A lot of it was covering up mistakes. Watching TNG on a modern display, you get to notice how they didn’t match the colors on the uniforms very well. It’s particularly noticeable with the extras uniforms compared to the main cast, though even the main cast uniforms aren’t all matched, either. Mostly happens with the remade uniforms from season 3 onward.
For one example, look at Geordi and Data. I don’t think this is just a matter of lighting.
It probably didn’t get noticed much on shitty broadcast quality TV back then, but once stuff got remastered for the digital age, it all popped out.
I’ve actually been working on similar patterns for the Strange New Worlds uniforms. It looked like it might be 3d printed directly on the fabric. I tried a transparent TPU, but it’s hard to get consistent results out of it. The transparent PLA I tried didn’t stick to the fabric.
They might have used a mask of some kind, or they tuned the hell out of a TPU printer setup and had an intern clean it up afterwords.
I saw a video about how they were made! Let me look through my browser history…
Ah, here we go. Here’s the bit where they talk about the deltas (on the Disco uniform, not the SNW one): https://youtu.be/xDthNAUMXYs?t=261
The person in the video describes it as a “rubberized print” (screen-printed rather than 3d-printed) and “foiled on top.” She also describes it as “the cosplayer’s nightmare,” LOL.
On the other hand, I’ve noticed so, so much more intentional stuff that you just couldn’t see that the old resolutions. It’s one of the reasons it’s a damn shame that Boy/DS9 haven’t gotten a remaster (though, I think in this case the way it was filmed basically means this will never happen.)
A lot of it was covering up mistakes. Watching TNG on a modern display, you get to notice how they didn’t match the colors on the uniforms very well. It’s particularly noticeable with the extras uniforms compared to the main cast, though even the main cast uniforms aren’t all matched, either. Mostly happens with the remade uniforms from season 3 onward.
For one example, look at Geordi and Data. I don’t think this is just a matter of lighting.
It probably didn’t get noticed much on shitty broadcast quality TV back then, but once stuff got remastered for the digital age, it all popped out.
It could be worse: at least that makes it easier for cosplayers, unlike this shit on the Discovery uniforms that seems almost designed to thwart them!
I’ve actually been working on similar patterns for the Strange New Worlds uniforms. It looked like it might be 3d printed directly on the fabric. I tried a transparent TPU, but it’s hard to get consistent results out of it. The transparent PLA I tried didn’t stick to the fabric.
They might have used a mask of some kind, or they tuned the hell out of a TPU printer setup and had an intern clean it up afterwords.
I saw a video about how they were made! Let me look through my browser history…
Ah, here we go. Here’s the bit where they talk about the deltas (on the Disco uniform, not the SNW one): https://youtu.be/xDthNAUMXYs?t=261
The person in the video describes it as a “rubberized print” (screen-printed rather than 3d-printed) and “foiled on top.” She also describes it as “the cosplayer’s nightmare,” LOL.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/xDthNAUMXYs?t=261
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
On the other hand, I’ve noticed so, so much more intentional stuff that you just couldn’t see that the old resolutions. It’s one of the reasons it’s a damn shame that Boy/DS9 haven’t gotten a remaster (though, I think in this case the way it was filmed basically means this will never happen.)