A BRIEF HISTORY OF 3D VIZUALIZATION,PART 1, WE WERE ALL GEEKS AT ONE POINT

by: Andy Catterick

Many years ago when I started in this industry I remember a lecture that started

‘3D Visualization is like good sex, a lot of people are talking about it, but not many are doing it.’

How right he was, the buzzwords were all starting to become commonplace. Words like parametric, surface skinning, object orientated databases and on the odd occasion, ray tracing. We all spoke about the techie side of the industry, because it was exactly that, it wasn’t pretty back then. But like the opening line to that lecture, not many of us were really doing anything fun with that technology, unless we had a million dollar budget that is. Of course now, some of these words are now redundant, not because the technologies have been superceded, but the user doesn’t have to know about them. For instance, walk into a studio and ask for a show of hands how many people know what that teapot tool is for and what it’s called. I would guess that first answer may raise a few hands, but the second?

Well it’s called the Utah teapot, digitized from a Melitta teapot by a chap called Dr Martin Newell. Who you may ask? Well Newell was also responsible for a sorting algorithm known as Newell’s algorithm. This fixed a few problems with another graphical algorithm for sorting and cutting overlapping objects. So what I hear you cry, who cares! Well those technologies enable us to do much of what we do today, and we still use them, without thought, thanks to people like Dr Newell. If you have ever used AutoCAD, Illustrator or his own baby, Ashlar Vellum, you will have experienced his ‘drafting assistant’ technology. One that in my opinion changed the market place for electronic drafting. I was lucky enough to meet Dr Martin Newell a few times; we even worked for the same firm at one point. He came across as a very collected and giving man without much bravado. He was breaking ground every day and essentially developing new technologies one by one.

Years later the industry has changed. Technical ability and Artistry have separated. Users are now looking for different things and in my opinion the industry has matured for the better. I create two distinctions in users.

Artistry. There are those users that have come from a variety of backgrounds and are using their talent create beautiful 3D art. Software is a tool for them, tablets, just another pen. These people are often easy to spot, they tend to care less about tech, and their focus is in look, feel and story.

Technical brilliance. I see this growing with an unprecedented speed. People all over the world are becoming excellent at making 3D art accurate and startlingly real. Software has now become so easy to learn that almost anyone can make an image look almost real. In time and with enough hard work these people can produce some awesome work.

But this separation has created problems, BIG ONES, and its rotting away our industry. In the next part of this series I’ll talk about how the separation has occurred and its snowball effect on our industry.

Coming soon; Part 2, Art and Accuracy are not the same.