ABOUT

A recreation of my favourite shot from the opening space battle in Star Trek First Contact.
My aim here was to brush up on matching lighting from existing footage, create weapons-fire (torpedoes and phasers) FX, and experiment with AI for background objects.

It was challenging and enlightening to study an ILM VFX shot, but the end result has been very well received, with many saying it looks like an upressed version of the original.

Akira Class model by Marc Bell.

Norway Class model (work in progress) by me.

And the Saber Class (smallest ship on the right hand side) was made by "me", using AI. I fed screenshots of the original CG model into Trellis, an AI model generator. You can see the result clearly in this post. While it's surprisingly accurate it does have a lot of flaws which would make it completely inappropriate for close up views - but it's acceptable for its role here in the mid-background. I added further details such as engine and running lights. The "horns" on the front were a bit of a compromise (typical of AI) - they're not accurate to the design, but messy to remove due to the crazy paving UV map.