IS 490
Introduction
Hollywood has gone digital, and the old ways of doing
things are dying. Animation and
special effects created with computers have
been embraced by television networks,
advertisers, and movie studios alike.
Film editors, who for decades worked by painstakingly
cutting and gluing film
segments together, are now sitting in front of computer screens.
There,
they edit entire features while adding sound that is not only stored digitally,
but
also has been created and manipulated with computers. Viewers are
witnessing the results of
all this in the form of stories and experiences
that they never dreamed of before. Perhaps
the most surprising aspect of all
this, however, is that the entire digital effects and
animation industry is
still in its infancy. The future looks bright. How It Was
In the
beginning, computer graphics were as cumbersome and as hard to control as
dinosaurs
must have been in their own time. Like dinosaurs, the hardware
systems, or muscles, of
early computer graphics were huge and ungainly. The
machines often filled entire buildings.
Also like dinosaurs, the software
programs or brains of computer graphics were hopelessly
underdeveloped.
Fortunately for the visual arts, the evolution of both brains and brawn
of
computer graphics did not take eons to develop. It has, instead, taken
only three decades
to move from science fiction to current technological
trends. With computers out of the
stone age, we have moved into the leading
edge of the silicon era. Imagine sitting at a
computer without any visual
feedback on a monitor. There would be no spreadsheets, no word
processors,
not even simple games like solitaire. This is what it was like in the
early
days of computers. The only way to interact with a computer at that
time was through toggle
switches, flashing lights, punchcards, and Teletype
printouts. How It All Began
In 1962, all this began to change. In that
year, Ivan Sutherland, a Ph.D. student at (MIT),
created the science of
computer graphics. For his dissertation, he wrote a program
called
Sketchpad that allowed him to draw lines of light directly on a
cathode ray tube (CRT). The
results were simple and primitive. They were a
cube, a series of lines, and groups of
geometric shapes. This offered an
entirely new vision on how computers could be used. In
1964, Sutherland
teamed up with Dr. David Evans at the University of Utah to develop
the
world's first academic computer graphics department. Their goal was to
attract only the most
gifted students from across the country by creating a
unique department that combined hard
science with the creative arts. They new
they were starting a brand new industry and wanted
people who would be able
to lead that industry out of its infancy. Out of this unique mix of
science
and art, a basic understanding of computer graphics began to grow. Algorithms
for
the creation of solid objects, their modeling, lighting, and shading were
developed. This
is the roots virtually every aspect of today's computer
graphics industry is based on.
Everything from desktop publishing to
virtual reality find their beginnings in the basic
research that came out of
the University of Utah in the 60's and 70's. During this time,
Evans and
Sutherland also founded the first computer graphics company. Aptly named Evans
&
Sutherland (E&S), the company was established in 1968 and
rolled out its first computer
graphics systems in 1969. Up until this time,
the only computers available that could
create pictures were custom-designed
for the military and prohibitively expensive. E&S's
computer system could
draw wireframe images extremely rapidly, and was the first
commercial"workstation" created for computer-aided design (CAD). It found its
earliest customers in
both the automotive and aerospace industries. Times
Were Changing
Throughout its early years, the University of Utah's
Computer Science Department was
generously supported by a series of research
grants from the Department of Defense. The
1970's, with its anti-war and
anti-military protests, brought increasing restriction to the
flows of
academic grants, which had a direct impact on the Utah department's ability
to
carry out research. Fortunately, as the program wound down, Dr. Alexander
Schure, founder
and president of New York Institute of Technology (NYIT),
stepped forward with his dream of
creating computer-animated feature films.
To accomplish this task, Schure hired Edwin
Catmull, a University of Utah
Ph.D., to head the NYIT computer graphics lab and then
equipped the lab with
the best computer graphics hardware available at that time. When
completed,
the lab boasted over $2 million worth of equipment. Many of the staff came
from
the University of Utah and were given free reign to develop both two-
and three-dimensional
computer graphics tools. Their goal was to soon produce
a full -length computer animated
feature film. The effort, which began in
1973, produced dozens of research papers and
hundreds of new discoveries, but
in the end, it was far too early for such a complex
undertaking. The
computers of that time were simply too expensive and too under powered,
and
the software not nearly developed enough. In fact, the first full length
computer generated
feature film was not to be completed until recently in
1995. By 1978, Schure could no longer
justify funding such an expensive
effort, and the lab's funding was cut back. The ironic
thing is that had the
Institute decided to patent many more of its researcher's discoveries
than it
did, it would control much of the technology in use today. Fortunately for
the
computer industry as a whole, however, this did not happen. Instead,
research was made
available to whomever could make good use of it, thus
accelerating the technologies
development. Industry's First
Attempts
As NYIT's influence started to wane, the first wave of
commercial computer graphics studios
began to appear. Film visionary George
Lucas (creator of Star Wars and Indiana Jones
trilogies) hired Catmull from
NYIT in 1978 to start the Lucasfilm Computer Development
Division, and a
group of over half-dozen computer graphics studios around the country
opened
for business. While Lucas's computer division began researching how to
apply digital
technology to filmmaking, the other studios began creating
flying logos and broadcast
graphics for various corporations including TRW,
Gillette, the National Football League, and
television programs, such as "The
NBC Nightly News" and "ABC World News Tonight." Although
it was a dream of
these initial computer graphics companies to make movies with
their
computers, virtually all the early commercial computer graphics were
created for television.
It was and still is easier and far more
profitable to create graphics for television
commercials than for film. A
typical frame of film requires many more computer calculations
than a similar
image created for television, while the per-second film budget is
perhaps
about one-third as much income. The actual wake-up call to the
entertainment industry was
not to come until much later in 1982 with the
release of Star-Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn.
That movie contained a
monumental sixty seconds of the most exciting full-color computer
graphics
yet seen. Called the "Genesis Effect," the sequence starts out with a view of
a
dead planet hanging lifeless in space. The camera follows a missiles trail
into the planet
that is hit with the Genesis Torpedo. Flames arc outwards and
race across the surface of
the planet. The camera zooms in and follows the
planets transformation from molten lava to
cool blues of oceans and mountains
shooting out of the ground. The final scene spirals the
camera back out into
space, revealing the cloud-covered newly born planet. These sixty
seconds may
sound uneventful in light of current digital effects, but this remarkable
scene
represents many firsts. It required the development of several
radically new computer
graphics algorithms, including one for creating
convincing computer fire and another to
produce realistic mountains and
shorelines from fractal equations. This was all created by
the team at
Lucasfilm's Computer Division. In addition, this sequence was the first
time
computer graphics were used as the center of attention, instead of being
used merely as a
prop to support other action. No one in the entertainment
industry had seen anything like
it, and it unleashed a flood of queries from
Hollywood directors seeking to find out both
how it was done and whether an
entire film could be created in this fashion. Unfortunately,
with the release
of TRON later that same year and The Last Starfighter in 1984, the answer
was
still a decided no.
Both of these films were touted as a technological
tour-de-force, which, in fact, they
were. The films' graphics were extremely
well executed, the best seen up to that point, but
they could not save the
film from a weak script. Unfortunately, the technology was greatly
oversold
during the film's promotion and so in the end it was technology that was
blamed
for the film's failure. With the 1980s came the age of personal
computers and dedicated
workstations. Workstations are minicomputers that
were cheap enough to buy for one person.
Smaller was better, aster, an
much, much cheaper. Advances in silicon chip technologies
brought massive and
very rapid increases in power to smaller computers along with drastic
price
reductions. The costs of commercial graphics plunged to match, to the point
where
the major studios suddenly could no longer cover the mountains of debt
coming due on their
overpriced centralized mainframe hardware.
With
their expenses mounting, and without the extra capital to upgrade to the newer
cheaper
computers, virtually every independent computer graphics studio went
out of business by
1987. All of them, that is, except PDI, which went on
to become the largest commercial
computer graphics house in the business and
to serve as a model for the next wave of
studios. The Second
Wave
Burned twice by TRON and The Last Starfighter, and frightened by the
financial failure of
virtually the entire industry, Hollywood steered clear
of computer graphics for several
years. Behind the scenes, however, it was
building back and waiting for the next big break.
The break materialized
in the form of a watery creation for the James Cameron 1989 film,
The
Abyss. For this film, the group at George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic
(ILM)
created the first completely computer-generated entirely organic
looking and thoroughly
believable creature to be realistically integrated
with live action footage and characters.
This was the watery pseudopod
that snaked its way into the underwater research lab to get a
closer look at
its human inhabitants. In this stunning effect, ILM overcame two
very
difficult problems: producing a soft-edged, bulgy, and irregular shaped
object, and
convincingly anchoring that object in a live-action sequence.
Just as the 1982 Genesis
sequence served as a wake-up call for early film
computer graphics, this sequence for The
Abyss was the announcement that
computer graphics had finally come of age. A massive
outpouring of
computer-generated film graphics has since ensued with studios from
across
the entire spectrum participating in the action. From that point on,
digital technology
spread so rapidly that the movies using digital effects
have become too numerous to list in
entirety. However they include the likes
of Total Recall, Toys, Terminator 2: Judgment
Day, The Babe, In the Line
of Fire, Death Becomes Her, and of course, Jurassic Park.
How the Magic
is Made
Creating computer graphics is essentially about three things:
Modeling, Animation, and
Rendering. Modeling is the process by which
3-dimensional objects are built inside the
computer; animation is about
making those objects come to life with movement, and rendering
is about
giving them their ultimate appearance and looks.
Hardware is the brains
and brawn of computer graphics, but it is powerless without the
right
software. It is the software that allows the modeler to build a computer
graphic
object, that helps the animator bring this object to life, and that,
in the end, gives the
image its final look. Sophisticated computer graphics
software for commercial studios is
either purchased for $30,000 to $50,000,
or developed in-house by computer programmers.
Most studios use a
combination of both, developing new software to meet new project
needs.
Modeling
Modeling is the first step in creating any 3D
computer graphics. Modeling in computer
graphics is a little like sculpting,
a little like building models with wood, plastic and
glue, and a lot like
CAD. Its flexibility and potential are unmatched in any other art
form.
With computer graphics it is possible to build entire worlds and
entire realities. Each
can have its own laws, its own looks, and its own
scale of time and space.
Access to these 3-dimensional computer realities
is almost always through the 2-dimensional
window of a computer monitor. This
can lead to the misunderstanding that 3-D modeling is
merely the production
perspective drawings. This is very far from the truth. All elements
created
during any modeling session possess three full dimensions and at any time can
be
rotated, turned upside down, and viewed from any angle or perspective. In
addition, they
may be re-scaled, reshaped, or resized whenever the modeler
chooses. Modeling is the first
step in creating any 3-dimensional computer
animation. It requires the artist's ability to
visualize mentally the objects
being built, and the craftsperson's painstaking attention to
detail to bring
it to completion. To create an object, a modeler starts with a blank
screen
an sets the scale of the computer's coordinate system for that
element. The scale can be
anything from microns to light years across in
size. It is important that scale stays
consistent with all elements in a
project. A chair built in inches will be lost in a living
room built in
miles. The model is then created by building up layers of lines and
patches
that define the shape of the object.
Animation
While it
is the modeler that contains the power of creation, it is the animator
who
provides the illusion of life. The animator uses the tools at his
disposal to make objects
move. Every animation process begins essentially the
same way, with a storyboard.
A storyboard is a series of still images
that shows how the elements will move and interact
with each other. This
process is essential so that the animator knows what movements need
to be
assigned to objects in the animation. Using the storyboard, the animator sets up
key
points of movements for each object in the scene. The computer then
produces motion for
each object on a frame by frame basis. The final result
when assembled, gives the form of
fluid movement. Rendering
The
modeler gives form, the animator provides motion, but still the animation
process is not
complete. The objects and elements are nothing but empty or
hollow forms without any
surface. They are merely outlines until the
rendering process is applied. Rendering is the
most computational time
demanding aspect of the entire animation process. During the
rendering
process, the computer does virtually all the work using software that has
been
purchased or written in-house. It is here that the animation finally
achieves its final
look. Objects are given surfaces that make it look like a
solid form. Any type of look can
be achieved by varying the looks of the
surfaces. The objects finally look concrete. Next,
the objects are lighted.
The look of the lighting is affected by the surfaces of the
objects, the
types of lights, and the mathematical models used to calculate the behavior
of
light. Once the lighting is completed, it is now time to create what the
camera will see.
The computer calculates what the camera can see
following the designs of the objects in the
scene. Keep in mind that all the
objects have tops, sides, bottoms, and possibly insides.
Types of camera
lens, fog, smoke, and other effects all have to be calculated. To create
the
final 2-D image, the computer scans the resulting 3D world and pulls out the
pixels that
the camera can see. The image is then sent to the monitor, to
videotape, or to a film
recorder for display. The multiple 2D still frames,
when all assembled, produce the
final
animation.
Conclusion
Much has happened in the commercial
computer graphics industry since the decline of the
first wave of studios and
the rise of the second. Software and hardware costs have
plummeted. The
number of well-trained animators and programmers has increased
dramatically.
And at last, Hollywood and the advertising community have
acknowledged that the digital age
has finally arrived, this time not to
disappear. All these factors have lead to an explosion
in both the size of
existing studios and the number of new enterprises opening their
doors.
As the digital tide continues to rise, only one thing is certain.
We have just begun to see
how computer technology will change the visual
arts.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
How Did They Do It? Computer Illusion in Film
& TV , Alpha Books 1994;
Christopher W. Baker
Computer
Graphics World, Volume 19, Number 3; March 1996;
Evan Hirsch, "Beyond
Reality"
Computer Graphics World, Volume 19, Number 4; April
1996;
Evan Marc Hirsch, "A Changing Landscape"
Windows NT
Magazine, Issue #7, March 1996;
Joel Sloss, "There's No Business Like
Show Business"
Cinescape, Volume 1, Number 5; February 1995;
Beth
Laski, "Ocean of
Dreams"
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