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Old School Computer Animation In Star Wars (video)

I recently came across this video created by a fellow named Larry Cuba. Larry worked at the University of Illinois in Chicago – specifically in the ‘Circle Graphics Habitat’, also known as the ‘Electronic Visualization Laboratory‘. The video describes how the computer generated animation of the death star trench in Star Wars was created. I found this extremely fascinating – especially because of how far we’ve come from this ‘new and exciting’ (read: in 1977) technology.

The actual ‘models’ or ’shapes’ that were used to make the frames in the video were created by drawing points on the (X,Y) coordinate plane with a stylus. The Z coordinate was added by turning a dial on the computer that received the input from the stylus. Pretty much, the guy creating the models would, in a way, trace photos of the miniature death star trench. Today, modeling is done quite differently – but computer animation is inherently the same process used in the video – with obvious improvements, chief of which would be the removal of the film camera. I think it’s amazing to see how far the technology has evolved since then, and I hope you will find it equally as fascinating.

Apologies if the video is dated, but I couldn’t pass the opportunity to share.

Unrelated, but here’s a video of Luke Skywalker having a very serious moment with Darth Vader.

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