DarthAngelus

The full trailer for Star Wars: Heir to the Empire is here, along with a release date for Chapter 1: it's dropping Tuesday 2nd September, with a premiere as usual. A new chapter will follow every week and I'm excited for all of you to be able to see this new and improved version.

The early chapters in particular have seen a massive improvement but every chapter will get an upgrade even if it's just a higher resolution render.

Below I've written an FAQ with some questions I expect to hear a lot.

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Q: Can't you release them all at once?

A: Nope, I've not actually finished rendering them all yet. At the time of writing, 22 of the 32 are fully rendered and edited. A few others are in progress. I didn't do them all in order either because I wanted specific footage for the trailer. It's mostly the Myrkr chapters left to do though.

Q: Didn't you already do a special edition of Chapter 1?

A: I did! But that doesn't mean I can't do another one with a higher resolution render. I've also edited the sound again from scratch, the voices got drowned out in places before. In addition to that, I recorded Captain Pellaeon's dialogue again to sound gruffer like he does later on in the series.

Q: What other changes have you made for the Special Edition?

A: The main two changes are using NVidia Omniverse to render Chapter 1-17, since that wasn't done before and rendering at 1440p instead of 1080p. Other changes include putting the most recent character models in the early chapters so they look consistent throughout. Other changes include a more lore accurate Ysalamiri and Lando has a cape in later chapters (I now know how to make soft fabric effects work in Omniverse), tweaks to lighting and new building models for Hyllyard City.

Q: Why 1440p and not 4k?

A: 4k is incredibly slow to render, even with the new graphics card, I'd still be about quarter of the way through the series and I'd rather be able to move on to Dark Force Rising.

Q: You moved the premiere day from Thursday to Tuesday, why?

A: Christmas and New Years Day fall on Thursdays this year. The choice was to choose a different day of the week or have a two week break.

Q: What about the four hour movie?

A: That's still coming. Obviously I need to finish rendering everything first. The plan is to release it a few weeks after Chapter 32, with 1st May being the target date as the 35th anniversary of Heir to the Empire being published.

Q: Will the movie have the opening crawl?

A: As much as I'd like to, I will be keeping the opening crawl as a seperate video. As before, if it runs into problems with the copyright bots not liking the music, only the crawl gets taken down, not the entire movie.

Q: How is your health?

A: Still recovering from surgery. This special edition was a nice easy project though since all the hard work was done when I originally animated the scenes.

Q: How is Dark Force Rising coming along?

A: Still in the script writing phase, my recent surgery and recovery have slowed down progress there but my goal is to get something to the voice actors soon and get to work animating it once the last of the special edition chapters have been completed.

Q: How can I help?

A: Watch the new chapters, share them with your friends and family. You can also support my work through my Ko-fi page too (the current funding goals are complete but every donation is appreciated): ko-fi.com/darthangelus

1 week ago | [YT] | 111

DarthAngelus

Two weeks later, the new motion capture suit has arrived!

Those round things are the sensors and there are straps that hold them in place when in use.

In this photo they're in the dock which keeps them charged and calibrated.

Once I've read through the instructions and such, I'll put out a test video so we can see how it works. I'm still recovering from surgery though, so it won't be anything too exciting, probably just me walking around the room.

A huge thank you to everyone who made this possible, I'm excited to put this to good use with Dark Force Rising!

4 weeks ago | [YT] | 147

DarthAngelus

Wow. This morning I woke up to find the funding campaign for a new motion capture suit is now complete!

It's hard to find the right words to describe how grateful I am to everyone who has supported the campaign and made it possible. I've already contacted the retailer to place the order and I can't wait to give it a try and get to work on Dark Force Rising.

I've also ordered the graphics card that the community generously supported in the previous campaign as well. It might be a little while before I can install the thing (as part of my surgery recovery, I'm not supposed to bend over or do any heavy lifting) but at least I'll have to ready to go once I'm able to.

I don't know what the next funding goal should be yet, so I'm just going to leave it as it is on the Ko-fi page until I've had some time to give it some thought.

I've attached a picture from their website so you can see what it'll look like. They call it a suit but it's really just the sensors you see strapped to her arms, legs and head, plus that harness thing on her torso. Makes it easy to put on over the top of regular clothes.

Thankyou so much to everyone who supported my work and my future work. I'm excited to make use of both new pieces of hardware!

1 month ago | [YT] | 234

DarthAngelus

To give a quick update from my last post. I got home last night from my week in hospital. They said I am recovering well so I just need to rest and get back to eating normally.

Thankyou to everyone who left me well wishes. Reading those helped so much.

1 month ago | [YT] | 227

DarthAngelus

As those of you following this page or my Monday night streams for awhile will know, I've been running into a lot of health problems over the last few months.

Tomorrow I'll be having surgery that should hopefully deal with the problem. But it does mean I won't be streaming, updating here or working on Heir to the Empire or Dark Force Rising for a few weeks at least.

So I thought I'd give an update on where things are with the Thrawn Trilogy adaptation.

17 of 32 Chapters have been rerendered (this is just the footage).
9 of those have been edited into complete chapters (these are not in order so I can't release them yet).
2 Chapters worth of footage has been queued up to render whilst I'm in hospital, plus a few other long scenes.

6 Chapters of Dark Force Rising have been written and I can't wait to animate these.

The funding campaign for the new mocap suit is currently at 72% (woah!).

And the RTX 5070 graphics card you helped fund is now available but I don't want to order anything until I get back from my hospital stay, otherwise it would just be left on my doorstep. Something to look forward to when I get home.

Medical stuff is never the most pleasant subject, but I thought I should share why I'm going to be quiet for a little while. But I look forward to getting back to work on this because so much is done and I can't wait to share it with all of you. The good thing about this remaster project is the hard work was actually done when I first animated the scenes. I just have to do a few tweaks here and there, then render it again. So when I'm back home and have recovered enough to sit at my desk, I can do those things and feel productive without it being too much of a strain.

May the Thrawn be with you all!

2 months ago | [YT] | 383

DarthAngelus

Woah!

I've been watching the subscriber count all day and we finally reached 50,000!

A huge thankyou to each and every one of you. It really means so much to me that so many of you enjoy my work!

3 months ago | [YT] | 348

DarthAngelus

Sadly, no stream tonight but we continue to close in on the half way point of the remaster.

There is currently a 36 hour render underway of one of the longest scenes in the series. Getting that done will be a big step forward.

3 months ago | [YT] | 95

DarthAngelus

Another bit of exciting news today, Heir to the Empire is being included in the Best Star Wars Short Film Festival stream tonight at 8pm EST. I believe there will be some kind of audience voting too, so I hope I can count on everyone's support!

www.wildsound.ca/events/best-of-star-wars-shorts

3 months ago | [YT] | 293

DarthAngelus

May the Fourth be with you!

By now, the teaser trailer for the Special Edition has been released, this is your first look at the way these newly rerendered episodes are coming along.

But attached to this post are a few before and after images so you can see the difference side by side.

I'm happy to report that as of today:

- 14 chapters are fully rendered (almost half way!)
- 7 chapters have had the new footage edited in and are complete
- the motion capture crowdfunding campaign is now 58% funded
- The Dark Force Rising script has the first four chapters complete

The completed episodes are not necessarily in series order and I'd like to get more done before I start releasing them (the idea is to put them out weekly) but I am so excited to share this update with all of you.

May the Thrawn be with you all and thank you so much for the support you all show.

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3 months ago | [YT] | 281

DarthAngelus

Woah! Special thanks to @ncard00 for getting the crowd funded mocap suit campaign to the half way point! We are 50% funded thanks to so many generous people!

Once acquired it's going to really help get production going on Dark Force Rising, the suit I've been using is falling apart and while I can still use it for a bit longer, it really is time for a new one.

For those who haven't seen it yet, I've attached the video discussing the campaign to this post and here's a link to the Ko-Fi page where the campaign is taking place.

ko-fi.com/darthangelus

Lately I've been running into some health problems (I'll talk about that when I've got a full diagnosis) which have slowed down progress on writing Dark Force Rising, but thankfully rendering Heir to the Empire's Special Edition doesn't require a lot of effort on my part, so I can leave it running when I'm not up to sitting at the computer for long periods of time.

I'm very pleased to say that 14 Chapters worth of footage has been rendered, so it's almost half way there. The difference looks stunning and I'm hoping to have a trailer ready soon so you can finally see it for yourselves.

Thankyou everyone for your support, from watching the show, kind words about my health and helping out with the MoCap suit campaign. It all means so much and I'm very lucky to have all of you watching my back. Thankyou!

3 months ago | [YT] | 78