Star Trek: Lexington premiere on G3D

lexington1709 · November 6th, 2011, 04:20 AM

Here's an animation I've been working on and was wondering if I could get some feedback on it. The link is unlisted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4b5wmPuOhE

lexington1709 · November 6th, 2011, 04:28 AM

Don't know why I didn't say this before: I'm not sure what happened to the star background. I didn't notice it until I posted it. Oops!

gmd3d · November 6th, 2011, 04:42 AM

No problem......stars or no stars ,,, I love seen the Enterprise Refit.

who built it ??

Auditor · November 6th, 2011, 05:15 AM

I like it like the camera angles and the speed of the ship. I like the lighting for the most part. I love ST but some of the series was over lit. It's choppy on this computer, but I'm sure thats just YouTube. Think you need like a fast disolve between cuts so its not as jumpy.

evil_genius_180 · November 6th, 2011, 05:29 PM

I was wondering if you were still working on your film. I was going to ask in Ger's "Building the Enterprise" thread but it didn't go with the theme of the thread.

I like the animation a lot. I agree with what Auditor said about the camera angles. What I like most about it is that it's not yet *another* attempt to recreate the shots from TMP. You did your own thing and it looks great.

lexington1709 · November 6th, 2011, 07:55 PM

Well, I had inspiration. A Youtube user named "hardwire5000" did a redux for the Enterprise departure in ST II and I was impressed with his use of angles and zoom. Figured I could do the same. I've gotten a post (not here, obviously) that when animating, you're not supposed to cross the "line" (switch from side to side). What do you think of that?

lexington1709 · November 6th, 2011, 08:12 PM

Oh, nuts. I forgot to add credits. Enterprise mesh is Dennis Bailey's; Drydock is Prologic9's. I'll remember the next time; I was pretty tired when I put this together originally.

lexington1709 · November 7th, 2011, 03:18 AM

A small update:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRqtQ69yJVs

gmd3d · November 7th, 2011, 03:25 AM

Stars make a big difference

lexington1709 · November 7th, 2011, 03:41 AM

Yes, it does. I found out I had them there but the way I imported the file, it took out the BG.

On a side note. For some odd reason, the longer I set LW10 to render, the longer rendering time per frame. Example: Starting off on frame 0, the render time could be 1 min 10. By frame 100, it could be up to 7 min 30. By frame 300 (hopefully the program doesn't crash in the meantime), it could be up to 15+ min per frame. Not sure why LW's doing that. My PC is a stand alone (no internet connection), AMD quad core with 2GB DDR3 RAM.

gmd3d · November 7th, 2011, 04:06 AM

I don´t animate myself so I not the one to give the best feed back for it.

it could be lightwave number crunching the details on the models, or textures, Prologic dry dock is a great model, but could be difficult for the ram as it very detailed.

and your not really showing the dock off. perhaps add a little more light to the dock see if it helps, but exclude the Enterprise

Try another one. ??

Not sure if that is any help

Auditor · November 7th, 2011, 04:15 AM

If you don't already do it which hopefully you do, but I'm going to say it anyway render your animations as image sequences then compile them. That way if you scene crashes in the middle of your render at frame 150 or whatever you can just render from 151 on and not have to start from scratch.

evil_genius_180 · November 7th, 2011, 08:33 AM

Your processor is getting hotter and hotter as you render, that's probably slowing it down. What do you have in the way of cooling?

lexington1709 · November 7th, 2011, 03:36 PM

@evil_genius_180: I have a AMD quad core Athelon and I did get the CoreTemp widget; she runs a bit warm but not too hot. I've got the cooling fan that came with it and another one attached to the rear. I may need a new case but the wife will nix it.

@Auditor: I render in Targa32 images instead of AVI's. I don't like using AVI rendering in case the power or LW goes down.

evil_genius_180 · November 7th, 2011, 09:30 PM

Someone at SFM suggested taking the side panel off and putting a desk fan next to the computer blowing into the case when you render. Desk fans are relatively cheap, I don't think your wife could object to that.

lexington1709 · November 8th, 2011, 04:27 AM

A quick update:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN8Pa2QfRiU

evil_genius_180 · November 8th, 2011, 08:33 AM

It looks great. Though, the last two animations look redundant.

Auditor · November 8th, 2011, 06:26 PM

There are some odd shadows on the starboard {right} Nacelles in the third shot. There is some other wierdness with light/shadows in some of the others too.

The last shot is odd. I like it of course, but yeah it's like the same shot twice at the end.

Overall I think its good.

lexington1709 · November 8th, 2011, 08:08 PM

Well, After Effects did have a problem with the file names of the last two shots... When I re-render again, I'll work on that.

shaggy · November 9th, 2011, 12:47 AM

Looking good... But you're still 'crossing the line' at several points...

Sort that out and it will look / flow much better!

lexington1709 · November 9th, 2011, 03:52 AM

Working on it!

lexington1709 · November 14th, 2011, 02:38 PM

A big update

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vebhA39Fo0o

gmd3d · November 15th, 2011, 01:29 AM

Looks great...... I love to see that ship any time.

shaggy · November 15th, 2011, 02:08 AM

Much better!!!!