Script Descriptions

[Jan]

Starting a new thread since the original discussion is over in the other one and the subject heading is misleading.

Okay, here's the Cortez:

EXT. SPACE - THE JUMP GATE AND THE CORTEZ

The gate yawns open, and the Cortez comes through. Because of the massive size of the gate, we don't at first realize how big the vessel is. Ash she approaches the mouth, however, the Cortez begins to loom larger and larger, filling the jump gate border to border.

A musical note here, please: Let's have some majestic "movin' music to bring the Cortez in, something in the tradition of the opening bars of the major themes from SIVERADO (Bruce Broughton) or HOW THE WEST WAS WON (Alfred Newman) -- percussion, lotsa brass, maybe some violins.

EXT. SPACE - BABYLON 5 AND THE CORTEZ

The Cortez clears the jumpgate and cruises in slowly on its station approach. Now we finally see the enormous size and complexity of this ship, its unusual architecture. This isn't just a vessel that routinely plies point-to-point routes. This ship goes out into the deepest reaches of space, beyond the charts, making new maps, seeing what's out there. She is a strange and beautiful creation of Man, miles long -- and she is deadly for she goes armed on her voyages.

BTW, even though that's only about half a page of script, that's about as much as I'm comfortable putting up at a time.

Jan

 

[Triple F]

Paul Bryant on his design of the Cortez which appeared on screen.

I really respected (still do) Chris Foss's design work. He really knows how to get a ship huge looking. I especially liked his use of massive swathes of bold color. I did not want to do the standard Starwars/Trek primer grey look. This ship was supposed to be a leviathan. Absolutely huge, about half the size of B5.

Yeah, I had fun with that one. You can also see that it has a number of style cues in common with the Aggy. That was completely intentional. And you can stop looking before you start, I didn't stick in anything from any other designs. This one was 100% Paul Bryant. Oh, and the number? Sorry to burst any bubbles but 14286 was my house number at the time, as in 14286 Willow Glen . . . . well, you get the idea.

Paul also designed the Omega, and I’d been giving him a hard time (joking) about his nod to the Leonov which he had included in that ship (making the profile of the Omega’s rotating section the same as the Leonov’s from 2010). The Cortez also had a rotating section, but was completely different, while also having some things in common with the Omega – to suggest both ships were built by the same folk. The number thing had to do with a fan trying to figure out fleet sizes based on registration numbers on the side of ships, and I’d asked him about it. ; )

 

[JonFrain]

She is a strange and beautiful creation of Man, miles long -- and she is deadly for she goes armed on her voyages.

Hmm. I never got the impression that the ship was deadly or even strange. It was one of my least favorite ship designs. I did like the idea of them exploring the reaches of known space.

As far as posting stuff from the script. I assume just including ship descriptions is more than covered by fair use, as it is necessary to properly discuss the role JMS played in the design of CGI elements.

 

[Republibot 3.0]

The Cortez clears the jumpgate and cruises in slowly on its station approach. Now we finally see the enormous size and complexity of this ship, its unusual architecture. This isn't just a vessel that routinely plies point-to-point routes. This ship goes out into the deepest reaches of space, beyond the charts, making new maps, seeing what's out there. She is a strange and beautiful creation of Man, miles long -- and she is deadly for she goes armed on her voyages.

First of all: Thank you, Jan.

Secondly, that doesn't tell us diddly about the Cortez, apart from 'it's big'. There's no real description.

 

[Republibot 3.0]

Paul also designed the Omega, and I’d been giving him a hard time (joking) about his nod to the Leonov which he had included in that ship (making the profile of the Omega’s rotating section the same as the Leonov’s from 2010). The Cortez also had a rotating section, but was completely different, while also having some things in common with the Omega – to suggest both ships were built by the same folk. The number thing had to do with a fan trying to figure out fleet sizes based on registration numbers on the side of ships, and I’d asked him about it. ; )

First: Thank you.

Second: The Agamemnon/Omega is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, THE COOLEST STARSHIP EVER! I adored it from the moment I first saw it. It has a gorgeous ugliness unseen since the Space: 1999 Eagle. It's just glorious in its functionality, and just totally badass in its no-frills "I'm here to kill you" nature.

Gorgeous.

Thirdly: The Cortez is cool, though not as cool as the Omega. It's essentially a mobile Stanford Torus space habitat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus This makes perfect sense if you're gonna' be out on your own with a large crew for a long time. If the Cortez is 2.5 miles long (Half the size of B5), then I eyeball the revolving section to be about 1650 feet in diameter and about 1350 feet from leading edge to trailing. That gives it a circumference of close to a mile, and an internal floorspace of 6,997,891 square feet. The diameter is almost identical to that settled on for the NASA study of Stanford Toruses in 1975 (500 meters), but it's close to 3x as wide.

Just to put that in perspective, NASA concluded that a 500 x 75 meter Stanford Torus could self-sufficently sustain about 10,000 people with a population density about the same as the more crowded parts of NYC.

So, yeah, putting something like that on a stick, and sending it off on into the dark for years at a time makes total logical sense.

 

[Jan]

As far as posting stuff from the script. I assume just including ship descriptions is more than covered by fair use, as it is necessary to properly discuss the role JMS played in the design of CGI elements.

No, Fair Use doesn't have anything to do with discussion. Fair Use has to do with providing for small amounts of a work to be included in other works for the sake of criticism, education, etc.

Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship

But that's really not the point. The point is that about half a page is all *I'm* comfortable with transcribing. I'm aware that nobody at WB or JMS' office is going to come hunt me down, it's just my comfort factor with doing more.

Secondly, that doesn't tell us diddly about the Cortez, apart from 'it's big'. There's no real description.

True. Mostly just that she's long. JMS mentioned in a couple of instances in the script books that sometimes he would even try to sketch what he meant to the concept artists and it would be embarrassing.

JonFrain asked for "Shadow Vessel in "Signs and Portents", but for the first appearance of the Shadow (of Shadowman) ships in scripts, we have to look to 'Chrysalis' with filmed as #12 in the first season in order to give the CGI and other effects folks the most time to do what was needed.

EXT. SPACE - NEAR OUTPOST

There's not a jump point forming. Rather, first one, then
another, then a total of four massive SHADOWMEN CRUISERS begin
PHASING into view, as though moving from invisibility. They're
deadly looking ships, huge, black, with highlights of crimson
and purple. They begin to move in concert toward the moonbase.

ANOTHER ANGLE

As the fighters all start to move toward the cruisers. They
get only a third of the way there when ENERGY BLASTS from the
cruisers wash over them like a wave...not small bursts,
practically walls of destructive power. The ships are
demolished in a second.

THE NARN CRUISERS

Start to turn, to get out of the way. Too late. They are hit
by the Shadowmen cruisers. One after another, they EXPLODE,
debris flying in every direction. The destruction is sudden
and furious.

THE BLACK CRUISERS

ANGLE from BEHIND as they begin firing MASSIVE BURSTS down at
the moonbase. Big enough to see them impact on the moon's
surface. One after another after another. As one of the black
cruisers ECLIPSES FRAME, we go to --

As you can see, it's far more a description of the battle and the artists didn't do with any crimson or purple, but more of a shimmering texture that it seems JMS thought for a long time was based on a dogs nose but was apparently just the artist's nickname for that texture.

Jan

 

[Triple F]

Quite a bit was mentioned about the Shadows by Ron Thornton – who designed the ships and aliens. Here’s a couple of extracts

I wanted to break the mould a bit, but still make the Battle Crab familiar enough to give you the willies if you saw one (name came AFTER I designed it). I saw a documentary on Black Widow spiders where they had macro photography of one of them biting a leg of pork (looked like a human leg), KREEPEE.

Mojo and John Teska (who were sharing an office at the time) and I discussed how the weapon effect must appear to be effortless. My cue for this was the Daleks! They just pulled the plunger and said exterminate!! I just wanted the same effect, but as if they were yawning and flicking a fly. I think it was John who had the idea of the cutting beam which eloquently demonstrated that these guys could just nonchalantly slice up an entire fleet without upsetting the manicurist who was trimming their nails.

The idea that I had was that the Shadows defences were very organic. It laid an egg which burst into lots of shadow fighters! Mindless little killing machines, and the Battle Crabs could generate THOUSANDS of them!! I thought that was conceptually very scary. (Refer to the urban myth of the guy who went to the tropics and on his return had a swelling on his body which eventually POPPED! and thousands of spiders came from the wound!!)

The origin of the Shadow scout/corvette (the one that looked like a hair clasp) was more down to playing with software than anything else. As Jeff Scheetz explained.

The design of the scout ship was rather accidental. I was checking out some recently improved modelling tools in Lightwave. During this I created a block and grew some arms off of it and it reminded me of the Shadow ships. I kept playing with it and came up with something very close to the final design which I showed to Mojo, and he said it would work as the scout. I didn't even know there was going to be a scout. He suggested more curl on the arms and fewer of them. Ron looked at it and said, "put the dog nose texture on it and you're done!”

Dog’s nose texture was just a nickname given due to the obvious similarities when it was coloured black. It’s actually the same texture (coloured red/orange) which appears on the arse end of the original Drazi Sunhawk (Deathwalker episode) and even shows up with a bit of a purple hue in the landing bay of the Great Machine down on the planet. It’s was a mathematical construct, not a scan, and it’s use was necessitated by the lack of RAM on the computers. There was a fair bit of playing around with textures, a not so popular variant appeared on the Lumati transport.

It was a procedural calculated texture that just reminded me of Digby's (my dog, and company mascot) nose. There were technical (and more importantly memory) limitations during our tenure on B5. We had to depend a lot on calculated textures as opposed to image maps. Image mapping a shape like the shadows was almost impossible with the available computing power.

BTW. What was in the scripts was touched on a few times in the various interviews and to a man, everyone felt they were exceptionally good, for example:

Luc Mayrand said.
“Generally Joe did not make specific shape descriptions, but the scripts were very illustrative for scale, feel and purpose.”

Steve Burg said.
“I think everyone was in awe of the sheer amount he personally wrote for the series, and the high quality of the scripts; I certainly was. If you have a decent script, it answers a lot of questions! It makes the job that much easier. On “Babylon 5” we had good scripts. With a solid foundation like that you can focus on trying to come up with an interesting visual that conveys the intent of the story.”

[edit]
Forgot to mention. The wibbly wobbly phasing in and out effect of both the ships and the shaodw aliens wasn’t done by FI, at least originally. That was down to Kevin Kutchaver again, and his box of tricks held on the Apple Mac Quadra 700’s in his living room.

 

[Republibot 3.0]

Secondly, that doesn't tell us diddly about the Cortez, apart from 'it's big'. There's no real description.

True. Mostly just that she's long. JMS mentioned in a couple of instances in the script books that sometimes he would even try to sketch what he meant to the concept artists and it would be embarrassing.

Heh heh.

JonFrain asked for "Shadow Vessel in "Signs and Portents", but for the first appearance of the Shadow (of Shadowman) ships in scripts, we have to look to 'Chrysalis' with filmed as #12 in the first season in order to give the CGI and other effects folks the most time to do what was needed.

As you can see, it's far more a description of the battle and the artists didn't do with any crimson or purple, but more of a shimmering texture that it seems JMS thought for a long time was based on a dogs nose but was apparently just the artist's nickname for that texture.

Jan

The impression I'm getting is that the design of these things is kinda' like Joe gives 'em a vague description, and then they run off and show him what they've got, and then he tells the if he likes it or not. And if they have time they do another version more to his liking, and if they don't, then you end up with Drakh 1.0 and those Narn shps from the first season.

This isn't uncommon. Irwin Allen used to tell his model makers to make him stuff, with little or no idea what it'd look like. The model makers would have painfully little to work with, so they'd make design after design, which he'd reject without offering any clear criticism. (The Evolution of the Seaview is a fun example of this, whcih started out as a normal Skipjack-class sub with a glass observation deck aft of the conning tower, and ended up as...well, the seaview. Frustrated with Allen's inarticulate handwaving, they just started throwing crazy crap on it, culminating with the cheif modelmaker deciding to put cadillac tail fins on it. [If you look closely, there's even turn signals in 'em!])

 

[Republibot 3.0]

Quite a bit was mentioned about the Shadows by Ron Thornton – who designed the ships and aliens. Here’s a couple of extracts

Luc Mayrand said.
“Generally Joe did not make specific shape descriptions, but the scripts were very illustrative for scale, feel and purpose.”

Steve Burg said.
“I think everyone was in awe of the sheer amount he personally wrote for the series, and the high quality of the scripts; I certainly was. If you have a decent script, it answers a lot of questions! It makes the job that much easier. On “Babylon 5” we had good scripts. With a solid foundation like that you can focus on trying to come up with an interesting visual that conveys the intent of the story.”

[edit]
Forgot to mention. The wibbly wobbly phasing in and out effect of both the ships and the shaodw aliens wasn’t done by FI, at least originally. That was down to Kevin Kutchaver again, and his box of tricks held on the Apple Mac Quadra 700’s in his living room.

Thank you so much for posting this stuff!

So the impression I'm getting is that JMS basically gave a FEEL for the kind of ship he needed, and then just basically trusted the CGI guys to come up with something suitable. He dictated the requirements, but wasn't really any more specific than that, and the CGI guys were more or less on their own?

 

[Jan]

A feel is probably the extent of it in the scripts for effects though often stage directions were precise. And in at least a couple of Triple-F's interviews the artists commented on how JMS would be conservative in what he was asking for, being budget conscious, but that they would often come up with something cooler they could offer. Sadly, it's doubtful any of those meetings were ever recorded or transcribed. Most of my script collection came from Mark Walters in the Art Dept.(prop master and later Art Director) and in one of them he wrote something along the lines of 'One meeting down, 1,000 to go." Can't remember which one to give you an exact quote but it made me smile.

Jan

 

[Republibot 3.0]

A feel is probably the extent of it in the scripts for effects though often stage directions were precise. And in at least a couple of Triple-F's interviews the artists commented on how JMS would be conservative in what he was asking for, being budget conscious, but that they would often come up with something cooler they could offer. Sadly, it's doubtful any of those meetings were ever recorded or transcribed. Most of my script collection came from Mark Walters in the Art Dept.(prop master and later Art Director) and in one of them he wrote something along the lines of 'One meeting down, 1,000 to go." Can't remember which one to give you an exact quote but it made me smile.

Jan

I remember him saying that he was consciously trying to avoid the sort of soap opera stage direction you saw on other shows. Character A comes in and stands on his mark under a keylight. Character B comes in and stands on her mark under her keylight, as the scene progresses, they essentially reverse positions annnnnd SCENE! He said that it's lazy and once you notice it, you kind of can't STOP noticing how common it is, so he deliberately tried to avoid that.

 

[JonFrain]

As far as posting stuff from the script. I assume just including ship descriptions is more than covered by fair use, as it is necessary to properly discuss the role JMS played in the design of CGI elements.

No, Fair Use doesn't have anything to do with discussion. Fair Use has to do with providing for small amounts of a work to be included in other works for the sake of criticism, education, etc.

I absolutely think you're wrong. What you are doing is providing short excerpts for education, criticism and debate. Totally fair use. You need to provide it all in context, and by all that means whatever paragraphs describe the ships to be rendered.

But it's up to you to post what you want.

The examples so far show that JMS had little to do with the special effects and probably doesn't deserve his name associated with the FX emmy.

 

[JonFrain]

I'd be curious how JMS described the Drazi ship that looks like the ship from Blakes 7. I assume he also described the Vree ships as saucers.

The streib was a weird design that probably wasn't described by JMS.

One of the more disappointing ship designs was that of the alien that wanted to have sex with Ivanova to seal the deal.

 

[Jan]

But it's up to you to post what you want.

Yep. Because despite your opinion, the law doesn't cover individual discussions, only professionals and institutions.

The examples so far show that JMS had little to do with the special effects and probably doesn't deserve his name associated with the FX emmy.

Really. Seriously? You get that from the descriptions of the ships only? Despite everything said about the numbers of meetings there were, you made that decision based on...almost nothing. I may be wasting my time here even if this thread was supposed to have anything to do with the Emmy discussion, which it most emphatically doesn't. Why do you think I started a new thread?

How about this bit of description of Sheridan's starfury dropping in "All Alone in the Night"?

INT. STARFURY - SHERIDAN'S POV (STOCK)

As the Starfury rotates and drops.

EXT. STARFURY LAUNCH BAY

A CLOSE shot from right below the bay as the Starfury drops
RIGHT INTO CAMERA and BLACKS IT OUT.

EXT. SPACE - REVERSE

As the Starfury heads away from us, and three others ZIP past
us, heading away.

ANOTHER ANGLE - STARFURIES

As Sheridan's Starfury, the lead one, SPINS and rotates so
that it's flying backwards, looking back at the ships
following.

INT. SHERIDAN'S STARFURY - POV THROUGH WINDOW (CGI)

Showing the station falling away behind us, and the three
other Starfuries clustered behind.

Fours scenes, five CGI shots...just as a reminder that the ship design was a very small part of the effects overall.

I'd be curious how JMS described the Drazi ship that looks like the ship from Blakes 7. I assume he also described the Vree ships as saucers.

No idea what ships looked like in Blake's 7. From Deathwalker:

EXT. SPACE - THE VORTEX GENERATOR

It opens and a large warship soars out, a DRAZI HEAVY
CRUISER (known as a SUN HAWK). It starts toward the
station.

also

EXT. SPACE - THE VORTEX GENERATOR

It opens again and out pops an Iksha BATTLEGLOBE, and three
Vree BATTLE SAUCERS. They head for the station. (CGI)

Did we get a battleglobe in the final episode? I don't recall. I'm taking these from the script drafts in the script books. There may have been revisions afterward.

The streib was a weird design that probably wasn't described by JMS.

Here's where Ta'Lon's ship was captured.

EXT. NARN SHIP
As one last shot hits the engines, then a BEAM strikes,
immobilizing it. The forward section of the ship is WRENCHED
clear, and rises, rises along the course of the beam...until
we SEE the ship from which the beam has come: massive, long,
smooth with bubbles and jutting sections, like melted silver.
As the forward section rises toward this strange alien vessel,
we

One of the more disappointing ship designs was that of the alien that wanted to have sex with Ivanova to seal the deal.

From "Acts of Sacrifice":

EXT. JUMPGATE

A new form of alien ship comes in, and it should look very
alien indeed; strange angles and designs, but at the same
time very attractive, cathedral-like lines and pastels that
look almost like stained glass. It's very large, massively
impressive; promising a whole new technology.

BTW, I'm happy to do this but it would help a lot if you'd include episode name and approximate scene where the effect you're interested in was shown.

Jan

 

[Triple F]

Ron Thornton designed the three new ships that turned up in deathwalker.

The Iksha (or Ipsha, I’ve seen both names used) battle globe. There was a running joke we were having about fish being involved with the design of the ships. I’d also asked about the colours used in the jump gates.

No fish this time. Joe originally wanted the ship to be a Ball but I was afraid of it looking a bit like a mini Death Star. He was OK with the concept of the sphere still being used but reduced in size so it became the power source in the centre. It was also designed so I could make it quickly. Remembering that some of these ships had to be done in a day or less! The B5 budgets were about 1/10th of the Star Trek ones. (But MUCH more fun to do).

The initial flashes were to indicate the gate generators charging like a big capacitor, then they fire opening the rift but holding it in control between the separate generator shafts like an electromagnet. I wanted to do the Red/Blue shift thing more for the sci-fi fans (hardcore, not Star Wars).

Drazi Sunhawk – I’d just asked him if jms knew about the nod to the Liberator from B7.

No he didn’t. I’d always liked the Liberator (hated by all at the BBC) and the Drazi Sunhawk was my attempt to update it. I was fascinated by the idea of doing a "Blake’s 7, the motion picture" version, though I did only have two days to design and build it!

Doing this I’ve noticed some things about my designs that I forgot. Like the fact that the Sunhawk is really the lovechild of the Liberator, AND Thunderbirds 1 & 3! Look more closely at the nose and fuselage. It also had a great uncle in the USS Enterprise (movie version) !

When he refers to the movie version – he was talking about Star Trek the movie version. In other replies you’d learn Thornton was fairly impressed with the lines, look and feel of the new model of the Enterprise – funnily enough he, FI and Steve Burg would go on to do the FX for the special edition of that movie a few years later.

The Vree saucers – the one with the big guns on them. BTW I totally forgot to ask anyone about the ‘new’ bigger Vree saucers seen in season 3.

This saucer is another one I designed and built, the rotating parts were animated sections of the model not just animated textures. I’ve always had a design philosophy that I try to stick to which is - good physics with a pinch of artistic license, like the oversized guns being added for a bit of a giggle. We did occasionally discuss things like this over the telephone though meetings were the usual way to do things and that didn’t change much over time.

You’ll notice that reply mentions telephone calls and meetings where things would be discussed. That was in response to a question I asked about a post jms made on the newsgroups, where he jokingly apologised for the flying saucers in Deathwalker, and that the idea of including saucers was his during a phone call with Thornton. The reply for the Iksha Battle globe also drops a hint how things would sometimes go. jms suggested a globe and Thornton kept that idea but developed it for one reason or another. jms not knowing about the Blake’s 7 nod (though you’ll find no shortage of fans who think it was him that did it) is par for the course, I never found one nod that he knew about at the time.

While some of them were subtle and pretty cool, and the sort of thing that pops up in most sci-fi shows, some of the other stuff like mojo and the elvis thing was truly out of order. Seems, going by what a few were saying, jms only ever found out about them after fans approached him on the newsgroups.

I’m still hoping someone will find R2D2 somewhere in the first three seasons, Bryant and Thornton swear it’s there, but are usually giggling like a pair of little girls when saying it.

 

[Jan]

I’m still hoping someone will find R2D2 somewhere in the first three seasons, Bryant and Thornton swear it’s there, but are usually giggling like a pair of little girls when saying it.

Don't know about R2D2 but I've got a piece of set dressing from Crusade with THX 1138 engraved on it. It's a crate tag from a box on Excalibur from (iirc) 'The Memory of War'.

Jan

 

[Republibot 3.0]

One of the more disappointing ship designs was that of the alien that wanted to have sex with Ivanova to seal the deal.

The Lumati Spine Ship? I thought it was interesting.

 

[Republibot 3.0]

The examples so far show that JMS had little to do with the special effects and probably doesn't deserve his name associated with the FX emmy.

Really. Seriously? You get that from the descriptions of the ships only? Despite everything said about the numbers of meetings there were, you made that decision based on...almost nothing. I may be wasting my time here even if this thread was supposed to have anything to do with the Emmy discussion, which it most emphatically doesn't. Why do you think I started a new thread?

To be fair, the ship descriptions would seem to suggest that he had little to do with the design of the CGI models. As you point out, however, the descriptions of the action scenes and how they're incorporated in the show are entirely script-based.

EXT. JUMPGATE

A new form of alien ship comes in, and it should look very
alien indeed; strange angles and designs, but at the same
time very attractive, cathedral-like lines and pastels that
look almost like stained glass. It's very large, massively
impressive; promising a whole new technology.

[/QUOTE]

Well that's a big ol' fail. <G>

 

[Republibot 3.0]

You’ll notice that reply mentions telephone calls and meetings where things would be discussed. That was in response to a question I asked about a post jms made on the newsgroups, where he jokingly apologised for the flying saucers in Deathwalker, and that the idea of including saucers was his during a phone call with Thornton. The reply for the Iksha Battle globe also drops a hint how things would sometimes go. jms suggested a globe and Thornton kept that idea but developed it for one reason or another. jms not knowing about the Blake’s 7 nod (though you’ll find no shortage of fans who think it was him that did it) is par for the course, I never found one nod that he knew about at the time.

I personally find it hard to believe he didn't know about the Liberator, simply because he's said several times that he was a big fan of Blake's 7 (A show I've only seen once, and wasn't really paying attention to at the time). Conversely, I unquestionably believe him when he didn't realize the Agamemnon was an hommage to the Leonov from 2010, because honestly who even saw that movie?

While some of them were subtle and pretty cool, and the sort of thing that pops up in most sci-fi shows, some of the other stuff like mojo and the elvis thing was truly out of order. Seems, going by what a few were saying, jms only ever found out about them after fans approached him on the newsgroups.

Some shows can do the 'winking at the camera' thing well, and others can't. SG1 was really good at it, SGA not so much. Trek was generally awful, given the strictures of writing on that show. B5 was not amazingly good at it, excepting when they took jabs at DS9.

 

[Triple F]

Forgot to mention earlier. Paul Bryant did the Lumati ship.

This was definitely a quickie as it was only in one show, but it also had to look strange and alien like the Lumati. Originally it was colored in shades of red and green, at least until the first render. Couldn’t have a holly bush flying through space now could we. The textures was me experimenting with bump mapping & procedural animated maps. In general we found bump mapping pretty useless. It looked cheesy so we tended to avoid it. However we discovered if you applied bump mapping via organic textures the algorithm really came into it's own. Ron was vastly more successful and perfected the technique for the shadow ships.