Welcome to the Star Wars Hyperspace
Tunnels Effect Webpage
The first output (2nd iteration) of my Star Wars episode VI hyperspace tunnel rendering program.
The motion blur you see is accomplished by applying 112 subframes per animation frame.
A fifteen second Quicktime movie clip of a hyperspace tunnel (1st iteration) placed on a DVD and being watched on TV.
Another special effect that I have always been extremely impressed with, although there is precious little film of it, is Star Wars hyperspace tunnels. These effects are only present in two Star Wars movies, episodes IV and VI, and in total there is only about four seconds worth of seen film. On February 21, 2002, I decided that I would tackle this project and I started writing a C++ based computer graphics program that has allowed me to generate these incredible effects.
On March 4th, 2003, after spending 50 hours of research, coding and testing, I've completed the rendering program that actually generates the effect and I'm now getting output from it. In fact, I've just created two, 450 frame, 30 fps, 2nd iteration, animation clips from the program, which I have now put on DVD.
Creating Star Wars Hyperspace Tunnels
Unfortunately, I have never seen any description about how these effects were created for the original Star Wars trilogy. I believe that the effect was done differently for episodes IV and VI as they each have a very different look from each other. I think that the tunneling effect for episode IV was done using a modified version of the slitscan process developed for 2001: A Space Odyssey. I have no idea though how the effect was done for episode VI, and it has been extremely difficult for me to accurately replicate it. I believe the effect for episode II was done in a similar way to the way I am planning on creating it. Below are movie frames of hyperspace tunnels from episodes II, IV and VI.
An episode II hyperspace tunnel effect.
An episode IV hyperspace tunnel effect.
An episode VI hyperspace tunnel effect.
Note: Most of the diagrams still need to be added to the below discussion
The Results
(Hyperspace tunnel pictures will be here)
Click here to visit an effects website designed to show visitors how to create Star Wars episodes II, IV and VI hyperspace jumps and tunnels using commercial computer graphics modeling software.
Last Updated: January 17, 2005
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