What you’re viewing in this clip is an assembly of visual effects footage in various states of completion. The opener to Act II with the Enterprise sailing through the debris field is complete but for a planned re-rendering of the planet killer–I tweaked the model’s textures after I released test footage last month, and now it doesn’t match the appearance of the Doomsday Machine in the following scene. Speaking of which… the next sequence where the planet killer cuts loose on the Enterprise is semi-complete; there are about 20,000 more asteroids and the glowy blue dust cloud that still need to be added, and I may re-render the planet killer itself to give a better angle on the antiproton beam effect (right now, it’s kind of hard to see all four of the beams that lance together into one unified antiproton beam).

The rest of the visual effects from that point forward are actually old shots from my March 2008 attempt to complete this episode. I haven’t shown this footage to hardly anyone until today, so I hope it’s of interest for–if nothing else–comparison purposes with the visual effects that will eventually replace them in 2010.

I’ll be online sporadically until after the new year, but I welcome your comments in the meantime–I promise I’ll try to respond as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Blessed Kwanza, Festive Festivus and Happy New Year, everyone!

Onward with Act II!

And yes, I plastered a permanent “watermark” copyright on all of the live action footage from 1967. My intent here (indeed, my intent all along) is not to steal from Paramount/CBS Video or deprive them of a DVD sale. The original footage is posted merely to present my revised effects in the context of the original episode–nothing more. Hopefully, the constant watermark won’t be too annoying, but I feel that it’s necessary. ‘Nuff said.

doomsday machine

in Google, I don’t pop up until page 7 on the Web tab, page 5 on the Images tab and page 2 of the Videos. But if you enter

doomsday machine constellation

I suddenly jump to fourth place on the Web tab and the runner-up spot in Images (but am a no-show on the Videos… fooey).

Second place? Hmmph... you're #1 in my book

I guess there’s still some life in the old girl yet!

The Enterprise Approaches the Constellation

You can view the Teaser and Act I as one continuous sixteen minute clip by downloading the Windows Media Video (WMV) file from the following link:

Star Trek: The Doomsday Machine (Compressed ZIP file, 324,665,282 bytes)

Decompress the zip file and watch the movie on your local workstation–easy peasy!

I tried uploading Act I to Vimeo but their encoding process badly mangled the sound synchronization, so for now this is the only way to view Act I, I’m afraid. Hopefully I’ll be able to get this straightened out sometime this coming weekend.

(I’m terribly sorry, but I have (temporarily, I hope) removed all “Doomsday Machine” videos from my website… here’s why.)

We'll take her in tow

I’m really pleased with how this sequence turned out, but at the moment I’m very annoyed with LightWave 9.6 (the modeling and rendering software I’m using for this project). You don’t see them in this still (because I picked a frame where they didn’t manifest themselves!), but about a third of the 108 frames of the Enterprise in this sequence have little luminous “spots” roughly the size of one of the round portholes that randomly appear and disappear all over the saucer hull surface.

After a lot of digging around and consulting with professionals at some of the visual F/X forums I haunt, I’ve concluded that the spots are caused by a bug in LightWave’s rendering engine that has to do with the global lighting method I’m using on this project. When it works correctly, LightWave’s renderer is one of the best in the industry, but when it f***s up, it’s a pain to deal with. After almost a week of trying to debug what was going on, I gave up and rendered the scene as is, and am now hand-correcting the frames that have the spot artifacts.

One the theories about what is causing the bug to manifest itself is that I have a lot of small luminous objects on my model (e.g., the bussard collector volumetric lights, the little red lights on the bridge dome, etc.) which have been known to cause problems with LightWave’s “Monte Carlo” global lighting type. I think when I finish Act I I’m going to take a small project detour and investigate multi-pass rendering–this is a technique where you render parts of your scene in separate passes.

I already render each of the scene elements in their own passes (e.g., the Enterprise is rendered in one sequence, the Constellation in another sequence, the asteroids in yet another, etc.), but with multi-pass rendering you render aspects of your scenes in separate passes: the diffused color of objects in one pass, the lighting on those objects in another pass, the specular highlights in yet another pass, etc. What I’m hoping I’ll see is that the spotting artifacts will disappear (or at least be easier to isolate). But right now I have a deadline to hit and no time to experiement further, so mush!

(I’m terribly sorry, but I have (temporarily, I hope) removed all “Doomsday Machine” videos from my website… here’s why.)

Screencaps after the jump…

The Enterprise

Nothing left but rubble... and asteroids

The Enterprise enters System L-374

Every solar system in this sector blasted to rubble... and still no sign of the Constellation

Um Captain? I think we found the Constellation, sir

Look at that!

Red alert... red alert... man your battlestations!

These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise...

It's five year mission: To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations...

To boldly go where no man has gone before!

Another snapshot from the “dailies” while you wait. The color balance in this image is more like what you’ll see in the finished product (the Enterprise was way too dark in the frame grab I posted earlier this week).

Enterprise approaches the Constellation (click to embiggen)