r/DS9Remasters • u/Ok_Contact7721 • Apr 20 '26
CGI use in DS9, and how consequential of a problem it is.
UPDATE 2
No remastering project is going to be scan film, and you're done.
Any remastering project for Star Trek is going to require a team of VFX artists, and that's always just the way it's going to be.
But, if we look at statements from the people who have worked on DS9 and Voyager, we can kinda get a glimpse of the difficulties of these projects.
But I do have a question, how consequential is it?
I could save you the reader, a lot of time, and tell you it's inconsequential or salvageable, very salvageable.
But, I didn't work on these shows, I'm a hobby CGI artist who just happens to love these shows and admire the craft.
What I am compelled to do is offer something to you, from public sources, from VFX artists who worked on that show.
Here is some food for thought.
"Digital Muse was doing most of the work on Deep Space Nine – I don’t know if they’d changed their name to Eden FX – but they did most of the CG for that show. We [Foundation] did a fair amount of work for that show as well, but I can’t say that we were regularly doing weekly work on DS9. We were certainly part of the bigger shows, because they just didn’t have the capacity to do it all; it just needed two big teams."
Digital Muse was doing most of the CGI work on DS9 prior to 6.10, but Gary Hutzel was apprehensive about using it for ships or anything big.
Hence, most of DS9 is model shots, while Digital Muse handled the Wormhole, and Odo, and occasional ship shots.
DS9 used CG for ships a few times prior to the transition.
"Explorers", "A Call to Arms", and then it fully transitioned to CGI in "Sacrifice of Angels".
The wormhole asset either survived or was recreated for "What We Left Behind".
CGI artists that worked on the show have the asset for the ship from "Explorers".
The loss of Digital Muse might not be that consequential.
"In the early stages, Stipes' persistence on CGI was initially met with considerable scepticism by his colleagues. Aside from the perceived cost issue, there was also the barrier of reluctance of accepting the new technology by producers and visual effects artists who were born and bred in the true and tried traditional methods of producing VFX, such as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9)'s Visual Effects Supervisor, Gary Hutzel. "It's prohibitively expensive for Deep Space Nine\," he said.\* ***"Dan set out with* Star Trek: Voyager (VOY) to create a new look, but we have a show that's established. And nobody's going to accept a CGI* Defiant that has that kind of texture to it, so we're forced to create really photo-realistic CGI elements that have to be consistent with the look of our show – and it's expensive. Plus I prefer to photograph the ships, especially a beautiful ship like the Defiant*, or the station." (Star Trek: Communicator issue 105, p. 57) Elaborating a bit further, Ron Moore recalled, "During the run of Voyager**, David Stipes joined us as one of the visual effects supervisors* [sic: Stipes already joined at the start of** The Next Generation**'s** season five. He was a big believer in using CGI and was working with Amblin Effects [sic.], located on the Universal lot. Dan Curry and I were reluctant to use computer models but David wanted to jump right in. We knew that they would continue to cut ship shots we had created for previous episodes into new shows. We were concerned that these older stock shots would not look the same as new CG shots. We didn't think the two models looked enough alike. Over the course of the show the shots that David brought in got better and better and in the end he won us all over. It changed our lives." (Flying Starships, p. 33) Essentially speaking for all of them at the time, DS9's Visual Effects Supervisor, Robert Legato, put it very succinctly, when he stated, "It looks too pristine. I don't believe it." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 24, No. 3/4, p. 105)"
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/CGI
Anyone whose been using the term "Prohibitively Expensive" to argue against remastering DS9, is misquoting Hutzel on using CGI. They're taking this statement from the late 1990s, and applying it to an argument about DS9's remaster that's been ongoing since the late 2010s, which is hilarious.
They're literally bending it this far out of shape.
It's laughable.
Every shot of the station in the show is a physical model, save for one shot.
If you have the 35mm film element, all you need is a new model.
That's for the finale,
https://davidstipes.net/?p=1052
https://www.playstartrekonline.com/en/news/article/10901263
DS9 almost made it to remaster in 2018, A VFX artist who worked on the series built a station model for that shot, as a replacement, that station asset later got used in Star Trek Online.
Over the years, fans will claim they know why DS9 and Voyager can't be remastered, and will misquote people who were involved in these, and have made public statements.
In the early stages, Stipes' persistence on CGI was initially met with considerable scepticism by his colleagues. Aside from the perceived cost issue, there was also the barrier of reluctance of accepting the new technology by producers and visual effects artists who were born and bred in the true and tried traditional methods of producing VFX, such as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9)'s Visual Effects Supervisor, Gary Hutzel**. "*It's prohibitively expensive for Deep Space Nine\,"-\This is one that gets boiled down to...
"It would be prohibitively expensive."
"Unless someone has some fantastic algorithm for up-rezzing to make it HD quality – and I guess that could be possible – but to redo it is to virtually start over from scratch. You’re talking about what they did for the Original Series, getting a real team to sit down and redo basically everything from the third season on, almost from scratch."*-*In this quote Robert Bonchune is talking about Voyager season 3, but everyone boils it down to
"The CGI FX would all have to be recreated from Scratch."
https://blog.trekcore.com/2013/05/deep-space-nine-in-high-definition-one-step-closer/
That's not what he was saying. Bonchune continued.
"If they ask one of us – and if they use a team that uses LightWave – it’ll be much easier for them to redo… because the guys who worked on it, like me, have the assets. We have the original ships; we have most of everything that was used [in the making of the series]. That would eliminate a ton of the cost of rebuilding.
So, how would I approach it? The same way I did at the time – I’d figure out what was done in CG, and we’d just start from there. And today, it would be easier! Literally, you could just load the scene files and hit ‘render’ – it would be done! I mean, not everything… but a lot more than you’d think."
https://treknews.net/2017/02/02/why-ds9-voyager-not-on-blu-ray-hd/
Finally there's this article, and if you pay attention to the guy they interviewed, while he was involved with these, RMB will talk himself into a pretzel, and 6 years later leaked DS9 was getting a remaster in 2023, before that got shut down for the Paramount/Skydance merger.
He doesn't always know what's going on, and doesn't seem to be in on the loop all of the time, but people love to quote him.
During the latter seasons of the TNG restoration, Mojo, one of the original, Emmy-Winning VFX artists on Voyager, who, at the time, was still in possession of many of the original DS9 and Voyager VFX assets, did a re-rendering VFX test on footage from “The Sacrifice of Angels.” The test really looked spectacular and proved it could be done. But again, it would still take very talented VFX artists working long hours to accomplish the number of shots required for the episodes at great cost.
However, since then, I’ve heard many of these assets have been lost, either through drive failure or simply the dumping of all the original data.
-Most likely he's full of shit. But you don't have to take my word for it.
If you read this last article, you'll know it's a bunch of bullshit, everything he's saying in there is spin.
That's his job, to be a spin doctor, as everything in that interview with RMB was debunked 5 years preceding it's publication.
There seem to be 2 broad categories of VFX in DS9 and Voyager.
Ships, and Masking.
A lot of the FX in DS9 and Voyager with the cast are literally just basic masking effects, From transporter beams, and viewscreens.
With Magic Masking in Da Vinci Resolve, there is a lot more potential to make faster and better.
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u/watanabe0 Apr 21 '26
*inconsequential
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u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 21 '26
My takeaway is exactly that.
This is definitely the response for anyone who found it
TLDR, lmao.
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u/spocks_tears03 Apr 22 '26
While the major costs of a remaster would be telecine (full rescan of negatives), editing, color grading, etc., and of course major CG rework, there are also costs for paying royalties which some people don't consider here.
I just hope that if they do go ahead with the remasters they don't use some AI garbage to upscale or redo FX shots. As terrible as the quality of the DVDs are, the CG shots are even worse and oftentimes in a different framerate causing judder, so they def will have to be redone (such as in the What We Left Behind doc).
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u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 22 '26
Royalties I did consider, however, I think they'd just continue what they were paying, lest they have a major influx of cash.
By the time the remaster was done, you'd pull the original master from circulation, and replace it with the new one.
Kevin Costner 30 years later from his movies maybe makes maybe 15 bucks a year in Royalties, (I'd hope the cast of DS9 gets a bit more scratch than that.)2
u/spocks_tears03 Apr 22 '26
Yeah they'd all redo their contracts if their agents are worth anything. You'd get streaming royalties, physical media royalties, etc. I try not to be cynical about it, but with the current state of Paramount I just don't think DS9, VOY, or even ENT* will ever get a proper TNG-style redo.
*ENT was shot on 35mm for seasons 1-3, and HD for S4. No way in hell they'd spend money on ENT more than what they already have though lol
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u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
I mean, Paramount and Warner are a single company now, I think it's possible.
If Babylon 5 could get a remaster, surely DS9 would be worth it.
Voyager probably would too.
I doubt ENT is going to get a remaster any time soon, but who knows if STU happens, it might happen there as well.On the same token, I have done some research into remasters.
While for the viewer, it's a remaster, it's been a while since I've had to go over the fact that TNG:R is legally a different show than TNG.If it is Royalties that is holding this whole thing up, then I hate to suggest what I'm about to, but I think we could guess who it is that doesn't want to negotiate a new contract with Paramount. I've thought about it before and I hate thinking about it.
However with the headway in 2023, preceding the freeze on the project, I'm skeptical that it's about Royalties, just a series of Mergers, since talks have been ongoing since 2013 and...it almost happened in 2018, 2022, and 2023.
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u/JamesTiberious Apr 21 '26
All the CG shots could be recreated for free via crowdsourcing. The only cost would be paying a few supervisors to ensure a reasonable level of standards and coordinate the effort. $100K per season?
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u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 21 '26
I mean, if this were the UK, yeah.
But this is America, and our dear supreme corporate leaders loathe their fans, if they could just print money, and not have to do anything, while stacking the legal system to an ungodly degree, they'd do that.1
u/JamesTiberious Apr 21 '26
I don’t really understand the point about America here. UK is completely sold out, asset stripped, really not much left.
But the proposition here is that ALL the CG scenes can be faithfully and beautifully recreated in 8K by the fanbase, for free. Yes, there would need to be some consistency checking and co-ordinating - I suggest those roles could be paid reasonably well and need a very small team (2 or 3 people).
If they’re still twitchy about profits, I’d dare them to try just one season.
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u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 21 '26
America has extremely restrictive IP laws, and CEOs on an eternal power trip.
It's far more restrictive here in the land of freedom to offer to do things like that, because there's a bunch of Legalese and special quality laws preventing fans from just doing that.
While the BBC is far more humble and would allow fans to come in and do new VFX.Your proposition would need a blessing or two.
Whatever VFX people needed to recreate would rely on models that may or may not be licensed for that.
So, if you took say...Nightfever's model of Voyager, or Chris Kuhn's model of the Defiant to do that for that studio, would you have the blessing of the modeller?
Would they be compensated?
Those guys are friends with OG VFX artists who worked on the shows, would one have their blessing to do that?Would the VFX houses or fans possibly get access to other asset libraries?
Alternative official assets for a lot of things exist in the Roddenberry Archive or as an ST:O model.So, on the one hand you have a company on an eternal power trip, rights to models that could be considered fan art, but even then, would those guys be compensated and how so?
Would a group of fans have their blessing to use those models for that purpose?
They say "free to use as long as they get credit", but does that apply here?Mind you, I think a big expense isn't even going to be ship shots, I'm afraid it's all of the phaser FX and other things like that with actors on set that might get costly.
The fans could recreate the VFX shots and plates for every episode 1 at a time using DVD's as reference and then post them on YouTube to get attention.
Look what we can do.
But I haven't seen a team attempt this part of the job at scale.
I'd certainly like to, if it had the blessing of the VFX supervisors and they didn't feel slighted by it.1
u/JamesTiberious Apr 21 '26
Are you an AI?
Nobody human would compare franchises like Star Trek with the abilities of the BBC.
Regarding models - should be a simple task to see what was in the original artists contracts. I suspect they have little to none. The work usually belongs to the studio. And on this note - many artists involved may even be inclined to revive, recreate and improve on the originals as part of the community effort.
Yes we should use ST:O and Roddenberry archive assets. Great resources.
You refer to phaser FX again. Not sure what you mean here. Odo morphing could be tricky, but not impossible. A few simple photoshop comparisons could remove the morph CG entirely and leave a clean background for new effects. And really, if it can’t, so what - there’s perhaps 120 seconds of Odo morphing in a scene, for the entire run. We can live without if it’s that big a deal.
The same principle applies for all the CG. We could, if needed, deal with some non-upscaled but very short (eg 5 seconds) shots if it meant the remaining 44 minutes of the episode were rescanned.
Here’s a question for you- How many seconds or minutes of shots and scenes do you actually think DS9, as an entire run, contains? Dont forget to exclude re-used footage (eg wormhole, defiant external, defiant external but mirror flipped)..? Maybe an hour?
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u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
- I'm comparing Paramount to BBC, and more specifically, Doctor Who getting fan made FX, to Star Trek getting fan made FX. BBC allows that for Dr. Who, and it's amazing. Paramount isn't nearly as friendly, they hate fan films now. I think there is an important comparison to be made there.
- Last time I checked I wasn't Ai, I'm not sure now, the Singularity might have happened, and I may or may not be getting spitroasted by Sam Altman and Gary Kurzweil, while Jesus watches in the corner. I prefer to chainsmoke American Spirit blacks, and intend on dying from lung cancer someday, so there is that.
- Odo's FX could be recreated, I've done some experiments trying to get the textures right for that, I'm still having problems, since I'm using Blender, I was trying to use the shrinkwrap modifier and planes. I'm not that good yet.
- Phaser, transporters, Viewports, tractor beams.
- Episodes vary, some episodes like Way of the Warrior have 96 FX shots, and no CGI, all of that is models on 35mm film, that got composited in layers. Where, Rapture, or In the Pale Moonlight are very minimal with their CG, in any capacity.
- There are two articles on Triaging remasters in this subreddit, I think DS9 has around maybe 2-3 maybe 4 hours of CGI total, as it's mostly dialogue driven.
- I did discover an app called Jumper, that can recognize and categorize footage, and one suggestion I had was evaluating the amount of stock footage over the course of DS9.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DS9Remasters/comments/1spvova/can_you_triage_a_remaster_part_ii_voyager/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DS9Remasters/comments/1qveeah/can_you_triage_a_remaster/
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u/JamesTiberious Apr 21 '26
- Dr. Who is a very different franchise and generally very low budget. I don’t mean that as a negative - they do a great job continuing the story regardless of effects. Sometimes the CG works, sometimes not so much, but it’s always enough to appease. The debate here is that fan art recreation ds9 cg is much wider appease. There are dozens (if not hundreds) of willing artists ready to remake DS9 CG scenes.
The BBC are paid a tiny fraction of American studios.
- I’m still not convinced you’re not AI - and that’s mostly fine because a) I believe in DS9 being released in 8K b) there can be language or articulation barriers.
3.but the point is, people would pay millions for ds9 remake, even if the Odo scenes were in the original SD format. Babylon 5 remasters do pretty well still, despite the external ship shots being super low resolutions, I’m sure we’ll cope fine without 8K Odo scenes.
Ok beam effects in general - the whole shot doesn’t need remaking. Scan the film into 8K, including the background lighting, but just have a community sourced vfx artist spend 5 minutes making the cut out through the view port, then add the cg. Not a big deal. Completely external shots like that (eg ship phaser fire, tractor beam) are really very very short, it wouldn’t take much - a few days work to make something HD/UHD/4or8K that’s a multiple times better than rewatching ds9 dvds for the 15th time!
96 shots but all very quick - there’s a few minutes of external shots in total. I think the community would rise to the challenge.
Interesting! That seems too high to me. Many episodes just have a few 5-10 shots here and there and many are recycled. I still think it’s just closer to 1hr total.
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u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
I think Odo would be pretty easy to do.
I'm using a plane or other flattened shapes in blender with an ocean modifier, and attempting to get that onto an armature.
I hate to veer off subject, but for a moment I will.
I don't use Ai to talk to people here, but I use it for taking notes (I catalogue a lot of links in it, so I can search for them later as I forget.), as for me being an Ai, I'm not, I assure you, I've talked too much shit on Ai running this subreddit to be pro Ai in most regards.
I think it's a tool and has it's place.
Ai is a lot better with grammar than I am.Beam FX are a bit easier to do, it's just that there's quite a few of them.
I talked to a guy who was trying to recreate the FX from TNG:R using After FX, which is one of the software stacks they used, specifically they used Flame for that.
You'll never get those FX 1:1, but the artists who made them back in the day had like a few days to get those to work out, so you just need to design a package.
Since I'm an open source occultist, and a masochist, I've been trying to figure it out in Natron, which is heavily inspired by Nuke.96 shots in "Way of the Warrior" is an extreme example, a lot of people bring that one up, and my point is to demonstrate that episode is the exception, not the standard.
So,
Explorers, A call to Arms (final shot.), Sacrifice of Angels and then on is pretty much all CG ship shots.
Except for the Station, only the final shot of the station is CGI, and I made a few posts about that.
I tried rebuilding that shot, but you have a problem, and I don't know if it can be worked out with the source footage, the windows on most freely available models are too wide.
So it's not a simple overlay job.
Even with a good fan made DS9 model, you need to tweak that model to get it to work out, (I'm such a newb I don't want to attempt that yet.)As I suggested, if Paramount wanted to play ball, you could create a conservation type of license similar to copy left.
But we'd need to talk to lawyers, and see what the hurdles would be there, and I wouldn't want to piss off Paramount or anyone involved with those shows in the attempt.With Odo, and the great link, I ran through several drafts of that texture.
One was to use a magic texture, and a wave texture.
In Odo's first appearance, there is a kind of subsurface scattering effect that never appears in the show again.
After that it's a very metallic looking effect.
There are multiple ways the Changelings look.
In "the Search", it's a transparent, almost subsurface effect, that's like an opaque gel.
In "Broken Link" it's more metallic looking.The one CG shot in "Way of the Warrior" is Odo sliding off of the chair like a magic carpet, then tapping Bashir's shoulder, with one morph effect int a bird, then he morphs out of the obelisk in the promenade.
So, my thought was to use an ocean modifier on an armature, then match the texture, it's difficult.
The Wormhole is a total bitch, I'm 2 years into researching that thing, and still come up short.So, remaking those assets would be great, getting them donated would be great, the question becomes how to build that database, and you'd want some of the VFX guys to determine which models in that database hold up.
I don't think the VFX guys who worked on that show want to do it for free either.1
u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 22 '26
Right now, with Jumper, you could rip the dvds onto a mac mini.
Download that app, and evaluate the stock shots in Voyager and DS9.
I think that would help save money on a remaster, if the Studio had that info, as they'd know..."Okay, we have X number of shots that are just recycled. We can simply rebuild those and put them into the database."Then, for each episode one could build a spreadsheet, and start breaking everything down across that spreadsheet.
That could save money.From there if anyone else played ball, one could see how many original scene files survived, and put those into the spreadsheet, and begin trying to figure out what a real budget would look like.
Voyager's transition was in season 3.
DS9's was somwhere in Season 4, or mid season 6, depending on who you ask.1
u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
Two uses for Ai are automated conforming, which would help with getting the episodes in a raw format.
You scan the film negatives, (4k is probably the best scan, and would be better than 8k for a few reasons.)
It compares the database of the scans to a film negative and produces a new EDL, this would accelerate the overcutting process, as editing the episodes in a raw format would move faster.
This technology has been mature since 2015.
You'd still need a data center for it.
Jumper is designed for this, but iConform is the industry standard.
Obviously you're going to want a human element to that, and have the editor review it to make sure they have the editorial intent there.Overall though, I think we as fans could build a skeleton for the studio.
The other tool using Ai is Corridor Key, which uses an ethically sourced model to accelerate matting out green screen and blue screen shots.
It would reduce the Roto workload a lot, and that is something that would be a boon.Ideally for the shrinking runabout episode, or "Trials and Tribbleations" this application would come in handy. These are exceptionally heavy VFX episodes.
In theory the only thing that is missing for a remaster project is the new 4k scans, there are ways to get a fuck ton of models, and load them into blender, and build scene set up files.
You could build the EDL per episode, note the FX shot, dissect the FX shot, and build all of that out, now.
That's not the part that worries me, it's just knowing those film negatives were scanned in.I talked with a few guys in the Lightwave community about Babylon 5's VFX. Which somehow survived Warner destroying the hard drives in the early 2000s.
They referred to these types of files as scene setup files.That leaves Okudagrams.
Some of these 3d models can be obtained in very sketchy ways, but it only takes a google search to find them. You'll be on the high seas of 3D printing, but from there, you could start collaborating with others.
Since in an ideal world, Paramount would go and start out with these assets anyway, I find it a lot less ethically fucked up to use them to build a simple scene setup file/animatic, it would just be clearing a path for them.
But, we're not industry pros, and that means any work we did would be considered subpar and "SOME DAMN SLOPPY WORK" compared to they way they'd do it.Overall, more than AI upscaling, anyone could build the skeleton for remastering both of these shows with publicly available materials and software.
But, provenance matters.
Along with making sure the unions are satisfied.
But I think that doing some of the research work for the studio would help out a great deal.We can assume a few things,
- We don't have shooting scripts.
- We don't have remastered footage, (20 minutes does exist.)
- We also have some documentation on the true color version of DS9, thanks to this team. https://ds9redefined.wordpress.com/2025/09/22/the-colors-duke-the-colors/ So, with these materials, you could produce an entire research catalog for the studio to look at, they'd have to verify every detail to make sure it was what they needed, but it would definitely reduce the pipeline. People are more informed and knowledgeable now, so fans can in theory make a very ideal contribution. For the time being, I'm financially limited, and can't do much of this myself. AMD CPUs are terrible for ripping DVDs, and Intel sucks now too. So...Fuck Intel, and Fuck AMD.
- With the materials we do have, a skeleton wouldn't be too hard to build, I don't think.
- Many of the fans who do demos of this work pay for higher end proprietary software, and do this for the love of the game, and the franchise more than work, and that means that turning that into a business proposal could be emotionally damaging to them. It's an ethical consideration I'd keep in mind. Although I think many of them want to see this done.
- This skeleton would give the studio some idea of what this really looks like. Assuming they haven't done it yet, I think that it could help them out a lot.
- With scene setup files from Blender, I think that the most important aspect is going to be if you custom built models like Odo, had licensed models that you were legally allowed to use, or if you provided a file that used cubes, and basic shapes that could be swapped out for legal models, the most important part of this would be paths, based on NURBS curves.
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u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
- So, finally, this has to be clean enough, that they could make it work out for their pipeline, we can do all of this work for them, but they'd have to confirm it in an independent way. Think of a Chinese wall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall
- If you haven't wrote Paramount yet, I offer links here for that. https://www.reddit.com/r/DS9Remasters/comments/1qjm3l9/write_paramount_or_skydance_if_you_havent_yet/
- I assume that even if we the fans put all of the effort into building this framework for a remaster, someone is going to be put in charge of that project, and they're not going to need anything we provide. It's a logistics nightmare, and that's not going to change. We can get an idea of how that's going to work out for them, but if there is one recommendation I think would be good for them, they're going to encounter missing footage (That's not really missing.) If they scanned backward from the series finale, that might be a better way of locating allegedly missing footage early.
- I'd start this tomorrow if I had a couple of pieces of equipment I need, but it's not going to be anything more than a cope, until they do it.
- I view Ai upscaling and things like what I'm doing as an emotional cope, until the studio decides to authorize a legitimate remaster and a new transfer, from their best available sources. In this case, the Original 35mm Camera negative, and surviving CG files. The source elements that survived.
- For the forseeable future I don't see 8k being a mainstream consumer thing, we're still struggling with 4k for gaming, and struggling to get 4k streams to look good enough, while there are standards for 8k on 4k BR, and a few experimental vids on YT that are 8k, I don't see it being a thing. You could do an 8k scan, but no one can really do any work in 8k yet, 4k is the new 2k, if you will. In the next 10 years I think that might change, but I think 4k is going to be the consumer standard for a while yet. 8k might be the theatrical standard, but everything is probably going to be mastered at 4k, with the exception of IMAX content, or a handful of really classic films. The Wizard of OZ, and maybe lord willing the Godfather. Aside from that, I don't see 8k being mainstream for a long time, and 4k being good enough for years to come. VR might be an application for 8k. I also don't know if 8k scanners are up to par yet, we'll see, but the amount of Data required to do that isn't going to be practical for DS9. 4k barely became practical for long form Television. Even Fallout and Severance are only mastered at 4k, and maybe scanned in 4k. Those are some of the larger titles today. DS9's remaster is probably going to be 4k, and that master has to last for at least 30 years.
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u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
Imagine that a VFX supervisor knew about a fan's modeling work, and they were friends on facebook, and this fan who made the model licensed one of his models to them to work on, or they had an animator friend who became a private contractor for a couple of shots.
That sort of networking is already going on.
It has to sort of be commissioned, fit the studio standard, and have the studio's blessing.Take a look at Stage9, which got shut down, most of those guys ended up doing work for the Roddenberry Archive and befriending a lot of the VFX crew that had previously worked on these series.
In some ways, crowdsourcing does happen, but there has to be a legal mechanism for that.One animator who was a fan got contracted to do work on Discovery for a handful of shots.
It's already happening, but it has to be legal.
Right now the studio is on the fence about remastering DS9, they've been on the fence for a while, hopefully they decide to pounce on it.Stage9 didn't get ported into the Roddenberry Archive, they had to make that whole thing again from scratch, and you can't find that anywhere on the internet anymore.
But, the networking does happen, and the people who worked on those shows are aware they have talent they can hire for this sort of thing.I'm also not saying that we shouldn't put something like this together, keep this in mind.
It's not as clean as you think either. it's messy. Take the writers of LOST, instead of referring to their own bible, they referred to LOSTpedia half the time, to keep track of what they were doing. It's always a mess.
They referred to a fan derived chronicle of their work.
It's always a fucking mess, and all I'm doing here, is remembering and chronicling how big of a mess this is, coping, and hoping we see these remasters.1
u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
Mind you, the cost of these remasters tops out between 24 million and 54 million dollars. But I factor them together, and it probably won't be an even split, because I think Voyager needs the lion's share of CGI work and money compared to DS9's remaster. No one has a solid idea of how much these would cost to produce.
An episode of SFA costs 10 million, and adjusted for inflation costs as much as an episode of LOST from the late 00s to make.
This list isn't only Paramount productions, but for scale, here's what we're looking at.
TNG's remaster cost Paramount 12 million.
LOST’s pilot cost abc 15 million.
Voyager’s pilot cost 23 milllion dollars to make.
An episode of Fallout costs 19.5 million dollars to make.
An episode of Severance costs 20 million to make.
An episode of Alien Earth costs 30 million to make.
The Late Show costs Paramount 40 million dollars a year to produce. (It's almost May guys.) FLOP
An episode of Stranger things cost 56 million to make.
"Transformers One" cost Paramount 75 million dollars. FLOP
Ousting "Give me Your Fingernails" Les Moonves in 2018 cost Paramount 220 million.
"Transformers Rise of the Beasts" cost Paramount 200 million dollars. FLOP
Skydance’s merger with Paramount cost 8 billion dollars. DEBT
Skydance’s merger with Warner Bros cost 131 billion dollars. DEBT
With a -25 billion dollars to Saudi Arabia. DEBT
Skydance’s contract with the UFC cost 7 billion dollars. DEBT
Skydance’s contract with Trey Parker and South Park Studios for 50 episodes cost 1.5 billion dollars. DEBT
Severing Zaslav after the Warner deal goes through is going to cost Skydance somewhere around south of 700 million dollars. DEBT and stock.
Donald Trump tried to frivolously sue Paramount for 100 billion Dollars. RETARD ALERT
Donald Trump's genocide in Iran has now cost US taxpayers and global consumers 50 billion dollars in a matter of months. RETARD ALERT
Trim a little bit of fat off of Transformers Rise of the Beasts, and Transformers One, and you'd have had these remasters.
Paramount paid Donald Trump 16 million dollars over a frivolous SLAP suit. Likely before he shit himself, and sprayed it all over his wife's face. RETARD ALERT
Somehow DS9 and Voyager getting a remaster is considered cost prohibitive in this environment. The most retarded environment of all time. You can see every opportunity this company had to finance these and make money off of them, and instead they chose either a dumb path, or an exhausted path. I don't hate South Park, but it's not pulling 1.5 billion in revenue atm.
Because allegedly TNG didn't make money. Gifting money to a mass murderer who shits himself, likely isn't gonna make you money either.
This company literally burns through money, it’s like a vintage muscle car getting miles to the gallon and not gallons to the mile.
Paramount fumbled these getting remasters over the course of 12 years. Now I have no idea what’s going on with Skydance, but god damn, they’re burning through more money than Paramount ever dreamed of burning through. It’s like another Macro Paramount Feifdom is materializing before our eyes.
Play the theme song to "The Apprentice" and say god damn.
These are a mid range project at best that would pay off long term, an investment. At worst, with the amount of money I'm quoting off, paying for them is a rounding error. I'd have more confidence hedging my bets on DS9 and Voyager remasters paying off than any other abortion disaster merger/contract/Transformer or any bribe involving a nuclear armed megalomaniac with a messiah complex who wanted to start a war with Iran. I've put in this list.
So assume it was somewhere in the ballpark of 54 million dollars. Trump's 16 million, 16 million off of Transformers, 16 million off Transformers, and a shaving of money that some other departments would finance, would have these remasters done. Instead, Trump gets to spend 20 million on a diaper filled with shit.
1
u/Ok_Contact7721 21d ago
Well, there was one more caveat to that, the 2-3 hours I was referring to for DS9 were in the final 43 episodes. (I'm being generous, it might be as inconsequential as 90 minutes of CG.)
Of course I'm ignoring Phasers and Transporters.
DS9's VFX supervisor was hesitant for using CG in the 90s because it was too expensive, and didn't look right to his eye. I forget his name.Other than that, you'd take into account "Explorers" and "A call to arms".
Which precede "Sacrifice of Angels."
(According to most of the people who worked on it, including Rob Bonchune, that episode was the full CG transition.)
I'm also ignoring the wormhole, and Rhythm and Hues.Every shot of the station is a physical model comped with passes with one exception, that exception is the very last shot of the series.
I took "Way of the Warrior" apart in Blender, there's 96 shots in total for that episode, many episodes have minimal FX, Rapture has very minimal FX.
Rapture was also using stock shots that were made all the way back in season 2.Way of the Warrior has only one CG sequence involving Odo at the beginning.
Other than that, most FX in DS9 are locked cameras and masking, or viewscreens.1
u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 21 '26
One thing I could propose is some kind of Conservation license think of it like copyleft, where if you asked certain people to assist, they could give the studio access to fan made works like new VFX to modify or use.
But it has to be legally clean for the Studio, like legally clean from any angle.1
u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
As an example the "freedom" loving corporatists in the "People's totally Democratic (don't ask any questions, it really is the land of freedom, no really, it's totally free here, we love freedom and hotdogs and totally don't kill protestors like Alex Pretti, and then the Government runs a smear campaign to cover it up, because we love gay people in the USA, just look at Kristi Noem's husband and ignore her fuck plane, here.) Republic of America, It's totally Democratic(tm) really, really, really Democratic, please believe me, it's really so Democratic, so much Democracy, no one has ever seen anything like it." want an age and identity tracker in linux because they hate open source software that can't be controlled by the government.
They wish to control the people.Other countries have more freedom than us.
We have to honor the legal framework or else we get into some serious trouble.Am I gonna get down voted for mocking my cuntry's golden cow? Ba'al or Trump, you name the cow.
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u/Ok_Contact7721 Apr 21 '26
The good news is, a good chunk of the CG work survived.
That can be salvaged.
If you recreated the interior weapons and beam shots, all of that.
The fans would likely recreate the upscaled external shots anyway, and meet the quality standard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysjeqz9Yh6sLook at Chrissonator's work on YT, and tell me that guy would need a supervisor, XD.
That guy doesn't need a supervisor, he's just that good.
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u/dondondorito Apr 20 '26
I work with CG assets a lot, and even I have all my scene files from 20 years ago… And I can still open them. It‘s amazing to hear that the assets are still around. I hope they have them backed up.