Not a member? Sign up now
Check out a nearly forty-year-old 3D animated film from the president of Pixar
By Jessica GentileSeptember 6th, 2011, 6:30 amComments (11)
Back in 1972, graduate student Ed Catmull was hard at work on a computer animation project. The somewhat primitive 3D rendering of a plaster model of his hand might not look like much by today's standards, but it laid the foundation for the film studio Catmull was about to co-found — a little company called Pixar. While the animation might just look like a couple of shapes on screen, it's actually better than Cars 2.
It's hard to imagine a time when 3D cartoons weren't ubiquitous at the multiplex — and maybe they wouldn't be if Catmull hadn't succeeded in placing polygon vertices on a computer screen using the right mathematical formulas and a whole bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo that exceeds my vocabulary.
Tags
Pixar
Commentarium (11 Comments)
I'd love to know how long it took to render those animations using the computer equipment of the day.
Why do I have the feeling this is fake?
Hate to break it to you dude, but all animation is fake.
HAHA, Good one. But Im sure he was talking about when it was produced. Still that made me laugh. nice nice
Excellent! Thank You!
Why did I expect to see a copyright notice in the name of Chester J Lampwyck on this? Might be time to cut back on the Simpsons.
When I was studying CompSci in the 80s this was a popular showcase of the state of the art. I didn't know it was as early as 72.
Cool.
What's the music?
Sounds like Dave Brubeck....one of the GREATEST jazz musicians (and I mean like top 3).
Song is Stardust.
Wow...awesome music.
Check out the Brubeck album "Time Out". One of my desert-island albums. Just amazing stuff.
Music non-stop. Technopop.
The Pixar guy might have made more money if he had marketed the machine he used to measure the coordinates of the vertices. It's called a CMM (Coordinate Measuring Machine) and they are the most useful gotta have one gadget in many engineering and scientific settings.