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3DStar Trek: The Motion Picture - Light Trails Effect
animator0
Posts: 0Member
My first post of 2011. 
Recently (on top of the "Leaving Drydock" project), I've been working on a recreation of the original light trail warp effect from TMP (and TWoK). I'm attempting to make it as accurate as possible, using geometry instead of particles (which I found no practical method of using).
As it is now, the effect is almost physically complete and will soon require more thorough texturing/lighting. The lack of textures on the Refit (by Al) is simply to smooth the workflow.
Let me know what you think. Comments/criticisms always welcomed. n_n
Recently (on top of the "Leaving Drydock" project), I've been working on a recreation of the original light trail warp effect from TMP (and TWoK). I'm attempting to make it as accurate as possible, using geometry instead of particles (which I found no practical method of using).
As it is now, the effect is almost physically complete and will soon require more thorough texturing/lighting. The lack of textures on the Refit (by Al) is simply to smooth the workflow.
Let me know what you think. Comments/criticisms always welcomed. n_n
Post edited by animator on
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Looking good!
Not that far off, colors need a little adjusting, but other than that, all you need are some gradients or falloffs applied.
Oh also, note that the saucer gives of a dark blue streak or two as well, just like the pylons
Be sure to put the movie into an editor, and look at it frame by frame and make it last exactly as long as it does in the movie, otherwise it will not look perfect.
There is offcourse a bit of difference between trek I and trek II, mainly the stars, but I guess you did know this allready.
Good luck
By the way, I'm not sure exactly how accurate you're trying to be...but to show just how much of a Trek geek I am I'm compelled to remind you that when the Enterprise goes into warp her impulse engines shut down, so there shouldn't be any streaks coming from the impulse stack.
wjaspers, there is one small issue I have had to work around thus far; that being the management of the geometry itself. Is there some way to attach or link the vertices on the stationary end of the trails to a dummy, such that the trails will stretch with the ship automatically (eliminating the need to keyframe the ends to hold position)?
Buckaroohawk, can't understand how I managed to miss that one! Must have mistaken the trails on either side of the impulse engines (the lights shining on the saucer) for them being on. I am just as much of a Trek geek as you!
A general step-by-step explanation of how the effect is accomplished:
- Splines are drawn to match the individual shapes of each light source on the ship (there are slightly different methods, this is simply mine)
- Once complete, the splines are converted to polygons, then extruded (this creates vertices on the extruded ends which we will use for animation later).
- The extruded shapes are moved into place, such that each will trail simaltaneously (using an orthographic view does not place the geometry correctly along the z-axis).
- The individual trails are collapsed into objects (one object per source area; may not be the norm, just my method).
- The trail objects are linked to the ship mesh.
- Texturing/animation time.
Looks great though.
Problem with this method was as you mention, that one end follows the ship (which works perfectly), and one end stays stationary, or should stay stationary, but it doesn't. Somehow the stationary end "wiggle a bit forth and back, which is then counter acted by keyframing those ends. Did not have a solution to that, but maybe it could work binding (grouping) them to a dummy, never tried it. BUT, keyframing them is not that bad, you do it once, and you can use the scene over and over again with different camera angles. And btw, it ain't supposed to be easy
I have no problem with it being difficult (more interesting!), but a little less chaotic would be excellent. :P
Almost finished matching all of the sources. New update soon.
japetus: Thanks for the suggestion. I will try that and let you know how it goes.
EDIT: The Linked Xform modifier appears to work very well for this purpose.
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Think he is working on a version in AE.
Just tried the "unneeded" rendertime in max, takes about 4 secs a frame longer. Don't think you can beat that in AE.
Yea, using an echo effect, and blur of some kind, I use a zoom blur... it comes out rather nicely, it's a matter of getting the echo's close enough...
Well, you undoubtedly have a more powerful system than me, because your refit takes ~50 seconds to render @ 720p on my machine, by itself, lol.
Well, usually takes about a minute to render a whole animation in AE, prolly about 2 seconds a frame, with the effect, of course, I don't remember exactly.
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 12GB
1TB NVMe SSD, 2 x 1GB SATA SSD, 4TB external HDD
32 GB RAM
Windows 11 Pro
Almost all geometry has been added and I have switched all of it over to Linked XForms for the trailing. Last pieces will be for the tops and grilles of the nacelles.
I think it looks reasonable thus far, given a lack of any shading on the trails (for preview purposes I have reduced the visibility of the trails to make them transparent). Not sure if the blue might be a little strong or dominant, let me know what you think.
Average render time per frame is 20 seconds at 1280x720, so the trail geometry has not had much impact.
I've been reading up on the the whole Linked XForm modifier, and I still don't see how it is used to accomplishing the trailing...
Looks nice, but the trails seem to sharp... right now.
Yes, but don't you have like an 8-core Mac Pro... lol.
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 12GB
1TB NVMe SSD, 2 x 1GB SATA SSD, 4TB external HDD
32 GB RAM
Windows 11 Pro
I'm uploading a quick YouTube video to demonstrate uses of Linked XForms. You may find some of them highly useful.
Someone needs to create a plugin that allows the same affect to be achieved, I mean, how did they do it in the original version, with long exposure, or something...
ah, ok.
Cool, because I've looked all over, and nothing I come across shows anything useful, like one video I saw, was linking a camera to a car with Linked XForm, so the camera moves with the car, but I could do the same thing with the simple 'Select and Link.'
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 12GB
1TB NVMe SSD, 2 x 1GB SATA SSD, 4TB external HDD
32 GB RAM
Windows 11 Pro
I think the most frustrating thing in digital VFX is how difficult it is to replicate well the simplest long exposure-based photographic effects (it seems one has no choice but brute-force "echo time"-type plugins and such, which are rather processing time-costly).
By the way: Douglas Trumbull went back to the business of old-style VFX for Terrence Malik's "Tree of Life" and perhaps a few projects of his own. See TCM Festival: Hollywood Visionary Douglas Trumbull Working on Terrence Malick Movie. What I like most about Trumbull's oeuvre is how he often produces somewhat abstract imagery and the way he plays with light (2001's cosmic trip; TMP's warp jump, V'ger cloud flythrough, the wormhole, Spock's trip and so; Brainstorm's death tape sequences, etc.). I hope we get a bit of that back.
I knew it had to be something like that, I mean, something so simple, an After Effects plugin to do the same thing, I mean, Trapcode Shine, the effect it creates with a few tweaks and enhancements, could accomplish something like long exposure effects.
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 12GB
1TB NVMe SSD, 2 x 1GB SATA SSD, 4TB external HDD
32 GB RAM
Windows 11 Pro
Think the blue is a bit dominant, here a reference, (if you don't have it already)
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/twokhd/twokhd0356.jpg
Think you should do only the visible parts, in your picture, that would mean that the outher bright streaks should not be there, because the windows producing them are hidden by the nacelles.
I know, it is a b..ch to render, but quality takes longer to render.
Don't doubt once you hit the button render in AE it will be quick, what I meant is the time to set it up in AE.
But we'll see, guess you will do a tut on it once you nail it.
Everything is massively crude. What I wanted to know most was whether trails drawn in Photoshop would align OK to the animated 3D model or not. It seems they do. To make it look right one ought to study and replcate TMP's timings and elements sizes and looks, as they are so just right, and do lots of careful masking, but it seems quite practical if it is for just a couple of warp shots in a short movie.
NOTE: I've replaced the original with a better contrast one
True, but my computer is not only devoted to animations, nor does it have the muscle, I'm working on 4GB of DDR2 ram, and a Q6600 @ 2.4GHz.
It doesn't take that long in AE to set up, you render out the illumination pass, apply the echo to it, and with a few minute adjustments, and key frames, set the transfer mode to screen, over top the diffuse pass, and voila.
The trails shooting backward shouldn't happen, but as you said it's just a crude testing of the effect.
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 12GB
1TB NVMe SSD, 2 x 1GB SATA SSD, 4TB external HDD
32 GB RAM
Windows 11 Pro