One of the things that really stands out to me in the trailer is how amazing this shot of the Star Destroyer looks.
It looks so much like the miniature ships from the OT, however I can’t find any reason to rationalize this effect as being anything other than CGI.
It could of course just have to do with the resolution of the trailer, and maybe when I see it on the big screen it’ll look more like the CG ships in TFA, but maybe they’ve done something somewhat different. This is really just a wild speculation (based off one shot at that), but maybe they’ve done something similar to what was done in Star Trek: Insurrection, where they photographed the miniature of the Enterprise from the previous film and then made a 3D CG model out of those photos to make it look more convincing. Maybe they’ve done something similar with one of the old Star Destroyer miniatures?
Or maybe it’s just an exceptionally good CG shot, I just thought it look strangely better than the AT-AT’s in the trailer, as well as all of the spaceships in TFA (both the film and trailers).It’s definately NOT an old miniature. The original Star Destroyer model still exists and goes on tour with other props (I’ve seen it in person twice) but it has been damaged and repaired (the “X” shaped antenna has been re-attached lying flat, matching the later star destroyer models from ESB)
It IS an extremely faithful, but much more detailed recreation of that original model from '76. Which is awesome because that model is significantly different from all other Star Destroyers featured in the films. The most obvious detail being the upright “X” antenna atop the bridge, and a couple others being the radar dish things at the forward corners of the large hangar bay and the three cannons lined up on the spine of the ship just ahead of all the conning tower stuff.
As for what is the model, my guess is pure cgi. Though I do agree it looks GREAT. But so did a lot of TFA’s cgi ships (watch that shot of the Falcon in space leaving Jakku and tell me it’s not amazing! It looks VERY much like another shot of that ship leaving a desert planet from the 70’s…)
Although TFA had a lot of great CG shots (the opening shot with the darkened Star Destroyer really stands out to me) I never really felt that any of the shots were too convincing to me. Good, yes, but not as realistic as they could have been. This one shot from RO looks much better though, and I find it hard to believe that RO should have managed something that TFA didn’t.
That’s why I thought that they might have scanned an old miniature from ANH, not used it, but scanned it to get the dimensions right, and maybe even used the photos to create a more realistic texture to the 3D model. Also Star Destroyers don’t move that much do it wouldn’t require that much digital trickery to make a few photos look convincing on screen.
Anyway, we’ll have to wait until the movie is released to see just how good these Star Destroyers actually look.