give some info for those curious, if anyone is even curious.
Post
#306964
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/306964/action/topic#306964
Time
Hmm, i wonder how you got hold of a picture of the new death star schematic used in my edit for your would be avatar
Uh... Oh yeah! Remember when you accidentally posted that image on ratemykitten.com instead of your cat's picture? Well, I was looking at kitten pictures that day -- and due to your mistake and my good luck I was right there to snag your mistakenly posted DS schematic image. Uh, yeah, that's how I got it.