• As early as the 1940s and 50s, experiments in computer graphics were beginning, most notably by John Whitne
• Initially, uses were mainly for scientific, engineering and other research purposes, but artistic experimentation began to make its appearance by mid-1960s
• By the mid-70s, many such efforts were beginning to enter into public media
• Much computer graphics at this time involved 2-dimensional imagery, though increasingly, as computer power improved, efforts to achieve 3-dimensional realism become the emphasis
• By the late 1980s, photo-realistic 3D was beginning to appear in cinema movies, and by mid-90s had developed to the point where 3D animation could be used for entire feature film production.
• The first digital image
• One of the first programmable digital computers was SEAC (the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer), designed by computer pioneer Russell Kirsch in 1950 at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in Maryland, USA
• In 1957, the team unveiled the drum scanner, to "trace variations of intensity over the surfaces of photographs", and so doing made the first digital image by scanning a photograph
• The image, picturing Kirsch's three-month-old son, consisted of just 176 x 176 pixels.

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• Sketchpad of Ivan Sutherland
• Ivan Sutherland is considered by many to be the creator of Computer Graphics and an Internet pioneer.
• which is one of the most influential computer programs ever written by an individual
• Starting with his Ph.D. thesis, named Sketchpad
• Sutherland has contributed numerous ideas to the study of Computer Graphics and Computer Interaction
• He introduced concepts such as 3-D computer modeling, visual simulations, computer aided design (CAD), virtual reality, etc.
• His first computer experience was with the famous computer Simon of Edmund Berkeley.
• Sketchpad ran on the Lincoln TX-2 computer, an innovative machine designed in 1956
• (it

  had a large amount of memory for its time: a vacuum-tube-driven core of 64K words, a faster, transistor-driven core of 4K words, a paper-tape reader and could also use magnetic tape as auxiliary storage.) TX-2 was an "on-line" computer (at that time most computers would run "batches" of jobs and were not interactive), used to investigate the use of Surface Barrier transistors for digital circuits. TX-2 included a nine inch CRT and a light pen which first gave Sutherland his idea. He imagined that one should be able to draw on the computer. Sketchpad was able to do just this, creating highly precise drawings, and also introduced important innovations such as memory structures to store objects and the ability to zoom in and out.
• The Sketchpad uses drawing as a novel communication medium for a computer.
• The system contains input, output, and computation programs which enable it to interpret information drawn directly on a computer display
• It was a general purpose system and has been used to draw electrical, mechanical, scientific, mathematical, and animated drawings
• A Sketchpad user sketches directly on a computer display with a "light pen." The light pen is used both to position parts of the drawing on the display and to point to them to change them. A set of push buttons controls the changes to be made such as "erase", "move", etc.
• In 1968, together with his student Bob Sproull, Sutherland created the first virtual reality and augmented reality head-mounted display system, named The Sword of Damocles.
• His company Evans and Sutherland (founded together with his friend David Evans) has done pioneering work in the field of real-time hardware, accelerated 3D computer graphics, and printer languages. Former employees of company included the future founders of Adobe (John Warnock) and Silicon Graphics (Jim Clark).

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• Pixar’s Ed Catmull sounds off on animating creativity 

    

   

  Pixar’s Ed Catmull sounds off on how companies can foster the kind of culture that leads to original work.  

           

   

  By Ellen Fagg Weist

   

  | The Salt Lake Tribune
• First Published Apr 04 2014 08:33 am • Last Updated Apr 07 2014 04:07 pm 

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• Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar and Disney animation companies.
• Catmull says his theories draw upon basic principles he learned while studying physics and then computer science at the University of Utah in the late 1960s and early ’70s
• he worked with other students to build rudimentary animation software
• In 1972, he and a colleague, Fred Parke, created a one-minute digital animation of Catmull moving his left hand. In 2011, that film with its very basic title — "A Computer Animated Hand" — was included in the National Film Registry housed at the Library of Congress.
• That experiment launched Catmull’s career in computer graphics, with stops at the New York Institute of Technology and Lucasfilm. In 1986, the company’s digital division, under Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith, was spun off into its own company, Pixar, funded by Steve Jobs. In 1995, the company launched "Toy Story," the world’s first digitally animated feature, and the first of the company’s string of 14 consecutive No. 1 hits. That list includes "Finding Nemo, "The Incredibles," "Ratatouille," "Up" and "Brave."

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• Original Creators: Visionary Computer Animator John Whitney Sr
• By Kevin Holmes — Jun 11 2012
• Whitney’s work stands out because not only was he an early, bold experimenter in the field of computer graphics, he was also explicitly using computers to create works of art.
• He also realized the connection between generated imagery and music, using jazz as inspiration to create compositions in real-time.
• was his collaboration with Saul Bass on the title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo in 1958.
• his most famous and recognized work
• experimentations with his self-built mechanical analogue computers, which he built with his brother, James.
• he converted a World War II M-5 anti-aircraft gun director to create a complex drawing machine
• Whitney built his first analogue computer in the late 1950s
• This instrument gave him the ability to explore the world of motion and movement in a new kind of abstract space powered by computers.
• The customized gun was able to control cameras that would maneuver above the artwork and, astoundingly, perform the kinds of functions that would later be common on digital computers
• Whitney could create a peerless type of art while keeping ahead of the computing technology of the time
• The film demonstrates techniques like the slit-scan effect
• create motion graphics
• nfluential in computer art
• twisting forms and spirals, along with their bold use of color
• Whitney was a visionary in what he thought possible in the world of motion graphics and computer imaging, paving the way for today’s computer animation industry and the complex abstract animations that can be seen in the works of artists like Scott Draves.
• began to experiment with digital effect
• In 1966, Whitney became the first artist-in-residence at IBM
• 1970s he’d stopped using his analogue machinery and instead primarily used digital computers, which were used to create Arabesqu
• Arabesque explores the notion of “harmonic progression” and Islamic architecture and was created using a vector display
• This sane audiovisual synthesis is something that can still be seen in modern animations like Beeple’s IV.10,
• While Whitney’s technical accomplishments were remarkable, it was also his adoption of the computer as an artistic tool that makes him an antecedent to many of today’s digital artists working in the fields of animation and beyond.

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• Russel Kirsch
• Voilà, the scanner was born.
• The SEAC scanner used a rotating drum and a photomultiplier to sense reflections from a small image mounted on the drum.
• The first image ever scanned (see the nearby image) on the scanner was a 5x5 cm photograph of Kirsch's then-three-month-old son, Walden. The black and white image had a resolution of 176 pixels on a side.

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• Pixar’s RenderMan turns 25 (Exclusive)

   

  By Mike Seymour

   

   July 25, 2013
• May 1988 when the original RenderMan interface 3.0 was launched
• Pixar is celebrating 25 years of RenderMan.
• Ed Catmull, one of the founders of RenderMan, now President of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios and asked him how it felt to be celebrating not 10 or 20 years but 25 years of the rendering software.

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• Motion capture is the recording of human body movement (or other movement) for immediate or delayed analysis and playback
• Motion capture is the recording of human body movement (or other movement) for immediate or delayed analysis and playback

• 1980-1983: Simon Fraser University — Goniometers

    

  Around this same time, biomechanics labs were beginning to use computers to analyze human motion. Techniques and devices used in these studies began to make their way into the computer graphics community. In the early 1980's, Tom Calvert, a professor of kinesiology and computer science at Simon Fraser University, attached potentiometers to a body and used the output to drive computer animated figures for choreographic studies and clinical assessment of movement abnormalities. To track knee flexion, for instance, they strapped a sort of exoskeleton to each leg, positioning a potentiometer alongside each knee so as to bend in concert with the knee. The analog output was then converted to a digital form and fed to the computer animation system. Their animation system used the motion capture apparatus together with Labanotation and kinematic specifications to fully specify character motion.[1]

• 1993: Acclaim

    

  At SIGGRAPH '93 Acclaim amazed audiences with a realistic and complex two-character animation done entirely with motion capture. For the previous several years, Acclaim had quietly developed a high-performance optical motion tracking system, much like the ones used for the Graphical Marionette and Dozo, but able to track up to a 100 points simultaneously in real-time. Acclaim mainly uses the system to generate character motion sequences

  for video games. Their system is proprietary and they do not plan to market the technology except as a production house
• Last changed <!--webbot bot="Timestamp" s-type="EDITED" s-format="%B %d, %Y" startspan -->March 13, 1999<!--webbot bot="Timestamp" endspan i-checksum="17367" -->, G. Scott Owen, owen@siggraph.org

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• Thomas W. Calvert
• Professor Tom Calvert of Simon Fraser University is one of the founding fathers of graphics and human-computer interaction research in Canada
• Dr. Calvert is receiving the CHCCS/SCDHM Achievement Award for his long-term contributions to the development of computer graphics, visualisation, and human-computer interaction in Canada, most notably for his role in establishing and maintaining a "Western outpost" that was home to many students who gained their first experience in his laboratories and then joined companies in British Columbia that were the beginning of the strong graphics, animation, and multimedia industry that exists today. Tom's accomplishments are particularly noteworthy for three characteristics.
• (CHCCS/SCDHM home) 
   This page maintained by: Kellogg Booth 
   Last modified: 04/03/2012 16:44:23

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• UCLA Extension 
  Maya for 3D Animation, Level 1 
  Instructor:  Kevin Carney
• History of 3D Matchmoving
• two general types
• 3D Matchmoving (also called tracking) is a process used to integrate 3D computer generated animation with live-action filmmaking.
• In camera tracking you look at a scene which was shot on film or video tape, and try to re-create the movement of the camera that was used on the set or location so that visual effects can be placed into the scene.
• First is camera tracking
• In object tracking you look at a scene and try to re-create the movement of one of the moving objects in the frame
• The second is object tracking
• were the first to refine it and make it work
• Douglass Trumbal
• , John Dykstra

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• How Machinima Works

   

  by Jonathan Strickland
• Machinima traces its history back to 1996, when a group of gamers called The Rangers created a short film titled, "Diary of a Camper."
• The Rangers used a demo function in "Quake" to record their film
• Developers designed the demo function to allow players to record gaming events to share with friends
• The Rangers' film went a step beyond, using the demo function to tell a story.
• it is important in that it was the first to use video games as a film medium.
• Other films followed and were commonly called "'Quake' films."
• January 2000, two machinima filmmakers named Hugh Hancock and Anthony Bailey decided they needed a new term to describe all video game films, and the term machinima was born.
• been used to storyboard more traditional films
• Machinima
• The New Zealand company Regelous created a special-effects program called Massive for Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies
• Steven Spielberg used machinima as a tool in pre-visualization for his movie "A.I."
• © 1998-2014 HowStuffWorks, Inc

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• Have Computer Generated Images Changed the Definition of Cinematography?
• Robert Hardy 

  01.1.14 @ 10:00AM Tags : aintthembodiessaints, cinema, cinematography, emmanuellubezki, gravity, rogerdeakins, traditionalcinematography, virtual, virtualcinematography
• In the past four years, the Academy Award for best achievement in cinematography has gone to a film with heavy amounts of computer-generated-imagery three times
• In 2009, Avatar took the top prize in cinematography, followed by Hugo and Life of Pi in 2011 and 2012 respectively.
• lighting, composition, and camera movement are created digitally

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