Computer animation - The first use of 3D wireframe
Time: 1976
Place: U.S.
Details: The first use of 3D wireframe imagery in mainstream cinema was in the sequel to Westworld, Futureworld (1976), directed by Richard T. Heffron. This featured a computer-generated hand and face created by the University of Utah graduate students Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke which had initially appeared in their 1972 experimental short A Computer Animated Hand. The Oscar-winning 1975 short animated film Great, about the life of the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, contains a brief sequence of a rotating wireframe model of Brunel's final project, the iron steamship SS Great Eastern. The third movie to use this technology was Star Wars (1977), written and directed by George Lucas, with wireframe imagery in the scenes with the Death Star plans, the targeting computers in the X-wing fighters, and the Millennium Falcon spacecraft.
Related
1976
