history of CGI

THE FIRST COMPUTER ANIMATION

1958

The first ever used of CGI was in 1958 when John Whitney used a WWII anti-aircraft targeting computer on a rotating platform with a pendulum hanging above it to create spiral elements in the opening sequence.

THE FIRST EXPERIMENTAL COMPUTER ANIMATED FILM

1961

John Whitney created a film to build up his demo reel. The film is basically just a whole bunch of lights moving around using computers and technology. this film ended up inspiring Douglass Trumbull in his VFX work in 2001 : a space odyssey.

FIRST DIGITAL MORPHING

1967

One of the next big steps in CGI was digital morphing. in a film called " hummingbird" the creators used more then 30,000 images that were animated for the film. in this film you will see humming birds breaking up into little pieces as they back away from the screen and as they come forward towards the screen the pieces join together and make the image of a hummingbird.

FIRST DIGITAL ANIMATION IN A FETURE FILM

1973

In 1973 john Whitney Jr and Gary Demos digitally processed motion picture photography and created the pixelated POV of Yul Brynner’s gunslinger robot in the movie "Westworld". The CGI in the film shows the robots POV walking around in a building and seeing a room with multiple hospital beds and the visions all pixelated as if you were looking though a TV. Showing the fact that we are looking through a robots eyes.

FIRST PARTICALE SYSTEM COMPUTER ANIMATION

1979

In the 1979 film "COSMOS" Jim Blinn worked along side Carl Sagan to create animations including spinning and interactive galaxies made from CGI particles. In the film it shows CGI particles spinning around to create galaxies and in the background a man is informing the viewer about galaxies and what they look like and how they may act.

FIRST CGI SPACESHIPS

1980

In 1966 a group called MAGI ( Mathematical Applications Group, Inc) was created for the purpose of evaluating nuclear radiation exposure. It was then adopted for the use in CGI by tracing light instead of radiation, making it one of the fist systems to implement the later concept of ray-tracing for making images. This technology was the basis for the first CGI spaceships. A short demo film was then created and it was a spaceship flying around space, it was called MAGI Synthavision demo.

FIRST MOTION CAPTURE CGI ANIMATON

1981

In 1981 "The Juggler" was presented at SIGGraph. It was produced by information international inc. It showcased both the storytelling potential of CGI and I.I.I's innovative polygonal modeling technique. This demo led directly to Ricard F Taylor's involvement in Disney's Tron 1 year later in 1982

FIRST FULL HUMAN BODY REALISTIC CGI

1981

In the 1981 film "looker" the futuristic computer scanning scene of Cindy ( Susan day ) was the first full human body CGI imagery ever.

FIRST COMBINATION OF CGI AND LIVE ACTION

1982

In 1982 the movie Tron had the first moving and talking CGI character. It was the first combination of CGI character and live action character. the first extensive of fully computer-generated polygonal animation in a movie. It was also the first fully CGI background.

FIRST MOTION BLUR AFFECT

1984

in 1984 the adventures and wally. B was the first time motion blur was created and used. Motion blur is a post processing affect that blurs and streaks moving objects in a photographs or sequence of frames. Rendered on cray X-MP/48 supercomputer and ten VAX-11/750 superminicomputers from project Athena, provided by cray research, the fastest computer at the time.

FIRST LIQUID METAL COMPUTER ANAIMATION

1985

In 1985 computer scientist chuck Csuri and investor Robert Cranston Kanuth formed the American computer animation company CCP. The film was called CRANSTON/ C SURI clock demo. The liquid metal affect was later used by James Cameron in terminator 2.

FIRST PHOTO REALISTIC FLUID MORPHING

1989

In the 1989 movie "the abyss" industrial light and magic (ILM) spent 6 months to create the 75 seconds of computer graphics needed to bring the creature to life.

FIRST HUMAN SKIN CGI ANIMATION

1992

In the 1992 film "Death becomes her" industrial light and magic (ILM) used the first human skin CG software to replicate skin and linked it to a body and head together with a digital neck.

FIRST DIGITAL FACE REPLACMENT AND PHOTOREALISITC DINOSAURS

1993

In the 1993 film "Jurassic park" industrial light and magic (ILM) created the first photorealistic CGI dinosaurs but at the 0:42 second mark, you can see the digital face replacement for Ariana Richards' stunt double as she hangs from the ceiling.

FIRST 3D BULLET TIME

1996

Created by BUF Compagnie for a Smirnoff commercial that aired in the UK in 1996. Three years later THE MATRIX (1999) popularized this technique of using still cameras to capture individual images then playing them back in sequence.

FIRST USE OF PHOTOGRAMMETRY IN A MOVIE

1998

In the 1998 film "Godzilla" wire-frame 3-D models were created from photographs or real, still objects. The photos were then re-employed as texture maps, augmented with additional paintwork.

FIRST CGI DE-AGING

2006

In the 2006 film "X-men: the last stand" the opening de-aging affect, sir Patrick Stewart and sir Ian McKellen gave the visual affects experts pictures of themselves as younger men, so that the computer program called "LOLA" could make them look younger on the screen.

FIRST CGI BODY REPLACMENT

2011

In the 2011 film "Capitan America : the first avenger Paul warren was used in pre-production to help develop the 'skinny Steve rogers' effect by CGI supervisor, Christopher Townsend, as well as one of the 'skinny Steve' on set stand-ins.