adywan

SpenceEdit said:

Maybe that just makes me slightly retarded, but I've used Sony Vegas for years and I can do pretty much anything I can think of. I could never get the hang of Adobe's layout in either Premiere or After Effects. It's just not logical. It doesn't flow with your thoughts.

For instance, I want to lay part of a shot over another shot. So I cut half the shot off and drag it over the other one. That would make sense, right? But nooooooo, you have to have this setting, then that setting, then opacity, then animate, then pre-render 12 times, then make three seperate masks that can't touch, and finally by the time you get there you scrap the idea because it ain't worth the aggravation. I feel like if I did something the exact same way twice, the results would be different each time.

I don't know where you get the idea that you have to do all of that stuff with After Effects, because i can assure you that you don't have to at all. I'd never even touched After effects or anything like it when i started ANH:R and i found it unbelievably easy. I never pre render anything. If i want to overlay part of a shot over the top of another then that's all i do. Then use the mask tool to mask out only the section i need to keep and thats it. If the image is slightly unstable compared to the footage you have overlayed it upon so it looks like its moving  then you can either stabilise it or track the motion of the original to make it match.

Grythandril said:

The scene at the start showing main shot of the bridge, i  noticed that either side of the main door is shown but not the roof of the door.  This is shown in other parts of the movie.  Will you be adding that in?

You don't see the top of the door in any other shot in the movie. Unless you mean the lower ceiling sections at the bottom of the stairs. These can't be added in or it would chop to whole top section of the ceiling matte and would ruin the composition

The smile was a nod to the original Emperor who smiles at the exact same point.

I've given up on this video. No matter what i do there will be complaints. First the face is too static and that the original emperors face is more emotive, then i add the smile at the same point as the original Emperors smile and some motion to the face, then the face needs to remain more emotionless.

So that's it. No more videos. I'm spending so much time going back over videos i have posted trying to please everyone that i'm wasting time that could be spend on other scenes. When i get to the point that i'm pleased with a shot, i should stop there. I'm never going to please everyone and things just then get bogged down. 

I'm pretty sure that some people thing i can perform impossible things. You have to remember that i can only work with what i have available with  existing footage, etc. The only way i could do the emperor any better now would be to pay Ian to reprise his role in this scene and get him to wear a prosthetic that matches his ROTJ one. But we all know that this is never going to happen.

rpvee said:

It's a trick of the mind indeed, Ady.  And synchronization aside, when he says "He could destroy us", the lips don't close to make an "s" sound.  That's really my only nitpick, personally.

your lips don't close to make an "s" sound, they remain partially open, which the emperor does here.

Now i did a little experiment on the videos with the added smile which has now proved something to me. It really doe seem to me that knowing that i used a static image is causing people to see just that: something static. Because it isn't. It has been mentioned that i need to add movement to the cheeks, well the cheeks, right up to a small section of the lower eyelids, are actually the 2004 version and is not part of the mask and they can clearly be seen to move when he speaks. Also the eyes have had movement added and the forehead is also animated. He now makes a scowl when he says "the son of skywalker must not become a jedi", his brow raises after the smile and it also has movement during the first shot . Also it has been said that the upper part of the head has a separate movement to the lower from the bridge of the nose. Well the static image used actually covers the nose and ends at the tip of the nose so the movement in the whole nose would be the same. Youtube and facebook's horrible recompression destroys a lot of the detail, as has been mentioned by people who have downloaded the high bitrate version and is the reason i really hate uploading video to these sites.

Even the 1980 emperor was very static during the front view shots. the upper part of his head has no movement at all, only up to the lower eyelids. It had to remain as static as possible so they could add the monkey eyes later, but the upper part of the mask does not move at all, even when talking. The blinks are slow because they slowed down the footage of the monkey to give it a strange look about it. But this would not work with Ian's Emperor because he is more human looking. But, as i have said before, adding blinks to creatures is one thing but adding them to a human will make it look fake because of the way our eye perceive real world objects. It's to do with recognition and its one of the main reasons why CG faces will never look real, because we will always be able to see that something isn't quite right.

You can find the AVCHDs over at tehparadox. just search for adywan in the movies section

brash_stryker said:

I've just downloaded the latest version. Is it just me, or does it look like the whole hologram moves lower as the smile goes back down? Is this actually happening or an illusion caused by how Ady had to manipulate the mouth, and therefore the hologram effect?

Also I'm assuming  the audio is only temporary. It seems perfectly in sync except for "...of Skywalker must not become a Jedi" where the mouth seems slightly ahead of the dialogue.

Seeing it in higher quality, it's just beautiful though :-)

If you look at the comparison video i posted the original 2004 emperor hologram lowers at that exact same point. I had to track the original to match up the overlayed mask so the movement needed to stay the same. The problem with the hologram beings semi-transparent is that the original background shows through, so if i tried to erase the slight drop of the hologram, the background behind the original face would look like it's moving upwards. But i might see if i can do something about it. If not then it will just have to stay as it is

Monroville said:

Another tiny point: the nose lights on the Executor from 0:54 to 0:58 are green (as opposed to the blue of the rest of the lights on the side)... just wondering if the lights will be blue across the entire side in all of the Executor shots...

The lights at the tip of the Executor have always been a different colour to the main lights. In the original they were an orange colour to match the stardestroyers lights, but in the 2004 version their colouring became green. The shot of the executor leaving the asteroid field hasn't had anything done to it yet, but the lights will be recoloured to match all the other shots of the executor, although they will be more of a cyan colour and not changed to match the other lights as i really like the difference in the tip lights.

Here's the high bitrate 720p mkv version of the Emperor scene with the correct front view shots.It's approx 80mb

http://hotfile.com/dl/99813929/0d6e092/emperor_revisited_proper_emperor.mkv.html

the link i gave to megui doesn't need installing as it runs direct from the folder once unpacked. It works perfectly on win7 pro 64bit because that's what i'm using

Dark_Jedi, you can use megui to encode a great mkv. You can download it here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/megui/

That is the offline package so no need to install, just run it.

Once you run it make sure you are connected to the internet because it will look for updates. You will need these as it has a lot of presets updated all the time. It has a bitrate calculator, avs scriptcreator and everything you'll need and is very user friendly. I would use the script creator even if you are familiar with avs scripts. You can adjust the aspect ratio, scaling and everything in there.

There are many presets included. It all depends on what you want. I'm not sure if you can output an anamorphic mkv because there are a lot of players that don't recognise the anamorphic flag so would diplay it at the incorrect ratio. Your best bet would be to resize the video horizontally so you can keep the original vertical resolution. In the filters tab of the script creator change the resize filter to Lanczos4 as this is the best one.  I've only ever encoded non anamorphic video to mkv with this program so its best to try out different options. I would also crop the matte bars off the video as this will reduce the file size also.

once you have created your script then you need to choose your encoder settings. In the drop down box you will see lots of presets. I usually use the bluray preset then change the bitrate to the desired setting in the config box. automated 3 pass encoding will give you the best results but will take a lot of time depending on your hardware. Once you have your encoder settings sorted you need to change the "file format" settings to MKV (or MP4 whichever you prefer) then just click on "Enqueue" and this will queue your render. Now you are ready to encode. Click on the "queue" tab and you will see all 3 passes queued up. Now just click start and your done.

Once your video is encoded you need to add your audio track. For this you will need Mkvtoolnix. Only use v3.2.0 because later versions are causing problems with media players, but this version works the best. It's best to get the gui for this program MKVMERGE GUI. It may be included with the download but i can't remember.

Just load your video into it first then your audio and just output your muxed video, it's that simple. You can change the video properties if you want but most players will ignore most of them anyway in an mkv package.

Bingowings said:

Did you manipulate the smile by hand or did you take any elements from his smiles in the other films?

It's a nice touch.

It's all done by hand

Well i was just rendering the 720p high bitrate mkv and i realised that i only had the test layer for the front view shots enabled. So back to square one on the rendering. The high bitrate download WILL feature the completed version. That'll teach me to try and work on video on a machine that lags like hell on 720p lossless :(

ChainsawAsh said:

I noticed the smile - great touch!

Gotta say, Ady, it looks absolutely fantastic.  My only quibble - and it is minor - is that it looks a little too "grayscale."  The 1980 version had more of a clear "flesh tone" to the face, and you can clearly see color in the officers' holograms before you get to the Emperor scene.

Other than that, I'm stunned.  It actually looks like (gasp!) the Emperor now!

The main problem is that the face of the 2004 version is blue/cyan. I did attempt to add more of a flesh tone to it but it looked terrible IMO. Plus in the 1980 version the emperor had more of a greenish face. His ROTJ appearance he is very pale, almost white skinned in some scenes.

TML said:

adywan said:

So no one has noticed the creepy smile i added to the emperor when he says "yes, yes". at the end then ;) A bit of a nod the the original 1980 version there

 

TML said:

Wow, that new clip was just perfect. I love the new smile during the line "Yes... He would be a great asset". Just perfect! He actually shows some emotion, yet the unblinking eyes are just so creepy! I love it! A huge improvement over the other.

That was one of the first things I noticed, and is probably my favorite thing you added. :P

oops, sorry. i missed that comment.

Kurgan said:

Wait, so adywan, you're not using the recently discovered "Luke" sound byte from McDiarmand?

I guess no one ever reads the video information ;)

This video shows a comparison between the 2004 DVD Emperor and the newly tweaked Revisited version. As you will see the flicker is on the 2004 version and it cannot be eliminated because i have to match the brightness levels of the 2004 mouth with the new elements for the Revisited version so they blend together. You can also see just how static the original Emperors face is throughout the scene. I have tweaked the face of the Revisited Emperor since the last video. Again the audio is only a temp track and so may not be fully in sync and the dialogue is unfinished

So no one has noticed the creepy smile i added to the emperor when he says "yes, yes". at the end then ;) A bit of a nod the the original 1980 version there

I'll upload a high bitrate 720p mkv version to download later so you can see the revisited version in better quality.

ImperialFighter said:

adywan said:

I haven't touched the "interference" effect. It's exactly the same as the previous video

Ah, thanks for clarifying.  There seems to be a slight difference between this and yesterdays Youtube upload, where that's concerned.  Either that, or it was just me.  It's just that you said there were some tweaks since yesterday's version.

Really neat to have a moving side-by-side comparison with the SE version now. :)

It's been rendered at a much lower bitrate than yesterdays one to keep the file size down for uploading so that could well have caused the interference to look different

ImperialFighter said:

doubleofive said:

Your version looks SO MUCH BETTER.

Absolutely, but am I right in thinking the 'interference' lines seem more prominent now compared to your previous version adywan, or is it just a Youtube thing?  The 'interference' effect seem to be subtler in the previous clip, but it may just be me.

I've no idea how anyone could be less than delighted with what they saw yesterday, to begin with, considering the final soundtrack wasn't in place yet.  It was awesome work.

I haven't touched the "interference" effect. It's exactly the same as the previous video

The Golden Idol said:

Looks awesome, although I noticed that you shifted his gaze and now the Emperor looks slightly crosseyed. Or is that just me?

it's just you. the emperor is looking directly ahead and slightly down so his gaze would be fixed on Vader

New Emperor comparison clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyxwJ_cqNZ4

You will see it has had a few tweaks since the last video. But this is the final version. I will not be doing any more work on it.

I'm rendering a new version of the video now. I'm going to add a comparison with the 2004 emperor so people can see the movement and flicker and just how static his face actually is. 005 is almost spot on how i've had to do this. I have to match the brightness, position etc to that of the 2004 lower section of the face frame by frame so they match. I can't reduce the flicker because it wouldn't match the original footage i'm using. I have tweaked the emperor slightly since the last video i posted, but it taking so damn long to render each shot on the wifes laptop. How the hell does anybody work using a laptop i'll never know. Can't wait to get the PC back up and running

the grain matches perfectly on the new elements. You are watching a highly compressed video and grain gets eliminated/blurred. you can clearly see the grain is there if you watch it in its 720p res, plus if there wasn't heavy grain on the background there wouldn't be the amount of moving video artefacts on the background. It would be almost still as there would be no movement.

And adding movement to the face was tried but it looked fake. It may work on an alien but on a human face it becomes noticeable due to the way we recognise real life objects. Besides, there is zero facial or eye movement in the 2004 version so i really don't see what the problem is here.

Ghostbusters said:

Emperor hologram looks great Adywan. Are you sure the lip-syncing is accurate? It seemed a bit off, but if that is the best you can do I am fine with that. So is this the final version, on facebook you said it was another rough draft, but on here you say it is the final version?

no, on facebook it says its the final version also. and on both youtube and facebook i state that the audio is only temporary. I won't even begin to touch the audio track until the video side of things is 100% complete

Loconut said:

Great clip! On another note, I hate to 're-post' but does anyone have confirmation on a fix regarding:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/STAR-WARS-EP-V-REVISITED-EDITION-ADYWAN-CHRISTMAS-CLIP-NOW-AVAILABLE/post/466574/#TopicPost466574

Thnx.

you mean this:

As for the dots, i haven't bothered doing anything with them

And ImperialFighter, the emperor scene has changed a little more since i sent you that pic

You can now view the finished Emperor scene on youtube in 720p:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eStsTNOaED8

For those that have facebook you can also view it on the ESB:R site:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=316830255423&ref=mf#!/video/video.php?v=1815604587668&oid=316830255423

people who have seen the donators version will notice it has had a few changes since that video was done.

head over to tehparadox.com and search for adywan. You should find rapidhsare links there (you'll probably have to register)