The history of 3-D animation closely follows the advances in computer software that enabled it. Graphical interfaces began to be used after the launch of the first personal computer, the Apple Macintosh, in 1984. Programs such as Aldus Pagemaker, later to become Adobe Pagemaker, enabled artists to lay out and manipulate graphics in ways that had never been done digitally. These images could then be encoded and printed in 2-D. The invention of scanners also allowed images to be imported into the digital realm to be manipulated, further enhancing tools available to digital 3-D artists. According to Your3Dsource.com, it was the development of Photoshop software for work at Industrial Light and Magic that really launched the digital darkroom.
"Tron" (1982) was the first movie to use 3-D animation techniques, according to Virtualunderworld.net. The 1980s and early 1990s saw incremental advances in 3-D technologies, notably with CGI (computer generated imagery) battle sequences in movies such as "The Last Starfighter" (1984); Pixar's first totally 3D animated short, "The Adventures of Andre and Wally B." (1984); "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), which used 3-D elements to enhance a 2-D animated feature; and "Jurassic Park" (1994), the first use of organic CGI in a movie with the 3-D animated dinosaurs.
With the release of "Toy Story" in 1995, the bar was raised. This was the first 3-D animated feature, and the technology for it won John Lasseter a special Academy Award. Pixar and Disney continued to dominate the 3-D animation landscape with films including "A Bug's Life" (1998), "Toy Story 2" (1999), "Monsters, Inc." (2001) and "The Incredibles" (2004). Pacific Data Images (PDI) along with DreamWorks provided competition with their releases of "Shrek" (2001), "Shrek 2" (2004) and "Shark Tale" (2004). Sony's "The Polar Express" (2004) was the first time "performance capture" was used, which according to Virtualunderworld.net, "not only works with (captures) body movement, but also face movement and expression." New movies from both the "Shrek" and "Toy Story" franchises, as well as many other 3-D animated films, were scheduled to be released in 2010.
The process of creating 3-D graphics for animation involves the following steps: forming the shape of the object, or modeling; animating the model; and rendering the model into an image, which can then be projected onto a two-dimensional space. Computers figure heavily, in that the modeling is done either in the computer itself using software or by scanning an image of a 3-D object into the computer. Then, again using specialized software, the objects are placed and animated within the scene. Finally, once created and placed, they are rendered using additional programs into images that appear to be in 3-D.
James Cameron, director of "Avatar," said that "certainly every film I'm planning to do will be in 3-D." ("Time" magazine; "Are 3-D Movies Ready for Their Closeup?"; Josh Quittner; March 19, 2009). With statements such as this, the future looks bright for the technology. In the same article, Jeffrey Katzenberg, head of DreamWorks Animation, said he's repositioned the studio as a 3-D Animation studio, and thinks 3-D will be "as big an innovation in movies as were sound and color."