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

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.

Tech the Tech: White Star Insignia

While the White Star was introduced in the third season of Babylon 5, for most of it, only the prototype was seen. It wasn’t until season 4 that we began seeing scenes set on multiple different White Stars. The set for the White Star bridge was also redesigned and rearranged for the fourth season, and the new design seemed to take into account that there would be times when different characters would be seen on different (but identical) ships in the same episode.

From what I can tell, there were four main ways to redress the White Star bridge to represent different specific ships. There were lights in the supports for the railing around the command chair that were changed to different colors, the large light panels on the aft bulkhead had their color changed, some of the computer screens on the aft bulkhead were changed out, and a lit plaque above the main door to the bridge would be changed. For now, I’ll just be going into that last one.

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Back to Basics with the Enterprise-G

A few days ago, Marc Bell released his CG model of the Titan-A/Enterprise-G from the final season of Star Trek: Picard. I’ve been acutely aware for the past… fifteen years… that I don’t just hop onto the computer to mess around and make some fun spaceship pictures like I used to. Despite my attempt to get back into the groove a few years ago, it didn’t quite take, possibly because I was scratching the 3D itch at my job at the time, and then Lightwave 2018 came out and my library of models assembled over the years and tweaked to my liking became more-or-less useless.

I recently started rebuilding a new, PBR-based set of models in Lightwave 2020, mostly thanks to the models of Chris Kuhn, Marc Bell, and Alexander Klemm, but I hadn’t really done anything with them yet. This new model was a good chance to, and since it hadn’t been officially converted into Lightwave, I got to dip back into my roots a little when I had to convert anything I wanted to use. Downloading a cool new model that was just mesh and textures, and really digging into it to get it to look right. I spent the weekend building out the lighting rig and doing various minor modifications and tweaks, like breaking out the formation lights and impulse glows so they could be animated, and found picked an angle to run a test render (a good thing, too, I found a tiny sliver of window-box sticking out of the hull). I thought it looked pretty good, so I did a final version adding a basic Sun/Earth/Moon three-point light setup, and that was that.

I tried to think of something more dramatic, and thought up a concept for another image, with the Enterprise-G over the Founder’s Homeworld seen in Deep Space Nine, returning the renegade Changelings who’d infiltrated Starfleet to their own people. Luckily, my prep came in handy, and I already had a Jem’Hadar fighter and a Defiant ready to go for a suitable escort. I spent a bit of time making new decals for the Defiant-A (I know in-canon the second Defiant had the same markings as the first one, but Ron Moore wanted it to be the Defiant-A, I wanted it to be the Defiant-A, so I made it that way). I was pretty far along before I remembered the Defiant was a museum exhibit now, so I just went with it, not having any better idea what ship Deep Space Nine might have assigned to it in the PIC era (or if there’s even still a DS9 at all). Maybe they flew it out as a goodwill historical thing.

“Repatriation”

Enterprise-G by Marc Bell, Jem’Hadar Fighter by Chris Kuhn, Defiant mesh by Chris Kuhn, textures by Marc Bell, and Lightwave conversion by Matt Christou.

Star backgrounds in both images are NASA’s Deep Star Map (though I should’ve been used the fictionalized version without recognizable constellations for the second render). The Founder homeworld is NASA photo ISS048-E-010018, recolored in Photoshop to match the planet as seen on the show. Both images had compositing and post work done in After Effects.

Stargate 2020 Effects (Film Version)

The Stargate VFX from the original film, my recreation, and a side-by-side comparison

“Stargate 3.0 Effects (Film Version)” for Lightwave 2020, Released December 25, 2021 (CC0) —142 MB

After a year and a half, I’m running out of steam on the Stargate project for now, so I pushed myself to finish up the part I was currently working on, the version of the “kawoosh,” “strudel,” and “puddle” effects as seen in the movie.

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Stargate 2020 (Pegasus Version)

Orthographic diagrams of the model1Atlantis Expedition Logo by CmdrKerner
Showcase animation of the model and effects

“Stargate 3.1 (Pegasus Version)” for Lightwave 2020, Released July 30, 2021 (CC0) —53 MB

Conversion Kits:

After over a year, I’ve reached the end of my 2020 pandemic modeling project with the completion of the version of the stargate used in Stargate Atlantis. Alongside the movie and SG-1 versions, that makes a complete set for this basic design.2The Universe version being a totally different design, and the Origins version being intended to match the movie version, even if it didn’t quite hit the mark perfectly. While I don’t think I’m quite done with Stargate just yet, I’m probably done with modeling actual stargates for a while.

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References
1 Atlantis Expedition Logo by CmdrKerner
2 The Universe version being a totally different design, and the Origins version being intended to match the movie version, even if it didn’t quite hit the mark perfectly.

Stargate 2020 (Milky Way Version)

Orthographic diagrams of the model1SGC Logo by mikepjr
Orthographic diagrams of the model with chevrons omitted
Showcase animation of the model and effects

“Stargate 3.0 (Milky Way Version)” for Lightwave 2020, Released March 28, 2021 (CC0) —80 MB

Conversion Kits:

Main Model

Inner Rings With Alternate Origin Symbols

Continuing with my work on building a new stargate model, and in advance of the Atlantis-style ‘gate, we have the flagship version, the stargate as it appeared in the series Stargate SG-1, give a take a few alterations and enhancements.

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