Historical Perspective
 Perception of Images in Motion
 Conventional Animation
 Early
 Disney
 Stop Motion
 History of Computer Animation
Perception
Positive afterimage: imprint of image in the
visual system just viewed (look into flash of a
camera)
Our brain sees a sequence of images as
motion
persistence of vision: lower limit for
continuous viewing
flicker rate: rate of playback in order to
achieve continuous illusion (depends on
lighting, viewing distance etc.)
flicker: perception of continuous imagery fails
playback rate: (related to flicker) number of
images displayed per second
motion blur: movement is too quick to track.
Doesn’t come automatically in animation
strobing: too fast movement of object in
animation, where motion blur in not considered
sampling rate: (related to strobing) number of
different images per second
not every displayed frame needs to be re-drawn/rendered
from scratch
Convential Animation – Early
Hand-drawn, 2D images
George Melies (1896)
– multiple exposure and stop-motion
– make objects (dis)appear, change shape
Pioneers in film animation:
Emile Cohl, J. Stuart Blackton
– animation of smoke (special FX) in 1900
– first animated cartoon in 1906
Winsor McCay
– first celebrated animator
– 1911 - Little Nemo
– 1914 - Gertie the Dinosaur
VAN EATON GALLERIES, SHERMAN OAKS, CA
– redrew each complete image and filmed individually
– early cartoons included live action with animated
characters (rotoscope)
John Bray
– major technical developments
– patents of techniques
– 1914: use of translucent cels (compositing of multiple
layers)
– peg system for registration (simplify panning - parallel
movement of camera to drawings)
From Bray’s studios:
– Max Fleischer (Betty Boop)
– Paul Terry (Terrytoons)
– George Stallings (Tom and Jerry)
– Walter Lantz (Woody Woodpecker, Chilly Willy)
Convential Animation: Disney
Walt Disney
– many technical innovations
– advancing the art form
– storyboard to review
– pencil sketches to review motion
– first sound - Steamboat Willie (1928)
Major innovation - multiplane camera (p8, Parent)
– each plane moves in 6 directions
– camera can move closer or farther
– more effective zoom
– illusion of depth and a 3D sense
– motion blur (camera lens stays open)
Disney created unique personalities
– Mickey Mouse, Pluto, Goofy, …
– mind of the character is the driving force
developed mood pieces: Fantasia (1940)
Convential Animation - Stop Motion
1930s - proliferation of animation studios
Willis O’Brian - King Kong (1933)
Ray Harryhausen - Mighty Joe Young
(1949), Jason and the Argonauts (1963),
Sindbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977),
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Tim Burton - Nightmare Before Christmas
(1993), James and the Giant Peach (1996)
Nick Park (clay-mation) - Wallace and
Gromit (1992-1995)
Computer Graphics & Animation
(Excerpts from an online resource
http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html )
1941
First U.S. regular TV broadcast
1953
NTSC broadcast code
1961
Spacewars, 1st video game, developed by
Steve Russell at MIT for the PDP-1
1963
Sketchpad developed beginning in 1961
by Ivan Sutherland at MIT is unveiled
Source: Sun Microsystems
Roberts hidden line algorithm (MIT)
1964
Electronic character generator
1967
Steven Coons publishes his surface patch
"little red book"
1968
Intel founded
Evans & Sutherland, Houston Instrument,
founded
1969
SIGGRAPH formed (began as special
interest committee in 1967 by Sam Matsa
and Andy vanDam)
1971
Gouraud shading (Henri Gouraud,
Continuous Shading of Curved Surfaces)
1972
C language developed by Ritchie
Newell, Newell and Sancha visible surface
algorithm (A Solution to the Hidden
Surface Problem.)
video game Pong developed for Atari
Source: Atari
Rich Riesenfeld (Syracuse) introduces bsplines for geometric design
1974
z-buffer developed by Ed Catmull
(University of Utah)
1975
Phong shading - Bui-Toung Phong
(University of Utah)
fractals - Benoit Mandelbrot (IBM)
Bill Gates starts Microsoft
1976
N. Burtnyk , M. Wein, Interactive skeleton
techniques for enhancing motion dynamics
in key frame animation
Jim Blinn develops reflectance and
environment mapping (University of Utah)
1977
Apple Computer incorporated
Frank Crow introduces antialiasing
Jim Blinn introduces a new illumination
model that considers surface "facets"
Larry Cuba produces Death Star
simulation for Star Wars using Grass at
UICC developed by Tom DeFanti at Ohio
State
1978
Bump mapping introduced (Blinn)
(Simulation of wrinkled surfaces)
1980
Turner Whitted of Bell Labs publishes ray
tracing paper
Disney contracts Abel, III, MAGI and DE
for computer graphics for the movie Tron
1981
REYES renderer written at LucasFilm
1982
Jim Clark founds Silicon Graphics Inc.
Sun Microsystems founded (SUN :=
Stanford University Network)
Skeleton Animation System (SAS)
developed at CGRG at Ohio State (Dave
Zeltzer)
Tom Brighham develops morphing (NYIT)
Adobe founded by John Warnock
AutoDesk founded; AutoCAD released
1983
Particle systems (William T. Reeves Lucasfilm)
Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS)
introduced by Tiller (Note: this date is
somewhat misleading, since the concept
built on the work of Vesprille (1975),
Riesenfeld (1973), Knapp (1979), Coons
(1968) and Forrest (1972))
1984
Wavefront Technologies is the first
commercially available 3D software
package (founded by Mark Sylvester, Larry
Barels and Bill Kovacs)
Distributed ray tracing introduced by
Lucasfilm (Robert L. Cook, Thomas Porter
and Loren Carpenter.)
Cook shading model (Lucasfilm) (Robert L.
Cook)
Radiosity born - Cornell University (Cindy
M. Goral, Kenneth E. Torrence, Donald P.
Greenberg and Bennett Battaile)
John Lasseter joins Lucasfilm
Lucasfilms introduces motion blur effects
Porter and Duff compositing algorithm
(Lucasfilm) (Thomas Porter and Tom Duff)
1985
Perlin's noise functions introduced (Ken
Perlin)
1986
Pixar purchased from Lucasfilm by Steve
Jobs
Luxo Jr. nominated for Oscar (first CGI film
to be nominated - Pixar)
1987
GIF format (CompuServe), JPEG format
(Joint Photographic Experts Group)
Reynolds' flocking behavior algorithm
(Symbolics) (Craig W Reynolds)
Source: Craig Reynolds
1988
Disney and Pixar develop CAPS
(Computer Animation Paint System)
(academy technical award in 1992)
1989
mental ray renderer released (integrated
with Wavefront (1992), Softimage (1993),
Maya (2002))
PIXAR starts marketing RenderMan
1990
3D Studio (AutoDesk)
1991
World Wide Web (CERN)
1992
OpenGL (SGI) released
1995
Wavefront and Alias merge
1998
Alias Maya released
2001
Microsoft xBox and Nintendo Gamecube
released
2003
Alias/Wavefront becomes Alias
2004
Cmpt 466 …..