Pioneers of 3D Graphics

The term "Computer Graphics" was coined by William Fetter as a way of describing his work as Boeing. Where it has gone from there is phenomenal. From the first display of computer animation in the form of a hand and face by Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke to photorealistic animations produced for live action films, CG films and video games.

So we went from this:

A Computer Animated Hand (1972)

To this:

Elsa from Frozen (2013)

Rocket Racoon from Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

From: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

Lara Croft from Tomb Raider: The Definitive Edition (2013)

Now that I've shown some pretty pictures lets go back and look at some Pioneers in the development of 3D Graphics.

Ivan Sutherland

Dr. Ivan Sutherland developed the first interactive drawing-and-design program called sketchpad when he was just a student at MIT. This invention pretty much launched the computer graphics industry as it drew the attention of many people and MIT even produced a TV show for it.

Later on Sutherland went on to work with David Evans and together they founded Evans & Sutherland which commercialised their computer graphics research through products like flight simulators. Their company is still around today as a manufacturer of digital projection systems for planetariums. 

Edwin Catmull

I mentioned this guy before as one of the co-creators of the first animation A Computer Animated Face and Hand (1972). Well, his career in animation didn't end there. Later he went on to be one of the co-founders of Pixar. We all know Pixar as the guys who brought the first fully animated feature film Toy Story (1995). This is what makes him the most known pioneer in computer graphics. 

His greatest contribution to computer graphics however came from his invention of texture mapping, but that wasn't the only thing he did. He also contributed to the development of spatial anti-aliasing algorithms (minimising distortion when representing high resolution images at a lower resolution), the refinement of sub-division surface modelling (representing curved and smooth surfaces with polygons) and pioneering work on the concept of Z-buffering (depth management).

He basically helped to lay the groundwork for the commercial computer graphics industry and the use if animation in the film industry.

Jim Blinn

Blinn started out working at NASA where he worked as a computer graphics expert. His contributions to computer graphics came from his work modifying the Phong reflection model to make the Blinn-Phong shader model and his invention the bump map, which revolutionised the way light interacted with 3D surfaces.

References

Frick, A. (2001). Jim Blinn. Siggraph.org. Retrieved 4 July 2014, from http://www.siggraph.org/conferences/reports/s2001/interview/blinn.html

McCracken, H. (2013). A Talk with Computer Graphics Pioneer Ivan Sutherland | TIME.com. TIME.com. Retrieved 4 July 2014, from http://techland.time.com/2013/04/12/a-talk-with-computer-graphics-pioneer-ivan-sutherland/

Seymour, M. (2012). Founders Series: industry legend Jim Blinn. Fxguide.com. Retrieved 4 July 2014, from http://www.fxguide.com/featured/founders-series-industry-legend-jim-blinn/

Slick, J. (2014). 10 Pioneers in 3D Computer Graphics - The Men Behind the Breakthroughs. About.com 3D. Retrieved 4 July 2014, from http://3d.about.com/od/3d-101-The-Basics/tp/10-Pioneers-In-3d-Computer-Graphics.htm