Turing Prize goes to Pixar Computer Graphics Pioneers

[BillTre]

TL;DR

Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan got the Turing Prize for this year.
They pioneered graphics for movie use.

Here is a NY Times article on this.
They were recognized for their work on three-dimensional computer graphics and get $1,000,000.
Besides Hollywood special effects, their techniques are used in video games, and virtual reality (more useful now in the age of social distancing).

When they started, the young researchers hoped to make a full-length feature entirely from images generated by a computer. Dr. Hanrahan did not think they would reach this goal, but he felt they might as well get started.

“I didn’t think it would be possible in my lifetime, but I could spend the rest of my life working on it,” Dr. Hanrahan, 64, said in an interview.

After joining Pixar in 1986, he oversaw the development of a graphics system called RenderMan, building on more than a decade of work by Dr. Catmull and others. RenderMan played a key role in the making of “Toy Story” and the many Pixar features that followed, generating increasingly realistic 3-D animation. But its effect on the movie business extended well beyond characters like Woody and Buzz Lightyear.

Even before the release of “Toy Story,” RenderMan was used to create special effects for seminal films such as James Cameron’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park.” Later, it fed the creation of movies like “Avatar,” “Titanic” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

 

[anorlunda]

Kudos to the winners. Thanks for sharing.

I lament that they never gave Dan Bricklin an award for Visicalc. It was as important to history as movie graphics, but I think the Turing judges had stuffed shirts back than.

Also, Microsoft Solitaire taught computer literacy to more people than any other single thing. But horrors , the thought of an award for Microsoft is out of the question.

Forgive my rant. I'm biased. I believe that many professional societies have been captured by academia, and have thus become irrelevant.