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Chapter 4 : A HISTORY OF COMPUTER ANIMATION 3/20/92 38 Stereoscopic animation, where a separate point of view is calculated for each eye, was first produced by A . Michael Noll at Bell Labs (1965) . Stereoscopic animation was not new, but when Noll animated the first four dimensional objects and mathematically projecting them from 4D to 3D stereo pairs, he provided a very unique way to actually look into the 4th dimension . The Bell work spanned a wide range of problems in addition to scientific visualization, typified in the first Zajak film, or language design, typified by Knowlton . Frank Sinden made the educational computer animation movie Force, Mass and Motion, which depicted the motion of bodies under various gravitational laws . It prooved conclusively that computer animation was a natural for science education . Thus by 1965 both vector and pixel computer animation techniques were defined . The simulation of image may be totally abstract and purely 2D, or it may derive from a pictorial representation . With pixels one may simulate all known analog effects (from fades to the traveling glow mattes of Luke Skywalker's light sword), plus some digital image effects that have no analog ancestry . The first color films Although color animation could be made by shooting black and white film and optically printing it with colored filters this was a tedious process . The solution was the development of continuous tone color film recorders . were built (independently) by General Electric in Syracuse and the Mathematical Applications Group (MAGI) in Elmsford, New York about 1966 . Both of these machines were raster only, and displayed the picture by interlacing each scan line, in other words, each scan-line was drawn successively in red, green and blue through rotating color filters before the next scan line was drawn . Software was progressing rapidly, and in 1968 GE produced a color computer animated film for NASA, 1984, that depicted the operations of a future space shuttle, perhaps the first movie that featured opaque colored solid objects and polygonal shading (fig . 68) . The following year their movies on Highway Interchanges and Hancock Airport included fog simulation ; flight simulation was a definite market area . Other experiments included architecture- 68 . Solid, opaqued polygons, occulted surfacing (hidden surfaces removed), color, lightsourcing (Lambert, single color per polygon) and a moving camera mark the state of the art in 1966 systems by GE (left) and MAGI (right) .
Chapter 4: A HISTORY OF COMPUTER ANIMATION 3/20/92 39 Donald Greenberg made his first animations using the system . This same GE research unit was later to develop the first successful computer slidemaking system-Genigraphics . MAGI's first films, like Army Heavy Lift Helicopter Simulation (1970), reflected the company's research roots ; now its president, Phil Mittleman, brought the medium to attention of the networks and advertising community, with some success . It is probably fair to label MAGI as the first computer animation company . The first animator to be employed there was Larry Elan, who was hired about 1974 . GE and MAGI aside, computer animators who wanted color in their movies throughout the 1970s had little choice but to add color optically using gels [probably not do this here but may keep if expand section with typing . fig . space ++ or times square] . The major difficulty of this was not in producing pure color with filters, but with continuous tone, full color . This problem resolved itself at the very end of the 1970s, when Informational International Inc (III), a company that had been building black and white film recorders for over a decade, constructed special full color raster units for a newly formed motion picture group, headed by John Whitney Jr . (the son of John Whitney Sr ., above) and Gary Demos . The COM units utilized a small flat faced CRT display that displayed 256 levels of grey, and a color wheel between it and the camera that was also computer controlled (K&R fig . 3-27 shows the arrangement clearly, although the reader should note that the color wheel need only contain three filters, red, green, and blue . The three additional complimentary filters make it possible to shoot interpositive directly . COM units also often have a clear (aka neutral) filter so they can shoot B&W in one pass) . Unlike the GE and MAGI machines, the III units were not constrained to a rapidly spinning color wheel ; the color wheel was usually programmed to turn on a field by field basis (fig . 69) . The III movie group units were also extraordinary in that they could digitize film frames using a flying spot scanner technique (see K&R 3-27 for typical diagram) . The frames could then be written back out 69 . One of the most famous images of this period is the III jugler, certainly not their first full color COM recording, but with acton so compelling that the viewer forgets about the technological background . The rendering is Phong, and the juggler is made by rotoscoping witness points on live action . And the tromp d'oeil that ends the scene is a masterpiece of animation .
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Chapter 4: A HISTORY OF COMPUTER ANIMATION ... - Vasulka.org

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