CT CGI effects for Empire Strikes Back (original 1980 version)

I remember reading something a while back, but now I can't find any reference to it. It said that Lucasfilm animators had designed CGI X-wings and TIE Fighters back in 1979/80 and pitched a sequence where a TIE chases an X-wing to George Lucas for use in ESB. Lucas liked it, but ESB was already too far in post-production for it to be used.

Then i discovered this. This may be a different version of the same story, but there are several differences: In the first story, the fighters were designed internally, while the second story has third-party animators. The first says the idea was personally pitched to Lucas and he liked it, but the second says they never heard back from him. Finally, the second was 1978 while the first is when ESB is nearing completion and almost ready to be released.

Does anyone recognize the first story? Are these different versions of the same story, or two unrelated events?

 

That actually looks more lifelike than a lot of the CGI in the prequels.

I'm not convinced it actually is CGI though.

 

Why would you not think it's CGI?

 

That looked way better than I was expecting, especially given the time in which it was developed.

 

But I don't think image resolution would have been remotely adequate for big screen theater projection.

Just think of the VFX of Babylon 5, done in standard NTSC image resolution they nowadays somewhat stand in the way to justify HD video releases and the PT is forever trapped in FullHD 1080p resolution, making it unlikely it will ever see a 4K video format.

 

My understanding is that upscaling from 1080p to 4K and maintaining image quality is extremely trivial, and that the 4K video format brings with ancillary benefits that can improve aspects of the picture beyond just resolution. Obviously you can't make a 1080p source true 4K, but there's no logical reason not to release the two prequels that were shot on video in a 4K format along with all the other films.

 

Forever trapped in High Definition that is for the most part virtually indistinguishable in presentation from anything ever shot on film and scanned in or done with 4K cameras.

Far less so for ROTS and only for AOTC due to it's age and being the first major film done in HD. The OT is similarly "forever trapped" by the film stock it used and the cameras they were shot on which no matter what you do is simply not going to look like a modern day movie shot either digitally or on film (even with all the VFX redone digitally composited instead of the original optical work).

Exactly. The full picture quality available through just regular BD isn't the optimal look for the PT. Triple layer 4K will allow that to be reached for home video for the first time.

Which is odd as that looks far more lifelike then anything in the OT. Of course that is assuming you are talking about actual CGI work as opposed to practical work that for some reason is mistaken for CGI (which of course seems to happen all the time).

 

I would just say that the first time I saw TESB back in the mid-1990s I was blown away. I thought it was a great film in terms of story and the visual aspects. I was horrified by the ending, but that's how you're supposed to feel.

 

Indistinguishable? No! (except on smaller TV screens)

Physical film negatives (I'm not talking about 8 or 16 mm) do have a resolution potential in excess of 8 K. Because of its "Reality Creation" processor, Sony TV devices have the reputation to upscale FullHD 1920 x 1080 rather well and to create images that almost do look like 4K. But if you go to devoted message boards like AVS Forum or others, you'll notice rather fast how dissatisfied 4K display owners (especially those using 4K front projectors) are with the majority of 4K UHD Blu-ray discs - because live-action very often is in true 4K image resolution, but CGI is not - and therefore sticks out like a sore thumb.

One of my friends who works in the program content industry told me that WB just doesn't know how to handle the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Costumes and live-Action are crying to become available in 4K, but the CGI just isn't and can't be just technically upscaled to 4K to match the quality of the live-action footage.

 

They managed to create revolutionary effects without CGI. But I guess GL wasn't satisfied with that because it wasn't created with CGI..

 

Yes, this is all George Lucas's fault. That's why all other modern special effects films, including the new Star Wars films, have all but completely abandoned models and miniatures, whereas each individual prequel film used more models and miniatures than the entire original trilogy combined.

Give it a rest. You're acting like a Luddite who refuses to acknowledge that times change and technology marches on.

According to this guy's testing, fine-grained 35 mm film has a subjective quality of detail comparable to 8K digital film. Just the result of one guy's testing methodology and I'm far from knowledgeable about this stuff, but no one else I've read ever seems to take into account signal-to-noise ratios like he is. It's always about making the highest possible estimates of potential spatial resolution while ignoring all other factors. But if one were attempting a fair comparison of film vs. digital, signal-to-noise ratio seems like it should be an important metric.

So to say that physical film negatives (presumably referring to the 35 mm industry standard) have a spatial resolution potential in excess of 8K may be technically true but ultimately misleading.

Just something to keep in mind during these discussions. The difference is there but it's not as stark as some make it seem.

 

No. All the movies from the PT (and that includes TPM, which was shot on film) were finished at 2K (DCP). Most 4K Blu-ray releases come from 2K masters. So there's nothing preventing the PT from being released on 4K, nor there's anything preventing them from having excellent picture quality.

 

One definitely believes the intended size of the AT-ATs, asteroids, and Cloud City. Williams' magnificent music adds to the grandeur.

 

Back in 1980? That X Wing would have been carefully laid out with X,Y,Z co-ordinates, and as long as nothing much moved and the colour scheme was kept simple, and with a simple starfield background, then yeah, they'd get away with a few short shots.

X Wings would be a good element to animate.
I think the complexity of an AT-AT walking over a landscape would have been far beyond the abilities of 1980.

 

I was always under the impression that the early HD cameras used on AOTC (not sure about ROTS) shot at 1080p.

But yes, TPM went through a DI process which I assume was in 2K. People have this idea of it as all being done on film, but that’s just how the live action images were captured on set. The rest of the process was totally digital.

Edit: I just remembered the category and topic, so I apologize for getting away from it. I just watched the test footage and it looks pretty cool, but in that quality it’s hard to say how it would have looked blown up on a theater screen. I love the eventual CG X-Wing replacements in ANH though. For me they improve the first section of that battle in a big way.

 

Thinking back, I'm afraid the first story I mentioned was told on the IMDb message boards in a topic I started there. The boards were removed, and even the so-called "complete" archives of them by third-party sites only include topics from the last two years for Empire Strikes Back, and I posted my topic earlier than that.

 

i call complete b.s. on this. it wasn't possible.

 

^ "Only in your mind it is."

 

It's on the Last Starfighter DVD "Making of" video

 

Excellent evidence there.

Remember, Lucasfilm owned Pixar back in the early 1980s, before George Lucas sold it off to raise money to offset his divorce settlement. It'd make sense that the effects team there was working on stuff like this at the time. Remember that CGI Genesis Effect demonstration in Wrath of Khan?

 

How could they NOT use CGI for Bigger Luke??

 

Yep. Doesn't get any better than from the mouth of Dennis Muren.

That said, Dennis said he couldn't even previsualize the X-Wing looping over out of screen and back in. Seems to me he finally figured out a way. One might notice the similarity.



Guess we now know where the idea for that shot came from, lol.

 

Right, but the CGI test shot also has the camera doing a 180-degree horizontal pivot around the X-Wings as the fighters do the off-camera-and-back loop. Whereas the Empire shot mostly keeps to a head-on orientation, with just a bare glimpse of the Falcon turning to the side as it enters the asteroid.

The simultaneous motion possible in the CGI shot looks simple to us, who are used to that by now, but it must have been one of the things that wowed Muren et al.

 

Fair point. It's a beautiful shot regardless. My other favorite shot is the MF leaving the DS in ANH.

 

STWoK was in ILM production in 1981. The production factors of the Genesis CGI are orders of magnitude greater than the test X-Wings.
That CGI already shows the seduction to the dark side to make what ought to have mass act like it is a massless hedgehog. Happened with AOTC Yoda. Happened with Abrams Enterprise and other Federation ships. Happened with Abrams Falcon. Johnston took the cue that that is ok, so Falcon just hedgehogs everywhere now. Both Abrams and Johnson have hedgehog X-Wings. There is no grandeur and majesty anymore.

An effective analogy to the seduction of CGI in the wrong hands...