The first CGI Enterprise from 1987

P5ych0p4th

I’ve recently stumbled upon this little documentary:



I believe it’s from the TNG BluRays but I hat never seen it before. Maybe it’s news to some of you, too.

While I’m glad, they didn’t go this route, since the TNG Vfx are still amazing to look at, you’ve got to admire the quality of the CGI. I hat no Idea, that level of quality was even possible back then. The one shot, where you see the briefing room interior and the one wide shot especially.

Would be interesting to see, what TNG with CGI effects from that Era would have actually looked like.

evil_genius_180

Yeah, that's on the Blu-rays. While it's certainly great for its time, the practical models they wound up using definitely look a lot better. I do believe they did most of their space backgrounds in CGI, though, and you can tell certain things like the crystalline entity are CGI.

Freak

That Documentry was only available for the Blurays that was sold at Walmart.
It did not come on the discs, but available as a free downloads on buying it.

View the video while you still can, as it keeps getting pulled.

evil_genius_180

Hm, then it may not be on my Blu-rays. I've not watched all of the special features. Hell, I haven't even watched the whole series on Blu-ray.

I'd never actually seen that before, that was interesting. I read somewhere that they'd tried CGI for the effects, maybe on Memory Alpha.

Tralfaz

I just watched this a day or so ago. Very interesting.

P5ych0p4th

@evil_genius_180 ... same for me ... I think, the Whole of HD TNG was added to Netflix a week after I bought the Blu-ray Boxset ... so I‘ve just watched some of the documentaries on it, yet never came about this one. Now I know why 😁

There‘s also some Test footage out there of the Effects House, that did Enterprise, from when the were competing for doing the TOS remastered VfX. It looked so much better than what CBS‘ in house team did.

evil_genius_180

You mean that Emmy winning team from Enterprise? Yeah, I'm sure their work would have been fantastic. The stuff they did for Enterprise 20 years ago still holds up well today. I don't know if Doug Drexler was part of that group, but it's a good possibility since he worked on Enterprise. However, I remember him mentioning once on his blog that his crew put in a bid for that TOS job and were outbid. You know, those people who won Emmy awards for Battlestar Galactica. I don't want to insult the team that did the actual TOS remaster, they did a competent job, but it definitely could have been better.

I don't understand the exclusive documentary on only Walmart boxed sets. Usually, you get an extra that comes with boxed sets at stores, not an actual different disc. But, it does happen. I got my TNG set from Amazon. I just looked at my boxed set and I definitely don't see that documentary listed. I say this because I've gotten store exclusive stuff off of Amazon before. Back when I bought the Star Trek Online Collector's Edition, I got the Gamestop exclusive boxed set from Amazon.

P5ych0p4th

@evil_genius_180 ... I don’t know, if it was common back then, to have more than one effects house working on a show, but it was probably the team around Drexler. It was on small Video about the remastering and it was only two shots, but those looked really great. They especially captured the movement of the TOS ships perfectly, which CBS Digital almost never got right. It basically looked like big budget movie effects from the late 60s with modern day compositing. Which is pretty much, what it should have been.

Then again. Without the formation of CBS Digital we might have never gotten the TNG Remaster, so there’s that. I’d also love to see DS9 in HD but there simply isn’t enough interest there. Especially since the whole thing would be quite a bit more expensive than TNG, which supposedly didn’t sell all that well. Maybe if Netflix does buy the licensing rights, but I don’t see that happening.

evil_genius_180

DS9 is also more complex. The show relied heavily on CGI in its later seasons and that was all done by Digital Muse, which closed down 20 years ago. So, none of those elements likely exist anymore and, even if they did, would have to be rebuilt. So, don't expect DS9 or Voyager to be done, ever. Foundation Imaging also worked on Voyager, and they're no more too. In fact, their computers were all sold as part of their bankruptcy settlement, which is why the version of TMP they did on DVD can never be redone without totally redoing it too.

I'd imagine TNG didn't sell on Blu-ray as they'd hoped. Blu-ray technology hasn't caught on the way they'd hoped it would. Plus, a lot of people already paid about $100 per season (in the US, I'm not sure how much it was elsewhere) for the DVDs, or bought the whole series later at a reduced price. Asking them to re-buy all of that on Blu-Ray is asking a lot. I only bought that because I got it at a deep discount for an anniversary sale.

P5ych0p4th

@evil_genius_180

Didn’t they use some of the original cgi elements rendered in highere resolution for the DS9 Documentary? Looked great. But even if those were still around, DS9 was ridiculously expensive in its last seasons. In today’s money some of those Dominion War Episodes came to almost 8 Million Dollars. So they reused Shots a lot. I believe, not a single new Battle shot was done for the Season Finale, because there simply wasn’t any money left. So on top of cleaning up the live action elements, up scaling the video material and redoing/recompositing the original vfx shots, you’d have to so some completely new battle scenes for those parts of the show (at least I believe, you should; would be a great selling point, too)

So yeah ... likely never. That’s, what frustrates me so much about the new shows. They have the budget and the artistry (at least Discovery does) and they waste it on this uninspired mess.

Would be interesting to know, how much money a remaster costs compared to a season of let’s say Picard. I mean they would get a lot of People watching, if they were to do DS9 and especially Voyager and release them at a rate of say two episodes a week. I don’t live in the US but I would totally pay for CBS AA, in that case. Maybe combined with an Aftershow for the Episodes and a small making of (Doctor Who confidential, if anyone remembers those) ... you’d get all the people hating on CBS right now on board immediately and keep them paying for a good 3 years. There has to be money in that 🤔

Freak

@evil_genius_180 if you had gotten the TNG Blu-ray from Walmart you would have been given the code to DL that feature. It was not on the disc itself.
Walmart paid extra to have that as an exclusive.

@P5ych0p4th there is a demand for DS9 in HD or even 4K. The problem is the only way for CBS to get the money back on doing the remastering is from physical media. Which people are not buying anymore.
Though that might change. With Disney making changes to classic films (they CG longer hair to cover Daryl Hannah Bum in Splash as she running into the water.)
Then you got Amazon being taken to court for removing content people have paid for. Though it does state in there T&T that any digital content you "buy" is not yours to own, it is only available to you while Amazon has the rights to have it on their service. So in another words your just renting it. Makes the case for keeping Physical Media around.

As for the issue of the CG element being lost for DS9, that not the case. Even though Digital Muse is closed. The artists that worked on the show kept all the files.
It just a case of CBS finding them all. Though I understand that when the documentary was being made. Ira Steven Behr was offered any file for the CG elements he need. But there was about a dozen that could not be found.
So if they where to do a remastering of DS9, those elements would have to be recreated.


I don't see it happening anytime soon. But I understand Paramount is thinking about Remastering all it back catalogue of films so they can be preserved and future proofing them.
With Paramount and CBS now being back under one roof and DS9 being a Paramount Production. It could happen.
I just hope it sooner than later.

evil_genius_180

Freak wrote: »

@evil_genius_180 if you had gotten the TNG Blu-ray from Walmart you would have been given the code to DL that feature. It was not on the disc itself.
Walmart paid extra to have that as an exclusive.

Ah, I see. The digital code extras.

P5ych0p4th

Freak wrote: »

The problem is the only way for CBS to get the money back on doing the remastering is from physical media.

@Freak ... you know ... I don't think that's the case. The suits at Viacom might think that but I don't believe it to be true. Streaming Services obiously make money, that they put in new productions. Getting and keeping subscribers is a little more dificult, that generating money form sales, but both obviously works.

So a deal, where CBS remasters the shows, and Netflix pais money for the international distribution should more than cover the costs, especially if you spread the release out over 2 or 3 Years (it's 14 Seasons of TV after all). And with a making of/aftershow there's even potential to sell Ad-Space for even more money.

Now ... my background is in law (with a little philosophy and medicine), not in economics, so I can't actually calculate this. But given, how streaming generates money and that this should still be cheaper than an actual new season of a show, it should work even on the economic side of things.

Not to mention the ammount of good will you'd get from all the fans that have a problem, with all those Kurtzman-produced shows.

evil_genius_180

Twelve months of CBS All Access with ads comes up to $71.88. That's just the subscription, then you add the ad revenue onto it. Honestly, people are probably more likely to pay that due to the fact that it's in small monthly payments, rather than shelling out over $100 for a DVD or Blu-Ray set at once. Though, if they want anything with streaming to be successful, they need to go international with it. Either take CBS All Access international or partner with a service that's already international, like Netflix.

Freak

CBSAA is dead, and it being put together with Viacom's other assets and being relaunched as something else. From what I have read, they are planning to take it internationally, but I can't see that working. There are already to many streaming service.
Here and in the UK we got Netflix and Amazon Prime being the most popular. Then you got NOWTV which has everything that Sky shows. plus Disney+ and Britbox and that lunched this year.

Speaking about CBS content appearing on Netflix. There is a rumour flying around that Netflix could be buying ViacomCBS, given that it stoke and fallen so far, and the debt they are in. It means there assets are worthless at the moment.
Netflix won't buy it outright just the bit and peace's they want, a bit like what Disney did with FOX. Midnight Edge did a video on this last week.
If Netflix does pick and chose what they want from ViacomCBS, it means they don't have to honour any current contracts. So it would be bye bye Kurtzman. If they buy it out right, they do have to honour the contracts.


On a side note, I have checked Bluray.com and it is showing that Paramount has realised a bunch of classic 80's movies in 4K. So you never know about DS9 or Voyager getting remastered.

P5ych0p4th

If not the shows, they could at least do a decent boxset of the movies in 4K. I recently bought them on amazon video and all those versions are terribly confusing.

The movies up, to Frist Contact should be pretty easy to do in 4K. Just some cleanup and you‘re good to go. Maybe some CGI on the TMO Directors Cut. Insurrection end Nemesis already don‘t hold up that well, when it comes to the CGI, so they probably need a little more Work for a 4K release.

Then again ... I think almost no one is really buying 4K Discs 🤷🏻‍♂️

Freak

If they do, do the movies, then I hope we get the Directors cut for STII:TWOK and STVI:TUC for better films than the theatre cut. They have not realised them since the early 00's on DVD. The Blu-ray realised is just a crap up res of the Standard DVD they realised in the late 00's.

The only reason no one is buying 4K is that there are not to many player out there.
That could change at the end of the year with Sony realising the PS5.

MadKoiFish

no, no one buying 4k cause the players are crap. Sit through adverts and loads of PGAs or whatever they are called on BRD (basically content you have to watch and cannot skip or force past to get to the menu to play the film) not to mention loads of stupid copywrong DRM BS when you go to watch the film needing "UPDATES" and only if your lucky to own hdw that is still updated.

Most people I know who buy 4k brds instantly crack and rip them to a NAS for playback to get around all the annoying DRM crap. Watching a proper 4k everything film as a remuxed not recompressed rip is something else. Sadly a lot of films are still upscales or have SFX upscaled as most of that is rendered out to the film 2k format. (this is not 2560X1440 but 2048X1080)

I am not sure how many of the old trek films would hold or take too good to 4k. Maybe the 4k and hdr format could carry more of the films color for a richer level of color and tonal range etc. I would probably spring for a decent directors cut of them in 4k or least a remastering of them with a 4k pallette/hdr color depth even if the video content is 1080p.

PS5 wont change this stupidity, that is IF it even will have a disc player in it.

I think FI folded soon after ENT.

Eden FX did a sampler of TOS remastered. CBS blew it off as too expensive to do as a contract. Doug worked for the design team. So no he was not part of that. BUT he did do a Connie as a proposal. This is the one he built TO scale with the 11footer. Least I think it was built for the TOSR proposal. I think eden did the work after as a example of what they would have done vs a proposal to CBS.

hate this site but it has the best article on the edenFX stuff
https://trekmovie.com/2006/09/08/more-images-from-edenfx/

FI assets well, some people have them. Well models not scene builds and render projects. If anything they would have to reconstruct everything from scratch in a similar way they did for the tng brds where shots were not around or they added to or altered stock footage. So if they had all the models redoing all the animations and scene files would be a issue.

The DS9 sfx in the doc what we left behind was done by IRML if I remember right. It was not made with CBS assets or anything relating to DS9 original content. You can find it all on youtube.
[video]

[video]

not sure if he used assets from the show, you could just pm him and ask I guess. >_> I think he just made them or borrowed them from someone.

P5ych0p4th

@MadKoiFish ... thanks for clearing that up!

What don‘t you like about trekmovie.com, if you don’t mind me asking?

MadKoiFish

The behavior of the posters there and admin there censor people who go against the mass opinion. Just as a observer it is highly acidic. Also seen critical opinions get edited and or censored. Site was a good place back in 2011 or so as they reported unbiased but somewhere it seems it changed. Reports and posts now are all very biased.


Also for some reason I keep thinking eden FX sprouted from FI or am I wrong? Too long ago to remember lol.

Ah fing google!
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Eden_FX

HEH watching TNG s7, tiz a crushy grainfest. Forgot so much carpet was all so 90s mauve! Need to screen cap a mess of this crap for my galaxy! I miss the 90s a lot but I do not miss the house color schemes and furnish fittings all that ugly gold tan mint-green and mauve. . . heh. The talk about it relax no jarring colors era. . . lol. As chyrosran22 on yt says HEEEEEDDDDIIOUSSSS

P5ych0p4th

@MadKoiFish

Yeah, their articles seem a bit biased, I give you that. However I‘ve written some long comments on how I don‘t like Picard or Discovery, that were certainly debated but not censored or anything.

As for how civil the discussion is ... well most online communities are pretty toxic, especially when it comes to fandom. Really sad to see really.


On the TNG aesthetic ... while the Color schemes don‘t hold up, most of the interiors still look pretty futuristic. You have to give it to the production designers, to get that part right (Herman Zimmerman, I believe). It‘s so hard, to give a SciFi show that timeless look, that still looks futuristic even 30 years down the line. Especially most shows and movies in the 70s failed hard on that front 😁

And who knows ... maybe mauve will make a HUGE comeback in the 2360s 😜

MadKoiFish

Maybe the comments area is not as bad as it once was. As debates were more like children fighting and slinging insults over any real discussion. Regulars or least back then people who were like camped out there would just jump on some people and flay them for just posting. moderators would quickly silence posts that would go after any of these "regulars" But never moderate those people for doing worse to other posters.

Yeah it just had hints at the era. I think it was only in early season 1 eps that one hall that had the alcoves and seats in that had anything really strong of the early mid 90s flair as well as that touch of late 80s. I cannot find a pic but it was a intersecting hall off the main corridors for quarters. It likely got redressed early on. But it had some of that gross patterned fabric that was very early 90s. Actually lived in a flat that in the lobby they had couches with that fabric on.

TNG and alter trek I think avoided the niche fads by always looking at the newest tech fabrics and the like. Instead of going wild with trends in furnishings. As for the set designs I think the neutral colors help in that regard also cannot go wrong with grey accents. That and TNG went on air just before the huge mid 90s push for alot of the horrid design choices of that era. Think HOMETIME tv show as that introduced so much of that look. Fake marble walls, gold trimmed shower stalls and molded carpet. The light oak finish wood trim.

Given how all this pseudo retro is so in now mixing 50s and 70s stuff and early 80s nostalgia by kids who were born after the century mark the whole 90s watered down style might return in a few years. lol
Im shocked I do not see kids running about with NEON clothes and BA surf tshirts. heh I so remember that fad neon silkscreens and those surf shirts. Back when logos and brand identifiers were king and of social value.

Freak

Is IRML still around, I have not seen him in donkeys.


@MadKoiFish as for your question on the PS5 having a disk drive. Yeah it will and the bluray player will be 4K. Also as it uses the same architecture as the PS4, it will be backwards compatible. I just hope it will work of the PS4 Discs so you don't have rebuy the games digitally.
We should find out more about in the next few months as it planned for release at the end of the year.

With Disney cutting or digital altering films scenes from films and the Digital content you think your are buying from Amazon being taken away. I can see people going back to physical media even if it just to rip it.

I just found out that even though Disney gave Daryl Hannah longer hair to cover her bum as she runs into the water in Splash. They have not edited X-Men: Days of Future Past, where you get to see Hugh Jackman bum. So they are not consistence on what there are changing.

MadKoiFish

It was not a "question" but a statement. I have since seen some press releases. It claims to contain a player. Either case a stupid console will not drive 4k brd sales.

Only way to really save it is to dump all the consumer abuse with drm macrovision and region crap and just release it. People ripping or sharing the content will happen no matter what. Hell if anything the DRM drives it. Punishing the abiding purchaser is not a way to sell a product. But there is more motivation to make physical media more annoying to push streams and non physical media resources as it costs far less and soon is going to cost the consumer just as much or more.

Oh also the latter TNG films are all likely only 2k. They would have to re-scan them or even re composite them to 4k. I would have to recheck things but I think only generations was mostly optical printing after that it was all digital. Meaning it is stuck at whatever rez it was mastered to in digital. Either case CBS would likely do what most companies have done and upscale the 2k and make "fake" 4k releases.

Freak

Well Paramount did that we with the blu-rays of the films.
Reason why I did not pick them up on Blu-rays.

When Paramount now releasing it back catalogue in 4K. It will be interesting to know if they have up scaled it or remastered it.

MadKoiFish

There are sites that log that stuff.
https://4kmedia.org/real-or-fake-4k/
https://www.digiraw.com/DVD-4K-Bluray-ripping-service/4K-UHD-ripping-service/the-real-or-fake-4K-list/
https://real4kbluray.com/

though there are things to consider such as HDR etc. As a HDR fake4k might look better than a 1080p brd without. It is one major reason people feel ripped about 4k as the fake thing is now a trope so even if all new stuff is not upscaled, well. heh.

Also these lists mostly only refer to the final master not any possible upscales in production. Such as sfx rendering rez. Also left out is the scaling method some are good some are terrible. Some sharp others fuzzy but worse are ones with temporal artifacting noise of grime in moving objects.

There is one site I saw that listed a more detailed breakdown such as shot in X system and camera edited in X sfx rendered at X etc. Been looking for it for the last few days now ran across it 5 or 6 mo ago when I was making a list of films for a want list.

Older shows I have taken to visiting rip sites to dl samples or view screen shots as those often show if the grading is ok or what level of quality is there. Some films just do not do so well. Same goes for 1080p stuff. Some of those older 80s~90s action flicks just look horrible. heh. I think it was young guns or something the brd was really yellow and so full of inverted grain vs the dvd. While others like outerlimits are worth getting as most of the eps are fairly good for the time.