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One of the earliest steps in the history of computer animation was the 1973 movie Westworld, a science-fiction film about a society in which robots live and work among humans, though the first use of 3D Wireframe imagery was in its sequel, Futureworld (1976), which featured a computer-generated hand and face created by then University of Utah graduate students Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke. The third movie to use this technology was Star Wars (1977) for the scenes with the wireframe Death Star plans and the targeting computers in the X-wings and the Millennium Falcon. The Black Hole (1979) used raster wire-frame model rendering to depict a black hole. The science fiction-horror film Alien of that same year also used a raster wire-frame model, in this case to render the image of navigation monitors in the sequence where a spaceship follows a beacon to a land on an unfamiliar planet.

In 1978, graduate students at the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab began work on what would have been the first full-length CGI film, The Works, and a trailer for it was shown at SIGGRAPH 1982, but the film was never completed. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan premiered a short CGI sequence called The Genesis Effect in June 1982. The first two films to make heavy investments in Solid 3D CGI, Tron (1982) and The Last Starfighter (1984), were commercial failures, causing most directors to relegate CGI to images that were supposed to look like they were created by a computer.

Another Star Trek movie - 1986's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - features a little-known use of CGI that would prove to be a major stepping stone for the technology in years to come. The dream-like sequence where Kirk and his crew (in a commandeered Klingon starship) travel back in time features computer-generated images of the crew's faces "morphing" into one another. Although the images look like clay sculptures, they represent the antecedents of the photo-realistic morphing that would become popular in the early 1990s, and the ILM team responsible would be sought out by James Cameron three years later (see below).

The first movie to feature photo-realistic CGI integrated seamlessly into scenes was The Abyss (1989). A five minute sequence featuring an animated water tentacle or "pseudopod" was created using groundbreaking new algorithms design by ILM, and supervised by Denis Muren for James Cameron's underwater action movie. It featured reflection, refraction and a short "morphing" sequence, taking on the facial forms of actors Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Although Cameron's subsequent movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, would be the one that brought CGI to the attention of the masses, it was The Abyss that represented the true technological milestone, and the foundation upon which the modern CGI industry would be built.

1991 could be considered the breakout year for the new CGI technology. Two huge hits, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Beauty and the Beast, both made heavy use of CGI. These successes marked Hollywood�s transition from stop-motion animation and conventional optical effects to digital techniques. Beauty and the Beast became the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

In 1993, another affirmation of CGI came from Jurassic Park where CGI dinosaurs were integrated into hydraulically-controlled life-sized puppets shot on-set. The palette of tools available from CGI was becoming larger. In 1994, CGI was used to create the special effects for Forrest Gump. The most noteworthy effects shots were those that featured the digital removal of actor Gary Sinise's legs. Other effects included a napalm strike, the fast-moving Ping-Pong balls, and the digital insertion of Tom Hanks into several scenes of historical footage.

In 1993, Babylon 5 and SeaQuest became the first television series to use CGI as the primary method for their visual effects (rather than using hand-built models). It also marked the first TV use of virtual sets. That same year, Insektors became the first full-length completely computer animated TV series.[1] Soon after, in 1994, the hit Canadian CGI show ReBoot aired.

In 1995, the first fully computer-generated feature film, Disney-Pixar's Toy Story, was a resounding commercial success. Additional digital animation studios such as Blue Sky Studios (20th Century Fox), DNA Productions, O Entertainment, Sony Pictures Animation (Columbia Pictures), Vanguard Animation, Lions Gate Entertainment and 20th Century Fox), Big Idea Productions and FHE Pictures), Animal Logic and Pacific Data Images (Dreamworks SKG) went into production, and existing animation companies, such as The Walt Disney Company, began to make a transition from traditional animation to CGI. Between 1995 and 2005 the average effects budget for a wide-release feature film skyrocketed from $5 million to $40 million. According to one studio executive, as of 2005, more than half of feature films have significant effects. However, CGI has made up for the expenditures by grossing over 20% more than their real-life counterparts.[2]

In the early 2000s, computer-generated imagery became the dominant form of special effects. The technology progressed to the point that it became possible to include virtual stunt doubles. Camera tracking software was refined to allow increasingly complex visual effects developments that were previously impossible. Computer-generated extras also became used extensively in crowd scenes with advanced flocking and crowd simulation software. Virtual sets, in which part or all of the background of a shot is digitally generated, also became commonplace. The timeline of CGI in film and television shows a detailed list of pioneering uses of computer-generated imagery in film and television.

CGI for films is usually rendered at about 1.4�6 megapixels.[citation needed] Toy Story, for example, was rendered at 1536 � 922 (1.42MP). The time to render one frame is typically around 2�3 hours, with ten times that for the most complex scenes. This time has not changed much in the last decade, as image quality has progressed at the same rate as improvements in hardware, since with faster machines, more and more complexity becomes feasible. Exponential increases in GPUs processing power, as well as massive increases in parallel CPU power, storage and memory speed and size have greatly increased CGI's potential.

In 2001, Square Pictures created the CGI film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which made headlines for attempting to create photo-realistic human actors. The film was not a box-office success. Some commentators have suggested this may be partly because the lead CGI characters had facial features which fell into the uncanny valley. Square Pictures produced only two more films using a similar visual style Final Flight of the Osiris, a short film which served as a prologue to The Matrix Reloaded and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, based on their extremely popular video game series.

Developments in CGI technologies are reported each year at SIGGRAPH, an annual conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, attended each year by tens of thousands of computer professionals. Developers of computer games and 3D video cards strive to achieve the same visual quality on personal computers in real-time as is possible for CGI films and animation. With the rapid advancement of real-time rendering quality, artists began to use game engines to render non-interactive movies. This art form is called machinima.

For many years, I have lived uncomfortably with the belief that most planning and architectural design suffers for lack of real and basic purpose. The ultimate purpose, it seems to me, must be the improvement of mankind.
James Rouse

I am but an architectural composer.
Alexander Jackson Davis

I hope that America as a whole, and especially its architects, will become more seriously involved in producing a new architectural culture that would bring the nation to the apex - where it has stood before - and lead the world.
Tadao Ando

I look upon myself as a musical bricklayer with architectural aspirations.
Robert Mayer

I'd say that my profession ends where architectural thinking ends - architectural thinking in terms of thinking about programs and organizational structure. These abstractions play a role in many other disciplines, and those disciplines are now defining their 'architectures' as well.
Rem Koolhaas

I'm not an architectural composer.
Harrison Birtwistle

It fills one with a sense of architectural possibility.
Paul Goldberger

It was always my intention that The Frieze should be housed in a room which would provide a suitable architectural frame for it.
Edvard Munch

Profit and bottom line, the contemporary mantra, eliminates the very source of architectural expression.
Arthur Erickson

Supply and demand regulate architectural form.
Adolf Loos

The center of Western culture is Greece, and we have never lost our ties with the architectural concepts of that ancient civilization.
Stephen Gardiner

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