May the 4th will be here soon enough, and with it the entire nine movie Star Wars saga hits Disney+ streaming. The Clone Wars is rocketing right along to its seemingly thrilling conclusion. With all that is new, how about looking back on something interesting from the original Star Wars movie magic?
It turns out, the computer that animated the original Death Star plans and attack sequence is still around, and so is the original software. After an extensive restoration process, they were able to get it up and running, and recreate the animation. This video is takes a couple of minutes to get going, and it gets pretty technical about the 1970s era computer, the restoration efforts, and the programming efforts, but it is interesting to hear some of the history of the famous sequence.
There is also this video with the creator Larry Cuba showing and explaining the original digitization methods, and narrated by the original 3D animation has come a long way. The video also includes an unedited version of the complete sequence.