Brief CGI history summary

Many of the first computer graphics were stylised images. This is because they had a massive lack of resolution and detail. They were created upon lines and simple strong images. Lots of the first computer games made used vector images, two of the first games are pong and asteriods.

one of the main pioneers in this era would be Charles Csuri. He was mainly experimening with computer graphics technology in 1964 and in 1965 and he managed to create someof the very first computer animated films. Another pretty well known figure in the 60’s was John Whitney SR. This was for his work at the International Experimental Film Competition in Belgium 1949. He studied different sound sine waves and music with graphics.

1970’s

There were big Hand and Face animation improvements. puppets were a massive part animations when thaey fires started out Gerry Anderson played a big role in puppet animation. He’d worked with these for many years, an example is the program Captian Scarlet shown in 1967 it was very popular. And In 2005 a CGI version of catpain scarlet debuted and Anderson worked on the animation and CGI effects with the team. This was a totally different approach of animation compared to his earlier work and was a big improvement though many people still prefer the older version.

The first main useage of 3D CGI in movies was in Star Wars IV: A New Hope. This was the start of something new that continous to improve today. They used 2D digital compositing to materialize characters over a background.

1980’s

By this time CGI was being used wtih shading this method was invented by the company III (Information International Inc)In 1982 ‘Tron’ was the longest film to feature CGI most of the way through it. As well as III, Magi Synthavison, Digital Effects of New York and Robert Abel were involved in its creation.

1990

This is the time 3D studio max was created. This allowed users to generate 3D characters and use various materials and textures on them. For example the movie‘Terminator 2 Judgement Day’ (1991) used this on the face and body of the liquid character.

1993

‘Jurrasic park’ (1993) was also a big step in CGI which was used to make all the dinosaurs and anlot of the objects that were being attacked of destroyed.

1995

The company DreamWorks SKG was founded, and they started to make many cgi films like ‘Toy Story’ and also made some 3d games like Nintendo’s ‘Super Mario 64′.

Disney and Pixar

these two have now joined forces. In 1970 disney created Disney Visual Effects lab, in 1990 they changed it to Buena Vista Visual Effects and then changed it again in 1996 to Buena Vista Imaging. Once disney and pixar had joined up they could start to create many long feature films like ‘A Bug’s Life’ and ‘Monsters Inc’. Pixar was once part of Lucas Arts which was the group that was involved in the first effects in ‘Star Wars A New Hope’. Other feature length films that disney and pixar teamed up to make were ‘Finding Nemo’ 2003, ‘The Incredibles’ (2004), ‘Cars’ (2006) and ‘Ratatouille’ (2007).