Forest Kenton Musgrave (16 September 1955 – 14 December 2018) was a professor at
The George Washington University in the USA. A computer artist who worked with
fractal
In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illu ...
images, he worked on the Bryce landscape software and later as CEO/CTO of Pandromeda, Inc. developed and designed the innovative MojoWorld software.
Education
He obtained his
Ph.D in
Computer science from
Yale University in 1993, writing his
thesis on ''Methods for Realistic Landscape Imaging''. He was referred to by fractal pioneer
Benoît Mandelbrot as being "the first true fractal-based artist".
Software work
Musgrave designed the initial fractal-based programs on which
Bryce was based, and later worked on designing the Deep Materials Lab component of Bryce.
His work was featured in an article in the January 1996 ''
Scientific American'' (Gibbs, "Playing Slartibartfast with Fractals") which discussed fractal curves. The article also described software he had designed which would generate entire Earth-size planets using semi-random procedural 3D, and then allow a user to fly or walk about that world, exploring mountains or forests, and choosing a scene to render to an image. The software eventually became a commercial release called
MojoWorld
MojoWorld was a commercial, fractal-based modelling program for the creation of digital landscapes, and attracted a following among artists who create space art and science fiction scenes. Originally created by Ken Musgrave, it was marketed comme ...
, which went through three releases to end with version 3.1.1.
Cinema work
Musgrave received screen credits for digital effects in the films ''
Titanic'', ''
Dante's Peak'' and ''
Lawnmower Man''. His MojoWorld software was used to procedurally generate background mattes and terrains on big-budget movies such as ''
The Day After Tomorrow''.
ZeniMax Media
Musgrave was technical advisor at
ZeniMax Media parent company of videogame publisher
Bethesda Softworks
Bethesda Softworks LLC is an American video game publisher based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded by Christopher Weaver in 1986 as a division of Media Technology Limited, and in 1999 became a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media. In its ...
, at the time of famous releases such as the RPG ''Morrowind''.
Publications
* ''Texturing and Modeling: A Procedural Approach'' - F. Kenton Musgrave et al., 1998 -
*
See also
*
Fractal landscape
A fractal landscape is a surface that is generated using a stochastic algorithm designed to produce fractal behavior that mimics the appearance of natural terrain. In other words, the result of the procedure is not a deterministic fractal surface, ...
References
External links
*
Ken Musgrave's websitePandromeda's websiteMethods for Realistic Landscape Imaging - doctoral dissertation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Musgrave, Ken
1955 births
American computer scientists
Yale University alumni
2018 deaths