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The Special Effects

© David Ye

One of the most important elements in a sci fi series is, of course, the special effects, and Babylon 5 is no exception to that.

When filming began back in 1992 the producers of the show decided that they would try to do the entire show's special effects in CGI (Computer generated Imagery). This was a risky decision as the technology was still in its infancy and there were very good chances that the CGI sequences would be unrealistic and would not work out.

Their fears proved to be unjustified and special effects became one of the best ever made for a sci fi show. The special effects thus became one of the strong selling points for the show and the quality of the CGI sequences have remained thoroughly consistent throughout the three-and-a-bit seasons of Babylon 5 that I have seen so far. In order to create these dazzling effects, the producers of the show used a three-dimensional modelling - rendering system called Lightwave 3d from Newtek (Which incidentally is now at version 5.5). The pilot episode used Lightwave 3d running on Amigas, while for the rest of the series, the crew switched to PCs -faster and easier to use.

There were other graphics packages that were used to create the final effects, Lightwave 3d is the primary program for creating the 3d models, scenes and animations.

That's probably the reason why Star Trek Voyager opted to go for CGI instead of models, using the same program and hiring Foundation Imaging to do the special effects - the same company that did CGI sequences for Babylon 5 in the first three seasons. But season four is now produced by Netter Digital Animation, one of the internal departments for the show.

If you watch the show regularly, the reasons why the CGI sequences are so realistic is very obvious. When ships get hit by weapons fire they don't just disintegrate in a ball of flame, instead they break up into chunks under several internal explosions and the debris just floats away and doesn't disappear. The ships and planets themselves look real - the ships are not too shiny, and the planets and rocks have a rough dusty look to them. Now that's just fine if you have a few things in the scene, but what if you have hundreds, maybe even thousands of things in the scene - all moving in different directions and doing different things? Well, after many hours of studying the CGI sequences (especially the ones in "Into the Fire"),