That's not AI. That's still people manipulating other people.
Bridge Stations: TV Show vs. Realism
- Thread starter ZapBrannigan
- Start date
Futureworld (1976) featured a rasterized animation of Ed Catmull's hand. Catmull had a funny anecdote about that model. Not being an art student, he didn't think to cover his hand in Vaseline before casting it in plaster, and pulled all the little hairs out of his arm getting the plaster off.
Futureworld raster graphics
Catmull original animation (1972)
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People designed the AI to do something that manipulates, which in turn it does, based on how it was programmed. Online services today use rudimentary AI to predict what you might want to hear/see next, which can be used to manipulate the viewer/listener towards content the service wants to push. Was Landru good, but his computer too strict? Or was Landru a tyrant, and the computer did just what he wanted? Is M5 the killer of the Excalibur, or is it Richard Daystrom? The scriptwriters were wise enough to leave that a mystery.
Certainly TOS must have some AI because the computer is used to predict scenarios occasionally, and they'd need video-game-style enemy prediction. I just don't think it would go much beyond that onboard the ship: Mudd's Androids, programmed to serve, still wanted control.
To be clear, nothing I said was meant to criticize TOS or suggest that it is a post-AI world. If the TOS bridge it relied on AI as much as we could suppose from our standpoint today, it would not really be the TOS bridge.
You missed Westworld where they rasterized motion picture film images:
Yep. But fine for a university project, and impossible for a film. I mean...
Transferring the images to film was a task in itself. Because the display hardware never showed the entire image on screen at any one moment, Catmull could see a frame of his work only by taking a long-exposure Polaroid of the screen and looking at the snapshot. Once satisfied, he then shot the footage using a 35mm camera the department rigged to take photographs from a CRT screen.
A friend of mine who used to wrote for Cinefex, etc., tells me:
The thing about vector vs raster may be conflating the issue; I remember several interviews with Larry Cuba (didn’t get to talk with him myself [...]) and the deal was about whether Lucas wanted hidden lines showing or not, and it was an artistic conscious decision to show the hidden lines because he thought it would reflect what an audience expected of such graphics (same thinking probably informs the sound-in-space.)
Anyway, I’m well aware of the state of the art of computer graphics in that era. I am just wondering what the source of this assertion is re Lucas, because the trench animation was rear-projected into the rebel briefing set, which means it was done in 1976.
Regardless of what Lucas was or wasn't shown, I don't think raster was practical in 1976 on a film production's tight schedule, at a reasonable cost, for an extended sequence such as the one in question.
Curious where did you read this? Here?
A clearer copy of the X Wingd appears here at 1:27:
That demo was made in 1978,
Here's the X Wing model used:
Which is very impressive for the time, but executed two years after the Death Star plans animation.
CGI history is fascinating. As a point of reference, THIS was state of the art cutting edge real-time rendered CG animation in 1981.
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@Maurice, I wish I could tell you the exact source of the bit about Lucas, but I've read so much about Star Wars that I wouldn't stand a chance of digging it out at this point—if I even have the document on hand anymore.
The Catmull sample from '72 shows that the technology was long since available for Lucas to have seen it and passed judgment on it. Budget and time constraints could have played a role. Still, I recall reading somewhere that Lucas opted for the vector trench animation because it was more readily identifiable as a computer sim.
The Bell Labs clip above is interesting, however I was not referring to realtime rendering. In college I used a "galley" printer that was much like the CGI printers of the '60s and '70s. It was a box about the size of a large Xerox copier with a high-res B&W CRT in it. Paper rolled from one reel to another over a lens arrangement to create high quality (1200 dpi, if memory serves) "galleys" for mechanical paste up graphics for printing—books, flyers, etc. If one retracted the paper and lifted the lid while running a print, one could watch the dot of light squiggle and trace all over the glass like an oscilloscope.
Yes, CGI history is fascinating, along with the development of non-linear video editors, digital audio workstations and associated technologies. In fact, it is probably more fascinating to look back at it than it was to live through it—at which time I took such developments for granted. "Cool!" Ever seen "music animations" on an oscilloscope? That might be the way the Tektronix animations were done for the original Battlestar Galactica. (I've read only the most superficial articles on that; passing mentions.)
To keep this post "on topic," and if one is looking for "in universe" reasons why people making interstellar flights, like the Enterprise or the Battlestar Galactica, do not have hot computer graphics and talking smartphones like we do, perhaps they never got around to developing such things while fighting Cylons for a thousand yaren, or coping with the likes of Khan Noonian Singh.
The Catmull sample from '72 shows that the technology was long since available for Lucas to have seen it and passed judgment on it. Budget and time constraints could have played a role. Still, I recall reading somewhere that Lucas opted for the vector trench animation because it was more readily identifiable as a computer sim.
The Bell Labs clip above is interesting, however I was not referring to realtime rendering. In college I used a "galley" printer that was much like the CGI printers of the '60s and '70s. It was a box about the size of a large Xerox copier with a high-res B&W CRT in it. Paper rolled from one reel to another over a lens arrangement to create high quality (1200 dpi, if memory serves) "galleys" for mechanical paste up graphics for printing—books, flyers, etc. If one retracted the paper and lifted the lid while running a print, one could watch the dot of light squiggle and trace all over the glass like an oscilloscope.
Yes, CGI history is fascinating, along with the development of non-linear video editors, digital audio workstations and associated technologies. In fact, it is probably more fascinating to look back at it than it was to live through it—at which time I took such developments for granted. "Cool!" Ever seen "music animations" on an oscilloscope? That might be the way the Tektronix animations were done for the original Battlestar Galactica. (I've read only the most superficial articles on that; passing mentions.)
To keep this post "on topic," and if one is looking for "in universe" reasons why people making interstellar flights, like the Enterprise or the Battlestar Galactica, do not have hot computer graphics and talking smartphones like we do, perhaps they never got around to developing such things while fighting Cylons for a thousand yaren, or coping with the likes of Khan Noonian Singh.
I made reference to the real-time rendering as a point of contrast because render time and output method was a huge bottleneck for CGI in that era. (I made a correction above because I confused Gary Demos with Larry Cuba).
Just for fun:
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Just for fun:
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Pixar Tin Toy, the precursor to Toy Story with the scary baby! The people in Toy Story weren't that hot, either. And The Incredibles avoided the issue altogether by making the people highly stylized. But what the heck, you could tell the robots in Westworld by their hands! (Maybe that was the in-joke with the hand in Futureworld?) The fembots in The Six Million Dollar Man were flawless though, until you knocked their faces off.
Right. And because you can't put a Spock or a Commander Data on every ship in the fleet, those jobs usually need to be separated.
Bobs? I'm trying to think who that would be and I'm coming up with Gene, Rick, Brannon, and so on. I can think of Robert Justman, but who would the other "Bob" be?
Look up "Bobiverse" at your favorite book seller, and you will find the series. Bob was the name of the main character. The Von Neumann clones all selected different names, and had variations in character from the original Bob. Those variations appear in book 4 to address the matter of souls—which also turns up in discussions of the Star Trek transporter (wormhole or disintegrator/duplicator).
https://bobiverse.fandom.com/wiki/We_Are_Legion_(We_Are_Bob)_Wiki
Or maybe, I dunno, include a reference to things that are uncommon so people know what you’re talking about.
My humble apologies. It is a popular series, and I mistakenly thought this crowd would be
Granted, it was obscure. But the book series is popular, and I thought this crowd might get it. In fact, searching "Bobs Riker" found it on the third entry.
"Gee, that looks interesting. Maybe I'll read it."
