X-Wings CGI 1978

[Antiriad]

Not sure if this is well known ... on the DVD of The Last Starfighter the documentary making of has test footage of X-Wings in flight done in CGI in 1978 (yes George was ALREADY thinking about it way back then).

Anyone want some pics or dare I say footage or is this well known?

[Upke]

I would love to see pics of this, please.

[malkieD2]

pics would be fantastic

This almost makes me want to rush out and get the Last Starfighter on DVD. It's not a bad movie.

It certainly had me playing "starblade" in the arcade back in the day (which is now fully emulated by MAME)

[Upke]

Google comes up with this : http://www.calarts.edu/~nstrum/macmame/ ... bonus.html

[Dogg Thang]

Wow, even at that size they look very impressive. Was that really 1978?

Dogg.

[Upke]

Apparently. I would love to see more fotage, and bigger pictures of this if possible. I'm surprised I haven't heard about this on any of the SW documentries.

[dylan]

Because that CGI in SW was done in '76, not '78.

Besides, do you know how cost prohibitive CGI was in 1978? They were excited to get 20 seconds of footage in a mear couple of months then. That's with some of the most specialized equipment of the day.

For some enlightenment on the issue, check out the early histories of Lucas Digital aka Pixar and the work done by Ed Catmull & Alvy Ray Smith.

[mebejedi]

While the stills look pretty sharp, the video is sketchy by today's standards (though still very impressive.) The other problem was that there was no motion blur - something motion control had in abundance. As bitchin' as Last Starfighter looked, the spaceship sequences still looked very video-game-ish compared to the same scenes in SW.

I have the DVD. I'll rip a copy of the sequence and see if Rikter will host it.

[dylan]

I have the DVD. I'll rip a copy of the sequence and see if Rikter will host it.

Sweet! - that'd be awesome, MeBe. I was considering buying the DVD just for this doc as it was only $10, but...

thanks!

[mebejedi]

The movie's worth it at any price.

Can someone host it for me?

[Upke]

Yup. I can. As long as I don't get a Lucas E-mail like last time.

[mebejedi]

This ain't Lucas' property. He didn't use the footage, remember?

[dylan]

In the pictures of the documentary it clearly says "Test For ILM, 1978" which, if true, is pretty goddamned amazing.

[mebejedi]

"Yeah, I saw that--but there's no way anything in 1978 was making anything that advanced."

As "advanced" as it was, it really wasn't all that, and took a long time to do. Once you see the whole video, you'll get a better idea about why it wasn't used. It's jerky, and there are definite glitches.

In the meantime, I am looking for my DVD. I don't remember where I put it.

[Zion]

I can host the vid for you if you need it.

[Antiriad]

right, had to install windvd as the last starfighter has some irritating copy protection which powerdvd did not like.

ive tried several programs but failed to convert the VOB file that contains the footage into another format. i did manage to get an anim gif via windvd. Take a look here: http://img20.exs.cx/img20/6823/clip1.gif

[Antiriad]

and done some full size dumps which you can grab from here

[Antiriad]

Wont be up there forever so grab em whilst you can.



If anyone knows another way round this copy protection issue let me know!

[Upke]

Have you tried win dvd, it allows for 30second movie taking of dvd's?

Also.

My MSN: Martijn.vanGompel@iae.nl

I'm willing to host a movie if you succeed.

[Zion]

Have you tried ripping it with DVDDecrypter? You can download it from doom9.org in their downloads section.

[mebejedi]

Okay, who wants it? PM me with details for uploading for hosting.

[mebejedi]

Zion? Upke? Anyone?

Okay, I'm going to bed. It'll have to be tomorrow afternoon then. Sorry.

(BTW, Fatboy, I voted for you. Now, where's the picture of your ass, fat as it is? )

[Upke]

Add me to MSN, send it over MSN, I'll upload it.

[mebejedi]

I have Yahoo IM. Will that work?

[Zion]

Hey man, I'm at work right now, but I'll try to set up an FTP account on my site for you to upload it. I'll email you.

btw, what is the size of the file and what video format is it?

[mebejedi]

I made two. A 32 MB vob of the entire segment (but not of the entire documentary), and a 4 MB segment of one of the fly-bys (for those of you whom the broadband Gods have shunned ) Both are straight off the DVD, and compressed by 50%.

[Zion]

cool, now check your email.

[mebejedi]

Files are on their way now.

[EDIT] All done. The ball's in zion's court now. Hope you guys like the footage.

[Zion]

Files are now ready for download:

http://www.aptirrelevance.com/~original/Small.VOB - 4.1MB

http://www.aptirrelevance.com/~original/Big.VOB - 31.7MB

Please save to your hard drive before playing. When I get home tonight I'll convert these to AVI's for easier playability. Thanks again MBJ.

[General Gravos]

This is simply amazing!

MEBEJI and Zion, thanks to both of you!

[dylan]

Hey, thanks to you guys. I must say that's some impressive work for so early on in the world of viable computer animation. I just wonder how long that short cut took them to render?

[dylan]

Like I said earlier - I'm sure it was due to expense. Not only in money, but also time. Think about how long it would take to render that? How much money a computer capable of doing these things was in those days. Finding an available computer to do those things. At that point, the deck was more than stacked in favor of shooting models with celluloid cameras and utilizing optical compositing.

[mebejedi]

...as well as motion control. Either way, ILM was using cutting-edge technology. They simply chose one technique over the other. Keep in mind, also, that motion control allowed for "motion blur" - an effect that would have been prohibitively time-consuming for the computers at the time. Heck, I seem to recall it being commented on during the "Toy Story" commentary about how difficult the effect was to get right.

[TheSessler]

Thanks alot Zion and MeBeJedi.

[yarq]

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[yarq]

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