History of Computer Graphics
Here I am going to present history of computer graphics and little about computers it selves. For some picture will be submitted so will explanation.1947
Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain of Bell Labs invent transistors ("transfer resistance")
From this everything started. Transistors have replaced vacum tubes, and thanks to their small sizes making of chips of big number of transistors was succesfuly done
1963
Mouse invented by Doug Englebart of SRI
It is enough to say that we can't imagine todays work with computers without mouse...
DAC-1, first commercial CAD system, developed in 1959 by IBM for General Motors is shown at JCC
CAD(Computer Aided Design) programs - are used in big companies and this one of its first versions developed by IBM especial for GM company. One of most popular ones in todays world is CATIA(IBM).
1965
CADAM developed at Lockheed; CADD developed at McDonnell Douglas - This is one more version of CAD programs. Now we can see how computer graphics industry had slow begining.
1967
Adage real time 3D line drawing system - yet another program that made Adage company which was created in 1965
1969
UNIX developed by Thompson and Ritchie at Bell Labs (in PDP-7 assembly code) - not directly in connection with CG, but this was one of biggest operating systems in the past, and all next operating systems are based on this one(BSD->MacOS, GNU/Linux, Solaris, etc..) or used expiriences from that OS (Windows, OS/2, etc..)
First use of CGI for commercials - MAGI for IBM - yet another step into making CG industry more expansible.
Graphical User Interface (GUI) developed by Xerox (Alan Kay) - I think this is most important for computers at all... The ideas for this GUI are made back in WWII and some of those ideas were redesigned and they get GUI. After, Apple take that idea, after M$ has, and we have it like today. You can notice that it hasn't changed a lot. LINK
SIGGRAPH formed (began as special interest committee in 1967 by Sam Matsa and Andy vanDam) - we all know what SIGGRAPH is today --- biggest CG (3D, producers, artists, etc.. ) event in the world.
1972
Emmy awarded to Lee Harrison for SCANIMATE (star wars) - here we can see another application of 3D
C language developed by Ritchie - Most programs at all are written in C Programming language, so I don't want to make this an exeption.
1973
Barnhill and Riesenfeld introduce the name "Computer-Aided Geometric Design" (CAGD) - Yet another Computer Aided Design program developed, but this time it is for geometry.
1974
z-buffer developed by Ed Catmull (University of Utah) - z buffer is very important in todays games, and real time 3D rendering (3D programs). In programing rendering is done is buffer, and when it is done, action of swaping buffers is called. With this way, apearing of flickering effect is avoid.
1975
Phong shading - Bui-Toung Phong (University of Utah) - I bet that few milions of times a day this type of shading is used in 3D scenes. Enough said.
Bill Gates starts Microsoft - Have you heared about Microsoft ?
Anima animation system developed at CGRG at Ohio State (Csuri) - This and similiar programs maybe aren't big cas today, but we have to respect them because thanks to them and expiriences with those programs, we have todays ones.
1976
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak start Apple computer.
1977
Computer Graphics World begins publication (started by Joel and N'omi Orr as Computer Graphics Newsletter)
Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences introduces Visual Effects category for Oscars - yet another significant point in our history.
1978
Lance Williams curved shadows paper. - Shadow maps are very used today, and they make work a lot easier. LINK
First CGI film title - Superman (R. Greenberg)
Bump mapping introduced (Blinn)
Bump map changes look of textured object from smooth to more bumped. It is very useful and usable option.
1980
Turner Whitted of Bell Labs publishes ray tracing paper - ray tracing is known as one of better techniques for rendering
1982
Tron released - Legendary movie named TRON released. It used a lot of CG.
Sun Microsystems founded (sun := Stanford University Network)
Skeleton Animation System (SAS) developed at CGRG at Ohio State (Dave Zeltzer)
Adobe founded by John Warnock
1983
Particle systems (Reeves - Lucasfilm) - Today particle systems are used for creating simulation such as: rain, snow, liquid, or custom particles.
Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) introduced by Tiller - One of more advanced tools for modeling and shaping objects.
Alias founded in Toronto by Stephen Bingham, Nigel McGrath, Susan McKenna and David Springer - Alias, until recently was one of bigest companies for producing of CG software
1984
Wavefront Technologies is the first commercially available 3D software package with distributed ray tracing
Radiosity born - yet another more advanced rendering technique.
1985
PODA creature animation system developed by Girard and Maciejewski at Ohio State - by now we can se that CG industry expanded a lot.
1986
Softimage founded by Daniel Langlois in Montreal - One of todays best CG programs that has Compositing program integrated.
mental images founded in Berlin - Company that made best rendering software (mental ray) was founded in 1985.
1987 GIF format (CompuServe), JPEG format (Joint Photographic Experts Group) - I'm sure that all computer users are using jpg and almost all gif, pictures.
Side Effects Software established - company that owns one of todays bigest 3D program.
1989
Adobe Photoshop - One of best programs for editing pictures.
mental ray renderer released (integrated with Wavefront (1992), Softimage (1993), Maya (2002)) - awarded AMPAS Technical Achievment Award in 2002 - I mentioned mental ray above.
PIXAR starts marketing RenderMan - Renderman is special rendering software developed inside pixar for pixar needs. It is the only one that could compare with mental ray until recently.
1990
3D Studio (AutoDesk) - More known as 3D Studio Max, as it is called today. Latest version is 8 and it is one of most popular 3D programs.
1991
ILM produces Terminator 2 - we all have seen movie Terminator 2.
1992
OpenGL (SGI) released - I can freely say that this was special year. OpenGL, today is used in every 3D program for real time rendering of scenes. It is used in big number of games also.
1994
Microsoft acquires Softimage - announces Windows 95
1995
Wavefront and Alias merge
1997
Bryce 3D - Program that I worked with for 2 years. Great for landscape design.
1998
Alias Maya released - Maya is program that has been used for creating big number of games, movies, projects, etc... It is very popular and has got lot of abilities.
Google launched - http://www.google.com
Avid purchases SoftImage from Microsoft
1999
Side Effects Houdini ported to Linux - small number of programs (especialy 3D programs) have been ported to GNU/Linux or other systems, but Houdini has even been ported to Solaris.
2000
Maya ported to Macintosh - at that time Macintosh were strong machines and using that hardware with this software was needed like food.
2001
Side Effects Houdini ported to Sun
2003
Alias/Wavefront becomes Alias
2005
Autodesk agrees to purchase Alias for $182M.
2006
Intel Mac released, MacOS ported to PC and Windows ported to Macs.
Softimage|FACE ROBOT released
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There has been a lot of 3D events lately, but I have taken the most imported ones, because, time of 5 years (2000-2006) is not relatively long period.
With this post I didn't want just to give you new informations what happened few or 10's of years ago, but I wanted to take your attention and point to past a little bit, because we must respect that. People in that period have tried to make better programs, technology and because of that we have what we have today
Too bad almost noeone have seen it.
I found you blog via DigitalZone.
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