Just watched the Trek Remastered episode “The Devil in the Dark”.  Yes, I watched it live at midnight here in Los Angeles.   After seeing the little clips on TrekMovie.com, I was encouraged at the look of the matte painting and the dissolving rock effect.  Seeing them in the context of the episode was good... I think the non-Enterprise work is pretty darn good.  Subtle, and faithful.  Some nice moments in VanDerBerg’s office with the matte out the window.  Some tricky match moving and rotoscoping work done there.  I liked the animation of the Horta coming out of the newly made tunnel... (still a little too sharp for film-look effects, but nicely restrained in its technology).

 

The shots of Janus VI are quite good... I think they’ve matched the style quite well.  I was a little disappointed in the Enterprise shots still... although the final shot is nicely done, and the lighting is much better than the previous shots.  (I think they’ve gotten the blue fill light finally correct)  The Engine Nacelle caps still need some work... are still a bit too evenly “glowy” and still have the cartoony look.  My suggestion would be to use a gradient falloff on the outer shell, and only put luminance on a nested inner shell.  

 

I’ve put up a test shot of my Enterprise model lit closer to the style of the later shows (Voyager, Enterprise...)  ... just to give a look at how good this ship can look.

 

Enjoy, and I’ll be back next week for the Tekky report on the next episode!

 

-Daren