The Art and Science of Computer Animation Stuart Mealing First published in Paperback in United Kingdom in 1998 by Intellect Books School of Art and Design, Earl Richards Road North, Exeter EX26AS, UK Copyright © 1998 Intellect Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. Consulting editor: Masoud Yazdani Copy editor: Cate Foster Cover design: Sam Robinson Text layout: Stuart Mealing A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1-871516-71-4 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Wiltshire For my mother ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am pleased to offer my thanks for help in connection with the production of this book to: Roger Fickling, Dr. Wendy Milne and Coral Mealing for the many helpful comments and suggestions passed on after reading the draft copy of the book, many of which have been acted upon. Apple Computers Inc. for kind permission to reproduce the paper by Galyn Susman on 'The Making of Pencil Test' as an appendix. Program Now magazine for permission to reproduce passages from an issue. Paul Hooker of 3C Systems, Worcester, Bill Allen at Gromark Ltd (London), and Daphne Powers at Symbolics Ltd (High Wycombe) for generously taking time to produce material used in diagrams and plates. Mick Winning and Brian Carroll of Splash (Cardiff) for advice and for allowing me to browse through and photograph their artwork. Mark Watt of Digital Pictures,William Latham of IBM UK Laboratories Ltd, Craig W. Reynolds of Symbolics Graphics Division, Karl Simms of Optomystic, Professor Eihachiro Nakamae of Hiroshima University, Deirdre Warin at Pixar, Jarrett Cohen at University of Illinois and Alan Stone at Rediffusion Simulation for very kindly supplying slides for reproduction as plates. The Apple Centre (Exeter) for help and advice. Malcolm Kesson, Paul Reilly and Bill Tingle for specific advice and discussion. Professor John Lansdown and the staff at CASCAAD (Middlesex Polytechnic) for much information, acquired both formally and in casual discussion, which has percolated through to the book. Trademarks: Atari & Atari ST - Atari Corp.; Symbolics, S-Paint, S-Render, S-Dynamics & S- Geometry - Symbolics, Inc.; Pixar, RenderMan & RIP - Pixar, Inc.; CyberStudio, Cybercontrol & Cyberpaint - Antic Publishing, Inc.; Swivel 3D - Paracomp Ltd; TDI & Explore - Thomson Digital Image America, Inc.; Luxo - Jac Jacobson Industries; MC68000, MC68020, MC68030, MC68040 - Motorola Corporatio; IBM - International Business Machines Corporation; Postscript - Adobe Systems Inc.; Apple, Macintosh, Mac, Hypercard, Hypertalk-Apple Computer, Inc.; Commodore- Commodore Electronics, Ltd; Amiga - Commodore-Amiga, Inc.; Paintbox - Quantel Ltd. COLOUR PLATES Front cover A numerically severe storm (a) This animation is used to study the water and ice structure of a severe storm, the movement and rotation of air in and around the storm, and the different physical processes which influence storm rotation near the ground. The cloud formation and movement, as well as the movement of other elements in the animation, was created numerically from mathematical equations which are based on contemporary laws of physics.The measurements for this model were taken from a severe storm that occured in Oklahoma on April 3, 1964. Produced by the Visualisation Group, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Back cover Particle Dreams (waterfall) This waterfall is part of a group of animations entitled Particle Dreams, which are all created using particle systems, created by Karl Sims at Optomystic. Back cover Wet, misty road This plate is taken from research at at the Electric Machinery Laboratory, Hiroshima University, into the creation of a light model aiming at drive simulators Back cover Flight simulator A two and a half ton flight simulator from Rediffusion Simulation. Its 6 hydraulic legs move the 'cockpit', in synchronisation with the cockpit display, to realistically reproduce the flight movements generated by the 'pilot'. Plate 1 Storyboard Created by Mick Winning (now at Splash Computer Graphics Ltd., Cardiff) for S4C to demonstrate an animation idea (not transmitted). The scene opens with mountains reflected in rippling water, reflections turn into the number '4' and lift from the water, bands of light and water orbit the '4' and then form the letters 'S' and 'C'. Plate 2 Stills from the storyboard Three stills from the storyboard (Plate 1), generated on a Paintbox. Plate 3 Rendering sampler Examples of quick Lambert shading, smoother Gouraud shading and raytracing, which includes shadows and reflections. Plate 4 Luxo Jnr. From an award-winning animated short film created at Pixar in 1986 by John Lasseter with William Reeves, Esten Ostby and Sam Leffler. At the time, the fire broke new ground in its ability to imbue inanimate objects with personality and emotion using computer animation. It is the first 3-D computer animated film to be nominated for an Academy Award. Plate 5 Tin Toy This 1988 Pixar production is the first computer animated film to ever win an Oscar. A 3-D model of the baby's body was digitized from clay figures and merged with a skeletal description of the character. Special software fits the body model to animation of the skeleton, so that the body moved and flexed according to the animator's directions. Plate 6 Sunlight on water From Light-water interaction using Backward Beam Tracing, SIGGRAPH Proceedings 1990 by Mark Watt of Digital Pictures. A fuller treatment is given in Advanced Rendering & Animation Techniques: Theory and Practice, (pub) Addison Wesley 1991. Plate 7 Mutations Produced by William Latham with Stephen Todd at the IBM UK Scientific Centre, Winchester. The programs used were Esme, Mutator and Winsom. Plate 8 Numerically severe storm (b) See the description of the front cover plate. Plate 9 Quarry From an animated simulation of a quarry created for an environmental impact analysis (EIA) by 3C Systems, Worcester.