History of Animation

Computers have totally changed the way we create and work with images and graphics and games. Animation needs these computers and it’s sometimes hard to grasp the vast, fundamental shift that technology has caused in the creation and distribution of visual media, especially since the actual workings of the technology still remain a mystery to many. To give a brief history, from the seventh through to the thirteenth centuries, books-usually religious in nature-were created one by one by hand, and it took a huge amount of dedication to create such beautiful manuscripts. While the Chinese developed a form of simple printing at the beginning of the eleventh century, it wasn't until the fifteenth century, when the German inventor Johannes Gutenberg invented his printing press using movable type, that the production and distribution of printed text and images in volume was possible (Ford, 15). Centuries later, printing was still done mechanically. Great newspaper presses could churn out thousands of copies bearing text and photographic images, and by the mid nineteenth century they were able to do so in colors. Sophisticated interfaces were developed, and in 1984 Apple Computer released the Macintosh sporting its "desktop" metaphor interface. This marked a huge change, enabling anyone with access to a computer to create and manipulate text and images. However, there were more than a few who were interested in images alone. With the introduction of the Apple Macintosh and programs like Aldus PageMaker (later to become Adobe PageMaker), the role of the computer in publishing was set. With a computer that featured an easy to use graphical interface, it was simple to lay out text and images in the digital realm, then transfer them to an image-setter to produce color separations for printing (Cholodenko, 23).

The Postscript language bridged the gap between the computer and the real world, converting digital fonts and graphics into real printed text and graphics. Similarly, digital scanners took photographic prints or negatives and converted them into digital images for manipulation on the computer. It was a program that could take digital images and make adjustments to them that sparked the digital imaging revolution. Photoshop was designed by brothers John and Thomas Knoll to assist John in his work at the legendary special effects company, Industrial Light and Magic (John would later become an important figure in the 3D industry, too) (Rita, 104). The program allowed simple color correction and file format conversion, plus basic painting and cloning tools. Suddenly it was possible to do pretty impressive things with digital images-things that were previously impossible. The digital darkroom was born. Photoshop was licensed to Adobe and it has since become the most popular and important imaging program (Morrison, 44). It is also an incredibly important application for 3D artists, for whom it is used to create textures or composite 3D renders with other images (Ford, 24). We can now use computers to generate photorealistic images using 3D software. We can combine computer generated imagery with imagery from the real world. We can even take 3D objects designed in the digital realm and reproduce them in the real world through processes such as stereo lithography and computer controlled manufacturing. Increasingly, anything is possible.

The real computer animation started with the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) opened in August 1957 in Maynard, Massachusetts. With only three employees they had 8,500 square feet of production space in a converted woolen mill. Lawn chairs made up most of their furniture but in November 1960 they introduced the PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processor) the world’s first small, interactive computer. Thirty years later, Digital would post Fiscal revenues of $12.9 billion with over 124,000 employees worldwide. Along the way, Digital would play important roles in the progress of computer graphics (Rita, 125). In 1959 the first computer drawing system, DAC-1 (Design Augmented by Computers) was created by General Motors and IBM. It allowed the user to input a 3D description of an automobile and then rotate it and view it from different directions. It was unveiled at the Joint Computer Conference in Detroit in 1964.

The next big advance in computer graphics was to come from another MIT student, Ivan Sutherland. In 1961 Sutherland created another computer drawing program called Sketchpad. Using a light pen, Sketchpad allowed you to draw simple shapes on the computer screen, save them and even recall them later. The light pen itself had a small photoelectric cell in its tip. This cell emitted an electronic pulse whenever it was placed in front of a computer screen and the screen's electron gun fired directly at it. By simply timing the electronic pulse with the current location of the electron gun, it was easy to pinpoint exactly where the pen was on the screen at any given moment. Once that was determined, the computer could then draw a cursor at that location (Morrison, 64). Sutherland seemed to find the perfect solution for many of the graphics problems he faced. Even today, many standards of computer graphics interfaces got their start with this early Sketchpad program. An example is that Sutherland's software modeled objects -- not just a picture of objects. In other words, with a model of a car, you could change the size of the tires without affecting the rest of the car. You could stretch the body of the car without deforming the tires (Cholodenko, 44).

These early computer graphics were Vector graphics, composed of thin lines whereas modern day graphics are Raster based using pixels. The difference between vector graphics and raster graphics can be illustrated with a shipwrecked sailor. He creates an SOS sign in the sand by arranging rocks in the shape of the letters "SOS." He also has some brightly colored rope, with which he makes a second "SOS" sign by arranging the rope in the shapes of the letters. The rock SOS sign is similar to raster graphics. Every pixel has to be individually accounted for. The rope SOS sign is equivalent to vector graphics. The computer simply sets the starting point and ending point for the line and perhaps bends it a little between the two end points. Raster formats on the other hand work well for continuous tone images and can reproduce as many colors as needed.

Bui-Toung arrived at UU in 1971 and in 1974 he developed a new shading method that came to be known as Phong shading. After UU, Bui-Toung went on to Stanford as a professor, and early in 1975 he died of cancer. His shading method accurately interpolates the colors over a polygonal surface giving accurate reflective highlights and shading. The drawback to this is that Phong shading can be up to 100 times slower than Gouraud shading. Because of