FREE ESSAY ON COMPUTER GRAPHICS

COMPUTER GRAPHICS

Computer Graphics
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
How It Was 3
How It All Began 4
Times Were Changing 6
Industry's First Attempts 7
The Second Wave 10
How the Magic is Made 11
Modeling 12
Animation 13
Rendering 13
Conclusion 15
Bibliography 16
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
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