exciting times

I am dusting off the audio file for the Federation. I will start working on a video. We will see if I can match the video action to the Gino Blaze soundtrack. As soon a Phil can send me his part of the Klingon Video I will add the soundtrack, submit it to Trekmovie.com and post up a download of the final file for everyone to have. We are trying to set up an interview with Mike in conjunction with the release of the Klingon Video.

Does anyone have a higher definition earth image I can use for our home planet? This is the first steps in the Federation intro. This one is only to 512 on the long axis by 256.

I understand the Phil is busy at school right now. That is why he has not had time to put the Klingon Video clips together and add the lens flare to the latest version. I could do a version of it and replace it later with his work.


Here is a update on the Federation. You do not need to tell me all that is wrong with the image. It is just a WIP so I could see how work is progressing. Thanks Vjeko for the updated Earth texture. That is also your star field in the background.

I would suggest adding bump and Specular maps to Earth. I can make them for you if you want. Bump texture would add an illusion of depth making clouds a bit 3D and adding some surface detail. Specular map would make the sun bounce off the sea part of the map more than from the ground which would make it more realistic.

Please, that would do nicely.

That looks great!

I would also suggest a specular map for the NX-01, If want send me the normal maps/textures and I'll make a specular one.

I will take a look as soon as I get done with the Klingon Intro. With Phil busy at school I have decided to make an interim version. We will see. I will send it to trekmovie and after posting here. That is if Gino can help me line up the audio.

i'm back, we are writing the last exam today
i will do the klingon intro today
i'm not sure that you sent me the correct resolution for the emblem kenneth, but i will check

I hope things went well with the exams. I will wait for the file. We will have two versions in any case. One will be YouTube with a title and credits. The other will be ingame without the add-ons.

I expected that i will have some free time today, but i spent the most of the day packing and preparing for shooting....
I will be back on monday and i will do the video then. I hope that isn't to late. Should i insert the supremacy team clip in the youtube version of the video?

by the way, everything you've done for the federation video look amazing

Have a great shoot. We will be here when you get back. This video will likely undergo a few revisions more before you see it in the game. For now I am getting ready to release what we have to Trekmovie.com. Send me your version when you get time for it and I will update from there. Your suggestions have all been very good. They have all been used in one way or another.

Qapla'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mu1kJ11eQY

YouTube

Thanks to everyone. It is not bad for a first try. So much has been done here for the first time. Let us hope they only get better. I will take suggestions on fixing this one but move on for now to the Federation.

I also sent this to Trekmovie.com in the hopes of getting some coverage and more fans to help. Be nice if anyone new pops in.

No video found for "http://www.youtube.com/my_videos_timedtext?video_id=0mu1kJ11eQY" .
What happened?

I had gone back in and added the links to our forums. You may have hit it while I was under the hood. Try the link again.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mu1kJ11eQY

Ok! Got to it with a workaround. Real nice!

I can fix the star issue when I now render the ingame version of the video. This version will lack the title and credits. It should be done before I forget where I put all the parts used to make it.

I see that you corrected the link. Thanks!
Yeah!
We've been exchanging and changing this video a lot!

Here is an updated version of the Klingons. It has a fade out on the audio at the end and a load of stars.

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

I just check on the maps for the NX01 and it only comes with image maps. It is not so bad though. The objects are cut up into hull parts and glowy parts so you can do much of the light properties at the material level and then compositing to get a really glowy glow. You can also fake some normal map just by turning it on for the image map and tuning the level of influence. I do not think we have to halt production to rebuild the ship from the ground up.

Ok, I forgot to post this yesterday. This is just a Photoshop composite of how the NCC-1701 orbiting Vulcan should look like. I've already made the Vulcan scene as a video but my PC isn't good enough to do the NCC-1701 scene. I've passed the blend file on to Kenneth, I hope that he will be able to do the scene and then send it to me for final blend with the Vulcan scene. This will only work if he can send me the video with transparent background, so my question is is it possible to render a video with transparent background?

Improved lighting:




I'll send you the scene now.

Here it is on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFY7IoBrVAg
I will need to change the motion to linear go get ride of that speedup and slow down. It would be better to render the planet with the ship. I will also work on the lighting and some compositing of the glow parts. File transfer the planet to me and I can put it in. I will send you what I have so far on the NX01.

Well is there a way of rendering video with transparent background because I did some post-processing on the planet, added a thin atmosphere, fixed the colors...

I also did the background for NX video, I'll upload it in a moment




The only video type that I know supports alpha channel is uncompressed .avi. When rendering try setting that as the file type and be sure to check rbga (as red-green-blue-alpha) as output so that the video stores all four channels.

This way we can post process more easily the static backgrounds and we get better result.

If you don't succeed at that at least give is a strong green background because I can filter it out later.

Can you also extend the motion to 5-6 seconds or atleast shorten the path because she's way too fast in this version. I miscalculated the speed (hey, it even happened to Spock, so...)


EDIT:
Here is the blending test:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWZuXtYlc24

It didn't blend quite as well because of the black background, if you make it green and send it to me I will be able to make it as close to the one in the episode as we are able to produce.

note: It looks like it's semi-cloaked, hehehehe

I do not know how to make the background render transparent in blender. One could render in a series of images and put a transparent on all the backgrounds. Easier than that though is just put the planet image in as a background as you render the ships in motion in bender. You can send me a render of the planets and I will animate the ships over each.

Sure, but the planets are not looking like that when I render them. There was quite a bit of post-processing in Photoshop to make them like this.

I learned a technique of the "green screen" can please you just render the moving ships on a green background and send it to me in HQ, I can do the rest.

I would do it myself but my PC isn't good enough to render it. The advantages of this are that we can additionally process static backgrounds in Photoshop and we have separate scene lighting that allows us to approximate the look more closely to the imagined scenes.

Please just give a chance to my technique. If it fails or simply fails to produce wanted results I will gladly give you all my resources and you can take over.


Here are before and after post-processing in PS of Earth and Vulcan to give you an example of what I mean.

I could put the "after" images in as a 2d background to look 3d with all your post production and animate over it. If you would rather edit all the frames of video to add in the back image after the fact it will save me a few minutes of work. You want that in .avi raw and not avi codex?

Mike asked for the videos in 1280 x 720 at 24 frames per second. I will time the animation to give enough frames to match the audio track.

Sorry I am so slow to work on this. I am working this weekend so time is limited.

No problem man. As I said, the best thing would be to render it over a bright green background and then I can easily blend it. My program has a function of making one color transparent in all frames of a video file (green is the best one for that unless when we will do the Romulans) so it's a 5 second job and it allows me to additionally adjust everything.

I finished two NX sequences and they are ready for rendering.

The animation looks nice. I still see two problems. When I do compositing to get glow and moving lens flare these features will extend out onto the green background. I would have to do a really bland animation to keep it clean enough for green screen. Also the original sequence in the show used a nice camera pan that follows the Enterprise. The fixed camera angles you have are not as interesting. I will do as you ask so we can see how it looks. I will set up the animation as soon as I can and send it to you to work on. Then I will see if I can do better building it like the original sequence.

I figure 12 seconds for the first sequence and 7 for the second out to 27 seconds on the audio.