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The Advanced Visualizer
The Advanced Visualizer (TAV), a 3D graphics software package, was the flagship product of Wavefront Technologies from the 1980s until the 1990s. History A software package famous for its use in the production of numerous Academy Awards, Oscar-winning movies such as ''The Abyss'', ''Terminator 2: Judgment Day'' and ''Jurassic Park (film), Jurassic Park''. Alias, Wavefront Merger This was widely seen as the result of Microsoft purchasing Softimage in an attempt to take over the 3D computer graphics market. Silicon Graphics responded by purchasing Alias Systems Corporation, and their two major competitors, Wavefront, and the French company TDI (Thomson Digital Images) for their Explore, IPR, and GUI technologies. Thus SGI created the super-company ''Alias, Wavefront''. Wavefront's programmers continued to reside in California but the management of the company was carried out in Toronto, Canada. Autodesk Era In 1996 Alias, Wavefront announced the release of Maya (software), Maya w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wavefront Technologies
Wavefront Technologies was a computer graphics company that developed and sold animation software used in Hollywood motion pictures and other industries. It was founded in 1984, in Santa Barbara, California, by Bill Kovacs, Larry Barels, Mark Sylvester. They started the company to produce computer graphics for movies and television commercials, and to market their own software, as there were no off-the-shelf computer animation tools available at the time. In 1995, Wavefront Technologies was acquired by Silicon Graphics, and merged with Alias Research to form Alias, Wavefront. Products Wavefront developed their first product, Preview, during the first year of business. The company's production department helped tune the software by using it on commercial projects, creating opening graphics for television programs. One of the first customers to purchase Preview was Universal Studios, for the television program Knight Rider. Further early customers included NBC, Electronic Arts, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk Maya, commonly shortened to just Maya ( ), is a 3D computer graphics application that runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, originally developed by Alias and currently owned and developed by Autodesk. It is used to create assets for interactive 3D applications (including video games), animated films, TV series, and visual effects. History Maya was originally an animation product based on code from The Advanced Visualizer by Wavefront Technologies, Thomson Digital Image (TDI) Explore, PowerAnimator by Alias, and ''Alias Sketch!''. The IRIX-based projects were combined and animation features were added; the project codename was Maya. Walt Disney Feature Animation collaborated closely with Maya's development during its production of ''Dinosaur''. Disney requested that the user interface of the application be customizable so that a personalized workflow could be created. This was a particular influence in the open architecture of Maya, and partly responsible for it becoming popul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bump Mapping
Bump mapping is a texture mapping technique in computer graphics for simulating bumps and wrinkles on the surface of an object. This is achieved by perturbing the surface normals of the object and using the perturbed normal during lighting calculations. The result is an apparently bumpy surface rather than a smooth surface although the surface of the underlying object is not changed. Bump mapping was introduced by James Blinn in 1978.Blinn, James F"Simulation of Wrinkled Surfaces" Computer Graphics, Vol. 12 (3), pp. 286-292 SIGGRAPH-ACM (August 1978) Normal mapping is the most common variation of bump mapping used. Principles Bump mapping is a technique in computer graphics to make a rendered surface look more realistic by simulating small displacements of the surface. However, unlike displacement mapping, the surface geometry is not modified. Instead only the surface normal is modified ''as if'' the surface had been displaced. The modified surface normal is then used fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Texture Map
Texture mapping is a method for mapping a texture on a computer-generated graphic. Texture here can be high frequency detail, surface texture, or color. History The original technique was pioneered by Edwin Catmull in 1974. Texture mapping originally referred to diffuse mapping, a method that simply mapped pixels from a texture to a 3D surface ("wrapping" the image around the object). In recent decades, the advent of multi-pass rendering, multitexturing, mipmaps, and more complex mappings such as height mapping, bump mapping, normal mapping, displacement mapping, reflection mapping, specular mapping, occlusion mapping, and many other variations on the technique (controlled by a materials system) have made it possible to simulate near-photorealism in real time by vastly reducing the number of polygons and lighting calculations needed to construct a realistic and functional 3D scene. Texture maps A is an image applied (mapped) to the surface of a shape or polygon. This ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reflection (computer Graphics)
Reflection in computer graphics is used to emulate reflection (physics), reflective objects like mirrors and shiny surfaces. Accurate reflections can be accomplished e.g. by a Ray tracing (graphics), ray trace renderer by following a ray from the eye to the mirror and then calculating where it bounces from, and continuing the process until no surface is found, or a non-reflective surface is found. Approximate reflections can usually be computed faster by using methods such as environment mapping. Reflection on a shiny surface like wood or tile can add to the photorealistic effects of a 3D rendering. Approaches to reflection rendering For rendering environment reflections there exist many techniques that differ in precision, computational and implementation complexity. Combination of these techniques are also possible. Image and object order rendering, Image order rendering algorithms based on tracing rays of light, such as Ray tracing (graphics), ray tracing or path tracing, ty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dynamation (software)
Dynamation was a 3D computer graphics particle generator program sold by Wavefront to run on SGI's IRIX operating system as part of The Advanced Visualizer. The core software was originally developed by Jim Hourihan while at Santa Barbara Studios, a visual effects company owned by effects pioneer John Grower. The software was licensed to Wavefront Technologies in 1992, and passed through to the merged company Alias/Wavefront. It was introduced as a product at SIGGRAPH in 1993. In 1996, Jim Hourihan received a Scientific and Engineering Award for the primary design and development of Dynamation. Dynamation could create behavioral particle systems that responded to gravity, air resistance, and other real world physics. It gave users an interactive environment to create and modify dynamic events such as water, clouds, rain, fire and dust. The interactive aspect of this software was revolutionary at the time. Users were able to change parameters and the particle system updated in rea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UV Mapping
UV mapping is the 3D modeling process of projecting a 3D model's surface to a 2D image for texture mapping. The letters "U" and "V" denote the axes of the 2D texture because "X", "Y", and "Z" are already used to denote the axes of the 3D object in model space, while "W" (in addition to XYZ) is used in calculating quaternion rotations, a common operation in computer graphics. Process UV texturing permits polygons that make up a 3D object to be painted with color (and other surface attributes) from an ordinary image. The image is called a UV texture map.Mullen, T (2009). Mastering Blender. 1st ed. Indianapolis, Indiana: Wiley Publishing, Inc. The UV mapping process involves assigning pixels in the image to surface mappings on the polygon, usually done by "programmatically" copying a triangular piece of the image map and pasting it onto a triangle on the object.Murdock, K.L. (2008). 3ds Max 2009 Bible. 1st ed. Indianapolis, Indiana: Wiley Publishing, Inc. UV texturing is an alter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
OpenGL
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering. Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) began developing OpenGL in 1991 and released it on June 30, 1992; applications use it extensively in the fields of computer-aided design (CAD), virtual reality, scientific visualization, information visualization, flight simulation, and video games. Since 2006, OpenGL has been managed by the non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group. Design The OpenGL specification describes an abstract API for drawing 2D and 3D graphics. Although it is possible for the API to be implemented entirely in software, it is designed to be implemented mostly or entirely in hardware. The API is defined as a set of functions which may be called by the client program, alongside a set of named intege ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IrisGL
IRIS GL (Integrated Raster Imaging System Graphics Library) is a proprietary graphics API created by Silicon Graphics (SGI) in the early 1980s for producing 2D and 3D computer graphics on their IRIX-based IRIS graphical workstations. Later SGI removed their proprietary code, reworked various system calls, and released IRIS GL as the industry standard OpenGL. See also * Silicon Graphics Image for file extension .iris * SGI IRIS * IrisVision IrisVision is an expansion card developed by Silicon Graphics for IBM compatible PCs in 1991 and is one of the first 3D accelerator cards available for the high end PC market. IrisVision is an adaptation of the graphics pipeline from the Personal ... - first port to PCs References *{{Cite conference , first = James , last = Clark , title = The Geometry Engine: A VLSI Geometry System for Graphics , book-title = Proceedings of the 9th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques , pages = 127–133 , da ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wavefront
In physics, the wavefront of a time-varying ''wave field'' is the set (locus) of all points having the same ''phase''. The term is generally meaningful only for fields that, at each point, vary sinusoidally in time with a single temporal frequency (otherwise the phase is not well defined). Wavefronts usually move with time. For waves propagating in a unidimensional medium, the wavefronts are usually single points; they are curves in a two dimensional medium, and surfaces in a three-dimensional one. For a sinusoidal plane wave, the wavefronts are planes perpendicular to the direction of propagation, that move in that direction together with the wave. For a sinusoidal spherical wave, the wavefronts are spherical surfaces that expand with it. If the speed of propagation is different at different points of a wavefront, the shape and/or orientation of the wavefronts may change by refraction. In particular, lenses can change the shape of optical wavefronts from planar to spher ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya (software)
Autodesk Maya, commonly shortened to just Maya ( ), is a 3D computer graphics application that runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, originally developed by Alias and currently owned and developed by Autodesk. It is used to create assets for interactive 3D applications (including video games), animated films, TV series, and visual effects. History Maya was originally an animation product based on code from The Advanced Visualizer by Wavefront Technologies, Thomson Digital Image (TDI) Explore, PowerAnimator by Alias, and ''Alias Sketch!''. The IRIX-based projects were combined and animation features were added; the project codename was Maya. Walt Disney Feature Animation collaborated closely with Maya's development during its production of ''Dinosaur''. Disney requested that the user interface of the application be customizable so that a personalized workflow could be created. This was a particular influence in the open architecture of Maya, and partly responsible for it becoming popul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment industry worldwide. Given annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the awards are an international recognition of excellence in cinematic achievements, as assessed by the Academy's voting membership. The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette as a trophy, officially called the "Academy Award of Merit", although more commonly referred to by its nickname, the "Oscar". The statuette, depicting a knight rendered in the Art Deco style, was originally sculpted by Los Angeles artist George Stanley from a design sketch by art director Cedric Gibbons. The 1st Academy Awards were held in 1929 at a private dinner hosted by Douglas Fairbanks in The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The Academy Awards cerem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
