Starfleet: Federation At War

Ok, I am thinking of revisiting an old fan project I was working on back in the 90's. It was greatly inspired by Star Trek, the old Fasa line of Star Trek III Combat Simulator games, and, Starfleet Battles. It was going to be about the War between the Klingons and the Federation, set in a pseudo-movie era timeline. I was not going purely canon on anything, and was really only heavily drawing on Star Trek for mainly visual references, and some key plot and story elements. Most of the story was purely alternate reality type, and many of the ship designs were going to be hypothetical, re-envisioned, or orriginal. It never got extremely far, and most of the ships I did end up using were still very rough designs, and low detail meshes. Some of my more interesting designs (the carriers and starfighters) were only ever sketched, and never made it too 3D. I had to scrap the project for so many reasons, most of which tied into a lack of funds and/or resources (no actors, no costumes, no sets, etc...). However, several sequences of, at the time, decent 3D footage did come from the endeavor. I am thinking of re-exploring this path, and using this project to get back into my 3D groove, and scrape the rust off my skills. While digging through my archives, I did find several 3D segments, and I thought I would share them.

Please, don't be too harsh or critical of these, and keep in mind that:
1) They were never fully finished.
2) They were rendered between 10 and 12 years ago when this technology was still relatively young (on a Comodore Amiga 4000 60mghz machine to be precise).
3) At the time I was obsessed with creating renderings that did not need post production touch ups...that is, all of the effects in these shots are 3D elements of some sort, mostly available through base plugins and features included with Lightwave 4.0 and a few features from when I had upgraded to 5.0.

This first sequence I was quite proud of at the time, and took me months of set-up and modelling. The Starship itself was modelled by me (unfinished and rough though it is), as were the space suites. The rigging for the walk sequence and movement of the suites was done entirely with the limited bone capabilities available to LW 4.0 (which took the bulk of the time - Poser was not really available at the time). All of the elements are in a single scene file, and was done in 1 render (no compositing or Post Pro). I admit it is dated now, but I am still somewhat proud of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYvoAB6j3-w

These were some effects tests I had done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A3XePzAn60
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfygY_GBlHw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9uxYkhEwuA

All in all, I currently have maybe 90 seconds or so total of a feature. I am thinking of revisitting this and using Poser to do all of the character animation. Between Poser and Lightwave 7.5 (ok still older software), and all the new tricks I have learned in editting and compositting, I think I can make this work. I am planning on remodelling the existing ships, increasing the detail and quality of the meshes, as well as stylizing them more significantly.

None of these have sound yet.

Back when I started this project I had such wonderful things planned for it - I was sad to have abandoned it. If I restart it, I plan to make it an actual film/feature of sorts, depending on whether I am doing it solo or others volunteer time and talent to help, and how much I can acomplish, I want to make either a movie-length production or several linked episodes of between 30 to 45 minutes (anime OVA style). I am trying to decide whether to go with a realistic style look, or a semi-cartoon look I have been experimenting with that can be seen here:
http://kageryu.deviantart.com/art/Sq...runts-95307530

Man, they suck!

No - really - they're cool. I just had to be a chump.

I got started with a Commodore 64 back in 85. It's nice to see a fellow Commodore'er...even if you had the rich kid's machine. LOL!

Ok, really though...

I like what you have done.
Now, I've said it before - I am not a professional animator, just a guy with a hobby so my opinion probably doesn't mean jack to some, but I think you did a damn good job.

There is something in the first clip that I noticed. You have the ability to direct a scene and tell a story in a few separate scenes edited together. I've met more than a few people who cannot do that. That's pretty cool in my book.

You should really keep doing it.

Thanks man.
Yeah most of those clips were part of a larger project, but are missing vast sections in between yet. That Drydock scene was rendered from multiple files, but I set the LW start and end points to the next frames in sequence, so it was one massive frame sequence in the end (I used to cheat like this a lot - still do). One reason I abandoned the project was I couldn't get enough fans together with costumes and props to do the various bridge scenes back then - but I can possibly do those in poser now (if I can get motivated), lacking dialog though (so a lot of it will be very Aeon-Flux like - just reaction shots and such).

Also a lot of scenes never made it too render, as I was not happy with my own 3D modelling skills, and often couldn't find suitable shareware/PD 3D models for what I needed. I am trying to re-model the Federation Destroyer, and if that goes well, I will re-model that cruiser too. These wont be exact replicas of the Star Trek designs, as I decided if I do this I am re-envisioning it, and adding my own personal touch and taste to some of it.

I started on a C=64 too, then moved to an Amiga 500, then an A3000. It wasn't until 1993/94 I got my VT Flyer setup, I had pre-ordered it, then while waiting, Commodore announced they were going bankrupt. I had nothing but problems with it when it finally arrived, and no warranty (I swear I got the last A4000 to roll off the production line - had no install disks, no HD...uggghhh). I look back now and wish I'd waited.