The year is 2026, and we take computer-generated movies for granted: Pixar, Illumination, DreamWorks, and a myriad of smaller studios delight us every year with more and more technical and storytelling prowess. Heck, we even have “artificial intelligence” systems that can generate whole movies out of a single “prompt” consisting of a certain amount of words that make a certain sense in a particular context. 50 years ago, however, the prospect of a computer generating images was the subject of intense scientific research.
The challenge was not small; the computers of that age were vastly underpowered compared to those of today, and the kind of images we could dream of required unknown algorithms and data structures, not to mention a non-existent, monumental amount of computing power. The latter problem would eventually and gradually be solved by Moore’s Law; for the former part of the equation, that is, the algorithms and the data structures, we can thank the early research of this month’s Vidéothèque subject, Loren Carpenter.
Not to be confused with his namesake and contemporary director extraordinaire, John Carpenter (nor, for that matter, with Karen and Richard Carpenter, also active in the same era), the recently deceased Loren Carpenter (he passed away last December 21st) paved the way for computer-generated movies as we know them today.
On July 14, 1980, at the SIGGRAPH conference (a legendary focal point of research in the field of CGI), attendees became the privileged spectators of the first computer-generated movie of all time, “Vol Libre”, a French title that translates as “Free Flight”. This movie was a demonstration of the content of a paper titled “Computer rendering of fractal curves and surfaces”, presented by Loren Carpenter at the same occasion.
It is important to set some context first, particularly for younger members of the audience: by the time Carpenter came into the scene, the “Star Wars” (1977) Death Star and trench run sequence made by Larry Cuba on a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11, was considered the pinnacle of computer animation.
The description of “Vol Libre” on Vimeo, written by the author himself, says it all:
I made this film in 1979-80 to accompany a SIGGRAPH paper on how to synthesize fractal geometry with a computer. It is the world’s first fractal movie. It utilizes 8-10 different fractal generating algorithms. I used an antialiased version of this software to create the fractal planet in the Genesis Sequence of Star Trek 2, the Wrath of Khan. These frames were computed on a VAX-11/780 at about 20-40 minutes each.
20 to 40 minutes per frame. Let that sink in. Do you know how fast your iPhone renders a full 4K movie on iMovie these days?
In all honesty, “Vol Libre” looks dated to our modern eyes, slow, and clumsy. It lacks the polish and the finesse of a recent Pixar movie. But to the SIGGRAPH audience of 1980, after picking up their jaws from the floor, this short film represented actual proof that computer-generated movies were not only a theory but a reality (albeit a rudimentary one at the time). History in the making; it is both wonderful and humbling to realize that a whole new industry debuted in a humble conference hall, not even 46 years ago.
The audience erupted. The entire hall was on their feet and hollering. They wanted to see it again. “There had never been anything like it,” recalled Ed Catmull. Loren was beaming.
(Quote from “Droidmaker” on “Vol Libre, an amazing CG film from 1980” by Jason Kottke.)
Loren Carpenter was almost immediately hired by the aforementioned Ed Catmull (recipient of the ACM Turing Award 2019) to join an experimental unit of Lucasfilm called “Graphics Group”, dedicated to exploring the use of computers in moviemaking.
“There was strategy in this,” said Loren, “because I knew that Ed and Alvy were going to be in the front row of the room when I was giving this talk.” Everyone at Siggraph knew about Ed and Alvy and the aggregation at Lucasfilm. They were already rock stars. Ed and Alvy walked up to Loren Carpenter after the film and asked if he could start in October.
(Another quote from “Droidmaker” relayed on the same Jason Kottke blog post.)
George Lucas, probably rather skeptical of the whole concept or blissfully unaware of Moore’s Law, would later decide to spin off this unit a few years later, selling it to a certain Steve Jobs (who had just been sidelined at Apple), becoming Pixar in the process.
(Ironically enough, and following the steps of Larry Cuba, the “Star Wars” prequels and sequels would include an insane amount of computer-generated imagery, including a creepy recreation of a young Carrie Fisher in the otherwise magnificent “Rogue One”, to the outcry and indignation of most of its fanbase and critics alike. The fact that BB-8 and Baby Yoda were instead filmed as physical props on set says a lot about how the audiences reacted to CGI. But I digress, again.)
The rest, as they say, is history. As he explained above, Loren Carpenter would reuse the same engine created for “Vol Libre” in the final terraforming scene of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” released in 1982 and arguably the best movie in the Star Trek franchise. Later would come “The Adventures of André & Wally B.” in 1984, “Luxo Jr.” in 1986, “Red’s Dream” in 1987, and finally “Tin Toy” in 1988. This last one would become the first computer-generated movie to win the Academy Award for the “Most Disturbing Baby Ever Shown in a Movie Picture” category, and it foreshadowed a fully-fledged franchise known as “Toy Story” since 1995.
Meanwhile, the work of Loren Carpenter set the basis not only for the algorithms and data structures required to create a movie inside the memory chips of a computer but also to streamline the industrial processes used by Pixar, and later by all of its competitors, to produce movies. Among the research papers authored or co-authored by Carpenter, we must mention “Computer Rendering of Stochastic Models”, “Volume rendering”, “The Reyes image rendering architecture”, “Distributed ray tracing”, and “The A -buffer, an antialiased hidden surface method”.
Next time you go to a theater to watch a computer-generated movie, pay attention: we not only have standard-length feature films released simultaneously in various locales, but the characters are actually moving their lips as if they spoke those words in those other languages than English. The labels on things and locations reflect local cultural brands and expressions, different for each region of the world. The animation is buttery smooth, well over the standard 24 frames per second of celluloid film stock productions. And they can even be rendered in 3-D, if needed. The magic is complete, down to the smallest details, and Loren Carpenter had a lot to do with that.
Watch the second of this month’s Vidéothèque movies, “Vol Libre” by Loren Carpenter, on Vimeo or on YouTube. After watching this, do not miss this gem: “Loren Carpenter Experiment at SIGGRAPH '91”. You will thank me later.
Cover snapshot chosen by the author.