Making of the Computer Graphics for Star Wars (Episode IV) 

A 3D Death Star being rotated in real time, in 1977. Hands down, this is awesome even today. Larry Cuba rules!

When you think about it, this is extremely high tech stuff for 1977.

So.....building an actual model in real life, then taking pictures of it then scanning those pictures with a pen line by line then repeating this like a hundred times then writing a program to combine them...... wow! And today all i do is create some polygons and shape them, 15 minutes work that took, days? weeks? in the 1970s! That's really impressive amount of patience!

Keep in mind that they only had kilobytes of RAM to work with back then.

I made my own version of the Trench Run using a Tektronix 4014 memory tube in 1979 or so. The Tek4014 had a "write-through" mode where you could do a kind of animation (Battlestar Galactica incoming Cylon animation was exactly this). I didn't have enough baud for that, needed minimally 9600 baud, had only 1200. I would start with a flat panel, then "glue" a random sized box somewhere on the panel , then arrange such three panels of them in a "U". As I was working from memory, I would then join 6 U (not 4 like Larry) sections together but would add some random jitter. No hidden line removal, none in the original. Display 6, drop the one in front off, add a new U from behind, move half of a U section width forward, render, do it again, render, then repeat. The rendering was fast enough (an Amdahl V8 on a Sunday afternoon) but no real time animation. Write-through mode way to slow in 1200 baud. Have some Polaroids somewhere. I knew Tom DeFanti (independent study), saw GRASS in action, but did not stick around UICC after 1977. Went to work, then to Canada, then later to Europe.

Thank You - but we cannot take all the credit. The artist was Larry Cuba, who stayed at our facility and used our equipment for many months in order to create the sequence. You can search him on the internet and on RU-vid for more examples of his work.

Wow.. that is quite a lot of work. I could pull off the same thing today with google sketchup in a few hours.

for me this is more fun than any post-90's cg effects. This video is awesome!

Wow! Computer work before the invention of the mouse looks like working with an overly complicated electronic etch-a-sketch. I'm glad this little gem has been uneathed. Thanks for posting it.

Wow, i work with blender and other software, and this is very advanced for its time, especially the hardware that was running this. The responsiveness of the mesh is impressive.

This is so cool. All these decades and I've never seen how this was done. Fantastic work then and still just as memorable now. Thank you for posting this (and thanks. Larry!).

So great to find this, I love how people genuinely think CGI as invented in the 90's, I think I'll go to my grave telling people otherwise, thanks for posting.

Well, these men are the real computer artists!

Wow. People usually don't understand how much time and care was needed to make these frames. In anything, the small details are always the most interesting and complex. It's amazing!

That's simply amazing, the amount of work which went into it. This guy had to understand programming (hard back then in languages such as assembly), mathematics, geometry, and above all he had to have the patience of 10 gurus to pull this off.

That's gotta be the most satisfying 10,000 manhours anyone's put into a movie since Cecil B. DeMille. Just the thought of entering those Z-coordinates by hand makes my jaw drop. Bravo!

Larry Cuba's effort is impressive, especially when you consider the tools he had to work with. Anyone that touched Maya or a similar package probably shrieks in terror at the thought of having to input data all the time and use real analogue dials to rotate objects. State of the art back in '77 is stone age today.

"A model of Death Star was digitized, animated, and displayed using the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-11 Vector General series of minicomputers"

May 1st 1976. It is almost 40 years old now.

Incredible, groundbreaking work Mr. Cuba. Amazing... and it still holds up today.

Wow, very impressive. Always great to see stuff like this, hats off to Larry.

Can you imagine how unbelievably tedious this must have been to create? My hat's off to Larry Cuba!

WOW! Completely revolutionary. That is so freaking cool that he did that with only late '70s tech. I had no idea they could even do that much functionally with the x,y,z data, I thought that was mostly introduced in the '80s (especially in GIS). That is like using a more analog version of Power Point for making shapes; in fact, it looked easier to make it do what you want it to. Props to the engineers and editors, this kind of innovation is the coolest.

@halo6534 There were 3d games around in the early '80s. They used the same vector graphics you can see in the vid. I know because I played some of them: Battle Zone. Star Wars, etc. There were no render farms back then. They put a camera in front of a high res. screen, and it shot a still after the computer completed drawing frame.

What's amazing to me is that this looks like a slightly more advanced version of the kid software LOGO. I remember learning how to draw using an x, y, and z coordinate system on an Apple II in grade school in 1983 that was remarkably similar to this. The fact that it was less than a decade between something was the purview of scientists to grade school children is amazing to me. Thanks for sharing!

It's amazing to see what was the technology at the time and what it was possible to make. Thank you for posting this!

gotta admit, i could use those dials to position 3d models in scenes, seem more precise than mouse and translate tool

Gotta love the ewok and droid background sounds ;D

just amazing piece of history!

This so so interesting to someone who sometimes does modeling as a hobby.

very impressive that a 1970 computer can do that, thanks for posting this awesome video

Thoroughly awesome for over 30 years ago! Never seen this before, it's amazing.

amazing how far virtual models and animation have come

I'm glad I saw this video...

People often forget how innovative the original trilogy was in terms of special FX for the time. This sequence looks painstaking as all hell, but is amzing for it's time.

Far superior computer technology than we have even today in 2022 was available to the producers of this movie back in 1977 due to the handing over of E.T. knowledge to Humans many Millenia ago.

@threedotsdead Before he wrote Alien, O'Bannon was a renowned animator for film effects. His company produced some of the displays which show the Death Star approaching Yavin near the end of SW.

very cool and interesting to know how that was made in Star Wars and still remains a classic

That is amazing - I’ve never seen anything on the trench graphics - always wondered if they were true computer graphics or actual animations - thank you fir posting

Impressive. Real impressive. For such a short bit of footage in the movie a lot of work sure has been spent making it... and it actually looked a lot more interestingly made than the usual modern 3D models and animation.

@FirebirdDude According to the Wikipedia article called Timeline of CGI in film and television: Westworld 1973: First use of 2D computer animation in a significant entertainment feature film. The point of view of Yul Brynner's gunslinger was achieved with raster graphics. Futureworld 1976: First use of 3D computer graphics for animated hand and face. Used 2D digital compositing to materialize characters over a background.

WOW!!! Guys like you laid the foundation work for what is now possible even easy on a home computer. Thanks!

Wow the digital luxeries that we have today would make this extremely time consuming and difficult task childsplay. Amazing to see how things have progressed.

Enlightening and inspiring. Thanks for posting this!

oh, and the background SW sound FX and score are a nice touch as well.

That's amazing - and I complain about Maya and Max sometimes...top work!

@FirebirdDude The Andromeda Strain from 1971 (also based on a Michael Crichton novel) contains a sequence when we see a screen showing something that looks like CGI. But it was actually all handmade, and only looked as CGI.

Very VERY cool to see what they had "back then" but WOW, that'd be sooo much easier and faster today!

Well, there was just one other scene that I remember that used computers. It's when Luke and Solo are in the Millenium Falcon fighting against some Imperial TIE Fighters. The "targeting computer" screen of the MF was CG'ed. Maybe the X-Wing fighters' was also? I'm not sure. The rest of the movie is all miniatures filmed against blue screen with the help of a (computer controlled) motion camera, matte paintings and such. Except for indoor and outdoor shots, of course. And lots of optical effects.

WOW! Never thought that I would ever see anything like that! Make you wonder what else is out there for us Star Wars fans.

THAT WAS AWESOME!!! I think it's amazing that the technology was around back in '77 to even make this!!! I wonder what was the first movie to use computer generated sequences...

A team at Aura Technologies in the Chicago area resurrected the system, off-and-on over a year. I got to play with it! Woo!

these grafics was a miracle that year and also very difficult to make with the technology of that year

i love this, its so retro, have more charm than the boring ironmam effects for jarvis

Also, the Apple II that came out in 1977 was used in the television industry for similar things and that was a consumer appliance rather than a specialist appliance (suggesting to me equivalent specialist appliances had been around for years prior).

i loved those times. its when i computer graphics were fun IMO. it was real pioneering geunius back then and discovering some totally new form of entertainment which is why i probibly liked programming back then. it makes me want to get an apple //c again just so i can do programming with its BASIC and screen abilities. it was such a versitle and powerful little machine.

now these were times. Daamn. Really ahead of time here :)

@4:40 That's the father of Microsoft's Surface Dial!

0:44 - That’s the 20th Century-Fox Fanfare with CinemaScope Extension.

What we have seen here are effects groundbreaking for their day and very elaborate in their nature. The Special Editions of Star Wars have shat all over the efforts made individuals such as Larry Cuba in this documentary.

What a nightmare it was to use computers back then. But then again there was no such things as PCs. Actually im impressed that it was even possible to have a real time preview running while editing. I thought that it was almost strictly coding with text.

Very cool, you paved the way to Illustrator 88(vector-based), and the basis for all vector illustration. Cheers!

From the speed of the rotation of the 3D building blocks I would assume that a vector graphics display is in use. However that would mean that it can draw only so many lines at one time. Which is why he draws each piece of perspective one after the other. Then the picture is composted together by using the longer exposure of the film. Very cool.

Look at those mind blowing graphics. Oh my god real time, Amazing...

That would've taken hours of painstaking work to enter those models. Absolutely incredible. The knobs strike me as being potentially imprecise, though - when he's rotating the models to form the U-shape, he's not locking them to any particular angle, just placing them where they look good. I would think that would've cause alignment issues further on.

As a computer graphics engineer I have to say it's reasonable that this was built with assistance of computers in the manner represented here. Vector (rather than raster) display technology was normal at the time. Computers of the time would have had trouble rasterising and computing the 3D space trivialized in this video, but vector displays would have had no problem with it. As for the other stuff you said, I have no opinion on that.

I am very glad I got to see this short film. I would rate it as very historic in the annals of computer graphics, right up there with Sutherland's Sketchpad demo, Jim Blinn's Pioneer/Voyager/Saturn sequences, Tron's Light Cycle, Last Starfighter model shading right through the crossover point (ie. animation becoming secondary to the characters and story) modern work of Toy Story and Shrek.

wow... I couldnt imagine having to do that with knobs, KNOBS! simply amazing.

those dials are awesome- as a control surface they would be helpful even in modern modeling

crazy. nearly 40 years ago. a lot of work. wow!

next steps would be editing, shooting it from the screen as he said (frame by frame) and then getting it on film to be able to rear project it on the screen. and like the narrator says, the final scene (the actual infiltration) was shot swede style with a model with added starship interiors, much like old movie car driving scenes.

Considering the cost of computing power in 1975-77 this was an expensive bit of equipment to do real-time object manipulation. Memory alone was really expensive as RAM DIPs were relatively new.

amazing work back in 76/77...groundbreaking!

pure genius. this led to the present films!

We're talking 1976 when Star Wars was being made... the first Star Trek movie wasn't until 3 years later... and didn't have any computer digital effects, but it did have a larger production budget... while some would consider it 'basically the same time', in tech-reality, it was a far time apart.

thanks for the upload

@zviaditemp I think that was from the 1990's special edition where they went back and cleaned things up and put new effects in, such as the one you just mentioned.

Sooo, no one ever noticed that this model of the Death Star is wrong? Because the "satellite dish" (laser) isn't actually located ON the equator, it's on the upper hemisphere.

I wish my laptop could run Blender as good as this

wow dude, i was not putting this down at all, i was actually worshipping this by saying, "THAT WAS AWESOME". I think the caps and the use of the word "awesome" explained that well enough, gosh!

hold on, i just though of a massive plot hole. The huge guns in the trench are shooting down its length at the assaulting fighters. Because the guns are mounted on the walls, and firing at a slant, that means the aim of the gun will eventually hit the opposite wall. If you are firing your gun from your hotel doorway down a long hall, the bullet will hit the opposite wall behind it. The guns on the death star are absolutely massive, so imagine the damage when the bolts finally hit.

@OriginalFoxBox It took video games almost 20 years in the future 1996, to become full 3d. And this is 1977 and that dude it rendering full 3d images......haha thats just fucking mind blowing! My guess it they most likely had a rendering farm, with its dozen, if not hundreds of computer all connected to one to have more memory and stuff. And this dude made a full 3d model of creatures and jabba the hut back 1977.....that tech was dozens of years ahead of its time.

I noticed that the computer model of the Death Star shows the beam array dish astride the equator, rather than at the 45º position it actually is.

Impressive. Most impressive.

Wow! Very interesting! Thanks for posting.

Bare in mind that many of the VFX pioneers working on the first Star Wars movie were very young. This tape may very well have been recorded a couple of months after the premiere of Star Wars in 1977. They also used computers to invent motion control cameras, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is for real. Would be cool though if someone could verify that this is not a hoax. :)

Great work Larry!

Very fascinating to see how they work back in the 70s before they had what we have today

Amazing what strides have been made in 3D modeling, with the interface (like a mouse instead of dials), as well as the software. Blender and Google Sketchup are also free for anyone to use, instead of just a few specialized technicians (like this guy narrating).

It's possible to put together such a setup yourself. If your 3D package supports MIDI input, all you need is a MIDI controller with rotary dials or sliders. It might take a bit of fancy scripting and tweaking to get it to function exactly as you'd like, but it's certainly possible.

Does anyone know where a better quality video of this is?? Like the actual scene?

wow. Es tan alucinante cuánta creatividad para la creación y uso de esas herramientas.

@AkelA984 Its SO DAMN COOL isn't it? Now we can do even better CGI on our home PCs!

Too cool. There's some history, kiddies!

This is pretty amazing. I never understood why these computer graphics weren't updated during the re-release? They did all those other unnecessary changes but not these. Well, maybe it's a good thing. They would probably end up looking worse.

Actually I think I'm wrong because he says in the video that it draws all the pieces which takes 2 minutes then it exposes the film. The 2 minutes must be the calculation of the perspective for each piece. The calculations are made and then the X,Y coordinates are stored for display. Then all 4 pieces are displayed once calculations are finished.

Just to keep things in perspective on teh Tickets Sold thing.... "Gone With the Wind" still beats Star Wars with most tickets sold. GwtW never had to compete with TV for an audience.

All the actors in this scene are actually computer-generated. True story.

this was back when looking good, was good enough

I wonder how Cuba dealt with all the eye candy he had control over with his dials. I'd be playing around the whole day, managing to complete maybe one unit a day.