The Computer Graphics Book Of Knowledge
History of Computer Graphics (CG)
Computer Graphics (CG) was first created as a
visualization tool for scientists and engineers in government
and corporate research centers such as Bell Labs and Boeing
in the 1950s. Later the tools would be developed at
Universities in the 60s and 70s at places such as Ohio State
University, MIT, University of Utah, Cornell, North Carolina
and the New York Institute of Technology.
The early breakthroughs that took place in academic
centers continued at research centers such as the famous
Xerox PARC in the 1970¹s. These efforts broke first into
broadcast video graphics and then major motion pictures in
the late 70¹s and early 1980¹s. Computer graphic research
continues today around the world, now joined by the research
and development departments of entertainment and production
companies. Companies such as George Lucas¹s Industrial
Light and Magic are constantly redefining the cutting edge
of computer graphic technology in order to present the world
with a new synthetic digital reality.
1940s
The very first ³computer assisted² graphics began in
many different unrelated fields around the world. There is a
very blurred line that is crossed somewhere between
mechanical and analog computer assisted graphics, and the
first directly digital computer generated graphics that would
associate with today as being true ³CG².
The very first radiosity image.
While at MIT in the 1940s, Professors Parry Moon and
Domina Eberle Spencer were using their field of applied
mathematics to calculate highly accurate global lighting
models which they called ³interflection reflection². The
illumination algorithms were based on those by H. H. Higbie,
published in his 1934 book, Lighting Calculations.
Lacking any display or output mechanism, the image
itself was created by painstakingly selecting Munsel paper
samples that matched the output data of their mathematical
model. The paper was cut out and ironed together by hand to
create the image shown here in print for the first time in
over 50 years.
[IMAGE OF THE RADIOSITY PIC]
(The original image is still hanging in the office of
Dr. Domina Spencer at the University of Connecticut.)
The images were first presented at the 1946 National
Technical Conference of the Illuminating Engineering Society
of North America, and published two years later (in color) in
the book: Lighting Design by Moon, P., and D. E. Spencer.
1948. (Addison-Wesley. Cambridge, MA) The book was used for
many years to teach lighting theory at MIT in the
architecture curriculum there. Dr. Spencer went on to teach
at Tufts, Brown, Rhode Island School of Design, and the
University of Connecticut where she remains active today.
1950s
€John Whitney Sr. devises his own computer assisted
mechanisms to create some of his graphic artwork and short
films. One of his sons John Jr. works with and learns from
his father from childhood through high school.see biography
€Pioneering artists Stan VanderBeck, Michael Noll and
others at Bell Labs in New Jersey created computer assisted
graphics using analog computer devices and plotter output.
Later, in the mid 1960s, digital computers and film recorders
would be used to produce some of the earliest CG animated
films
€Bill Fetter experimented with early vector graphic CAD
at Boeing (Seattle) in the late l950s using an IBM 7094
computer with punch card input and a Gerber plotter.
1950
Artist Ben Laposky uses analog computers to help him create
oscilloscope artwork.
1951
Vectorscope-type graphics display on the Whirlwind computer
at MIT. A device similar to a light pen allowed direct input
to the screen.
The General Motors Research Laboratory begins to study
the role of computer aided graphical design applications.
(This would later result in the development of the DAC-1)
1955
SAGE system at MITs Lincoln Lab uses the first true light pen
as input device. (Bert Sutherland)
1956
Lawrence Livermore National Labs connects graphics
display to IBM 704; use film recorder for color images
Bertram Herzog at the University of Michigan Computing
Center uses analog computers to generate CRT graphic studies
of military vehicle behavior.
1957
1st image-processed photo at National Bureau of Standards.
(By whom? Why?)
The IBM 740-780 (paired with a separate IBM 704 computer
system) generated a sequence of points on a CRT in order to
represent lines or shapes. Time lapse film photography was
used to capture the images as they were drawn on the screen.
The Defence Departments Advanced Research Project Agency
(ARPA) is founded.
1958
MIT¹s Lincoln Labs: Funded in part by the Air Force;
Steven Coons, Ivan Sutherland, and Timothy Johnson begin
working with the TX-2 computer system to manipulate drawn
pictures. Ivan Sutherland later began refining the work into
his famous Sketchpad system while a student at MIT. DEC
later commercialized the TX-2 as the PDP-6.
1959
The first commercial film recorder the General Dynamics
Stromberg Carlson 4020. (Produced in San Diego, CA.)
1959
DAC-1 (Design Augmented by Computers): First computer aided
drawing system. Created by Don Hart and Ed Jacks at General
Motors Research Laboratory and IBM. (Not unveiled until
the Fall Joint Computer Conference in Detroit in 1964.) The
system was originally based upon a IBM 7090 computer (later
upgraded to a 7094 in 1963) augmented with extra disc space
and a specially designed IBM 7969 ³image processing system².
Input was with punch cards, but was also capable of scanning
in drawings. The final data could be output to either 35mm
film (by way of a CRT), a hard copy plotter, or used to drive
computer controlled machining devices.
Biography: John Whitney Sr. (1917-1995)
A Los Angeles native, Whitney was a pioneer in many
forms of experimental and abstract art before turning to
computers to aid in his graphic creations. He attended Pomona
College in California in the 1940's and was the first in a
wave of artists to begin new techniques of computer
assisted graphics.
The integration of analog computer controlled camera and
artwork were at first more a pioneering use of motion control
than of computer graphics. In point of fact, the devices
these early artists used were not even thought of as
computers, being more akin to analog music synthesizers. From
his experience working in the aircraft industry during World
War II, Whitney realized that components of a computerized
anti-aircraft controller could be used to drive his
mechanisms. One of his sons (John Jr.), recalled buying the
³state-of-the-art² M7 anti-aircraft control computer at
surplus. The still unopened crate was 12 feet long, 7 feet
wide and seven feet tall. These synchronized mechanisms would
ultimately be used to calculate abstract shapes, and change
them over time to create beautifully abstract forms and
animation.
In the 1950¹s Whitney worked in Hollywood as an
animation director at UPA, most notably contributing graphic
elements for the Saul Bass designed opening credits to
Hitchcock¹s ³Vertigo². Whitney then founded Motion Graphics
Inc. in 1960 and produced animation for both television and
film, devising the ³slit scan² technique for his early short
film ³Lapis². This technique would later be made famous when
used by Con Pederson as a portion of the famous ³StarGate²
ending sequence of Stanley Kubrick¹s ³2001: A Space Odyssey².
In 1966 with the help of a grant from IBM and a Fortran
programmer named Jack Citron(sp?), Whitney made his first
digital computer short film called "Permutations". His next
works: Matrix 1 and Matrix 2 were done at Cal Tech,
followed by Matrix 3 at Triple-I in 1971. It was at this
time that he met Larry Cuba who would later be asked by
Whitney to collaborate with him in 1975 on his last 16mm film
project ³Arabesque², funded in part by an NEA grant. Both
Whitney and Cuba would work briefly at Robert Abel¹s effects
company before digital computer graphics were begun there.
Beginning in the mid 1980's, a new collaborator Jerry
Reed(sp?) translated Cuba¹s Fortran code into Pascal for use
on new personal computer hardware that Whitney could use at
home. Whitney continued to create abstract computer animation
on his own with the aid of this new PC technology that freed
him from the reliance of large company owned mainframe
machines and the need for sponsored grants. His work would be
displayed in galleries on the same PC hardware he created it
on. His last commercially available collection of works,
called ³Moondrum² was released on video in the late 1980¹s.
Today his son Michael Whitney is serving as archiver for his
fathers work, and recently organized a retrospective showing
at UCLA.
1960's
€³Computer assisted graphics² were being created more
widely as a new and unique art-form by people such as Charles
Csuri, Ken Knowlton and John Whitley Sr.
€Many pioneering artistic films and artworks were
created at Bell Labs from about 1962 to 1967 by artists and
programmers such as E.E.Zajac, Leon D. Harmon, Ken Knowlton,
A.Michael Noll, Lilian Shwartz, M.R. Schroeder and Stan
Vanderbeek. An IBM 7094 computer ran a Stromberg-Calson 4020
film recorder, programmed in FORTRAN to run Ken Knowltons
Beflix animation system.
Much of the nation-wide university computer science
research conducted at the time was due in part to funding
from the government¹s "Advanced Research Project Agency"
(ARPA). ARPA at the time took a very hands-off approach to
funding. This allowed researchers an un-pressured environment
in which to concentrate on the work, without the heavy
bureaucracy, paperwork and political constraints more common
today. Much to the benefit of researches was Ivan Sutherland
who headed ARPA for a time. With good funding, little
oversight and many brilliant young minds inspiring each
other, it was a unique and special time that produced the
very foundation of today¹s computer graphic tool sets.
€Herb Freeman had a school of CG development going on
at NYU including Alvy Ray Smith in his first professor's job
out of Stanford in 1969. Freeman and his students had already
solved the hidden-line problem, a very big deal at the time.
[Quote] ³Also on the pixel side of things, Azriel
Rosenfeld at the Univ of MD, and Ron Baecker was developing
some of the very first computer animation. I saw his system
GENESYS at an NYU demo in the early 1970s which means Ron
probably did the development (in Canada, Toronto, I think) in
the late 1960s.² -Alvy Ray Smith
€Nicholas Negroponte teaches Computer Aided Design
(CAD) at M.I.T in the mid to late 60s, and develops the
URBAN5 system. A light pen allows interaction directly on the
CRT, in combination with keyboard instructions. Points and
symbols are added in orthographic mode with a perspective
option entered after the fact in order to view structures
three-dimensionally. An ³intelligent² system study, URBAN5
was abandoned by 1968 in favor of other projects.
€³The Society for Information Displays² is formed
in the early 60s, publishing papers dealing mostly with
military applications.
€At this same time, practical commercial and industrial
use of computer graphics begins to take hold in many areas of
design and manufacturing. Throughout the decade at Boeing,
William Fetter and Robert Woodruff (Computing Technology
Administrator) leads many important industrial applications
of vector generated CG.
€Architectural and urban planning programs (typically
written in FORTRAN on machines like the IBM 1130 or 1800) are
used at the firm ³Skidmore, Owings & Merrill² in Chicago and
in the University of Texas School of Architecture. A sample
workstation would consist of a Rand tablet providing input,
with output to pen plotters such as the Calcomp.
€In the late 60s, the Electronics Laboratory of
General Electric (Syracuse, NY) produces a prototype
visualization system for NASA and the Office of Naval
Research. The system produced real-time color raster graphics
on a monitor as a training aid to astronauts going to land on
the moon. This same system was used by Prof. Peter Kamnitzer
of the UCLA School of Architecture and Urban Planning to
simulate urban development plans.
Biography: Dr. Dave C. Evans (1924-1998) MORE
One of a very few who could be called a true "founding
father" of computer graphics, Dave Evans is perhaps best know
for being the co-founder of "Evans & Sutherland Computer
Corporation". Mr. Evans was at one time chairman of the
computer science departments at both the University of
California Berkeley and University of Utah, where he started
the venerable doctoral program that would give birth to so
much of the foundation of our industry. Evans first
associated with Ivan Sutherland at both Berkeley and the
Pentagon's "Advanced Research Project Agency" (ARPA).
Mr. Evans made many contributions to a wide range of
computer technologies, and a great many of his students went
on to flourish in the brand new field of computer graphics,
becoming true pioneers themselves. Students of Mr. Evans
include Alan Kay(Co-founder of Xerox PARC), Jim Clark
(founder of both Silicon Graphics and Co-founder of Netscape
Communications), John Warnock(Co-founder of Adobe Systems)
and Edwin Catmull(see biography in Programming chapter).
Dave Evans passed away on Oct.3rd, 1998.
1960
William Fetter of Boeing coins the term "computer
graphics" for his human factors cockpit drawings. With help
from Walter Bernhardt, and others, Fetter input an aircraft
drawing¹s coordinates into a database and plotted out a
calculated perspective on a ³Illustromat 1100² plotter.
John Whitney Sr. founds Motion Graphics, Inc. in LA.
1961/62
Spacewar: The first popular computer graphic game
written by students Steve Russell, Slug Russell, Shag Graetz,
and Alan Kotok of MIT to run on the DEC PDP-1. (DEC's PDP-1
cost $120,000 and MIT¹s was one of only 50 ever built) The
large round CRT display featured graphics controlled by
primitive handmade joysticks. The object being to maneuver
away from a gravitational ³sun² force at the center, and
avoid the other enemy ships, while trying to blast him with
your own space torpedoes!
The original source code (which ran on 4k of memory!)
can still be found at
www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/projects/spacewar/sources
or ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/sim/sources/sim_2.3d.tar.Z
There's also a copy of the PDP-1 manual at
www.dbit.com/~greeng3/pdp1/pdp1.html
1962
"Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication
System" is presented by Ivan Sutherland as his Ph.D. thesis
at the M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory. The user could input simple
lines and curves by drawing directly on the screen with a
light pen. The computer, the TX-2, had a whopping 320
kilobytes of memory and a 9 inch monochromatic CRT.
While Sketchpad was strictly 2D, a few years later
Timothy Johnson expanded its capabilities into three
dimensions as ³Sketchpad 3². The display CRT was divided up
into the now familiar four views, top front side and
perspective.
ARPA J.C.R. Licklider is put in charge of the new Information
Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at the Defense
Departments Advanced Research Project Agency (APRA).
The initial $14 million dollar budget supported projects at
MIT, Berkeley and Carnegie-Mellon.
1963
Biography: Ivan Sutherland
Born in 1938, Hastings, Nebraska; Ivan Sutherland is truly an
early ³founding father² of computer graphics. After
completing his Ph.D. at M.I.T.(where he developed Sketchpad)
in 1963, Ivan Sutherland joined the army and was assigned to
the NSA as an electrical engineer. One year later, he was
transferred to the Defense Department's Advanced Research
Projects Agency (ARPA, later DARPA), and given responsibility
for the newly-established Information Processing Techniques
office. At age 26, Lt. Sutherland was given a secretary and
$15 million a year, and was told to "go sponsor computer
research." Which he gladly did for the following two years
until joining the faculty at Harvard late in 1966. It was
here with student Bob Sproull that they developed the Head
Mounted Display (HUD), for remote viewing; the first
³Virtual Reality².
In 1968 Ivan formed the Evans & Sutherland company
with partner Dave Evans. Ivan was now a part time tenured
professor at the University of Utah, where Evans was the
founding head of the Computer Science Department. Dr.
Sutherland had first met Evans during a visit to U.C.
Berkeley as part of his ARPA work.
Ivan's last research in computer graphics was a paper
titled: "A Characterization of Ten Hidden-Surface
Algorithms," by Sutherland, Sproull and Schumacker. The paper
solved many of the largest problems of the day in this
critical area of rendering and display technology.
Later, as co-founder (with Carver Mead) and head of the
Department of Computer Science at California Institute of
Technology from 1976 - 1980, Dr. Sutherland developed and
promoted courses involving integrated circuit design, the
seed of knowledge that helped create the Silicon Valley
industry.
In the early 1980s at Carnegie Mellon University, Ivan
did some research on a six legged walking robot, large enough
to carry a driver. (And controlled by a joy stick acquired by
brother Bert from his contacts in the Navy as a former
fighter pilot!)
In 1980, Ivan and Bob Sproull had started the consulting
firm ³Sutherland, Sproull & Associates². Sun bought the
company in 1990, which then became the nucleus of Sun
Microsystems Laboratories.
Today?
Charles Csuri created an analogue computer and used it to
make transformations of a drawing. He completed a series of
drawings based upon the paintings of old masters such as
Durer, Goya, Ingres, Klee, Mondrian and Picasso
Ken Knowlton's programs BEFLIX and EXPLOR are used to create
early computer films at Bell Telephone Labs.
The 1st computer art competition, sponsored by Computers
and Automation magazine.
The Spring Joint Computer Conference has several people from
MIT presenting papers on graphical display technology: Steven
Coons, Ivan Sutherland, Tim Johnson, Bob Stotz, Doug Ross and
Jorge Rodriquez.
John Lansdown pioneered the use of computers as an aid to
architectural planning, making perspective drawings on an
Elliott 803 computer in 1963, modelling a building's lifts
and services, plotting the annual fall of daylight across its
site and authoring his own Computer Aided Design
applications.
Edgar Horwood developed a computer graphic mapping system
used by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development. HUD publishes
³Using Computer Graphics in Community Renewal²
Frieder Nake at The Computer Institute of the Stuttgart
Polytechnic uses the Graphomat Zuse Z 64 Drawing machine to
produce 4 color plotter drawings.
1964
[QUOTE] ³I did my first computer graphic at the Physical
Sciences Lab at New Mexico State University. I was asked
to generate an equiangular spiral antenna for one of the
early Nimbus weather satellites. The old engineers asked me,
a student, to do the tedious hand-drawing. I got a computer
to draw the spiral quickly, amazing the old-timers.² Alvy
Ray Smith
Ivan Sutherland (a recent MIT gradute) takes over at the
Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at ARPA. It
is suggested by his predisesor J.C.R. Licklider to take on a
'deputy', Bob Taylor. (The office¹s budget would reach $30
million by 1969, when it was changed to DARPA the Defense.)
Sutherland transitions out of his office by early 1966 to go
to Harvard, leaving Bob Taylor in charge. (Bob Taylor would
later go on to play a key role in staffing the famous Xerox
PARC.)
1965
Dr. David Evans founds the Computer Science Department at the
University of Utah
Ohio State University CG program started by Charles Csuri.
1st computer art exhibition, at Technische Hochschule in
Stuttgart
Bella Julesz and A.Michael Noll exhibit for the 1st U.S.
computer art exhibition, at Howard Wise Gallery in New
York (April, 1965)
196?
First commercially available graphics computer: IBM 2250
(When was the DEC 338??)
[FACTOID COSTS] A typical graphic display CRT cost about
$40,000 US. Rand input tablets are about $10,000 US, and
Calcomp plotters about $4000 US.
1966
"Odyssey": The first consumer computer graphics games
product by Ralph Baer of Sanders Associates. Later marketed
at Magnavox.
Permutations: With a grant from IBM and a Fortran programmer
named Jack Citron(sp?), John Whitney Sr. made the first
digital computer short film. An IBM 2250 Graphic Display
Console created dot patterns which were then recorded onto
black and white 35mm film. The filmed images were then
further enhanced with a specially designed optical printer to
add secondary motion and color.
As Associate Professor at Harvard, Ivan Sutherland and his
students, Bob Sproull, Jim Clark and others, took earlier
"Remote Reality" vision systems of the Bell Helicopter
project, and turned it into what we now call Virtual
Reality by replacing the camera with computer images. The
first such computer environment was no more than a wire-frame
room with the cardinal directions -- North, South, East, and
West initialed on the walls. The viewer could "enter" the
room by way of the West door, and turn to look out windows in
the other three directions.
Affectionately called ³The Sword of Damocles² because of
its ceiling mounted gear, what they called the "Head-
Mounted Display," later became known as Virtual Reality.
The International Conference on Design and Planning:
³Computers in Design and Communication² is held at the
University of Waterloo (Ontario). Organized by Professors
Constant and Krampen of the Design Department, it was brought
together to enlighten and inform designers of emerging
computer technologies.
1967
[QUOTE] ³At the same time that geometry-based computer
graphics (CG) was being invented so was sampling theory-based
computer graphics, often called image processing (IP) or
imaging. In the early days, two conferences - one for each
half of the discipline - would be held side by side. One of
the earliest journals was called Journal of Computer
Graphics and Image Processing. Its editors were Herb
Freeman and Azriel Rosenfeld (CG and IP, respectively). The
earliest paper that I actually have in possession on IP side
is ³Processing of Tiros Cloud Cover Pictures on a Digital
Computer² by Albert Arking, 1967, but I'm sure the literature
is much older. It's easy for the geometry based guys to leave
all this stuff out and vice versa.² Alvy Ray Smith
Allen Bernholtz and William Warntz of the Laboratory for
Computer Graphics and Spacial Analysis at Harvard
University use computer graphics to study layout and sound
patters for hospital floorplans.
Cornell University's School of Architecture is founded by
Professor Donald Greenberg.
Charles Csuri creates his famous ³Hummingbird² film. A
ten minute long, vector interpolated 16mm film animation that
is later purchased by the Museum of Modern Art as part of
their permanent collection.
2D morphing techniques used were started by Les Mezei at the
University of Toronto
The MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies is founded by
Gyorgy Kepes
The Computer Technique Group in Tokyo Japan is funded at
the IBM Scientific Data Center. Engineers and designers
create many beautiful and varied computer graphic art works,
using image processing and geometric transformations. Members
include Koji Fujino, Junichiro Kakizaki, Masao Komura, Fujio
Niwa, Makoto Ohtake, Haruki Tsuchiya, and Kunio Yamanaka.
Stephen Coons is Associate Professor of Mechanical
Engineering at M.I.T., where he heads the computer aided
design (CAD) group. He invents a method for patch continuity
1968
Robert Mallary, Professor at the Department of Art at the
University of Massachusetts developed the TRAN2 computer
program for calculating three-dimensional sculpture
Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts
exhibition at London Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is
organized by Jasia Reichardt. The first major public computer
art show, Cybernetic Serendipity is also a book published
at the same name.
The UK's Computer Arts Society (CAS) is founded by John
Lansdown at the Royal College of Art.
The EVENT ONE computer art exhibition is held at the Royal
College of Art. Chaired and organized by John Lansdown.
CalComp (California Computer Products) holds a competition
for the best ³Computer Plotter Art², with scholarship and
cash prizes.
The first computer animation in the UK was the FLEXIPEDE
made by Tony Pritchett. Made at the Open University.
Several computer art publications are available in Europe
including Bit International out of Zagreb, and Page by the
London Art Society, a monthly magazine which actually lasted
until the mid 80s.
Ivan Sutherland joins the Computer Science Department at
University of Utah
The very first computer graphics company was formed by two of
the leading researchers of the day, Drs. David C. Evans and
Ivan E. Sutherland. Aptly named Evans & Sutherland, it
provided a vector system comprised of custom designed
hardware and software previously available only to one of a
kind, multi million dollar military sites.
Dicomed is founded as a manufacturer of hardware and
software products to apply computer graphic technology to the
field of medical radiology. Their systems operate by scanning
x-ray films, converting the information into digital data,
enhancing it and redisplaying the processed image. (See their
web site at www.dicomed.com ). Still in business 30 years
later, providing professional high resolution digital image
capturing technologies.
Bill Fetter contributed to the first (vector based)
computer generated television commercial in 1968 while
at Boeing.
1969
[IMAGE RAM 2/9 plotted drawing 1969]
Edward Zajec begins a long career of fine art aided by the
computer, creating plotter output works using an IBM 60/20 at
Carlton Collage in Minnisota. He would later spend 10 years
as an Artis-In-Residence at the University of Triese in
Italy. He returned to the united states to Syracuse
University in 1980 to reinvigorate the CG program there which
had begun in the early 70s. http://web.syr.edu/~ezajec/ez-
plain.html
[IMAGE RAM 3/16 plotted drawing 1969]
[COINCIDENCE!] It should be noted that this Edward Zajec
(with an ³e²) is not the same as the Edward Zajac (with an
³a²) who worked at Bell Labs. Two early pioneering CG
artists, two very closely spelled names!
LDS-1 (Line Drawing System). The first commercial CAD
wireframe graphics machine system released by E&S.
Incorporated hardware design from Garry Watkins, designed
input by Chuck Seitz (University of Utah faculty 1970-73),
Bob Shumaker and others.
[LDS-1 FACTOID] A local play-on-words for the LDS-1 was
based on the fact that the Mormon church was very prominent
in Utah, and more commonly known by the contraction of the
Church¹s full name ³Latter Day Saints²: LDS
John Warnok (University of Utah Ph.D. 1969) Developed the
Warnock recursive subdivision algorithm for hidden surface
elimination.
Alan Kay (University of Utah Ph.D. 1969 ) First developed the
notion of a graphical user interface with the Alto project at
Xerox PARC (Palo Alto, CA), which directly influenced the
design of Apple MacIntosh computers.
Computer artist Lloyd Sumner creates Christmas cards under
the company name ³Computer Creations²
Bell Labs developed the first frame buffer for storing and
displaying 3bit images.
Gary Demos first becomes acquainted with computer assisted
graphics with John Whitney Sr. who is teaching at Cal Tech
in California. An IBM 2250 ran a custom operating system,
images where photographed in Ektachrome and printed on
Kodachrome.
1970's
Widespread commercial use of this early technology did
not begin until the 1970¹s when early pioneers saw the
potential in the broadcast video market for the new creative
tools. Companies like Image West(LA), Dolphin Productions
(New York) and Computer Image Corp (Denver, President Lee
Harrison) used these realtime computer assisted video
graphics machines to introduce new imagery to both broadcast
clients and the viewers at home.
[BIO SNIP] Lee Harrison, the inventor of analog video-
based computer animation, was the founder of Computer Image
Corporation(1969) in Denver, CO.; where the ANIMAC,
Scanimate, C.A.E.S.A.R., and System IV analog animation
devices were developed. Lee won an Emmy for SCANIMATE in
1972.
Relatively affordable commercial random access frame
buffers became available in the mid to late 70¹s which opened
up the market for CG production. The input for these earliest
machines were often banks of patch wires, paper tape or punch
cards, very different from today's mouse and graphic
interfaces.
These first million dollar commercial machines were
mostly capable of only limited, video resolution raster based
graphics. While their output was limited in most cases to
videotaping or filming monitor screens, their imagery did
introduce the public at large to the new art form. By the end
of the decade affordable raster technology out paced the
earlier vector graphic mainstay.
€Pioneering work done by Jim Blinn at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena California
(started in 1975 by Bob Holzman). David Em (who would work
with Alvy Ray Smith at Xerox PARC on Dick Shoup's Superpaint
system in about 1974 or so) also later joined Jim at JPL to
create some of the early serious computer art in raster form.
€Nelson Max at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratories uses CG to illustrate basic biologic research;
the first ³scientific visualizations².
€Jim Kajiya, Gary Demos, Steve Gabriel and the Cal Tech
contingentŠ
[FACTOID] Artist and Author Jasia Reichardt estimates
in 1970 that there are perhaps ³1000 people in the world
working with computer graphics² who are not involved in pure
research or mechanical design. (In other words: CG artists)
1971
Gary Demos visits NASA AMES and Evans & Sutherland while
researching a documentary film about computers for ³Dimension
Films² in LA. It is there that he first meets Ivan Sutherland
and expresses his ambitious desire to create complex and
realistic high resolution CG images for films. (Gary is only
about 21 years old at the time) Since most of the hardware
and software technology that would make this possible does
not yet exists, Gary joins E&S in hopes of creating these
missing pieces. John Warnock ran the San Jose E&S office
before going to NYIT, and Ivan himself was working on his own
hidden surface solutions at the time. Gary helped develop a
high precision ³data table² (table not tablet because it was
4 feet by 5 feet) accurate to 100th of an inch for digitizing
images. The table used two pens to define two simultaneous
points in 3D space. Programming was done in assembly code on
a PDP-11 with a Picture System 1 for vector display.
Both Henry Gouroug and Bui Toi Phong worked on shading
at E&S, so that area was well covered needless to say. Gary
and the E&S team next tackled the challenge of building the
first ever random access frame buffer. They began with the
first 8 DRAM chips every produced, which came from a company
in Texas called Mostek(sp?).
1972
PONG developed by Nolan Bushnell. (Later founder of Atari)
The first feature film appearance of CG: West World. A
"block pix" scene done at Information International Inc.
(III; aka "Triple I") Led by John Whitney Jr., digitally
processed film was used to portray a pixelated android point
of view.
1973
ACM/SIGGRAPH is formed
'Interact' at the Edinburgh Festival, a seminal event in
establishing the use of computers for the creation of art
works. Organized by John Lansdown.
Edwin Catmull (Ph.D. 1974 University of Utah) develops both
the Z-buffer algorithm and the concept of texture mapping
in 1973-74. (Texture mapping techniques were later refined by
Catmull, Alvy Ray Smith, Tom Duff, Lance Williams, and Paul
Heckbert at NYIT.
First physical structure designed entirely with computer-
aided geometric modeling software: A large Easter egg which
is still standing in Vegreville, Alberta, Canada. "The Easter
Egg Capitol of the World". By Ronald Resch, pioneer in the
field of computer art, and member of the Computer Science
Faculty at University of Utah from 1970-1979. The programmer
that worked with Resch was Robert McDermott (who got his
Ph.D. from the work at U. of Utah).
Frank Crow (University of Utah Ph.D. 1975) Developed anti-
aliasing methods for edge smoothing.
1974
The first ACM/SIGGRAPH conference is held in Boulder
Colorado. There are 600 attendees.
The New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics
Laboratory (CGL) is founded in 1974 Dr. Alexander Schure,
and hires recent Utah graduate Edwin Catmull to head the new
CGL group. (See the companies chapter for a good history of
the NYIT CGL.)
Phong Bui-Toung develops the Phong shading method at Utah.
(Later become a professor at Stanford? When?)
Dr. Ivan Sutherland and associate Glen Flex start a Hollywood
company called Picture Design Group with John Whitney Jr.
and Gary Demos. One of the first tests they do is for a
feature film proposed by Walter Films and Carl Sagan, called
³Cosmos². Using an E&S Picture System at UC San Diego Demos
began tests on one-million-star galaxy simulations. Operating
with a clunky front-end system that crashed every fifteen
minutes, it forced him to wait 5 minutes to boot, and took 5
minutes to back up data after only 5 minutes of working
before the system would crash again. (in addition to having
to go so far as to write his own random number generator)
They did other work for educational films, and the
Museum of Science and Industry, but after about 9 months Ivan
wanted to give in favor of going back to academia. Demos and
Whitney would then go to Triple-I.
1975
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Bowling Green, Ohio with 300 attendees.
Hunger by Peter Foldes: "First fully animated figurative
film every made using computer techniques.² (Computer
Interpolation or inbetweening). Like Csuri¹s work, some of
the first geometric interpolation or "Morphing" techniques.
Foldes would also create the film "Metadata"
The venerable icon of early computer graphics, the famous
³Utah Teapot² is designed by Martin Newell at the University
of Utah.
The TWEEN animation system is developed by Dr. Edwin Catmull
at NYIT. Originally written in assembler language (Ed hated
Fortran), TWEEN was re-written completely in C to run on UNIX
about a year later (It took up ??megs of memory on a PDP-11).
He then actually renamed the program ³MO-TRUCK² for ³motion
trucking-thru-the-frames² but no one would use the new
nameŠso TWEEN it stayed.
After 20 years of research Dr. Benoit Mandelbrot publishes
his seminal paper: "A Theory of Fractal Sets." The study of
fractal geometry is revealed to the popular press. (The
theory had been around before, and contributed to by
noteworthy mathematicians such as Julia, Poincare, and
Falconer. Mandelbrot gave it a name and codified it.)
John Whitney Jr. and Gary Demos form the Motion Picture
Project Group at Triple-I.
1976
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with 300
attendees, and the first exhibition (with 10 exhibitors!)
Future World: Gary Demos, John Whitey Jr. and a team at
Triple-I creates the first feature film appearance of 3D CG;
a 3D polygonal representation of a hand, and of actor Peter
Fonda¹s head. (Rendered and filmed out at 2000x2560 pixel
resolution.) The film also featured the first ever digital
composite, a sequence of ³samurai warriors² materializing in
a chamber room.
Warner Communications buys Atari from Nolan Bushnell for $28
million
Nelson Max's sphere inversion film shown at SIGGRAPH
Jim Blinn environment (reflection) mapping while a graduate
student at the University of Utah. The paper is co-authored
with his professor Martin Newell, published in the
Communications of the ACM in 1976.
[SIDEBAR] Close Encounters CGŠALMOST!
Bo Gehring, founder of Bo Gehring Associates of Venice,
California, produced computer animation tests for Steven
Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. Like similar
tests created by Triple-I, the tests did not result in any CG
production work on the film.
1977
ACM/SIGGRAPH in San Jose, California with 750 attendees and
38 exhibitors.
Star Wars (Twentieth Century Fox)
The Death Star simulation was designed and created by
pioneering algorithmic artist Larry Cuba. George Lucas was
impressed both by Cuba¹s early abstract CG film First
Fig(1974) and the fact that he had worked with another
pioneer of motion control and computer graphics John Whitney
Sr. Ben Burt, the films sound designer, had been tasked to
get the word out around town and track down bids for the
work.
Cuba designed storyboards from the description of the
scene in the script, and worked on the job at the University
of Illinois Chicago. A 2D drawing program that Cuba designed
with the GRASS language was modified to allow input of a
third Z axis for every point entered on the digitizing
tablet, creating the 3D representation of the Death Star
surface.
Using the Vector General based GRASS graphics system
designed by Tom DeFanti, Larry worked night and day for 12
weeks to produce 2 minutes of film of which 40 seconds
appeared in the final film sequence.
[RENDER TIME QUOTE] ³(While the GRASS system was capable
of real time animation) the real time capability came from
the Vector General's hardware implementation of basic
transformations, like translation, rotation and scaling.
also the projection transformation that turns a 3D object
into a 2D drawing, but it was only capable of a parallel
projection (that is, no 'true perspective'). Since I needed
perspective for this project, I was back to using software
for the projection and therefore *not* able to animate the
scene in real time. I was getting a frame rate of about two
minutes of computation per frame and so the whole shot
took about 12 hours.² Larry Cuba
(A rented Mitchell camera filmed the imagery off of the
computer monitor) The finished footage was originally
intended to be shot as a rear projected element live on stage
with the actors in London, but greatly reduced production
deadlines made that impossible. The full story as told by
Larry Cuba himself:
[QUOTE] ³Around two months from my deadline, I was sent
a production schedule and I noticed that the live action
shooting of the shot that my work was to be used in, was
scheduled a month earlier than the delivery date specified on
my contract. So instead of having two months left to finish
the shot, I had only one.
When I mentioned this to the Assistant Producer, he
informed me that it was even worse than that because they
required the film to be delivered 4 weeks earlier than
shooting in order to have time to make back up copies (should
anything happen to the footage during the live action
filming). So apparently, since I couldn't send out the shot
immediately, we were already dead in the water.
The 'solution' he came back to me with was that they
would rearrange the schedule and place that scene (the
briefing room scene) on the last day that they had the large
sound stage (they were shooting in England. All
communication went from me, in Chicago, to the Assistant
Producer in LA, to the Producer, Gary Kurtz in London and
then to Lucas and then the reverse trip back). This would
give me four more weeks to produce the shot (rather than the
eight that I thought I had).
So with my schedule cut in half, I stepped up
production. I was getting three hours of sleep a night by
sleeping on the sofa in the (over air conditioned) lab with
the computers. computers generate a lot of heat so computer
rooms need to be kept cool or the computers will fail to
work.
Working in this way, I was able to finish building the
computer model of the Death Star and program the fly through
sequence just in time for it to be filmed and sent off. But
once I started the film run (which had to run continuously
for 12 hours), the computer would crash about 30 minutes into
it. Up until this point, the occasional crash was not a
problem. reboot and keep going. But now this was a
disaster. I couldn't put the shot together filming in 30
minute bursts. (I could if I rewrote the program, but there
was no time for that now). We tried everything we could
think of to get the system to stop crashing. (we even took
the hard disk apart and cleaned it), but 30 minutes after
every start, the system crashed.
It was getting late on Saturday night and I had to put
the exposed film in the mail on Monday. By 3am (my bedtime),
I decided that it was useless. On Monday morning, instead of
sending out the film, I would have to call LA and tell them
that I had failed to deliver and that our only recourse at
this point was to shoot the scene blue screen and optically
print my animation in later.
Since there was no more hope, I figured I would at least
be more comfortable, so before I went to sleep, I turned off
the air conditioning so I wouldn't freeze, and I started the
shot from the beginning one more time (what the heck?). This
time it ran continuously throughout the night and Sunday
morning, completing the shot just in time.² Larry Cuba
There was traditional hand animation done for the final
four seconds of the bomb entering the death star exhaust port
and exploding; completed by John Wash at Image West.
Other computer graphic and video display images were
created for Star Wars by several different people. John Wash,
Jay Teitzell and Dan O¹Bannon at Image West created many
electronic video graphic effects for the targeting computers
and background tactical displays. Larry Cuba also completed
several graphics seen in the DeathStar guard room when R2 and
C3PO first tap into the central computer.
[SIGGRAPH FACTOID] The 1977 SIGGRAPH convention
Electronic Film Show also ended with Larry Cuba¹s work,
although not as planned. Halfway through his film ³First
Fig² all the power went out in the hotel bringing it, and the
show to a premature ending.
1978
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Atlanta, Georgia with about 1500 attendees
and 44 exhibitors.
Jim Blinn produces the first in his series of animations for
the The Mechanical Universe while at JPL.
Jim Blinn also publishes his technique of bump mapping,
completed as part of his graduate thesis at the University of
Utah the previous year. His demonstration of the new shading
code is shown as 128x128 resolution, 16 frame loop of a bumpy
sphere. His initial method of calculating both the angle and
amount of perturbation is later refined and simplified as an
altitude description, allowing for incremental gray scale
values to define intermediate angles of surface normals.
1979
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Chicago, Illinois with about 3000 attendees
and 79 exhibitors.
Edwin Catmull leaves NYIT to head the Lucasfilm Computer
Development Division. He is soon joined by Alvy Ray Smith,
David Di Francesco, Tom Duff and Ralph Guggenheim.
[QUOTE] ³In 1979, the most significant artistic event of
my career occurred: Ed Emshwiller and I created Sunstone.
It is primarily his piece, but we worked very closely on this
piece and I am still extremely proud of it. It is in several
museum collections of the world, including MOMA. Lance
Williams and Garland Stern also helped some on it.² Alvy Ray
Smith
The Black Hole (Disney): Opening grid/black hole
simulation. By John Hughes (Rythm and Hues) et al. at Robert
Abel & Associates.
Jim Clark designs his ³geometry engine², the basis for his
future company Silicon Graphics.
Alien: Alan Sutcliffe at Systems Simulation Ltd. Of London
created a computer monitor sequence showing a 3D terrain fly-
over, rendering computer-generated mountains as wireframe
images, with hidden line removal.
Meteor has vector graphics created by Triple-I
Julien Gomez developes TWIXT at Ohio State software used at
Cranston Csuri Productions.
Raytracing developed at Bell Labs & Cornell University.
Turner Whitted published a paper for SIGGRAPH 79 describing
raytracing techniques.
1980's
The first digital computers used in CG were those in
the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) line including the
early PDP-1, PDP10 and PDP-11 of the last decade. However
because of their cost and high maintenance, these were
restricted to large budget University and major production
settings. Typical of this work is Jim Blinn at JPL creating
the Voyager Flyby films, the Cosmos Series for Carl Sagan,
and the Mechanical Universe project; all from about 1979 to
1983.
The ³workstations² as we know it today were introduced
in the early 1980s by companies such as Apple Computer and
Silicon Graphics Inc.
The consumer market for personal computer graphics began
with the Macintosh personal computer and its MacDraw and
MacPaint software in 1984. The Xerox Alto did of course pre-
date the Mac by a decade, but did not reach personal use in
any numbers; it¹s initial market was government and
University settings.
Commercial CG production was boosted by the new
generation of digital machines such as the (MORE INFO!) and
the early Silicon Graphics workstations such as the IRIS 3130
in 1989. At the same time, third party companies began
providing specialized software to run on these new graphic
platforms. For 2D graphic design and image processing,
Photoshop was introduced for the Mac in 198?. Early 3D
animation software for the higher end market included
Wavefront(1987), Intelligent Light(198?), and Alias
v1.0(1984).
The mid 1980¹s to early 1990¹s were a time of tremendous
advances in technology and stunning creative breakthroughs.
Companies such as Robert Abel and Associates, Triple-I,
Magi/Synthavision, Omnibus, and Digital Productions created
such memorable images as Sexy Robot (ABEL), Chromosaurs
(PDI), and the Benson & Hedges(Digital Productions)
commercials.
The U.S. National Science Foundation began to provide
supercomputer access to university research programs,
including the University of Illinois Supercomputing Center.
1980
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Seattle, Washington with about 7500
attendees and 80 exhibitors.
LOOKER: Triple-I produces seven minutes of computer graphics
under the Direction of Richard Taylor et al. Polygonal models
of a complete human body were created.
Loren Carpenter's fractal extravaganza "Vol Libre" is
presented at SIGGRAPH 80
Loren Carpenter at Lucasfilm's Games Group & Atari created
"Rescue From Fractalus!"
Chris Briscoe and Paul Brown co-founded Digital Pictures as
the UK's first specialist computer animation company
1981
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Dallas, Texas with 14,000 attendees and 124
exhibitors.
Nelson Max begins making computer graphics for the IMAX film
format at Lawrence Livermore National Labs. Steve Levine and
George Matthews here also had lots of contact with NYIT in
the early days. They were making graphics of "superheated
spheres" (get it?)
Computer Assisted Animation Stand(CAAS) at NYIT Computer
Graphics Lab.
Omnibus Video Inc. is founded in Toronto Canada.
Adam Powers (The juggling tuxedo guy): Part of Information
International Inc. (III) demo reel shown at SIGGRAPH that
year.
Nintendo introduces the Donkey Kong video game
1982
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Boston, Massachusetts with about 17,000
attendees and 172 exhibitors.
Tom Brigham (NYIT) introduces the first full raster ³morf²
technique at the 1982 SIGGRAPH conference.
Silicon Graphics Inc. formed by Jim Clark (University of
Utah 197?) For lots of details see the ³Companies² chapter.
Autodesk formed by Dan Drake and John Walker, release Auto-
CAD v1.0 at COMDEX.
Mits Kaneko and the Japan Computer Graphics Lab (JCGL)
produce the series "The Yearling². Episode No. 2 was
broadcast in April 1982 and became the world's first
television animated program completely processed with a
computer. (See the Company history on JCGL for more details.)
The first all digital computer generated image sequence for a
motion picture film: Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan/genesis
sequence. Amazing use of fractal geometry and particle
systems, (by Loren Carpenter based on his own work from his
³Vol Libre² film, completed while at Boeing). Bill Reeves
fire, Tom Porters stars, and Tom Duffs moon. Conceived and
Directed by Alvy Ray Smith.
Tron (Disney)
The first extensive use of 3D CGI animation for a
feature film. This milestone project was originally boarded
by Bill Kroyer and Jerry Rees and pitched to Disney by Steve
Listberger. Bill and Jerry came up with the titles ³Computer
Image Choreographers² for their roles which were much more
than traditional Animation Directors. The model motion and
choreography, along with camera blocking and motion paths
were all sketched out in exacting detail to be passed on and
realized precisely by four CG production houses.
[TRON FACTOID] The largest format pencil tests ever! The
Disney art and animation team that were previsualizing the CG
for the film, never had any way to view a traditional pencil
test. The first time they got a chance to see their planned
motion scenes was only after the CG was created, rendered and
output to 70mm film. Because of a technical limitations at
Disney, the film was actually rear projected in the screening
room.
So who did what CG on TRON? Robert Abel & Associates
created the title sequence for the film, and the entry to the
digital computer world. Digital Effects created the little
bit character. Mathematical Applications Group Inc.
(MAGI) created the light cycles and most of the recognizers.
Information International Inc. (Triple-I) created
Sark¹s carrier, the solar sailer, and the MCP character
sequences near he end of the film.
In total, there was actually only about 15 minutes of
computer generated imagery created for the film, supervised
by Richard Taylor. The majority of effects were accomplished
by traditional animation techniques involving tens of
thousands of hand rotoscoped individual frames of artwork.
1982/83
Where the Wild Things Are (Test done at MAGI): The first
instance of digital compositing for motion picture work. The
character animation was done at Disney (lead by Glen Keane,)
and the cg backgrounds, rendering, painting, and compositing
was done at Magi/Synthavision. Jon Lasseter was the
official Disney-Magi liaison. Ken Perlin supervised the
project, with the CG work lead by Chris Wedge and Jan Carlee
(both now at Blue Sky.). Software was by Ken Perlin,
Christine Chang, Gene Miller, and Josh Pines. Look for many
more details in the Companies Chapter!
1983
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Detroit, Michigan with about 14,000
attendees and 195 exhibitors.
AVCO Finance spot shown at SIGGRAPH Electronic Theatre. (This
was the first fully rendered raster 30-second commercial
spot.)
Alias Research Inc. founded in Toronto Canada
The Bosch FGS-4000 (the first true turnkey 3-D System) is
introduced at NAB in 1983.
Cube Quest(Simutrek Inc.): Early 3D graphics video game.
Return Of The Jedi (Twentieth Century-Fox/LucasFilm Ltd.):
Holographic Endor moon sequence by the LucasFilm Computer
Graphics Group. Bill Reeves and John Lasseter did it using
vector graphics to simulate raster graphics!
1984
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Minneapolis, Minnesota with 20,390
attendees and 218 exhibitors.
Synthavision, a division of MAGI, is sold off to a Canadian
investment company.
Silicon Graphics releases it¹s first commercial product,
the IRIS 1000 terminal (which ran off a VAX host).
Wavefront software company formed in Santa Barbera, CA by
Bill Kovacks et al Š LOTS MORE
A modern global illumination rendering technique called
Radiosity is presented by a team led by Don Greenberg at
Cornell University.
The Apple Macintosh computer is released. The first
personla computer with a graphical user interface (GUI).
The Adventures Of Andre And Wally B. LucasFilm Computer
Graphics Division. Alvy Ray Smith directed John Lasseter in
his first CG short animated film.
[SIDEBAR NOT!] Dune: Cool 3D CGI body armor. NOT!
(Traditional animation done by Jeff Burks while at Van
derVeer Photo Effects.)
The Last Starfighter (Lorimar): The first CG project by
the new Digital Productions formed by Gary Demos and John
Whitney Jr. after having just left Triple-I.
2010: Odyssey Two: Digital Productions worked with Boss
Film Corp.¹s Richard Edlund. Larry Yaeger, Craig Upson, Neil
Krepela, et al. combined computational fluid dynamics with
CGI to create the planet Jupiter.
1985
ACM/SIGGRAPH in San Francisco, California with 27,000
attendees and 254 exhibitors.
Disney¹s The Black Cauldron is the first use of 3D computer
graphic elements in an animated film. (true?)
The first ever Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences award recognition for computer graphics
achievement: John Whitney Jr. and Gary Demos of Digital
Productions receive The Scientific and Engineering Award was
for ³the practical simulation of motion picture photography
by means of computer generated images (1984).
Bob Abel¹s Sexy Robot completed for the Canned Food Council.
The animated short film Tony de Peltrie by Phillipe
Bergeron shows at SIGGRAPH 85. Using digitized clay models,
and the new user friendly TAARNA 3D animation system (From U.
of Montreal) along with additional keyframe interpolating
algorithms by Doris Kochanek described at the previous years
SIGGRAPH. (Phillipe also did hero animation on the Symbolics
short Stanley and Stella in 1985)
[SIDEBAR NOT!] Max headroom was NOT computer generated.
(Really, take my word for it.) Beginning with the 1985
British music video show and TV pilot, he was portrayed by
actor Matt Frewer in stylized makeup with added video editing
effects. The US TV series produced in 1987 did feature some
other on screen CG (created with an Amiga) but never Max
himself. (BTW, 10 years later actor Matt Frewer later stared
in the LawnmowerMan II sequelŠinfinately less good than Max
IMO) For all things Max visit:
http://www.maxheadroom.com/altfaq.html
Commodore introduces the Amiga color personal computer.
Playland (Atari Corp.): Bill Kovacs.
Los Alamos National Lab: The Ultra-High Speed Graphics
Project is started. It pioneers animation as a visualization
tool and requires gigabit-per-second communication capacity.
An early massively parallel (128-node) Intel computer is
installed.
Young Sherlock Holmes: The stained glass knight sequence.
€The first CG Character in a feature film
€The first computer generated images in a feature film
to be exposed directly onto the film with a laser.
€One shot was also the first ever all digital composite
of CG with live action footage for a feature film. (The rack
focus shot that starts on the knight¹s hands grasping the
sword hilt and then tilts up to his face)
By the graphics group at LucasFilm LTD.
[FACTOID] David DiFrancesco built the ³digital film
printer² that was used for Young Sherlock Holmes. Designed as
one unit with three main components; a scanner and a printer
with a Pixar Image Computer in between. The former video
artist would later receive two separate Academy Awards for
his pioneering work. A Sci-Tech Award in 1994 for the scanner
portion, and a Technical Achievement Award in 1999 for the
printer work.
Money For Nothing MTV video by Dire Straits.(Steve Barron
director) Gavin Blair and Ian Pearson created the animation
at Rushes Post production in London, done on the Bosch FGS-
4000. The Quantel effects were done by Viv Scott. Ian and
Gavin now own and run a company in Vancouver called
Mainframe, out of which they produced Reboot(1994).
Cranston-Csuri produces many national broadcast network
graphics, but closes in 1987. Many of its employees go on to
later form MetroLight Studios (1987).
[BIO] Gary Demos: (studied under Ivan Sutherland at
Utah?) Š Cal Tech, went to work at E&S in 1972 and met John
Whitney Jr. Began working on projects with III then went with
Whitney to III to form the ³Motion Picture Design Group² in
1974. Left III just before Tron production, again with
Whitney, to form there own company Digital Productions. DP
filed for chapter 11 in 198? But was then continued as
Optimistic by Whitney. Demos the formed his own company,
which still exists today: DemoGraFX.
1986
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Dallas, Texas with about 22,000 attendees
and 253 exhibitors.
SoftImage founded in Montreal by Daniel Langois.
Mick Jagger's Hard Woman music video. Digital Productions
Brad deGraf, Bill Kroyer, Kevin Rafferty. Et al. CG Co-
Produced by Nancy St.John and Alan Peach.
"The Juggler": An Amiga demo by Eric Graham.
Digital Productions create the three minute opening
sequence for the feature film Labyrinth.
Complex 2D vector graphics character animation was produced
by Digital Productions for the Mick Jagger music video Hard
Woman.
PIXAR formed by Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Division pioneers
Edwin Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith along with about 35 others
including John Lasseter, Ralph Guggenheim, Bill Reeves, et
al. Purchased from George Lucas by Steve Jobs (Apple/NeXT)
for $10 million.
Luxo Jr. (PIXAR Animation Studios): First CG Short Animated
Film to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Animated
Film
Flight of the Navigator: Omnibus Computer Graphics creates
the silvery reflective spaceship. Contributors included Jeff
Kleiser(KWCC), Les Major(ILM) and Kevin Tureski(Alias)
The Great Mouse Detective: Disney first use of 3D computer
graphic elements in an animated film. (Or was it The Black
Cauldron in 1985?)
Howard the Duck: first digital wire removal for a feature
film. Painted by Bruce Wallace at ILM with proprietary
³Layerpaint² software on a Pixar Image computer. Layerpaint
code originally written by Mark Leather and modified by
Jonathan Luskin and Doug Smythe.
Star Trek IV: First use of Cyberware 3D scanner for film
Digital Productions is purchased(June), then also Robert
Abel & Associates (September), by Omnibus Computer
Graphics in 1986. Omnibus goes out of business one year
later on April 13th 1987.
1987
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Anaheim, California with about 30,541
attendees and 274 exhibitors.
Rhythm and Hues formed by ex-Abel staffers, opens in a
former dentist office.
Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future
The first television series to include 3D characters
that were done entirely with computer animation. It went on
the air (September) in North America. Soaron and Blastarr
were two CG robots that appeared in the 22 episode series.
The computer animation was produced by Arcca Animation in
Toronto.
[SYNTHAVISION FACTOID] ³Arcca was the reformation of
Sythavision staff and software to do the Captain Power
series that was a creation of Landmark Entertainment
(Hollywood) and financed by Mattel. The show featured toys
that were interactive with the television show by registering
blast hits on the toy (via a 30hz flicker on TV) or on the TV
show character (via a trigger pull during a 15hz flicker from
the TV).² Paul Griffin
About four minutes of computer graphics was animated for
each episode every week using two SGI 3130 workstations
running Wavefront software. The motion was then ported over
to Sythavision data.
[ANIMATING WITH STICKS AND STONES] ³Animation was
incredibly arduous sometimes. First you'd plot the model and
the path of your animation on graph paper. Then input
hundreds or thousands of text lines in a form that
Sythavision would understand. If you were out as much as a
space or tab in your input file, it wouldn't run. To review
your animation, you played in back by flipping images through
a frame buffer that often time had pixels as big as postage
stamps and based on this make a decision as to whether or not
to send your rendered animation to the film recorder. Two
days later it would come back from the lab and you could see
where all the mistakes were and start over again. But it was
a beautiful renderer. The quality of the solid modelled
surfaces and the lighting routines made for some great
images.² Paul Griffin
Rendering was done on 13 Sun Workstations that ran a
proprietary job control system, that would pick up new frames
in a sequence as they were completed, which may have been the
first render farm of its time. The work for the show won
Arcca a Gemini Award (the pinnacle in Canadian film
production) for Technical Achievement in 1988.
The producer was Bob Robbins. The art director was Earl
Huddleston. Paul Griffin(ILM) was Animation Director, Andy
Varty, Sylvia Wong(Rhythm & Hues, ILM), Les Major (ILM,
Pixar). Paintbox work by Rob Smith and Mike Huffman.
Jenniffer Julich was in charge of storyboards. Rob Coleman,
was Arcca's onset liason/line producer. Mark Mayerson now
directs Monster by Mistake on DisneyTV and YTV (Canada). On
the live action production side, Doug Netter (Rattlesnake
Productions) and Larry Dittillo(sp?) (the writer) went on to
develop Babyon 5.
1988
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Atlanta, Georgia with about 19,000
attendees and 249 exhibitors.
Fruit Machine (Wonder World): The first all digital film
composite for a feature film outside the U.S. by Computer
Film Company (CFC)/London. Multiple film elements were
scanned into a computer, 100% digitally composited, and
filmed back out again.
see the Companies chapter on CFC for more details
Jim Henson and Digital Productions create a real-time 3D
digital character for the Jim Henson Hour. The first of its
kind. Steve Whitmeyer(sp?) was the puppeteer and voice. Thad
Bier(PDI/Hammerhead) and Grahm Walters and Rex, shipped all
the equipment up to Toronto one week before SIGGRAPH. The
opening to the show was done by Jamie Dixon(PDI/Hammerhead).
Mike the Talking Head The first real-time character (aka
motion-capture, vactor, performance animation). Michael
Wahrman and Brad deGraf did it at deGraf/Wahrman live at
the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theatre in Atlanta. ( Mike was a
virtual caricature of the late Mike Gribble, the host of that
show, and the Mike of Spike and Mike's animation festival.)
Willow (MGM/Lucasfilm Ltd.): First feature film use of
digital morphing technology.
CAPS(Computer Animation Paint System) developed jointly
between Pixar and Disney.
Tin Toy (PIXAR Animation Studios): First CG Short Animated
Film to win an Oscar for Best Short Animated Film
1989
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Boston, Massachusetts with 27,000 attendees
and 238 exhibitors.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Lucasfilm Ltd.
/Paramount): Contrary to what you may have read elsewhere,
this was NOT he first all digital composite for a feature
film. (ILM¹s own Stained Glass Knight in Young Sherlock
Holmes, CFC¹s Fruit Machine, and Triple-I¹s Future World
all came before) The ³Donovan¹s destruction² sequence by ILM
was the first to use many multiple scanned film elements,
digitally composited, and then scanned back out to film with
a laser.
(By now it gets a little silly with all of the sub-sub
classifications of ³firsts² in areas such as these.)
The Abyss (GJP Productions/Twentieth Century-Fox): Water
Pseudopod.
1990's
The entertainment world as we know it began to change in
the 1980s when motion picture images in Tron, Star Trek II,
The Last Starfighter, and Young Sherlock Holmes gave the
audience a taste of the future. Now, George Lucas¹s
Industrial Light + Magic began to continuously raise the
popular standard by which all CG was judged by creating such
images as the water pseudopod in James Cameron¹s film The
Abyss (1989) and the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day
(1990). In 1993 ILM smashed all previous conceptions about
computer graphics when Jurassic Park¹s photo-real dinosaurs
took center stage in theaters around the world.
1990
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Dallas, Texas with 24,684 attendees and 248
exhibitors.
The feature film ³Flight of the Intruder². Rhythm and Hues
created over 30 shots of photo-realistic aircraft, cluster
bombs, and smoke in full daylight..all with their own
proprietary software.
deGraf/Wahrman did The Funtastic World of Hanna-
Barbera, the first CG ridefilm. It was a fully 3D chase/ride
through Bedrock and Scooby-Doo's castle, with cel animated
characters, for Universal Studios Florida. (Additional CG
work by Rhythm and Hues)
Robocop 2 (Also by deGraf/Wahrman) was the first use
in feature films of Performance AnimationŠamong those who
also contributed were Ken Cope(animation) and Gregory
Ercolano(TD).
Kroyer Films creates the full length animated feature film
FernGully: The Last Rainforest. It contains 40,000 3D
hidden line computer plotted cel frames to augment the bulk
of the traditional animation. It also contains a digital-ink-
and-paint sequence by Sydney-Right, a feature film first.
The Rescuers Down Under: The first complete feature film
to be ³completely digital². The CAPS system digitally ink and
paints every frame of the film.
Die Hard 2:Die Harder (Twentieth Century-Fox): The first
digitally manipulated matte painting created at Industrial
Light & Magic. Matte department supervisor was Bruce Walters,
Paul Huston and Michael McAllister helped in design and
composition and Yusei Uesugi was the matte painter
extraordinare. Four separate images were digitized from the
painting (13 feet wide by 5 feet tall), decreasing in
resolution from the center outward. The images were assembled
in a MacII computer, and manipulated by Uesugi using
Photoshop. The image was combined with numerous live-action
elements of people, lights and steam with a camera move
programmed by Pat Myers.
NewTek releases the Amiga based Video Toaster.
1991
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Las Vegas, Nevada with about 23,100
attendees and 282 exhibitors.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (Carolco): T-1000 liquid
metal cyborg
Beautiful all CG commercials by PIXAR for Listerine, Life
Savers and Tropicana set s new standard for broadcast
excellence.
Disney¹s Beauty And The Beast ballroom sequence is a major
new direction in feature length animated films.
1992
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Chicago, Illinois with 34,148 attendees and
253 exhibitors.
Death Becomes Her (Universal): Photoreal human skin and
body replacement.
1993
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Anaheim, California with 27,000 attendees
and 285 exhibitors.
Wavefront acquires the TDI software company from Thompson
Corp of France. In exchange Wavefront receives a major
capital investment from Thompson
PDI opens a Hollywood production office. This office would
close in a short few years.
Marc Scaparro, Eric Gregory and Brad deGraf did Moxy for the
Cartoon Network at Colossal Pictures. Produced by Anne
Brilz. It was the first live broadcast of a virtual
character.
Jurassic Park (Amblin/Universal): Photo-real 3D Digital
Dinosaurs
1994
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Orlando, Florida with about 25,000
attendees and 269 exhibitors.
Reboot: the first 100% CGI television series airs on ABC
from Mainframe Entertainment Inc.
Microsoft acquires Softimage
Forrest Gump (Paramount): Photoreal/invisible 3D and 2D
digital effects blending new footage with old, changing
archive footage, and removing Gary Sinese(sp?) legs! By ILM
of course.
Flintstones (Universal): First feature film digital hair
developed for the saber toothed tiger.
1995
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles, California with 40,100
attendees and 297 exhibitors.
Silicon Graphics, Inc. acquires both Alias and Wavefront,
merging the two companies.
Toy Story (PIXAR Animation Studios): First full length CG
Animated feature film. Director John Lasseter wins a Special
Achievement Academy Award.
Judge Dredd (Cinergi): Early examples of fully 3D digital
stunt people by the Kleiser-Walzack Construction Company for
Mass-Illusion.
Casino (Dir. Martin Scorsese): Matte World Digital utilizes
LightScape software to seamlessly integrate a 1970s virtual
Las Vegas strip into present day live action footage. The
first time radiosity lighting was used in a feature film.
Batman Forever (Warner Brothers): Early example of 3D
realistic digital stuntman by Warner Brother Imaging
Technology (W.B.I.T.)and Pacific Data Images. Also a very
realistic, fully 3D cityscape by W.B.I.T.
Casper (Amblin/Universal): Record number of on screen shots
with a digital character. 400+
Jumanji (Tri-Star): Further development of particle based
digital hair technology for Lion sequence.
1996
ACM/SIGGRAPH in New Orleans, Louisiana with 28,800
attendees and 321 exhibitors.
Alvy Ray Smith, Ed Catmull, Tom Porter, and Tom Duff receive
a Technical Academy Award for digital image compositing
(ie the alpha channel)
Dragonheart (Universal): Breakthrough 3D CGI character
animation and lip-synch dialog.
Twister: Breakthrough realistic tornadoes and weather
effects by Industrial Light and Magic using Wavefront¹s
Dynamation..
1997
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles, California with 48,700
attendees and 359 exhibitors.
Floops (done at Protozoa by Brad deGraf, Emre Yilmaz, Steve
Rein and others) was the first character distributed as 3D
(VRML), the first episodic cartoon on the Web, and the first
significant animation on the web (30 minutes worth).
Star Wars/Special Edition (Twentieth Century-Fox/LucasFilm
Ltd.): Restored and enhanced 20 year old film footage. About
350 shots were added or modified for all three films.
Spawn: Photo-real fully 3D creature transformations, full
screen digital stunt doubles, and dynamic simulated cape. All
with bone-cracking, digital-drool slinging realism.
Titanic: Large scale use of motion-capture and 3D digital
crowd extras.
[Quantel looses PATENTS ISSUE]
³British company Quantel has been asserting a set of
patents against companies for about a decade now, patents
that many of us in the digital imaging and computer graphics
business believed were invalid. These 1980s-vintage patents
covered airbrushing (digital painting with soft-edged
brushes), digital image compositing (!), pressure-sensitive
stylus, mixing paints on a window called a palette, etc. I
and my colleagues have long believed these notions to be too
simple to be worthy of "invention" hence patent coverage.
Furthermore, if anyone were to deserve credit for the
"invention", it certainly wasn't the Quantel people in the
1980s but rather several of the many practitioners (in the US
mainly) in the 1970s.
Jim Blinn, Lance Williams, and I tried to help save a
British company called Spaceward from these patents in a
London trial in 1989. We were unsuccessful, largely, I
believe, because we didn't have any hard evidence - no code,
no program. This changed in September 1997. Quantel sued
Adobe, well-known US producer of popular software products
such as Photoshop, for patent infringement on US versions of
the UK patents that had been held against Spaceward. The
trial was held in Wilmington, Delaware. The following
colleagues joined me in helping Adobe this time: Marc Levoy,
Christie Barton, David Em, Dick Phillips, Jim Blinn (by
deposition), and others.
The Adobe attorneys did a great job of gathering
evidence, including hard evidence this time. They obtained
actual code that I had written in 1977 and 1978 and
recompiled it under Windows. So I was able to demonstrate
directly to the jury exactly what we had done in the 1970s -
in this case I was showing the first full-color (RGB, or 24-
bit) digital paint program, which of course did many of the
things Quantel claimed to have invented in the 1980s! Marc
Levoy's 1978 full-color paint program (the second one) was
similarly found and recompiled and shown to the jury.
Long story short: The jury found all five patents at
issue invalid (and that Adobe was innocent of infringement).²
-Alvy Ray Smith
1998
ACM/SIGGRAPH in Orlando, Florida with ??? attendees and ??
exhibitors.
1998 saw an unprecedented number of SciTech awards go to
the computer graphics community. Individuals at Alias, Pixar,
PDI, Side Effects, SoftImage and Wavefront all were
recognized for various components of those systems.
In addition, several individuals were recognized for
their contributions to CG.
A Scientific and Engineering Academy Award was awarded
to Richard Shoup, Alvy Ray Smith and Thomas Porter for
their pioneering efforts in the development of digital paint
systems used in motion picture production. The award reads:
³Much of the foundation for the numerous contemporary digital
paint products for motion pictures can be traced directly
back to the early work of these digital pioneers.²
A Scientific and Engineering Academy Award was awarded
to Craig Reynolds for his pioneering contributions to the
development of three-dimensional computer animation for
motion picture production. The award reads: ³The early
contributions of Mr. Reynolds in the digital animation arena
have become both influential and instrumental in the
architecture of many later systems developed at companies
throughout the computer animation industry.²
Geri's Game (Pixar): Academy Award winning animated short
film showcases the newly rediscovered modeling technique of
³subdivision surfaces².
Bingo (Alias|Wavefront) Chris Landreth¹s test piece for the
initial Maya release received a Genie Award from The Academy
of Canadian Cinema and Television. It was named Best Computer
Animation at Ottawa 98 and at Imagina in Monaco, Bingo also
received an award from France's Societe des Auteurs et
Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD) for "Most Innovative Story
and Production".
Antz is released (PDI/Dreamworks)
A Bug's Life (Pixar/Disney)
1999
Autodesk merges it¹s newly acquired Discreet Logic
(Montreal) division with its Kinetix (SanFrancisco) division
into the new Discreet entertainment division.
May 19th, 1999 Star Wars/Episode 1: The Phantom Menace
Almost 2000 state-of-the-art digital effect shots, most
of which are created at Industrial Light & Magic in less than
two years production time. The Gungan JarJar Binks is the
first all digital leading character in a motion picture.
The few shots that were not effects related were also
scanned and color corrected to produce a full digital master.
Later that summer, LucasFilm premiers the film in New
York and LA with a new electronic projection system. The
Texas Instruments system uses 1920x1080 progressive video
resolution to project the film at 24fps directly from digital
storage.