Star Wars fever is really starting to take off ahead of the new films. Star Wars fans at D.C. design agency nclud launched a new toy for others who enjoy the franchise, a 3D interactive map of dozens of planets from the movie series called Star Wars Galaxy.
"We're all giant Star Wars nerds over here," said Kyle Conrad, senior interactive designer at nclud. "Seems like most of America is these days."
The map was built using the Star Wars API, a free dataset a fan built to collate data on over 60 planets and over a hundred characters. The Star Wars Galaxy was a side project for the nclud team, built with WebGL using Three.js.
"It uses some cutting edge tech," Conrad said. "But we designed it to be a throwback to the original paintings. We used the original slanty logo."
The result definitely looks impressive. While the map is only a side project, it did help the team familiarize itself with some of the technology Conrad said. And it does work as way to show off some of the ingenuity at nclud, which might help give potential clients ideas about how nclud could help them with their goals.
"We built it as a 3D map to make people want to interact with it," Conrad said. "The effect can really grab them. It made my friend's jaw drop."
The map is full of little goodies and Easter Eggs for fans too, rewarding some lengthy exploration. You can even have the satisfaction of realizing that's no moon behind Alderaan. That's the Death Star.
You can explore more of the galaxy at Star Wars Galaxy.
