B5 Special Effects Remake (attempt)

Please tell me in your version the Omegas will fire their secondary and defensive weapons.

One of the problems i have is that i cant deviate from the original scenes. That means the fx scenes must be of the same length as the orginal so a 128 frame fx scene in the original has to be 128 frames in the new version because if i would shorten or lengthen the scenes the video and audio would become asynchronous.

But i could of course change elements in a scene so yes i could do that and i am glad that you came up with that idea because its really tempting.
I would need help tho because i dont want to violate canon.

AWESOME JOB!

I can't believe I missed this. It all looks great! I'm only sorry I can't help out ...

Are you gonna model damage on the ships, too?

We really need to get on the stick and start actually trying to do this.

If it were possible to find several CGI artists willing to donate the time, we could probably re-do every CGI shot in the show.

Contact the guys who worked on The Babylon Project @ Hard-Light Productions. There is a FREE fan-made Standalone B5 DVD game

Here's the Intro from the game. All are in-game generated shots.
(TBP Intro YouTube Vid

[TheTechMaster]

Actually, you should pad yourself by 6 frames. Three and the beginning and three at the for the sake of dissolves which may need to be re-done to avoid overlap with the old footage.

And we really do need to turn this into a cumulative effort between all of us with Lightwave 3D.

Re-Producing the FX for "Season One" will be the easies as it has the fewest CGI shots of ANY season.

Live-Action shots that cannot be re-rendered without blue-screen can be done with CGI models of the characters and careful tinting of the helmets.

If we can get nine people together with Lightwave, we can re-render every scene in Babylon 5.

We just need to get two people doing animation work. Two people doing lighting. Two people adding extra special effects and everyone else rendering the completed work as Wide-Screen HD at 30 FPS.

We CAN do this.

I wish I could help... but I don't have Lightwave or even a decent computer...

[Tigerclaw]

I wish I could help... but I don't have Lightwave or even a decent computer...

Well, you can help in other ways, like researching and popping B5 into the DVD and figuring out time stamps for us.

I'd LOVE to!

... popping B5 into the DVD and figuring out time stamps for us.

... but what does that mean?

Finding out when CGI shots are?

[TheTechMaster]

Yes. As well as figuring out how long they are.

I can do that.

As it so happens, I'm rewatching the whole series anyway.

I just started the 3rd season. I'll write down the times for each episode and put them up here. Do you even want the little transitions where they show the outside of the station and stuff? Or Mars? Or the Centauri Homeworld?

[TheTechMaster]

I just started the 3rd season. I'll write down the times for each episode and put them up here. Do you even want the little transitions where they show the outside of the station and stuff? Or Mars? Or the Centauri Homeworld?

Yes. AND any scene in which we have special effects combined with people. Those will be the biggest problem for us to fix. In some cases we may very well have to build CGI expansions of scenes in the show, like in C&C or Starfury Cockpit shots.

[TheTechMaster]

You know, I don't think we would have too much trouble, after all, with the CGI FX shots that were slapped into B5.

For example, that scene with Ivanova giving orders in her Starfury in "Severed Dreams". Why try to mesh that footage with something else? Why not simply show her Starfury from an Exterior shot as fighters form-up on her and follow her orders?

Sure, that means the actress gets less "face time" but who the hell cares? She's been paid already.

The big problem I see are when CGI shots were used with the live-action shots aboard the station. THAT will be an ouch to re-render. Like that whole scene where Sinclair and Talia were riding the the train, or when Sinclair was sitting in the garden and looking up at the plate separating Red-Sector from Green-Sector.

Abraxas, as you go back and re-watch B5, take particular care to let us know when we've got scenes like that which are going to bitch-slap our re-animation efforts.

A quick suggestion: I've been re-watching season 1 lately and some of the fx shots could do with re-choreographing, I'm thinking in particular of the early fights with the raiders.

Also, as I'm sure a few people will want to help with finding the time stamps etc, is there a standard format that would be helpful? and where should they be put when done?

[TheTechMaster]

A quick suggestion: I've been re-watching season 1 lately and some of the fx shots could do with re-choreographing, I'm thinking in particular of the early fights with the raiders.

Agreed. We don't have to make it a shot-for-shot remake. We can take some artistic license, so long as our key scenes still hold fast to the available sounds in the show.

Also, as I'm sure a few people will want to help with finding the time stamps etc, is there a standard format that would be helpful? and where should they be put when done?

Just post them here and we'll make use of them.

Hi, everyone. I have not been on the forum for a while. Life has me altogether too busy - it's a long story... and not one to be told here in this thread. However, I do have some comments that may apply. Keep in mind that while I do appreciate good video, I am an AUDIO guy, so that's what my comments pertain to. The below is from an e-mail I sent a fellow audiophile / engineer / B5 fan:

I was watching an episode of B5 tonight, "Severed Dreams" from the 3rd season DVDs that my brother gave me for Christmas, and I was pondering that while the audio is pretty clean, and thankfully free of the gosh-awful 100 Hz boom that seems to be recorded onto almost all audio-video material, these days, the audio track is in fact missing just about all the info. under about 100 Hz or so. That's pretty disappointing, on a DVD!

I even took the grill off one of the speakers to see if maybe there was some really low stuff, under the tuning frequency of the woofer cabinets, that I was therefor missing. But, no... no flutter or even significant cone excursion, even at pretty high levels, all the way through. Gee... you'd think that the destruction of a couple of Earth-Force destroyers, among other things, would generate at least SOME low frequency vibes.

I ought to put the audio track through a real time analyzer, but, the above tells me what I need to know. Contrast that to, say, standing near the engines of a freight train, starting to pull a string of 80 fully loaded coal hoppers from a dead stop. THAT's vibration. The space shuttle ride at NASA is even more fun - but that's getting beyond the capability of even exceptional subwoofer systems. Still... no bass below 100 Hz???

Now, I'll grant you that I have never been on a large vessel being blown up or rammed (perhaps the water damps out some of the vibration?) But, you can't tell me that two immense spacecraft colliding (the Churchill ramming the Roanoke) isn't something that those on board both would not feel all the way to their tailbones! Either make a real effort to at least somewhat simulate that, or, assume you are not on board, and then of course not hearing / feeling anything through the vacuum of space -- but who does that on TV or in the movies? That's no fun at all!

Possibly, for the TV show, it was assumed that powerful low end would not work so well on the typical cheapy speakers in TV's. But, why not "get it right" for the DVD's?

Star Trek DID "get it right" (at least on the Telarc CDs of the audio). I used to sync the VHS tape of "The Klingon Battle" with my CD of such. And, that CD on an exceptional home system or a really good clean car system is just freakin' awesome: You REALLY feel like you are ON that Klingon Battle Cruiser...

I think one of these days I'll bring in the DBX Subharmonic Synthesizer I picked up some time ago, and try it out on our system in the living room. That might add some fun to B5!

Now, I have not seen the most recent B5 productions, after Crusade, so, possibly they are better. But my guess is that with a little EQ, application of said Subharmonic Synthesizer, and perhaps some dynamic range expansion, "B5 audio" could be upgraded to be pretty darn impressive.
Combine that with the video work you all are doing, and you'd have something one could take to, say, the Consumer Electronics Show. With really good A/V equipment, you would just knock peoples' socks off. (Most of the audio in the A/V at CES is pretty poor, to be honest.)

The battle scene from Severed Dreams has, I think, the potential to be the talk of CES, in 2010.