Computer-generated imageryThe seawater creature in The Abyss marked CGI's acceptance in the visual effects industry.Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the application of the field of computer graphics (or more specifically 3D computer graphics) to special effects. CGI is used in movies, television programs and commercials, and in printed media. Real-time computer graphics, such as those in video games, are rarely referred to as CGI.
CGI is used because it is often cheaper than physical methods, such as constructing elaborate miniatures for effects shots or hiring a great deal of extras for crowd scenes, and because it allows the creation of images that would not be feasible using any other method. It can also allow a single artist to produce content without the use of actors or other contributors to the project.
2D CGI was first used in movies in 1973's Westworld, though the first use of 3D 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 first two films to make heavy investments in 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. Photorealistic CGI did not win over the motion picture industry until 1989, when The Abyss won the Academy Award for Visual Effects. Industrial Light and Magic produced photorealistic CGI visual effects, including a seawater creature lovingly dubbed the water weenie, for the film.
2D CGI increasingly appeared in "traditional" animated films, where it supplemented the use of hand-illustrated cels. Its uses ranged from digital tweening motion between frames, to eye-catching quasi-3D effects such as the ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast.
Toy Story was the first fully computer-generated feature film.In 1995, the first fully computer-generated feature film, Pixar's Toy Story, was a resounding commercial success. Additional digital animation studios such as Blue Sky Studios (Fox) and Pacific Data Images (Dreamworks SKG) went into production, and existing animation companies such as Disney 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. [1] (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/fxgods.html)
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 that were nearly indistinguishable from the actors they replaced. Computer-generated extras also became used extensively in crowd scenes. The timeline of CGI in movies 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. Toy Story, for example, was rendered at 1536 × 922. The time to render one frame is typically around 2-3 hours, with ten times that for the most complex scenes. This time hasn't changed much in the last decade, as image quality progressed at the same rate as improvements in hardware.
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.
Pixel
(PIX [picture] ELement) Generally, the smallest addressable unit on a display screen or bitmapped image. Screens are rated by their number of horizonal and vertical pixels; for example, 1024x768 means 1024 pixels are displayed in each row, and there are 768 rows (lines). Likewise, bitmapped images are sized in pixels: a 350x250 image has 350 pixels across and 250 down.
With color systems, each pixel contains red, green and blue subpixels, and the subpixel is actually the smallest addressable unit. The monitor's circuits address subpixels, and the software may also.
Pixel Structures
In storage, pixels are made up of one or more bits. The greater this "bit depth," the more shades or colors can be represented. The most economical system is monochrome, which uses one bit per pixel (on/off). Gray scale and color typically use 4 to 24 bits per pixel, providing 16 to 16 million colors. See bit depth.
Displaying the Pixel
On a display screen, pixels are either phosphor or liquid crystal elements. For monochrome, the element is either energized fully or not. For gray scale, the pixel is energized with different intensities, creating a range from light to dark. For color displays, the red, green and blue subpixels are each energized to a particular intensity, and the combination of the three color intensities creates the perceived color to the eye. See resolution and vertex shader.
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