This article is from WeChat public account: Academic Headline (ID: SciTouTiao) , author: academic Jun, title figure from: Pixar, Stanford University
ACM (International Computer Association) announced today that it has awarded Patrick M. Hanrahan and Edwin E. Catmull the ACM AM Turing Award 2019, In recognition of their contributions to 3D computer graphics and the revolutionary impact of these technologies on applications such as filmmaking and computer-generated images (CGI) .
Edwin Catmull is a well-known computer scientist, co-founder and former president of Pixar Animation Studios; Patrick Hanrahan is one of the founding employees of Pixar Animation Studios and a professor of Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University.
Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan have fundamentally influenced the field of computer graphics through conceptual innovation and contributions to software and hardware. Their work has revolutionized filmmaking, from 25″Toy Story” started years ago and continues to this day, forming a brand new type of computer animated movie and paving the way for today’s 3D animated movie.
3D computer animated movies are a very popular genre in the $ 138 billion global film industry today. 3D computer graphics are also critical for the booming video game industry and the emerging virtual and augmented reality fields.
Catmull and Hanrahan have made groundbreaking contributions to technology that are still integral to the development of CGI images today. In addition, their insights on programming graphics processing units (programming graphics processing units (GPUs) have affected not only computer graphics but also data centers. Management and artificial intelligence.
ACM also announced that Hanrahan and Catmull will be officially presented at the ACM Annual Awards Banquet in San Francisco, California on Saturday, June 20, 2020, and the two winners will also receive a $ 1 million bonus.
ACM Chairman Cherri M. Pancake said, “CGI has changed the way movies are made and experienced, and it has profoundly affected the wider entertainment industry. We are very excited to recognize Pat Hanrahan and Ed Catmull because computer graphics is ACM One of the largest and most active communities in the world is evidenced by the ACM SIGGRAPH Annual Conference. At the same time, Catmull and Hanrahan’s contributions demonstrate an advance in computing specialization. (Advances in one specialization of computing) can have a significant impact on other areas, such as Hanraha’s work with shading languages for GPUs (Hanrahan’s work with shading languages for GPUs) , Making it a general-purpose computing engine for a wide range of fields, including my own high-performance computing specialty. “
Jeff Dean, a senior researcher at Google and senior vice president of artificial intelligence at Google, said: “Because 3D computer graphics technology is now very popular, we often forget what this field looked like a while ago. Although technology is constantly evolving, Hanrahan and The technology developed by Catmull decades ago is still the standard in this field, which impresses people. Recognize the scientific contribution of CGI technology and let the public know that such a future will affect virtual and augmented reality , Data visualization, education, medical imaging and many other fields are very important.
“Pat Hanrahan’s work in 3D modeling and image rendering is very outstanding. This is to enable computers to represent graphics visually and to allow people and computers to interact graphically. It has a wide range of applications, including: computer imaging, Three-dimensional animation and even network image transmission fall into this category. This is why Hanrahan has become the chief scientist of several companies. “Said Tang Jie, a professor of computer science at Tsinghua University.
Two big guys, a history of 3D animated movies
Catmull received his PhD in computer science from the University of Utah in 1974. His mentors include Ivan Sutherland, the father of computer graphics and the 1988 ACM A.M. Turing Award winner.
In his doctoral dissertation, Catmull introduced two groundbreaking techniques to display surface patches instead of polygons: a Z-buffer for managing image depth coordinates in computer graphics. (Z-buffering) ; and texture mapping that maps 2D surface textures on 3D objects (texture mapping) span>.
At the University of Utah, Catmull also created a new way to represent a smooth surface by specifying a rough polygon mesh. Catmull’s technology has played a role in developing photorealistic graphics and anti-aliasing (a feature of original computer graphics, rough edges around graphics) Important role.
After leaving the University of Utah, Catmull founded the New York Institute of Technology’s (NYIT) Computer Graphics Lab, the earliest dedicated computer graphics experiment in the United States Room one. At that time, Catmull dreamed of making a computer-animated movie.
In 1979, Star Wars director George Lucas hired Catmull, bringing him one step closer to his animated film dream. At Lucas Films (LucasFilm) , Catmull and colleagues continued to develop innovative technologies for 3D computer graphics animation, while the industry was still traditionally 2D Dominated by technology.
In 1986, Steve Jobs (Steve Jobs) acquired Lucas Films (LucasFilm) and renamed it Pixar, with Catmull as president.
And Pat Hanrahan is Catmull running Pixar Animation StudiosFirst employees.
Hanrahan received his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985, and worked briefly at NYIT’s computer graphics laboratory before joining Pixar Animation Studios.
During Pixar Animation Studios, Hanrahan was the lead architect of a new type of graphics system that uses realistic material properties and light to render curved shapes. A key idea of this system (later called RenderMan) is the shader ( For coloring CGI images) . RenderMan’s capabilities separate light reflection behavior from geometric shapes and calculate the color, transparency, and texture of points on the shape. The RenderMan system also incorporates Z-buffering and subdivision surface innovations from Catmull’s earlier contributions in this area.
During his work at Pixar, Hanrahan also developed volume rendering (volume rendering) technology, which enables CGI artists to render 3D datasets 2D projection, such as smoking.
In Hanrahan’s most-cited paper, Hanrahan and co-author Marc Levoy introduce a light-field rendering technique that enables new views to be generated from arbitrary points without depth information or feature matching. The viewer feels they are crossing the scene. Hanrahan has also developed techniques that use subsurface scattering to depict skin and hair, and use Monte Carlo ray tracing to render complex lighting effects (so-called global illumination) Or GI) .
In 1990, Hanrahan published his RenderMan research in a seminal paper. At this point, it is still five years before computer hardware has developed to the point where Hanrahan’s RenderMan system can be used to make a complete 3D computer animated movie, Toy Story.
Under Catmull, Pixar produced using RenderMan technology