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Thomas “Gorkab” Martin unveils the second par of Digital Pioneers, his documentary on Digital Productions. This documentary is co-produced by 3DVF.
This company is the behind the CG revolution of the 1980s with films such as The Last Starfighter, 2010 :The Year We Make Contact, and Labyrinth.
This second part is focused on The Last Starfighter, a feature film from 1984 that is remembered for its extensive use of CGI. It features CG spaceships, backgrounds, battles.
The video features exclusive interviews, some information about Cray computers, how CG modeling was done at the time, technical challengers as well as tips & tricks, and more.
00:00 Logos
00:12 Opening
00:47 Getting the most powerful computer in the world, le Cray X-MP
02:03 What’s a Cray ?
04:46 Coding to animate in 3D
07:15 Digitizing a font
08:58 First client : Devo
09:38 CG commercials
12:42 Ice Pirates, the first studio movie
13:53 How did The Last Starfighter come to the studio?
17:53 Model 3D ships with Ron Cobb
22:42 The glass GunStar test
24:05 Early LODs
25:18 The Ko-Dan mothership creation
26:07 The movie easter eggs
28:04 The GunStar hangar tricks
28:39 Animating The Last Starfighter
32:28 Anti-aliasing? Why?
33:50 The StarCar
34:08 A Back To The Future easter egg from Ron Cobb?
34:36 Only with CG, or possible with miniatures?
36:28 CG? Wazzat?
37:20 Problems on The Last Starfighter
42:56 Getting a Cray to its kness / rendering tricks
47:30 Compromises to finish The Last Starfighter in time
48:05 The Rylos base, or the “melted ice cream” look
53:24 Everything must be CG!
54:24 The Last Starfighter Legacy
58:13 End credits
And here is the first part of this documentary, if you haven’t watched it already:
00:00 Logos
00:12 Opening
00:47 John Whitney Sr, the pioneer
03:24 #Westworld (1973)
04:48 Gary Demos
06:31 Futureworld (1976)
08:01 Meteor (1979)
08:31 #StarWars – X-Wing test
12:00 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1978)
13:09 Looker (1981)
15:12 Adam Powers, the first virtual man
16:32 #TRON (1982)
18:24 A new frontier: Digital Productions
19:00 End credits
