The History of Animation Software
Animation software is computer software used to create motion pictures without the need to draw each individual frame. Animation software has a history nearly as long as the history of computers themselves. Since its inception in 1951, animation software has gone on to produce computer-generated imagery for most of today's best motion pictures as well as simulations of distant planets and suns.
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History
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The earliest mention of animation with computers comes with the advent of Whirlwind I, a computer developed in 1951 at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) which had the first ability to display real-time video.
In 1963, Dr. Ivan Sullivan of MIT developed Sketchpad, a program that used a "light pen" to draw on a screen.
The first computer-animated film, "Two-Gyro Gravity-Gradient Attitude Control System," was produced by E. Zajac in 1963. It was followed in 1967 by F. Sinden's "Force, Mass and Motion," and "Harmonic Phasors" by William Huggins and D. Weiner.
In 1968, Sutherland became a professor at the University of Utah. Under his guidance, much of the seminal work in computer animation was the development of Goraud shading by Henri Goraud, and anti-aliasing developed by Frank Crow. Another of his students was Ed Catmull, who contributed texture mapping, bicubic patches and Z-buffering to the art of computer graphics.
At the same time, Sutherland and colleague Dr. David Evans went on to found Evans & Sutherland, which performed pioneering work in the field of 3D computer graphics . Evans & Sutherland was a hotbed of innovation and inspired the creation of Adobe Systems Inc. by John Warnock and Silicon Graphics by Jim Clark.
By 1971, animation software was used in commercials for "2001: A Space Odyssey," and the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine."
In 1979, Ed Catmull came to Lucasfilm, where he worked on digital imaging compositing until Steve Jobs bought Lucasfilm's digital division and founded Pixar, where Catmull became chief technical officer. In 1993, he received an Academy Award, and again in 1995 and finally, in 2001, he received an Oscar "for significant advancements to the field of motion picture rendering as exemplified in Pixar's RenderMan."
The first purpose-built graphics systems came from Silicon Graphics Inc., founded by Clark and Abbey Silverstone in 1981. SGI went on to produce 3-D graphics subsystems accessed through a proprietary application programming interface (API) called "IRIS Graphics Language." In 1992, SGI decided to release an open version of the API, called Open GL. Since then, Open GL has become one of the de facto industry standards for animation software.
SGI was also at the forefront of commercial animation software, purchasing Alias Research and Wavefront Technologies in 1995. Later the unit was sold and eventually came to Autodesk with its Maya 3D animation software, which is one of the premiere 3D computer animation software suites in use today. In 2003, Maya won an Academy Award for use in "nearly every feature using 3-D computer-generated images."
Significance
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Animation software today is used widely throughout the film industry for special effects and Disney's Pixar and Dreamworks SKG have produced many award-winning 3-D computer-generated animation features including "Up!" and "Shrek."
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Types
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Animation software can range from complex 3-D systems to simple cel-type animation where drawn images are composited to produce a moving picture, using 24 frames (or cels) per second.
Prior to such sophisticated films as Disney's "Toy Story," most animation was 2-D and hand drawn.
Today it is possible to create the old 2-D look by changing the lighting used with 3-D animation software.
Benefits
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Animation software allows animations to be created more quickly and with less error by allowing the computer to interpolate between one position and the next (known as "keyframing").
While producing large, high-quality 3D animations is still time-consuming and usually requires hundreds if not thousands of computers arranged in a "farm," the cost is much lower than producing the same images by hand-drawing and compositing.
Misconceptions
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Animation software provides a framework for building animated works. It still requires a great deal of foresight and artistic talent.
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