American Cinematographer - October 1989 - 80

Computer Animation Comes of Age
by Nora Lee
Nestled comfortably in the green hills of
San Rafael, California, in buildings that
used to house the corporate side of

small company that

manufactures the Pixar

completely computer-generated. But

Image Computer. Besides building the
device, they are continually developing
new ways to use it. They have discovered
applications in science, medicine, engi¬
neering, graphic arts and entertainment.
The Pixar system that can read
computerized tomography (CT) scan data

winners John Lasseter and William
Reeves couldn't have been all that sur¬

Lucasfilm, Ltd., is
invented and

now

and reconstruct

a

a

human skull in 3D

complete with muscles and skin can also
take massive amounts of remote sensing
data from satellites, radar and other
sources and reconstruct a 3D terrain for

flight simulation; and

can help a scien¬
tist visualize in 3D the unseen shock
waves that come off a projectile trav¬

prised at being singled out for recogni¬
tion. One of the animation team's first

efforts, Luxo Jr., was the first computer¬
generated film to be nominated for an

Academy Award, and that was in 1986.
This, then, is a highly unusual
company and a bit of background is in
order. In 1979, George Lucas already
understood that the future of special
effects was going to be tied directly to
the future of computer science. He cre¬
ated

a

division within Lucasfilm to de¬

colleague Dr. Alvy Ray Smith. Together
they assembled an interested and ex¬
cited group of researchers.
They went straight to work on
some of Lucas' more famous film projects
and produced computer-generated visu¬
als for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,
The Return of the Jedi, and Young Sher¬
lock Holmes. In the course of the research
and development required to do these

projects, the team found and filled the
need for hardware and software de¬

signed specifically to handle imaging
tasks. But Lucas

was not

interested in

going into the business of making com¬
puters, so in 1986 he spun-off his com¬
puter division to Apple Computer co¬
founder Steve Jobs and the employees
of what is

now

called Pixar. The research

team remained intact.

elling at Mach II. The very same system
also be used to help animate a small

velop computer technology for the mo¬
tion picture industry. He recruited some
outstanding people from the still-young

wind-up toy called Tinny.
So it was in early 1989 that

field of computer graphics to head his
new division-Dr. Ed Catmull formerly of

seven

acter animation.

two Pixar

New York Institute of Technology,

people-among them a former architect,

can

78

Academy Award for best animated short
film. It is the first such award-as every¬
one in the company is quick to point
out-to be given to a film that was

American

employees

were

Cinematographer

given

an

October 1989

and his

Pixar

employees, but
of them

today has about 120
a core group of about
dedicated to 3D char¬

are

It is that group

of
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