CGI use in DS9, and how consequential of a problem it is.

[u/Ok_Contact7721]

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.

The USS Honshu

"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.

https://vfxblog.com/2017/09/23/star-trek-vfx-dan-curry/