Earth Battlestars (spoilers)

[Ancient Atlantis]

If and when the fleet make it to earth will they have battlestars or will they appear much earlier but i think it may be that they will appear earlier. I recently viewed a preview for season 4 which i became quite alarmed and excited by when there was not 1 but 3 battlestars pictured at one point and two of those battlestars u get to see the name of being titan and hades respectivly now i dont no if this preview is real or some1 has jst gone n made some sick new battlestars bt u can pik up the difference so below is the link n post ur thoughts about it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQaEU....blogspot.com/

Wat may be new battlestars or earth battlestars come in to the video at about 20 seconds

[Detox]

If and when the fleet make it to earth will they have battlestars or will they appear much earlier but i think it may be that they will appear earlier. I recently viewed a preview for season 4 which i became quite alarmed and excited by when there was not 1 but 3 battlestars pictured at one point and two of those battlestars u get to see the name of being titan and hades respectivly now i dont no if this preview is real or some1 has jst gone n made some sick new battlestars bt u can pik up the difference so below is the link n post ur thoughts about it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQaEU....blogspot.com/

Wat may be new battlestars or earth battlestars come in to the video at about 20 seconds

That's a fake. Albeit a pretty good one.

[Berg417448]

Fanfic fake.

[BumpOnnaHalfApple]

I love the absolute certainty with which some people are declaring those shots as "fake".

Personally I don't think they're "faked" at all, but that does NOT mean we're going to run into more battlestars, that somehow survived the initial Cylon attack, in season 4.

Those are probably shots to be used in FLASHBACKS.

Keep in mind that a new "Six" character (Natalie) is to be introduced soon. It's a lot more probable imo, that the TITAN and HADES shown in those shots are of those two battlestars either just before the war began, or from just as the war began, and to be used to establish some part of "Natalie's" back-story, than it is likely that some fan produced such incredibly high quality fakes.

Even given the possibility that those ARE flashbacks, there's still no telling if we'll see them broadcast on tv. Though SFX shots like that only very rarely even get made before it's absolutely certain they'll be used, plenty of things wind up on the editing room floor despite the best laid plans. They could wind up on a DVD as "deleted scenes", added as "additional scenes" in an expanded DVD version of what was broadcast (like some of the shots in Razor), or even as part of internet "webisodes".

Either way, claims made with nearly divine certitude that they're "definitely fakes", should be taken with more than just a grain of salt imo.

[Deckard07]

Dude, as I recall from another post you stated basically the same thing, you think this footage is authentic and that you’d seen this clip on the SFC too. We’ll I’ve yet to see this clip on SFC because it’s FAKE. The trailer is well done but a fake none-the-less…time to let the topic die.

[Berg417448]

So your proposition is that they are real, but if, at the end of Season 4 we have never seen them they are still real? I still do not think it is real because the quality of the Hades and Titan sections of the video is clearly different than the rest.



Lots of comment about it here from some folks who claim to be "in the business":

http://forums.scifi.com/index.php?sh...c=2300920&st=0

[pileofcrap]

I think what he means it that they are real but not in the sense that they are Earth ships. That they are probably flashback shots of Battlestar's from the past.

[BumpOnnaHalfApple]

Berg417448 -

So your proposition is that they are real, but if, at the end of Season 4 we have never seen them they are still real? I still do not think it is real because the quality of the Hades and Titan sections of the video is clearly different than the rest.

Not quite B, my position is that NOBODY can say for certain whether or not that's a fake with any degree of certainty.

Reading what Punchface posted, he does seem to know what he's talking about, but I'm not certain that, even given his b.g., he's got anyway of saying for certain that those shots are faked.

It's been waaaay too long since I had to play with CGI in school, but I DO have to say that meshes are by no means at ALL the only thing you need to do something like that. The meshes only control shape. That's it. Just shape.

Once you've got a mesh, you have to, at the VERY least, "map" a texture onto it. And texture maps are incredibly touchy things. Apparent distance from the object, for example, can make or break the realistic look of a final rendering. A texture that looks fabulous in a close shot, can look horrible in a long shot, and vis versa. So where did whoever "faked" those shots get the texture maps appropriate for those shot distances? (An asside- B5 used "rotoscoped" texture maps, i.e. animated texture maps, to make the skin of the shadow vessels appear to sort of crawl, a very cool effect imo).

Additionally a mesh doesn't necessarily provide ALL of the shape detail. A mesh provides all of the gross shape info, but finer detail can also be added by using a "bump map". The seams in things like "hull plating", for example, don't need to be, and generally are NOT included in a mesh, precisely because details like that would increase the file size of the mesh, and consequently the rendering time, to an unworkable degree.

Then there are "transparency maps", which can be used to create passable windows in long shots without having to include all the windows in the mesh, for the same reason, the simpler the mesh, the shorter the render time.

There are "luminosity maps" that when used with "transparency maps" can provide the light that appears to spill from windows in long shots. (In tight shots, where you have to see some interior detail, you generally use a more detailed mesh, where the window, and even window seals, are included in the mesh, but the mesh only covers the area used in the shot. It's never a mesh of the whole ship, again, to cut render times).

On top of all that, lighting CGI shots is one HELL of an artform. Spots, fills, and diffuse sources, any and all of which require careful placement, and often the use of particular "gels" to duplicate the "look" of the shots used in a show, isn't something any old amateur can copy easily, let alone get right just by downloading an open source mesh off the net.

Additionally, once any CGI shot is "done", is does NOT acquire its final "look". Color correction, and color timing, also change the final appearance and quality of any film.

Lastly, and what makes me think those shots are probably not simple fan fakes is this...

When we were in school, one of our assignments was to duplicate a shot from Babylon 5 (with the aforementioned "Shadow Ships" in it). We were working on what, at that time, amounted to literally state of the art equipment. All of us spent a nerve wracking all nighter busting our humps trying to dupe that shot - AND EVERY ONE OF US FAILED MISERABLY, despite the fact that we were using more advanced software than was available to the SFX teams that had produced that shot years earlier.

The following day our prof let us in on the fact that we were expected to fail, miserably, because the real goal of the assignment was to learn this particular rule the hard way. That being: If you want to convincingly duplicate any existing CGI shot, USE THE SAME SOFTWARE THAT WAS USED TO GENERATE THE ORIGINAL SHOT.

Every piece of software introduces its own unique "quirks" into the shot in the form of everything from "rounding errors", to differing "dejagging" results, to "Phong algorithm artifice events", that form a kind of signature of that particular software, and give the final product its particular "look".

I'll admit I might have been mistaken about seeing that sequence on the SFC. My computer is tied into my TV, and at this point I've watched so many clips on YouTube, I could very well have been confused on that point.

But I still maintain that at this point, NOBODY can tell for certain whether or not that shot is a fake for certain. It's possible (tho VERY unlikely imo), and either way, it does not mean that those clips imply that we're going to run into the Triton or the Hades in orbit of Earth, or in some nebula, or anything else. They could be flashbacks to just before the initial Cylon assault.

[ATrain]

All of the live action shots in the trailer appear to be clips from previous seasons. I think the only new footage is the CGI shots. It's a pretty good bet that the trailer is not official and those CGI are fake.

[Bl4de]

All of the live action shots in the trailer appear to be clips from previous seasons. I think the only new footage is the CGI shots. It's a pretty good bet that the trailer is not official and those CGI are fake.

Right, the footage is just from stuff we've already seen (most of it from the final episode of season 3), and the CGI shots of the "titan" are clearly fan made, the quality of the cgi is very poor comparatively and also the camera is clearly fake trying to imitate BSG's, chances are it's from a mod for a game or a game itself or just fan made period. Which is very likely, I came across a site a few months ago dedicated to BSG tech and replics and the likes. They might have an idea of where that footage came from.

I've also never heard of a 1 minute 44 second ad on sci-fi for BSG, the ads they're promoting now are of new footage not 90% old footage, and the absolute newest ones features the light rotating around single character's face with one of their quotes. This is not quality material for SF channel, but it is decently fan made.

[Freek]

Sorry, but Im going to have to break your dreams guys:

http://lefclan.le.funpic.de/Screens/...008_152813.jpg

It's been said time and time again that this trailer is a 100% fake. Believe what you want, but I think you'd just be ignorant.

This is a duplicate thread by the way.

[Aussie_86]

Saying that "nobody" can say that the trailer is fake, is just as bad as ppl saying the trailer is definately fake too.

When we were in school, one of our assignments was to duplicate a shot from Babylon 5 (with the aforementioned "Shadow Ships" in it). We were working on what, at that time, amounted to literally state of the art equipment. All of us spent a nerve wracking all nighter busting our humps trying to dupe that shot - AND EVERY ONE OF US FAILED MISERABLY, despite the fact that we were using more advanced software than was available to the SFX teams that had produced that shot years earlier.

The following day our prof let us in on the fact that we were expected to fail, miserably, because the real goal of the assignment was to learn this particular rule the hard way. That being: If you want to convincingly duplicate any existing CGI shot, USE THE SAME SOFTWARE THAT WAS USED TO GENERATE THE ORIGINAL SHOT.

If you know anything about 3d modelling, which you claim to, you would be able to tell that the trailer that everyone's talking about probably wasn't done in the same software as BSG team uses. There's something which is just not quite right. And, commercial 3d modellers (such as Zoic i believe it is), probably get the base program, i.e. 3ds MAX, and then modify it to suit their needs.


I can't pick out one 'obvious' thing wrong with the trailer. It just looks wrong! I can say with moderate confidence, from looking at the trailer (0:22 and 0:54) that the specular and specular halo (shinyness in other words) is wrong - it just doesn't look natural, where in bsg (and the old clips in the trailer), it does.

Also, look at the flack barrier at 0:38 - it just looks wrong.

Also, those red and green lights at 0:32 just really, really, really, really look wrong.

Also, the bump mapping, specifically on the landing bays at 0:20 just look way inferior to what is actually in bsg - the stuff in bsg doesn't look like bump mapping, - it looks like actual mesh detail - while in the trailer, it looks like really good bump mapping.

Also,why the trailer looks pretty authentic is because the creator has used scenes which are similarly found in bsg... i.e. the sequence of the missile closing in on one of these 'new' battlestars' from 0:38-0:41 - i've seen that in bsg... also, the scene from 0:29-0:32 - i've seen that before 2.

i could go into more detail, but i've got a busted finger and typing this all has been a pain in the ass. in Summary, i believe the trailer 2 be a fake, but a really good fake. and if anyone knows the creator, tell me so they can teach me how 2 do it as good as that!

[Esquin]

To all of you who are saying we can't possibly know if these are real or fake you're wrong.

They're fake. I can say with 100% certainty and if this is real i'd be willing to give $50 to the topic creator. Won't of course but yeah.

The images come from a 3d website that is basically jsut amateur 3d artists making fan models. There are about 10 fan made battlestars on the site.

[Pepermint Jaffa]

I think this thread should be Stickied.

[Esquin]

Fake trailers don't get stickied.