Time for action – seeing the Triple I demo 1976 – 1979

This video is a compilation of two different demo reels. You can tell the change by the soundtrack. Look at their approach to animation. This was bleeding-edge graphics in its time. The Triple I demo reel shows huge improvements in computer graphics. Objects have solid surfaces, colors, and highlights. Watch this demo reel and notice the improvements since Sketchpad. Compare it to modern computer animation to figure out what is missing:

1. Search on the Web for the term Triple I (1976–1979). YouTube, archive.org, or some other site should have the video.
2. Watch it now and enjoy it.
3. Did you notice the equipment at the very beginning? Do you see the movie camera? How about the data tablet and the keyboard? Can you find the removable discs for data backup and the computer tape drives?
4. Just as we saw an improvement between Felix and Mickey, there's been a lot of advancement from Sketchpad to the Triple I demo reel. What changes do you see?
5. Notice the teapot on the table in one of the scenes? Have you seen it elsewhere?
6. Look at the geometry of the 3D models such as the ABC logo and the Mercedes Benz logo and the building. You can see that the sides are made of flat panels called polygons. What are some of the ways that they play with these polygons to make it more interesting?
7. Compare the animation here with the animation in Felix Turns the Tide. Both are primitive. Are there similarities in how they handle backgrounds? Is Triple I's plastic look equivalent to the line art in Felix because they couldn't do any better?

What just happened?

The first machine you saw was the FR-80 graphics recorder, the most advanced film recorder of its time. Next, you can see a digitizing tablet and a keyboard terminal. The two low machines in the foreground are disk drives. The multi-platter disks had an enormous capacity of 200 MB. Backing up data has always been a problem for animators. What are some of the ways you can back up your work?

This is quite an improvement over the work in Sketchpad but still very stiff. The work on color, lighting, textures, and post processing was all being done for the first time. The animation was still being done by people trained at Cal Tech, not Cal Arts. What is amazing is that this was a professional demo reel. Now, it might not even get you a job as an intern. Back then, it was mind-boggling.

The teapot was created in 1975 at the University of Utah and has become like the mascot of computer graphics. This was a very early use of it, and in this case, it was testing curved surfaces and shading. The teapot makes many appearances in films, including in Toy Story.

Back then, there were no such things as geometric primitives. Each object was digitized vertex by vertex in a similar manner to what was done in Sketchpad. However, the use of the digitizing tablet allowed much more flexibility and precision. The Peter Fonda bust was made by taking aligned photographs of him, mounting the images on a digitizing tablet, and then inputting each vertex one by one, based on the images. It was the first CGI image of a human in a major motion picture.