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Chapter 4 : A HISTORY OF COMPUTER ANIMATION 3/20/92 46 The perfection of this technology coincides with the first generation of computer animation companies-MAGI, Robert Able Associates (with Bill Kovacks), III, and Digital Effects (founded by Judson Rosebush, Donald Leich, and Jeffrey Kleiser), who all end up working together on TRON, the first feature film with a major computer animation component . In 198?, a new generation of raster non-programmable film recorders from companies such as Dunn, Matrix and Management Graphics plummeted prices and simplified operations . The new generation of raster recorders, coupled with the personal computer, exploded the color slide presentation and business graphics marketplace . And hooking a 35mm pin registered Acme or Mitchell camera onto one of these units only required the skill of a good machines, a tactic taken by newer generation companies, like Intelligent Light . Computer animation remained difficult, but the financial and technical hurdles that needed to be overcome were vastly diminished . Image Digitizing The digitization of 2D images is actually quite old ; early examples probably predate the Bartlane transatlantic cable (1921) . These early systems represent the image as a matrix of numbers representing the intensity values at each pixel, and a TTY style output device reproduces the image using either special characters or alphanumeric overstrikes . Adding a computer provides a better way to not only store and transmit pictures, but also to analyze them . A rotary drum scanners which could digitize individual images was built by Roland Kirsch at the National Bureau of Standards (1957), and in 1964 the Jet Propulsion Lab in California used pixel matrices to represent television pictures from the Ranger Moon probe . Using frequency domain techniques the pictures were computationally enhanced to make them look better and reduce interplanetary noise . Again Bell Labs demonstrated a wide range of applications, including using half toning techniques to make dot patterns on the SC-4020 film recorder (1966) . Digitizing film and tape proved to be a more formidable task, although single digitized images began to be employed in computer animations as image maps after 19xx . The first practical machine to capture a sequence of film images in registration was the above mentioned III film recorder, built for the motion picture group (1976?), and which worked as a flying spot scanner with a digitizer coupled to the output of the photometer behind the film plane (figure ??) . The III machines saw
Chapter 4 : A HISTORY OF COMPUTER ANIMATION 3/20/92 47 only occasional use in the image capture mode (fig . 70 of Westworld is one of them) . After III liquidated the motion picture group in 198? the COM units were acquired by Digital Productions and Omnibus . In one application Omnibus used them to capture live action footage which was image mapped (using Digital Effect's Visions software) onto a metallic spacecraft for Flight of the Navigator . Following the bankruptcy of Omnibus they were sold to --, where they are still running at presstime . Aside from these machines, which were never really marketed, the only other practical device for digitizing sequential frames of motion picture film seems to be the scanners built by the computer graphics group of Intelligent Light and Magic, a division of Lucisfilm . These machines reached their full maturity beginning in 198? on the films Willow, Indiana Jones and . . ., and Abyss, in which ILM perfected digital blue screen process at film resolutions . The effect and implications of this are not yet fully felt, but it is obvious that the complete digitization of the optical effects process overcomes a host of traditional problems and will vastly expand the range of the effects vocabulary . [Add Terminator] . At the end of the 1980's a host of vendors, including Nikon, Kodak, and others introduced low cost, high resolution slide digitizing devices designed for use with personal computers, and although your author is unaware of any specific utilization of these for motion picture capture he suspects that the integration of a pin registered motion picture shuttle into these devices could provide a very cost effective solution . The real reason this hasn't happened is more likely due to the fact that video has replaced film as a preferred medium of production for everything but theatrical release, and for video the image capture problem is easier to solve . [Develop Photo C/D and other Kodak strategies .] The Simulation of Cel Animation Although much of the pioneers' efforts were directed at the new possibility of 3D animation another faction tried to simulate the cel process . The problem, to the extent its purpose is to assist from the drawing stage forward, really requires a full range of graphic art creation and compositing tools to be operational . In order to solve it one must also fully understand classical cel production before movement of cels and computerization of inbetweens could be accomplished . In retrospect we see that the perfection of the parts was accomplished independently of any "grand plan" . Perhaps this is because each of the parts represented challenges themselves .
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