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As the cost of location filming inevitably escalates in the coming years, the cost of computer graphics will inevitably drop. The hardware is getting both cheaper and more powerful, while the software for generating the images becomes more sophisticated. We will soon see computer generated imagery used routinely in all kinds of films, not just for spectacular special effects. At the same time, the imagery is changing from the sanitary, airless, mechanistic look associated with computers, to the natural. Mountains, oceans, gardens, even animals and people will be possible before the decade ends. The microelectronic revolution is surpassing the industrial revolution in both the speed and breadth of the cultural and technological changes it brings. This impact has begun to be strongly felt in video of course, and the handwriting is on the walls of the motion picture studios, the problem is that the movie industry is very conservative when it comes to new ways of doing things (an understandable survival tactic in many situations) and prior to IRON, has shown near zero interest in computer imagery, so all advances in computer imaging have been made by people in other fields, such as educational institutions and the automobile and aircraft industries. But, that is changing. If you shake a person hard enough they will wake up, and the movie community is stirring, to find that the early birds are already busy.
Without getting bogged down in technicalities, a brief review of what makes computer graphics tick is in order. How does a big box full of electronics produce a photographic image that looks like a real scene? The objects in the scene must first be described to the computer by the user with one of several methods; the" most frequently used is point by point plotting on a sort of electronic drafting board called a data tablet. The object, a car for instance, is drawn in front, back, top, bottom and side views so that the computer gets a geometric description of the object formed in its memory. Alternatively, the object might be "built" out of primitive shapes, much like playing with a set of electronic blocks. One way or the other, all the elements of the scene are fed into the computer and...