Star Trek Yesteryear reanimated 2025 Making of

This is NOT an AI film but rather (way too) hard work that AI somewhat helped with. No prompts, though, just under the hood processing of movement data and face tracking and things like that. The movie was released on its own a few days ago and a lot of comments have told me that my AI needs to be better :) You can watch it separately here:    • Star Trek "Yesteryear" 2025 Re-animated sh...   Or just watch this video as the full film is included. I made this 'making of' to present to a couple of the makers groups I belong to and was encouraged to share it with the public. I hope other CG filmmakers can take away some positive and helpful notes to apply to their own work. Several of the comments did point out that the animation was a bit weird and I couldn't agree more. The final result was more a product of fatigue than anything else. I did do several passes across the animation and each time, those who saw the previous versions, remarked on the vast improvement. Perhaps another pass or two was necessary, but as a passion project it would be to the detriment of paying the rent and completing the 65 others that are at some stage of production. The goal was to get it 'not embarrassing' and properly transmit to the view what a Filmation Trek revisioning could look like. Star Trek: The Animated Series ran from 1973-1975 and featured most of the original cast voicing their characters. The major exception was the character of Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), who did not appear in the series because the series' budget could not afford the complete cast. In my version, he returns (for only one shot, but still). When it was originally released in 1973, it was praised for it's new and innovative stories. Animation allowed the 'gloves to come off' and the writers, many of whom wrote for the live action series, were excited to be free of budget constraints. Vast alien landscapes, weird and impossible-to-film aliens (think non-biped, multi-limbed and tentacled creatures) were suddenly possible now that the written word didn't need to be translated into physical representations for filming. The result was that the stories expanded beyond the limitations of the live action show but unfortunately the audience was left behind. These wonderfully creative stories were overshadowed by the 'cheap' animation techniques and Saturday morning time slot. Where the live action was a prime-time, adult sci-fi drama, that audience wasn't tuning in Saturday morning following The Jetsons. Considering that the show featured almost all of the live action series' cast (damnit, Walter!!) the decision for a slot associated with children's programming was baffling, Today, prime-time cartoons are common, including Star Trek! Why not bring those great stories supported by original cast performances back with a modern animation style for adults? Apparently so much was spent on the voice actors that little money was left in the budget for the animation. It suffered and it showed. Despite winning and EMMY in 1975 for Outstanding Entertainment - Children's series, it would be the look of it that would hold it back from being accepted as mainstream Trek. I sought to boost it visually, so the stories and the performances would all be on the same level. And so I present a sample of the series reborn with today's technology, Unreal Engine 5. A single filmmaker drives all the aspects of production with a little help in specific disciplines. This is a no-budget experiment that uses apps that are freely (some paid) accessible to everyone. It is not AI prompt generated slop, but does use AI powered tools such as marker-less mocap, voice cloning, face replacement, 'creative' upscaling and AI-processed facial performance capture. The project is an exploration of bringing a classic show that was missed by many, to a new audience. This video is a 'medium' dive into the processes that brought it to life. Not meant as a tutorial by any means, it should merely bring attention to the multiple techniques at work to make this a reality. Yes AI would have produced much more realistic movement and faces, but at the expense of control and predictable outcome. Every time you hit that generate button you get something different, and for a piece this long, I was not interested in a crap shoot. I hope you enjoy what I was able to produce, even if it isn't perfect. 00:00 Intro 00:23 TAS Yesteryear Sample 01:18 The Impetus 01:52 My Attempt (main film) 05:36 Production begins (space shots) 05:55 The Enterprise Set 06:18 The Planet Set 06:36 Soundtrack 07:18 Casting (and metahuman creation) 08:24 Grooms (custom 60's future hairstyles) 09:00 Costuming 09:20 Motion Capture 09:30 Facial Capture 09:55 Animation 10:16 Camera 10:30 Unreal Render 10:37 Topaz Astra Creative Upscale 11:00 Face Replacement (FaceFusion 3.3.2) 11:43 Re-LipSync (Sync.so) 11:52 The Beam in (Glitter!) 12:23 The Guardian 13:00 Bonus: Shame and Despair 14:45 Credits