StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Holy fuck does this look good.

Looks really nice, but would it kill them to show some action? I really don't care about Picard playing the flute. Quick, do a HD remaster of Sub Rosa!

The episodes they're doing aren't really action-filled ones, so they wouldn't have a lot to choose from on that front. Having said that, they could have picked a better one for Encounter at Farpoint - the other two episodes gave us fairly exciting scenes involving Worf defending his honour and Picard's life seemingly in imminent danger, and all we get from the pilot is a scene showing Picard and Q having a pissing match over what the word "savage" means.

Encounter at Farpoint was probably important to do because it has a lot of visual effects, all of the visual effects in Farpoint were done by ILM, and a lot of the Enterprise shots were reused as stock footage for later episodes.

And to be fair, the chase scene in Farpoint isn't too bad. I'd rate it higher than the "oh no! welp, turns out we can't move Picard. back to the real story!" scene in The Inner Light.

A bit of an update:


*drools*

Also check out http://www.trekcore.com/ for some screenshots of all three episodes that will be in 'The Next Level' ('Encounter at Farpoint', 'Sins of the Father', 'The Inner Light')

Holy crap, that looks gorgeous.

They corrected at least one error from the first cut of "Farpoint": http://tng.trekcore.com/bluray/exclusiv ... oint22.jpg

The beam in the original cut came out of the Captain's Yacht. Here's to hoping when they do the seasons and get to "Darmok" phasers are no longer shooting out of the torpedo launcher.

Really gorgeous looking transfer based on the screencaps.

My main concern is that that 'fix' looks really cheap. Look at the windows between the phaser strip and the captain's yacht; there's no indentation like there should be. And look at the saucer rim: it's way too smooth, and there's no indication of the rim windows at all. I really hope it's a cheap painting and not an actual CGI model, because that'd be one shitty CGI model if that were the case. Either way I hope it never gets used again.

And since I'm already sperging out I'll go ahead and point out that it never came out of the captain's yacht, it came out of the windows directly fore of the captain's yacht.

Actually, that's a physical model shot. The only CGI elements are the beam itself, and (I'm assuming) the glows on the nacelles and deflector.

You see, there were two initial studio models created for the Enterprise-D - a honkin' big one used by ILM, and a smaller one used by Paramount's own teams. They used the small one in this shot, which just happens to show off its main flaw; namely the fact that it looks horrible in close-up. I'm guessing the problem existed even at SD resolutions, because the small model apparently got ditched at the end of the first season and replaced by one which was midway in size between it and ILM's model.

Here's how it originally appeared:





Notice that:

- Details along the rim of the saucer are visible, including observation windows and (just barely) one of the RCS quads
- The windows between the phaser strip and the captain's yacht have clear shadows from indentations



Contrast with the new shot:



- The rim of the saucer is totally smooth, and the lighting is different too
- None of the saucer windows appear to have same indentations; this cannot be a result of the energy beam washing them out because it occurs before the energy beam energizes


There are instances of CGI model replacement on the Bluray; I'm not sure why this couldn't be one as well.

Also:

DaveJB wrote:I'm guessing the problem existed even at SD resolutions, because the small model apparently got ditched at the end of the first season and replaced by one which was midway in size between it and ILM's model.

This is incorrect. The four-foot model replaced the six footer, because Image D found it difficult to work with a model as large as the six-foot -D. The move to the four-footer was intended to make it possible to get more footage done within the constraints of television production time, as well as to achieve more dynamic movement than had been practical previously.

A comparison between the two:

The aforementioned CGI replacement shot, from Sins of the Father:




Although it might only be the Bird of Prey that was replaced in that scene.

Uraniun235 wrote:

Wow, I don't know if it's just the stronger lighting (as you say, the rim of the saucer is much darker), but that looks bad. In this version, the bottom of the saucer appears to be bulging (much more than normal) outwards and forwards. On the other hand, the secondary hull looks quite good and the increased detail is obvious.

(edited for clarity)

Uraniun235 wrote:
A comparison between the two:

To me that looks like the difference between the normal E-D and the one from Yesterday's Enterprise.

There was a good deal of footage accumulated with the six-footer that was reused throughout the entire run of the series, but starting sometime in the third season, all new ship footage was created with the four-foot model.