From the start of time, people have communicated thoughts, ideas, information, and fantasies
through visual means, using painting, then photography, then film, and now computer graphics.
The first general purpose computer, called ENIAC, was ordered by the Navy in the 1940s,
and was the prototype for computers as we know them today. The MANIAC computer was then developed
for flight control and the calculation of theoretical problems, and was a true computer
in that it could store a program of instructions. It could also play chess with human beings.
The first computer which people could communicate with graphically through drawing was developed
in the early 1960s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By 1970, computers were used at
the University of Utah to create actual three-dimensional images with motion. Even attempts at creating
the illusion of speech were made. The simulation of flight for training pilots was an early
and important use of computer graphics. Today with computer graphics, a wide variety of effects
and looks are achieved, including simulation of reality. The computer allows us to change points
of view from the possible to the impossible, and travel in amazingly short periods of time.
We can change the world in fantastic ways with computer graphics. Things are transparent,
light floating, or solid, metallic, textured. Glass is created, light sources and colors
controlled, and intricate reflections produced. Whole new worlds are created with computer
graphics. Different styles of painting can be accomplished almost like painting on a
canvas. The Quantel Paintbox is easy for the artist to use. The computer has built-in geometric
shapes available, such as squares, circles, and lines. The on-screen menu at the bottom
is used to command the computer to select different operations, including magnifying
the area to be worked on. A wide variety of type styles are available. Any image can be
scanned into the computer and changed, or retouched. The use of computer graphics to
change reality brings us some interesting questions. Designer Donna Cohen. There's
computers where the resolution is so high that you can never tell that it was ever touched
by anything, which raises the whole question of photography as evidence of anything. I
don't even think people are aware of how much computer graphics is used today. There's
just a whole question now of what is real. Create a new reality by adding an erupting
volcano to the San Francisco skyline, or remove the World Trade Center from the New York City
skyline. The artist saves and retrieves pictures, which can be altered or recalled at any time
from the computer library. The artist cuts and pastes elements together, or shrinks images
to any size. Create motion by combining a series of still images. A large number of
separate elements were created on the Quantel Paintbox and then combined into one single
finished piece. If a two-dimensional picture is rotated, there is no depth and the picture
disappears. With a three-dimensional or 3D object, each side of the object exists as
in real life, so that when it is rotated, hidden sides come into view. The square picture
unit, or pixel, is the building block of computer graphics. There are thousands of pixels available
on the screen, and each one can be used and colored separately. Painting with the computer
simply involves moving the pen or stylus around, depositing areas of color. Painted 2D backgrounds
can be combined with 3D animation. Part of the background is being magnified, so a star
can be painted onto the sky above the landscape. On the Cubicomp, a three-dimensional object
is built as a stick figure or wireframe model and magnified to change details. The model
is now given depth to add a third dimension. The color and lighting menu is brought up,
and the object is given color and a light source. Now the other half of the model is
built. The full wireframe model is positioned in the 2D landscape scene. Much like traditional
film animation, several positions or key frames are made to define exactly where the object
will move. With the key frames defined, the direction and velocity of the movement is
next determined through motion choreography. After adjustments are made, the animator views
a completed wireframe test of the motion before the computer generates the finished piece
frame by frame onto videotape. Computer graphics is big business, with over $7 billion spent
a year in the United States alone. The majority of the computer graphics industry is concentrated
in computer-aided design, or CAD. Other major uses are electronic design, business graphics,
architecture and mapping. The images most people have seen on TV are the smallest part
of the business, but have the most public awareness. International audiences have become
very familiar with the graphics, logos and commercials shown nightly on television.
Throughout this program, you will hear the voices of these designers, animators and artists
as they express their thoughts and feelings. It's people, people working with computers
who make computer graphics. Television is where mass audiences were first introduced
to computer graphics. The network promotions were all done using backlit film graphics
until 1983, I guess, when they started using computer graphics. Now they're all done with
computer graphics, and it's really been a change in the type of look. Pacific Data Images
president Karl Rosendahl reflects on the first major piece they produced. Probably the most
exciting was when Entertainment Tonight went on the air the first night. That's the first
piece we had done that was on the air domestically, and here it was a national show, and we could
pick it up in our own living rooms, and that was incredibly exciting. Computer graphics
are now seen nightly around the world, in show introductions, sports and news graphics,
and network IDs. Wavefront Technologies founder Bill Kovacs. I think computer graphics has
affected people's thoughts about television and information by certainly raising their
expectations. People now see very high quality graphics every evening on television. They've
come to expect that. Harry Marks designed NBC's new look. To do something that looked
like Vegas. That was all they said. Here's the theme. Let's all be there. We want something
that looks like Vegas. Able Image Research produced the opening sequence of the Amazing
Stories television series from these storyboard images. Amazing Stories was designed to open
with all the symbols and objects of storytelling from the beginning of time. Steven Spielberg
wanted 37 objects to fly by in only 45 seconds. That's usually the number of objects used
in three or four 30 second TV commercials. Director Randy Roberts. We had 37 objects
even though they flew by quickly. Each was on about four seconds, and each one had to
be rendered fully. Producer Robert Able. Every object in Amazing Stories has textures and
highlights. Like the skull, you can't tell the difference between the real skull and
the one we've created with raster imagery. Even when you don't see all the details, you
can sense them. Just look at this book for a minute. The inside is real typography of
Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol. The binding is real alligator leather. The knight in Amazing
Stories had to move in a lifelike fashion. The knight's elbows and wrists had to move
along with his head and torso. A live action swordsman was filmed and turned into the wireframe
model which was used to produce the finished computer animated knight. Developing a realistic
looking stone head image was another problem. This was solved by making a head and dividing
it into segments whose coordinates were fed into the computer using a digitizer. This
rough data was then enhanced point by point on the Gould computer system. Using photographs
of a pigeon in flight as a reference, various wing positions were picked and input into
the computer. The books flew perfectly the first time. A massive amount of information
was required to create the images on the Gould computers. We had people here 24 hours a day.
It got insane. There were people sleeping here towards the end. We'd have shifts of
people coming in in the morning that wouldn't see the people that were working in the night.
Even when you don't see all the details, you can sense them and that's what makes great
computer graphics.
No where else do people see as much sophisticated computer graphics as in broadcast sports.
Carl Rosendahl. With every job ideally what you want to do is play with things that you've
never played with before. Do something that you haven't done. Put yourself on the line
where you have to be creative and imaginative to come up with either a new technique, a
new look, a new way of doing things. Something that makes that job interesting and exciting.
KRON-TV in San Francisco uses the Aurora Paint System and its Weather Graphics Package to
quickly get the condition or situation across to viewers graphically.
Color and lighting is a very important factor, particularly with graphics where you're trying
to get across a look and a feeling in 10 seconds. You can pick some perfect blue for your object
but you don't know what color it's really going to be until you light it. If you light
it with only red lights it's going to look purple.
Using this wire frame ball, the number and placement of light sources can be chosen.
With a surface now added, the intensity, light color and texture is specified. This image
can be placed or mapped onto the ball as a reflection. The same image can then be used
as a background behind the finished ball. This still life is created using the Alias
3D Design Workstation. The animator works on modeling a wire frame apple, which is given
several sides. The completed 3D model is rotated. A vase is added and the two models are seen
together in perspective. Text is added and extended to make it three-dimensional and
then positioned with the other models. Color is added to the models and the final image
manipulated for different looks and styles by changing the textures, lights and levels
of transparency and colors. Using the Symbolics 3D system, the animator
begins to model objects and choreograph motion using wire frames instead of the fully colored
object. Wire frame images are collections of straight
lines which can be displayed and moved much faster by the animator to test motion before
the final piece is computed. Using the Wavefront Technologies system, the Showtime text or
logo was formed from individual 3D letters. This wire frame city street scene was built
on the Bosch computer system. While the bus pulls away, we move closer to the movie marquee
with a traveling point of view. In this low resolution color test of the same scene, objects
now have surfaces and color but they have a rough appearance and little detail. In the
final version, notice that the bus has been given headlights, there are stars in the sky
and lamp posts have been added to the town square. Also with a moving point of view,
we fly through this complicated landscape of moving images for Bravo. Notice that other
effects have been added in the finished piece over the content of the original wire frame
test. With the advent of three dimensional computer animation, different looks and styles
have evolved.
While this French commercial shows somewhat limited human motion, its sense of style is
infectious. The process of simulating human motion with the computer is extremely difficult.
It is much easier to fly a logo than to create believable human motion.
Three years in the making and at a cost of over one million dollars, this award-winning
Canadian short story of Tony DePeltri represents the state of the art in depicting human motion.
Although the figure itself is exaggerated, notice the subtleties of emotion and movement
the animators have created. It's a beautiful piece. It's got a great character and it tells
a story. It's emotional. It makes you relate to the person on the screen. For 27 years,
Tony spent 26 nights a week. Ah, it's tough being an entertainer. Seems I'm not in anymore.
I was the best, the craziest and now, well, it's dust to dust and somebody new comes along.
Ah, I remember when everyone came to see Tony DePeltri. Nights were always too short. The
The ladies and I got along and my look was all it took.
This commercial called Brilliance is an extraordinary look into human motion created by Ketchum Advertising for the National Food Processors Association and directed by Randy Roberts.
Producer Robert Abel explains the process.
The first step was to translate that two dimensional image that we see on the storyboard into one that works in three dimensions in the computer.
And that takes a lot more redesign than it looks at first glance because we had to build the robot and her environment in pieces.
It means everything from the smallest finger joint to the torso to the neck to the body parts, the leg, the arm.
Eighteen pieces had to be put together and created for the computer.
This entire image really never existed outside the computer itself.
The biggest unknown was making her move and bringing her to life.
Randy invented a technique he called brute force animation.
We filmed a live model and programmed her choreographed movements into the computer.
The computer track reference points painted on her body and created a stick figure animation, which we call a vector graphic.
A vector graphic or wireframe model was created on the computer and animated with the face of the real model converted into an astonishing simulation of real life.
The robot, her movements, the details, each reflection, the magic she does with the food, getting all of that into an environment and then adding Jupiter into the picture window.
Well, that's millions of bits of information that the computer has to chew through.
Those millions of bits of information took three computers used round the clock for a month to process the images for the final commercial.
The perfect fluidity of human motion is transformed by the animator with the computer into the captivating images of the future.
With advertisers locked into an increasing battle for the attention of TV viewers, ad agencies have discovered the alluring power of computer generated TV commercials.
Designer Donna Cohen.
Right now, the most exciting work is the high end commercials because they get to have the most resources, they have the most money and the best talent.
TV commercials, which combine computer graphics and live action, seem to have a freshness and originality all their own.
An artist at Cranston Surrey Productions in Ohio prepares a storyboard for a TV commercial showing each visual scene in the order it will appear in the finished commercial.
The animator uses a real pair of glasses as a model for a drawing on the computer.
The drawing is traced into the computer using a mouse.
The computer produces a three dimensional model from the drawing.
The model is easily moved in its wireframe form.
Using video camera input, real pictures of clouds are placed or mapped onto models of the gears.
Several completed still frames are made to check the color and lighting.
The animator tests a rough version for motion before the final commercial is recorded onto either videotape or film.
American and international businesses are finding computer graphics an important and vital tool in their offices.
Bill Kovacs.
Corporate communications are rapidly becoming dependent on computer graphics.
With the medium of 3D graphics, it became possible to break out of flat pie charts and bar graphs into creative spatial representations.
The computer has proven to be an invaluable tool in the design of products.
With the air dryer, varying amounts of transparencies were assigned allowing the industrial designer to study how components work together and look in finished form while they're still being developed.
Nowhere is it more important than in the automotive industry.
Before computer graphics tools were available, a car designer had to build models of clay, wood, and plastic.
With today's computer aided design, or CAD, the designer is free to try out many more possibilities in a short period of time.
This gives manufacturers the leading edge.
Instead of redesigning models with clay, they can be changed quickly with the computer.
Not only can the designer visualize the part, but the latest systems can test the material's properties and interaction with the rest of the automobile.
With design accomplished, parts are automatically built and computer controlled robots work on auto assembly.
Animated computer simulations are used to develop and evaluate handling characteristics of vehicles and visually demonstrate their performance.
In architecture, buildings are designed and previewed from all angles and sides through the use of computer graphics.
Bridges and towers are examined as well as buildings.
Using AutoCAD, the computer gives us a closer and closer view of San Francisco's Transamerica pyramid until we can actually work on designing the specific interior of one person's office.
Each of the possible design elements in this floor plan are explored and changed quickly.
Designers study and share information with each other while their computers communicate on a common design plan.
This courtyard area has just been given new parking spaces.
A solid model of a downtown city block is built and the viewer is free to move around it or over it.
Finally, a complete simulation of what the finished building will look like inside and out is made on the computer.
Worldwide information is easily understood when displayed graphically using the computer.
Geologists convert flat 2D information into three-dimensional landforms for seismic studies, mapping, and topological engineering.
The high-speed Pixar computer is used to build this 3D terrain model and for geophysical analysis of the underground salt dome to search for oil.
Computer graphics are used to reveal the world inside the human body.
These multiple black and white CAT scan views of a human pelvic region were input into the Pixar computer, which assigned different colors to the bones and soft tissues. Different views were calculated and then displayed using 3D animation.
At Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center in San Francisco, computer graphics is used in reconstructive surgery to provide 3D views.
The operation is actually planned using the computer and a visual simulation of the surgical outcome is previewed.
The computer information is used to automatically machine molds for production of custom bone implants. The result is greater surgical accuracy, better preoperative planning, and shorter and safer surgery.
In science, computer graphics allows the viewer to travel far inside the human body to study the smallest details to simulate the invisible so that we can see it.
Faculty and students at the University of North Carolina are able to interactively view this simulated enzyme molecule using an Evans and Sutherland computer system.
Nelson Max has spent years studying and animating how DNA, the building blocks of life, work.
The computer representations that can show those surfaces are useful for chemists who are studying how molecules interact, or how can DNA deform to open up to allow a drug to go inside.
What I show in the animation is the DNA actually twists open to make a hole, and the drug then comes in and slides into the hole.
A tomato plant virus is studied, with the protein in yellow linking three subunits of the molecule together. A more complete view shows the yellow protein linking many molecular subunits.
The simulation of flight for training pilots was one of the first and largest practical uses of computer graphics.
A simulation system comes very close to matching the thrill of flying.
Flight simulation systems have become so advanced that the images they produce seem real. With the Evans and Sutherland real-time system, these images are being used interactively, with the operator able to control how the plane moves.
The concept is similar to playing a fast video arcade game, but here the images are finely detailed.
A complete flight simulation system can cost over $8 million to buy.
Harry Marks.
The ultimate system is real-time. A flight simulator is a very expensive piece of equipment. They're working in real-time at a stunning level of realism.
This simulated space shuttle landing gives pilots the opportunity to practice delicate and vital maneuvers as the shuttle responds instantly to every command during the landing.
Stanford University uses the Bosch computer system to simulate the shuttle docking with a space station and life inside the station.
The building of a working lunar colony is visualized, and the completed colony has visitors in this projection of the future.
Back in 1781, the first planet to be discovered by telescope was sighted.
A little over 200 years later, in 1986, that planet, Uranus, was visited by the Voyager 2 space probe, as we see here in a computer simulation made by Dr. James Blinn of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Computer images of Uranus and its rings are both visually stunning and scientifically correct.
The computer simulates the anticipated visit to Neptune by Voyager 2 in 1989.
The use of computer animation is not limited to peaceful scientific explorations of space, as these British simulations of a nuclear war above Earth show.
To be able to look into the future using computer graphics and see where the stars will be years from now and where they have been in the distant past provides wondrous new information.
Computer graphics plays an ever-expanding role in understanding the universe.
The birth of our solar system is simulated here on the computer using 3D animation to visualize the process of creation millions of years ago.
The award-winning film, Quest, a long-raised journey into light, was made by some of the staff at Apollo Computer in Massachusetts during off hours.
50,000 hours of computing time and over 100 computers were used to complete this complex journey into this fantasy world.
Highly reflective surfaces are created here in the computer using a process called ray tracing, in which an imaginary beam of light is traced as it would bounce from a light source to an object to the viewer's eye.
This time-consuming process creates highly detailed and spectacular images.
Music
With images as complex as these produced by digital production scene simulation for Rockwell International, up to a million beams of light are calculated.
Music
Texture mapping begins with a simple wireframe shape made three-dimensional with the computer. Then the completed object is shaded, and a marble texture is scanned into the computer and retouched to add more color to the marble texture.
Finally, the texture is wrapped around or mapped onto the completed model and moved into the final scene.
The ability to alter texture along with lighting and color provides an endless and beautiful variety of forms.
The jug is completely simulated. The designer creates light and reflections with the computer the way we see it with our own eyes.
Using a Cray supercomputer, Digital Productions in Los Angeles shows their ability to completely change almost any object or texture to another.
Animation designer Jeff Kleiser.
The reason I think reality is of interest to people who are writing computer programs for simulating things is once you can suspend the viewer's disbelief in looking at a scene or an object, you can then do something with that object which is not possible in reality.
That's where the fun is for me. It's where you're not sure if you're seeing a real object or a synthesized object, but the payoff is when a synthesized object can behave in an unreal way or do something that would not be feasible in reality.
Computer graphics combines man and machine with the ability to create new awareness and new realities. Consultant Louise Ledin.
There are things you can do with computer graphics that you've never been able to do with any other medium. It's being able to create life.
The computer has now flowered into a powerful tool for creative minds.
The art form known as landscape takes on new meaning when computer animation is applied to the form.
Painting with computers became possible when artists were introduced to the new technology.
Donna Cohen.
I view the computer as a tool much the way a painter views a paintbrush, a writer uses a pen. It's just another tool which enables us to bring a lot more elements together.
Jeff Kleiser.
The impetus behind using computer graphics is to get a new look, to do something that hasn't been done before.
Louise Ledin.
They're the people in the culture that have historically made the most visually significant statements about their times.
And if anyone can find the beauty in a technology, it's an artist. And I think that's been proven throughout history in any form of industrial art, from weaving to pottery and now into this realm.
So I think people take that responsibility very much to heart when they create work.
Just like there are a lot of different styles in painting, there are many different styles in computer art.
Nelson Max talks about Yoekiro Kawaguchi.
When he was young, his interest was as a naturalist. He loved birds and sea creatures and insects and spent a lot of his growing up looking at natural life forms.
And then when he got into computer graphics, his images are inspired by these natural life forms.
He ended up teaching himself computer graphics before there were systems that he could use.
Although developed by the military and the government, computer graphics have become a part of life for many in our society.
Especially children, many of whom were introduced to computer graphics by video games.
Ask yourself now, how do you know it's the same place? A buoy, my friend, a buoy. You will need to find that buoy and bring her to the surface if you can.
Computers have become widely available and educational.
Let's make a picture of the problem. We know that 20 miles is 90% of the distance. We have to find out what percent 8 miles is.
The teleguide is an interactive computer display terminal which provides free information on a wide variety of topics and is found in cities in the western U.S., Mexico and Japan.
Aurora president Dick Schaup. Computer graphics certainly has the potential to enable communication between people on many levels to be a lot better, to be a lot easier and a lot clearer.
Computers have become easier to use, enabling inexpensive home computers to produce graphics. Painting with a computer is fun. Computers and music are natural together, both for learning to play music and as a professional tool for musicians.
Combine home computer graphics and music and some surprisingly complex ideas can be communicated easily, such as in this cartoon, Lone Breaker, promoting world peace.
Students at Sheridan College in Canada produced this piece under the direction of Robin King.
Oh, this will be fun. Come on inside. Here, how about going on a nice little ride?
Hmm.
Andre and Wally B., made by Pixar for Lucasfilm, illustrates the ability of designers and animators to completely create a short story cartoon using 3D computer animation.
Oh, boy.
The Bosch 3D system was used by rushes in England to create these computer animated cartoon characters.
Pixar produced this sequence for Lucasfilm for the movie Young Sherlock Holmes, in which a priest hallucinates a stained glass figure coming to life and menacing him.
The priest was filmed on location in a church with the computer generated stained glass man being added later. It took the six designers and animators six months to finish the computer animation.
The combination of live action and animated objects is accomplished here inside the computer.
More commonly, one inch video editing and video effects machines are used to composite live action together with computer animation in post production.
In this British piece, Picture Gallery, the museum was filmed live action while the moving form was created as a video effect. The flying 3D solids were animated on the computer before being combined together in editing with the live action.
Waring 2
The
most exciting potential is storytelling, being able to do whatever the computer graphic
equivalent of a cartoon is, being able to tell a story with wonderful characters in
it and make people laugh and enjoy it.
Some incredible work has come out that wouldn't have been able to have been done any other
way.
So, I think when computer art is good, it's incredible.
Because it hits you from two different directions.
It hits you artistically and aesthetically and emotionally and then it also hits you
technically.
And you can be wowed from both directions at the same time.
Getting both your left side of your brain and the right side of your brain excited over
the same thing.
It's a great rush.
In computer graphics, color is very seductive.
You have incredible ranges of colors to deal with.
Incredible large numbers of palettes to choose from.
The paint systems particularly are tremendous fine art tools.
Because they're very forgiving, they're very fast.
You can change things very quickly.
It's not like doing an oil painting or a watercolor where if you lay down a wrong color, it's
going to sort of start over again.
The reason some of us are building tools for video graphics, trying to enhance man's ability
to communicate by creating pictures and images.
I think the value of any one of these systems is the person who's sitting there operating
it.
It really has very little to do with the computer.
Computer graphics is, it's part of my life.
It's here to stay.
I look forward to the new tools.
I fantasize about the new computers that I'll have, about the new tools that will be available,
about the new things that I'll do with them.