B5 Special Effects Remake (attempt)

Greetings.
I am not sure where to start but i am currently trying to redo the fx on one B5 episode.
I know that some scenes cannot be redone like those with actors and fx in one shot but i really want to see how it would look like with some new effects.
I am not an expert on special effects so its quite possible that it will look much better with the old fx in the end


Over the years my hobby work with lightwave was limited to stills only so all that animation stuff is pretty new to me


I worked on this for the last 3 days and i got about 4-5 seconds of footage.
So this personal project will take a "very" long time.
I am not sure if this of interest to anyone here because this is no official stuff and its not canon,but i am trying to match the animations as good as possible.

Now a few pictures of the animations i have done so far
I let you guess on which episode i am now.













All fx elements will be 1280x720,thats one of the reasons why its taking such a long time plus whenever an omega is in the scene rendertimes go through the roof. The omega mesh(done by Meurig) has more than 1 million poly and my pc can only handle one at a time

I know that the lightning is not the same style like in the series but i decided to use my own style of lightning.

Holy crap that is a beauty shot of an Omega.

What software are you using? Lightwave?

Its really beautiful.

I know you said you are doing your own style of lighting, but it looks like you are missing a couple point lights along the hull

Thx

Good point with the lights. There are few running lights but i will add some more to enhance the overall look.
Yes i am using lightwave

running lights, thats what I meant. Its really amazing what the right lighting will do for a model. I've worked with lightwave as well, playing around with the classic B5 models as well as trying out the modeller on my own. I've rendered some models that looked really poor until they were lit right. Not saying yours are bad, just there are a couple details I remember on the Omega, like some red lights along the center of the rotating section.

Are you doing full video or just still frames? What version of LW do you have?

I can't wait to see more!

Those are shots from animations. Although the one with the omega isnt finished. I took a look at the original fx work and there are no more running lights than on the one i am using.

Here a reference picture from the show



The reason why you cant see much of the running lights is that they are animated and in that frame they are not on full brightness.
I will try to add some more lights but to be honest i dont know if my pc can handle more details on that ship.
I need around 30 mins per frame with an omega and sometimes lightwave displays an error that it ran out of memory during a render.


P.S.
I am using Lightwave 9.5

I'm gonna keep asking questions I love playing with lightwave, I really wish I could afford a copy of the latest edition. Been working with 6 forever Only ever done it amature, been thinking about taking classes.

What are your system specs? I just ordered a ton of new parts and am going to be building a new computer, I am curious how it will compare.

For the Omega in the background, you can probably get away with using an older/lower quality model since you are having so much trouble with that one on screen. But you're right, you got all the lights seen in the shot! I guess the running lights varied.

I started with Version 5 many years ago I am a complete amateur too I would really like to work in that kind of business but i guess it will be extremely difficult to get into it as an amateur.
By the way taking classes would be very expensive.
At the moment i am using an Intel Core 2 Duo@ 3Ghz and 2GB Ram but i really need more ram as Lightwave is soaking it up pretty fast.

Concerning the omega,yes i could use an older public version but i guess it would be noticeable with that kind of resolution. I guess i will try to render it out in separate passes and combine it again in post.

[TheTechMaster]

I was thinking to doing this exact same thing!

I have Lightwave. Is that the program you are using? Perhaps we should pool our resources so we can have multiple machines rendering scenes in wide screen HD that would be compatible with B5.

That is an interesting idea
I am using Lightwave 9.5

Which version do you have?

[TheTechMaster]

I am using Lightwave 8.3 because I haven't upgraded to Vista. Hardware is a Core 2 Duo E6850 using an P35 motherboard with 8 Gig DDR2.

Best thing to do would be to have one person set-up the animation, one person to set-up the lighting, one person to add details and FX and everyone render in order to maximize production.

While I'm doubting it (it's been a while since I've really played with lightwave) does a GPU have *any* influence in a systems capabilities to render in Lightwave?

I think the first version of LW I ever worked with was 4. Long long ago on a computer with less ram than my thumbdrive.

You should try a lower polygon one before you rule it out. It IS a long way in the back ground, and if you didn't put too much lighting on it and left it mostly to silloette, I think it would be alright.

How much did the model of that one cost?

And.. LW 9.5 requires vista? Lame

Wow thats impressive dude. I have some Maya experience so I'm sure if you're looking for people to help with rendering etc I'll be able to get my head aroud lightwave.

Beautifull indeed !

Well done, congratulations Lemon Wolf !

When will we see whole sequences ??

I cant wait

Excellent work Wolf, keep up the good work.

Thx
But most of the credit has to go to the people who made those B5 meshes and released them to the public.

@lennier
I have done just a few seconds yet because its very time consuming and i dont really have that much webspace or free traffic to upload 1280x720 raw material but i will try some video codecs for a half decent compression.

@l33tpenguin
I wish Lightwave would support rendering with the GPU but unfortunately it doesnt.
Regarding Lightwave 9.5 you dont need vista for it. I am not sure what you mean by how much the model costs but all models in this project are freely available models and i will give credits to their creators in the credits if i ever get that far

@TheTechMaster and Temporal_Mechanic
Thx for you offers and i think its a very nice idea to split up the workload but there is one issue Lightwave 8.3 lacks several features that are needed in the render process like the photorealistic motion blur and the perspective camera.