Episode III

[ZEAl]

в битве будут участвовать 5000 крупных боевых кораблей.
0_0
неужели мы это наконец увидем!!!

[ZheSyt]

конферент зал на мустафаре

[Таркин]

в битве будут участвовать 5000 крупных боевых кораблей.
"НЕ ВЕРЮ!" (с) Станиславский

[Master Xelamok]

Новая фотография из серии Before The Helmet.

Анакин Скайуокер направляет свой Джедайский истребитель в гущу атакующего флота Конфедерации.

[Таркин]

Такая рожа... Матросов отдыхает!
Блин, ну почему янки всех плохишей называют "конфедерацией"! Гражданская им, что ли, вспомнилась?

[Master Xelamok]

Новинка из Гиперспейса

Панорамная фотография съемочной площадки крейсер сепаратистов

Для просмотра требуется Quick Time Player.

[Master Xelamok]

Новая фотография из серии Before The Helmet.

Hayden Hangs Around
Fitted to a stunt rig to recreate his Force-fueled acrobatics, Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker) rehearses some of his Jedi fighting. (Photo by Paul Tiller)

[Master Xelamok]

Оригинал статьи о начальном сражении 3 эпизода.

A Tour of OSB010
May 26, 2004

Last year, as the Animatics Department was busily turning over shots of the opening space battle to ILM for visual effects completion, David Weitzberg, a visual effects artist I had befriended during principal photography in Sydney, told me he was hoping to get the opening shot of the film. I don't mean the title crawl, but rather the expansive introduction to the sprawling space conflict that kickstarts the movie.

On January 21, 2004, he was assigned as a technical director on the shot, code-named OSB010. Five months later, work still progresses on the whopping 1855 frame-long sequence -- a veering, twisting camera move that spans over a minute of screen time.

At his workstation, he pulls up movie files to show me the shot in progress. Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll will handle the title crawl - something that has become a sort of tradition with Knoll in the prequel trilogy. Weitzberg provided him with the star-field for the crawl, since both shots share the same starry background. But as soon as the camera settles from its initial move, we're into OSB010.

David shows me the rough layout of the shot where simple low-rez polygonal versions of cruisers and fighters approximate their moves for director's approval. Once such gross movements and timing are okayed, the ships are handed over to animator Scott Benza. A stickler for cinematic flight characteristics, George Lucas lets character animators determine the paths and curves of a hero starfighter, rather than let automated procedures determine the flow.

Once these low-rez flight paths are plotted, the heavier more detailed elements are layered in one at a time. David first shows me the matte painting of Coruscant that serves as the backdrop, lit by a blazing sun that throws sundogs and anamorphic lens flare into frame. "The sun flare was added by [compositor] Jeff Sutherland," David explains. "My elements here are the planets, stars and atmosphere." The next big element is the first big ship of the scene, a triangular Jedi cruiser that has since been dubbed a Venator-class Star Destroyer by the folks in Licensing.

"This is the biggest we'll ever see it," says David. "As we develop the shot, we notice that we'll get closer to certain parts, so we'll need to add more detail to the ship to keep it looking real."

As the camera zooms across its surface, its ponderous turbolaser turrets swing out of the way to let the Jedi snubfighters zoom past. I notice spots of interactive lighting along the massive ship's hull, something that in the old days would have been handled with hand-drawn animation. But now, the lighting passes realistically define how much light a Jedi fighter's twin ion engines would spill on the hull of a nearby ship.

One on of the frames -- a close-up of Anakin's starfighter -- David pulls up a frame showing me the lighting pass. The illumination of virtual objects continues to grow in complexity, and now the bright yellow highlights of Anakin's ship are not only lit by the nearby sun, but also by light bounced from the ship itself. A dark black frame with only the yellow highlights traces out the hazy illumination and hard surfaces, and I can see how the yellow light subtly traces a shape on Artoo-Detoo's reflective dome.

The Layout Department has tracked the path of Obi-Wan and Anakin's starfighter in two diagrams, printed out on 11 x17 paper -- one is top view, the other side view. The biggest landmarks on the map are the Trade Federation battleships -- seven of these three-kilometer wide titans form a horizon-line of sorts for the camera move, and can serve as orientation in subsequent shots.

"As the space battle develops in later shots, we try to make sure it's all in there in this first shot," says David. In theory, if you examine this OSB10 shot carefully, you'll see all the obstacles that lie ahead, though it's hard to look past the more immediate perils

The minute-long shot has three segments, dubbed Waterfall, Trench and Explosion B. These aren't literal appellations -- don't expect a waterfall in space -- but serve as shorthand for the artists by describing some of the characteristics of flight and combat.

"The laser fire between these ships hasn't been added yet," point out David, as the ships dive between sparring capital ships in the "Trench" portion. "This is a sim explosion here," he says, identifying a fiery blast, "but it's real pyro at the end, so it's a mixture."

Gossamer wisps and contrails streak by, providing a sense of speed, and dark black smoke belches from a burning starship - something we haven't seen before in a space battle. "John Knoll says that space starts at 60 miles up," explains Weitzberg. "We're at 59 miles up."

This atmosphere introduces a new type of chaos into these shots, including blossoming black burst otherwise invisible unless they appear in front of starships or the planet. "Those are flak hits," says David. "You see them all the time in World War II aerial footage. George seems to really like them."

In this latest version of OSB010, David explains that none of the "depth compositing" has been done for the cluster of debris, flak-hits, and other orbital detritus. It all rests atop the background plate, often in front of extremely close starships. Depth compositing will place these elements in their proper place in space, behind closer starships, but in front of farther ones, properly diffused and obscured as atmospheric conditions dictate. It's just one aspect of the compositing needs this shot requires.

There are also a few Easter eggs tucked away into this chaotic shot, but I won't reveal them just yet. After all, they may not make the final cut, and I wouldn't want people staring at pixels trying to find a gag when they should be soaking in the action.

"Fans keep asking if this battle is bigger than Return of the Jedi," I say to David, explaining that I never know how to answer that since what exactly does 'bigger' mean? David types in a command line to pull up a list of digital assets involved in this one shot.

"Oh yeah, it's bigger." He says without hesitation. "There's about 5,000 ships."

And that's just the capital ships. The take I saw didn't even have the all the starfighters -- a whole swarm of battles between the tri-fighters (which are back, by the way) and other midground fighters -- at least another few hundred ships.

Pablo Hidalgo

И сегодня на официальном сайте появилась фотографии аниматики для этого сражения.

[Master Xelamok]

2

[Master Xelamok]

3

[гросс-адмирал Траун]

Судя по всему, нас ждёт ещё одна попытка сделать "космическую битву всех времён".
Но Эндор, несмотря на малочисленность кораблей, пока ещё никто не переплюнул.

[hansolo]

"Впечатляет..."(Эп 2)

[Master Xelamok]

гросс-адмирал Траун
Судя по всему, нас ждёт ещё одна попытка сделать "космическую битву всех времён".
Но Эндор, несмотря на малочисленность кораблей, пока ещё никто не переплюнул.

Rolling With It
April 16, 2004

It's hard to grasp the scale of a space battle looking at words on a script page or sketches within storyboard frames. The jaw-dropping attack on the Death Star in Return of the Jedi seems hard to top, and since reports of the battle that opens Episode III have consistently stated that it will be bigger, many fans are asking how that can be possible.

It's not so much the number of participants that raises the bar, as it is complexity. The effects technology in the 80s meant that true interaction between starships in Jedi was always limited. Extended shots of starfighters soaring through capital ship flotillas were impossible. The destruction of vessels were also a stylistic cheat. ILM had largely abandoned blowing up models with miniature pyrotechnics, since the scale of the explosion and size of the models worked against each other. Such destruction was typically accomplished by matting scaled explosions onto model photography, thus leaving out the true interaction of lighting and debris. An explosion would often just cover up a ship, allowing for the removal of that model element, without the true chaos of fiery debris.

This new battle definitely captures that chaos. No wonder such emphasis was put on differentiating the shape of the Republic and Confederacy cruisers. When all the ships are aligned in the very upper atmosphere of a planet slowly turning towards dawn, and the wreckage, laserfire, missiles, missile contrails, starfighters and more are layered in, the skies suddenly become very crowded.

It's a messy battle, with capital ships exchanging broadside fire and bodies tumbling into space, bulkheads rupturing and depressurized atmosphere rushing to fill the void, complete with fire and smoke.

Think Pearl Harbor in space, and you're on the right track.

Of course, creatively mining WWII for space inspirations is nothing new. George Lucas drew from the great documentaries and film accounts of that conflict for much of the original Star Wars. You can see it in the hurried shots of Death Star gunners manning their laser turrets, but back in those days, there was never a real connection to what the gunners were doing and the outside battle. It was all implied through editing -- piecing together the strafing runs of the X-wing fighters and the corridor explosions of the Death Star.

To the critical eyes of today's moviegoers, such approaches would result in a sense of isolation -- the differences between studio shooting and motion control effects shots would keep attacker and defender separated in time and space. But now, digital effects merge those worlds seamlessly, and the results are dramatic. The gunnery crews on these capital ships -- droids and clones alike -- are in real danger. They're in the space battle, and not in some isolated studio, and the starfighter attack runs and capital ship broadsides really do involve everyone and really do make an impact.

It'll be a new kind of space battle in Star Wars. One that appears to have the customary beauty and elegance when seen from a comfortable distance, but reveals itself to be a much more dangerous place when you get in close.

At least, that's the intent. We'll see how this develops over the coming months.

"Rolling with the changes." That's the operating mode right now at ILM. At this point, the film is at its most volatile, shrinking and growing in size by the day. The last Post Note article congratulated the team on the completion of over 100 shots. By the next week, that number dropped to under a hundred as the evolving edit carved over two dozen of those finished shots out of the final picture.

The shooting script from last summer seems like an artifact, as the order of the scenes shift around for dramatic effect. The scene numbers are largely meaningless now. For example, scene 137 -- one that takes place in the Senate -- and scene 130 now happen concurrently, with dramatic cuts between each one as they play out.

Having witnessed each scene independently, it's impressive how much energy such inter-cutting adds. That what's occurring in both are symbolic echoes of each other is just an added benefit. It illustrates how these movies are truly made in the editing room.

Number of Shots: 2,000
JAK Finals: 117
Final Omits: 27
Shots Turned Over to ILM: 1,263

Shots Needed Per Week: 35
Weeks to Go: 50
Shots Left: 1,883
VFX Deadline: April 1, 2005

[гросс-адмирал Траун]

Master Xelamok
Think Pearl Harbor in space, and you're on the right track.
Плохое сравнение. Тот, кто это писал - не понимает, о чём речь. Потому что Перл-Харбор - это избиение морских кораблей воздушными бомбардировщиками прямо в порту во время блиц-рейда, а не противостояние двух флотов.

Если уж это такое мочилово знатное между флотами капшипов, тогда скорее Гуадалканал или Мидуэй.

Но американцу трудно даже эти, в общем-то славные страницы своей истории запомнить. Нет, американец знает только Перл-Харбор, и суёт его всюду, куда может, по поводу и без повода.

[VooDoo]

И все таки эти разрывы - флак, а не щит .

[гросс-адмирал Траун]

VooDoo
эээ... ты про что, извини конечно?
Может, промазал тредом?

[Master Xelamok]

гросс-адмирал Траун

Такой молодой, а память уже никуда не годится.

Да вот про это он

[гросс-адмирал Траун]

Master Xelamok
Дак мы уже давно эту тему проехали... флак это.

[Master Xelamok]

гросс-адмирал Траун

Дак мы уже давно эту тему проехали... флак это.

И это?

[VooDoo]

И это?
А вот это кстати не факт, что флак .

[Master Xelamok]

Тогда что вот это, происходящее парой кадров спустя?
Луч пролетел мимо Тай Файтера и взрыв происходит позади него.

[VooDoo]

Master Xelamok

Вот второе на флак похоже. Поведением.
Это SE на ДВД ?

[Master Xelamok]

VooDoo
Это SE на ДВД ?

Да.

[Master Xelamok]

Кстати, кадр идущий непосредственно перед тем что на два сообщения выше, выглядит так.

[VooDoo]

Вообще не пойми что. Может быть прямым попаданием.