3D Computer Graphics (1976)

The idea of 3D graphics-just like painting-is making an image that tricks the brain into thinking it is looking at something with three dimensions rather than two. To do this, you must consider the effect of lighting on the object, as well as depth,perspective,texture,and many more qualities, which the computer then has to project on a two-dimensional surface in a realistic way.
   The advance in computer graphics started in the early 1960s, with the first commercially available graphics terminal, the IBM 2250, hitting the market in 1965. Three years later, Ivan Sutherland (b. 1938) created the first computer-controlled head-mounted display (HMD). The wearer of this helmet was able to see a computer scene in steroscopic 3D, because separate images were displayed for each eye.
   Sutherland subsequently joined what was then the world's leading research center for computer graphics at the University of Utah. One of his students was Edwin Catmull (b.1945), a wannabe animator who conceived the idea of texture mapping, which is based on the fact that the majority of real-life objects have detailed surfaces. He was convinced that you could apply similar patterns to computer-generated object.
   Using this method, he created an animated version of his left hand. Following the world's first computer animation in movies-in the Canadian short film The Hunger from 1974-an animated face as well as Catmull's hand became the first 3D computer-generated images in movies when they featured in Futureworld in 1976.