Stargate Reference Information

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So you want to make a Stargate?

This article will discuss three related designs; the versions seen in the original 1994 movie, as well as the two TV shows Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. The design seen in Stargate Universe is entirely original, so it’s out of my scope. I want to go over not only the key features of the design, but also subtle differences that are sometimes missed when artists create the different variations.

The TL;DR is that the SG-1 stargate is a modification of the film stargate, so if you’re building either of those versions, you can source them both for reference material. The Atlantis stargate was built from scratch, so if you reference the SG-1 stargate while building that one (or vice-versa), you’ll run into confusing contradictions in terms of exact shapes and details. Despite how similar the Atlantis version looks to its predecessors, you can’t assume it matches them.

I’ll be illustrating this article with a mixture of screencaps, production documents, and photos of the original setpieces. The latter two groups are sourced from behind the scenes posts by production personnel, auction listings, and individual collectors, most notably, Les Enfants de MacGyver. If you’re collecting reference material for your own movie- or SG-1-style Stargate, there are countless photos of their original stargate components, disassembled and close-up, on their Facebook page.

The first thing to know is that all these stargates are made of nine identical segments which join together in the middle of each of the nine chevrons. There’s also an animated inner ring that contains some number of symbols which move within the stargate when a destination address is being entered.

The front face has several sets of repeating details. At the top are six irregularly spaced “buttons.” Immediately below that is a track of “arches.” There’s a series of blocks below them, just above the inner ring. Each block has two interlocking segments with an S-shaped seam between them. On the movie and SG-1 gates, there’s a set of smaller blocks on the bottom edge of the inner ring.

Below that are three tracks of engraved details. The top is a series of pill-shapes in clusters separated by circular dividers. Below that is a simple set of engraved rectangles, and below those are a pair of engraved lines that go around the inner rim in a zig-zag pattern, offset with occasional horizontal segments.

The inner rim has regularly spaced “emitters” which consist of three long greebles.

The rear face is similar to the front face, but omits the S-blocks, and the inner ring is replaced with a sort of conduit. The outer rim has an extension around the middle which is covered in an elaborate mosaic pattern.

There are nine chevrons equidistantly positioned around the ring. Each chevron consists of a clamp which is set inside a slot. The slot also has a mosaic pattern inside it. Above the chevron is a jewel1I call to the jewel the “Chevron Block” in my models, and the clamp simply the “Chevron,” but I’m using terminology from the production of the film for clarity in this article, rather than having the words “chevron” and “block” refer to multiple objects. Above the jewel, level with the rim, are four “wings.”

The Stargate’s outer diameter is exactly 20 feet. The ring itself is 2.5 feet thick, making the inner diameter 15 feet. Since you’ll probably be building out from the centerpoint using lathe and array tools in a 3D program, here are those figures as radii:

Outer radius: 10 feet / 3.048 meters
Inner radius: 7.5 feet / 2.286 meters

The first two stargates were ultimately hand-constructed, and may not exactly match the designed measurements, so I’m going to avoid any further figures, and explain the sizes of all the elements in relative terms.

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References
↑1 I call to the jewel the “Chevron Block” in my models, and the clamp simply the “Chevron,” but I’m using terminology from the production of the film for clarity in this article, rather than having the words “chevron” and “block” refer to multiple objects.

Miami Photowalk 17: Sunset Place

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This photowalk was meant to explore Sunset Place, an outdoor shopping mall in South Miami that’s slated to be demolished… eventually. I have some fond memories of the place, and I’ll be sorry to see it go. It’s also the closest high-grade movie theater, so once it goes, I’ll have to do without Dolby Vision until AMC opens a new one.

I managed to roam around half of the mall around dawn, as well as some interesting spots in the surrounding neighborhood. I even got a swag-bag from a grocery store that was having its grand opening.

Stargate Puddle Image and Animation for Physical Models

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With the recent release of the SG-1 and Atlantis Stargate desktop models from Master Replicas, I’ve seen more than a few people asking for images of the puddle effect they can print and insert into their model to make it appear to be active.

While a production-used animation loop of the puddle is available online,1This video was included in a large library of leaked video playback, and was used for the rear-projection puddle screen used to show the Stargate active in the background of scenes when people weren’t walking through it it’s compressed and relatively low-resolution. I rendered off a 4K image of my version of the puddle effect which should look a bit better printed .

PNG Version (10.3 MB)

EXR Version (Zipped, 159 MB)2Are there HDR printers? Just in case.

A lot of people are also using miniprojectors to make a live puddle on their models. I’ve uploaded a 38 minute puddle movie with opening, closing, and sound effects to YouTube. Here’s just the clip of the puddle loop by itself, if you’d rather download the file to run the movie indefinitely.

 

References
↑1 This video was included in a large library of leaked video playback, and was used for the rear-projection puddle screen used to show the Stargate active in the background of scenes when people weren’t walking through it
↑2 Are there HDR printers? Just in case.

Tech the Tech: The Ships of the White Star Fleet

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I’ve been working on a model of the White Star from Babylon 5, and have gone down the rabbit hole of cataloging and recreating the sets (at least, the one that’s visible through the ship’s forward windows). I’ve already done a post on the celtic knot designs decorate the bridges of the White Stars in season 4 and 5, so this is an overview of the design variations on the bridge set overall.

I’ll be illustrating each variation with a cutaway CG model of the bridge. To be clear, this version of the bridge has been modified to fit within the exterior shape of the bridge module on the ship, so it isn’t intended to be a perfect match to the original sets. That’s another project.

White Star 1

Throughout season 3, we only see the bridge of the original prototype White Star.1The White Star Fleet was introduced three episodes before the end of the season in 3×20 “And the Rock Cried Out, ‘No Hiding Place,'” but while we saw the other White Stars on the outside, there were still only scenes set on the original ship in the subsequent episodes. The bridge evolves over the course of the season, settling on its final form in 3×18 “Walkabout.” As it is a prototype that’s being tested in use, it does make sense in-universe for the bridge to be constantly modified.

This diagram is circa 3×08 “Messages From Earth,” the ship’s third appearance, but is consistent with its layout for the rest of the season.
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References
↑1 The White Star Fleet was introduced three episodes before the end of the season in 3×20 “And the Rock Cried Out, ‘No Hiding Place,'” but while we saw the other White Stars on the outside, there were still only scenes set on the original ship in the subsequent episodes.

Comparing the Homeworld Motherships

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After playing Homeworld 3 recently, I wanted to see how the Khar-Sajuuk and Khar-Kushan compared to the original Motherships (and, for that matter, how the original Mothership and Pride of Hiigara compared to each other) from the prior games, as well as Sajuuk an ancient ship discovered at the end of Homeworld 2 whose technology was incorporated into the next generation of Motherships, and the Kuun-Lan, the flagship in Homeworld: Cataclysm/Emergence, which is seen both its original configuration and its final appearance after several modifications over the course of the game. I extracted the models and texture maps from HWR and HW3 and set up this comparison scene. The scales are all directly as they came out of the game, cross-checked by the old trick of flying a fighter to one end and seeing how far the other one was with the move tool, so these are all to in-game scale.1The Kuun-Lan is at ~31% of the in-game figure, in accordance with the convention that the original Homeworld and Cataclysm/Emergence use feet as the in-game units, while the later games use meters. If anyone wants to use these images in another scale chart, the vertical edge of the image is 3,460 meters tall.

(Technically, the HW3 Motherships are upside-down compared to how they orient vertically in-game, but the top is their “hero” angle, and starboard is the usual perspective on the first two Motherships, so I had to compromise.)

However, I’m not entirely trusting of the in-game scale. After all, the original Homeworld’s manual says the first Morthership is “really” ten or twenty times larger than it is in-game. I made a second image, this time scaling the HW3 Motherships up so the size of their Hyperspace Core modules matched the similar feature on Sajuuk (the main cannon on the Khar-Sajuuk is clearly derived from Sajuuk, but the shape is different enough that there was nothing to scale-match), assuming since the ships from HW1 and 2 can all interact with each other in campaign and skirmish and are all Mothership-class, they’re all correctly sized relative to each other. There’s a little leeway involved, the two Hyperspace Core housings aren’t exactly the same shape, but this method makes the HW3 Motherships about 1.6 times longer than they are based on the in-game scale. The vertical edge of this image is 4650 meters tall, assuming the in-game scale for the HW1 and 2 ships is correct and they aren’t actually supposed to be twenty times larger.

I like this alternate scaling better, myself. Given how massive Sajuuk was compared to the Pride of Hiigara, I think it makes sense that a Mothership that was more-or-less built around it should be a similar leap in scale, revolutionary rather than the evolutionary change from HW1 to HW2. You can’t see it from this angle, but it also makes the Frigate launch bay and the fighter bays at the wingtips close to the same size as the prior Motherships’, rather than noticeably smaller, which is enough to make me wonder if the ship was scaled down after it had been designed for some reason. I did compare some of the other Homeworld 3 ships with their Homeworld 2 equivalents, and it appears if there was a post-design scale-change, the Motherships were the only vessels affected. Additionally, checking against the Hyperspace Core model (reused in Homeworld 3 from Homeworld 2 Remastered directly), there’s excessive amounts of room under the shaded circles on the Sajuuk’s module, the ends only barely exceed the circles of the Khar-Sajuuk’s module at the in-game size, and they’ll even fit centered under the domes of the Khar-Kushan’s module, properly rotated so they don’t collide (and the Khar-Kushan’s cores may not be the same shape or size as the three used in the Sajuuk and Khar-Sajuuk). So the smaller in-game scale for the ships is possible, even if I don’t personally like the idea of the ships echoing features of Sajuuk so closely but at a different size.

Acknowledgement to the original concept and 3D artists and developers of Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm/Emergence, Homeworld 2, Homeworld Remastered, and Homeworld 3. Thanks to ArkFlash for the Cataclysm/Emergence models. Homeworld 1 and 2 Remastered models were extracted with CFHodEd and Gearbox’s Modding Tools. Homeworld 3 models were extracted with UE Viewer and converted using Blender using this plug-in. All models were resurfaced and rendered in Lightwave.

 

References
↑1 The Kuun-Lan is at ~31% of the in-game figure, in accordance with the convention that the original Homeworld and Cataclysm/Emergence use feet as the in-game units, while the later games use meters.

Babylon 5 2×01 Effects Update Supplemental- The Three-Edged Sword

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The surprise Babylon 5 HD remaster came out on Blu-Ray recently. Something I was curious about was how difficult it would be to combine the 4×3 Blu-Rays with the 16×9 DVDs to get a 16×9 pseudo-HD version of the show, with the edges upscaled but the center using real film.

I did a quick test on a frame from “Points of Departure,” and the answer is “not as easy as I hoped.” I’ve tried this technique before, matching and blending the same film from two different releases (and, apparently, two different digital scans), and I’ve also run into this problem of the film not scanning perfectly flat, and having some amount of distortion. I’d have to do further research to see if there are tools to address this that I have access to,1It feels like a combination of technologies should be able to solve this; I’ve got two slightly different sources of the same ground-truth. The HD frame shows exactly how 3/4th of the SD frame should look after it’s upscaled, so it should be possible to have a computer program compare the two, adjust the color, size, rotation, and proportion of the SD frame to match the HD one as closely as possible, apply some ML upscaling (ideally using the very shot that’s being upscaled as training data so the computer can extrapolate the lost detail at the sides of the frame from the existing detail in the middle), and blend the two sources. I know all these features exist independently, but I have no idea how to get them all into one tool. There might also be some complications with the DVDs needing to be detelecined and having scanline issues in the raw data. so this is just a quick test and comparison using Photoshop. The vertical framing of the DVD and Blu-Ray don’t match exactly, and the DVD’s colors are a little more contrasty, so I had to make some adjustments to match better.

First off, the test image merging the two sources. I upscaled the DVD frame using an AI tool, color-corrected it as described above, and added some grain, while softening the border between the HD frame and the widescreen one:

It could be worse!

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References
↑1 It feels like a combination of technologies should be able to solve this; I’ve got two slightly different sources of the same ground-truth. The HD frame shows exactly how 3/4th of the SD frame should look after it’s upscaled, so it should be possible to have a computer program compare the two, adjust the color, size, rotation, and proportion of the SD frame to match the HD one as closely as possible, apply some ML upscaling (ideally using the very shot that’s being upscaled as training data so the computer can extrapolate the lost detail at the sides of the frame from the existing detail in the middle), and blend the two sources. I know all these features exist independently, but I have no idea how to get them all into one tool. There might also be some complications with the DVDs needing to be detelecined and having scanline issues in the raw data.