Now that J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens is just weeks away, the wait is more agonizing than ever. Sure, Disney has been shipping tie-in merchandise for months, but no mere toy will rescue us from the tedium. Unless that toy happens to be, say, a digital replication of an original prop, so realistic it’s like you’re wielding the real thing. And that’s exactly what Star Wars Battlefront delivers. Using a combination of scanning tech and reference shots, developers at the Stockholm-based studio DICE modeled in-game weapons and set pieces after originals from the movies—and “brought them back to their original glory,” says Sigurlína Ingvarsdóttir, Battlefront’s senior producer. Suddenly, a little more waiting doesn’t sound so bad.
Vader’s helmet
The team at DICE relied on a process called photogrammetry: shooting props from multiple angles in order to construct perfect 3-D replicas. But when they got their hands on the most evil breathing apparatus in the universe, the helmet turned out to photograph quite poorly—it was too hard and shiny. Lucasfilm wouldn’t let them dull the surface with matte paint (obviously), so DICE touched it up in post.
Boba Fett’s Mandalorian armor
Because the scanning process requires absolute stillness, designers hung the bounty hunter’s distinctive uniform on a mannequin. Costumes proved among the easiest objects to capture: Their soft, textured surfaces were better suited to photogrammetry than reflective helmets or spaceships.
AT-ST walkers
Sometimes, photogrammetry didn’t work at all. AT-STs, for example, “have a very particular way of moving and turning that makes them menacing,” Ingvarsdóttir says. To reproduce their chicken-like strut, the team used footage from the movies as a reference.
Spaceships (X-wings, TIE fighters, Millennium Falcon)
Some X-wing and TIE fighter models were so old—going on 40 years now—that their plastic had turned yellow, so Battlefront’s artists had to give the ships a digital respray of paint. In the game, they look nice and polished—until you blow one out of the sky.
Boots
OK, so boots might not be the most iconic items in all the galaxy, but the team loved scanning them—especially ones sported by the rebel soldiers; the shape and texture of the leather worked well for photogrammetry. As a kindness, try to keep them clean as you go around blasting clone troopers to bits.
