Re: 3D Movies

[P3D Peter Davis <pdavis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> |the "computer controlled" camera. I think that The Last Starfighter
> |was actually the first film to use computer generated imagry in
> |place of "real" models, which is typical of modern films like
> |Jurassic Park.

I don't think "The Last Starfighter" was the first, but it used more
computer generated footage than any previous film.  I believe that a
Cray XMP was used for this.

> "Tron" came out (disaster for Disney - 1982) a bit earlier, but I
> was never able to figure out what was computer generated and what
> was animated/rotoscoped.  Possibly the "Lightcycle" race and maybe
> the simple geometric forms of the "Recognizer" - It's an interesting
> film - however, I remember being impressed with the advance in
> realistic modeling in "Starfighter" as opposed to the cartoonish
> look of "Tron". 1982 seemed to be the year for film noir SF - what
> with TRON and Bladerunner...

A number of the "inside" scenes, including the Lightcycle race, were
generated in black & white on computer, and then hand-colored
overseas.  The "bit" character was also computer generated.

> I hope that ILM (they did "Toy Story", right?) is hanging onto thier
> rendering files. It would seem relatively easy to generate a second
> pass on it to make a 3D movie if one had the
> inclination/finances/time.

Actually, "Toy Story" was done by Pixar, a spin-off of ILM.  I would
assume they've got most of the models and motion sequences archived
somewhere, for sequel potential if nothing else.

-pd

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Peter Davis                    "Education is not the             617/873-4145
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