![]() Ludwig said of it: “Raytracing is a different paradigm. The software used sampling to calculate only the light emanating from an object, rather than every ray of light in a scene, and then interpolated between the points to render a complete image. He and his team wrote algorithms to speed up the calculations with little quality loss, making it usable for production. “Raytracing is intrinsically slow,” said Troubetzkoy. With 3D, you follow the light.” Because CGI Studio used ray-trace rendering to create its images, it handled light in a more accurate and therefore realistic way compared to other renderers that used scanline. (Also trying to imagine a time where nurbs were the best option…)įinding that his background in nuclear physics had an applicable overlap to computer graphics, Troubetzkoy once remarked, “In nuclear physics you follow neutrons. Such basic functions we take for granted today, hitting 3 on the keyboard to smooth the surface of your selected geo (in Maya), had to have a team with NASA (Ludwig) and Navy (Ferraro) experience. With tessellation, the software calculated the distance of geometry from the camera and then displayed enough polygons to simulate a smooth surface. All other renderers at the time converted nurb surfaces into polygons first before calculating texture and light. For the nerds out there, an early distinction of CGI Studio compared to other rendering software was that it didn’t tesselate the geometry–that is, it didn’t convert the surfaces into a pattern of interlocking polygons. Ludwig wrote the ray-trace renderer, Troubetzkoy wrote the code that calculated geometric intersections, and Ferrero worked as a software architect. It was used on all thirteen of Blue Sky Studio’s feature films. Troubetzkoy, along with other co-founders Michael Ferraro and Carl Ludwig, who had respective backgrounds in engineering and programming, developed Blue Sky’s proprietary renderer, CGI Studio, which at the time was the most sophisticated renderer used in production. The group moved east and founded Blue Sky. Though SynthaVision self-funded a lot of their own R&D, losing Disney as a main client forced MAGI to scale down, and SynthaVision was closed. ![]() After the box office failure of Tron, Disney execs got cold feet about more cg-heavy films, and several in-development projects with SynthaVision were cancelled. Much of the key research was done by Ludwig and Troubetzkoy. In 1972, they opened their SynthaVision division, which focused on high resolution computer graphics for film, utilizing ray-tracing. MAGI, which was founded in 1966, originally made databases for direct mail services and government agencies. Carl Ludwig, Michael Ferrero, and Eugene Troubetzkoy were hired for their technical prowess, Chris Wedge for his animation background (he was the principal animator for MAGI on Tron), David Brown to help with marketing later down the road when the studio was struggling, and Alison Brown as managing producer. ![]() He and the other five Blue Sky co-founders met at MAGI while working on Disney’s groundbreaking Tron (1982), among other projects. Pre-Blue Sky, he served as the director of advanced projects at MAGI/SynthaVision. As stated, he is a pioneer of ray-trace rendering, a technique for rendering cg scenes with more realism, particularly in the lighting, and helped author the CGI Studio renderer. I also found this intimidating sounding paper of his from 1958. Before focusing on films, Eugene created computer simulations of nuclear particle behavior and was a consulting physicist for the United Nuclear Corporation. Friedman, author of The Art of Blue Sky Studios, is one of the first people to work in computer animation in the 1970s. in theoretical physics from Columbia University, and according to Jake S.
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