FRONT PAGE
OVERVIEW
STRATA
HISTORY
TOOLS
GLOSSARY
called "becoming a Computer Artist," Indianapolis: Sams, 1994.
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Rotating drum scanning technique by Russell Kirsch | |
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Term Computer Graphics is first used by William Fetter at Boeing. The term becomes a buzz word for anything graphic created with help from a computer. | |
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The Sketchpad is developed by Ivan Sutherland as a part of his doctoral thesis at MIT. He could interactively draw geometric shapes on the screen with the aid of a photoelectric pen. | |
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Lawerence Roberts, at MIT, programs the computer to know the difference between front and back. His algorithm taught the computer to erase lines in vector graphics that would not be normally seen by the human eye in real life drawings of 3-d objects. | |
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Charles Csuri - First non-computer scientist/programer to get involved with computer graphics. As an artist, he scanned into the computer his own sketches as source material for computer manipulations. | |
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EAT - Experiments in Art and Technology. Formed at Bell Labs by Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Kluver, the EAT sculpture symbolized artists growing acceptance of the computer as a tool. The sculpture was made of common twentieth century technology gadgets such as radios and computers. | |
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At MAGI in Elmsfor, NY, SynthaVision was developed. This system could render solid shapes from primitive objects. Before SynthaVision, 3-d objects were only represented by lines, now they had a solid looking shape and complex shapes could be constructed from simple primitive shapes. At the University of Utah, researchers developed formulas to render vector line 3-d images into shaded 3-d raster images. Basically, the raster based objects were formed from a construction of polygons. A sphere can be shaped from flat polygons. How so? Think of a soccer ball. The ball shape is formed by small flat hexagon pieces. By increasing the number of polygons, a virtual sphere inside the computer can appear more rounded and smooth. | |
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Henri Gourand, At the University of Utah, figured out a way to smooth the facets of polygonal rendering. His rendering algorithm made shaded objects appear more smooth. | |
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Charles Csuri and friends get involved with animation. IBM invites them to work and demonstrate their real time animation software ideas on the IBM mainframes in New York. | |
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Richard Shoup and Alvy Ray Smith work together developing hardware and software for interactive computer paint programs. Shoup, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, builds the first user-friendly raster display. Smith, in 1975 at the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Laboratory, develops the computer program PAINT. On a side note, Smith is now senior executive at Pixar, the people behind Toy Story. | |
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Shoup and Smith develop the frame buffer which is the key ingredient to raster based graphics. Smiths PAINT program expands into a program called Superpaint. This is important to artists because Superpaint uses familiar tools to artists like brushes, pencils, and air brushes. | |
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Bui-Tuong Phong develops a rendering scheme that creates a highlight on the object to simulate a light source. | |
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James Blinn, a doctoral candidate at Utah, creates algorithms for bump mapping. This mapping technique simulates texture on a 3-d object. | |
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