Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

John Knoll on CGI, Tron And 25 Years of Change

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the dusting-off-the-mcp dept.

StonyandCher writes to tell us John Knoll, visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic, is using the 25th anniversary of Tron as a platform to look back at the last 25 years of visual effects. "The type of imagery that was possible to create at the time was very clearly computer generated; it wasn't going to fool anybody into thinking it was live action. That was a limitation of the technology that worked very well within the story, that fit right in and made a lot of sense: if you're telling a story about events taking place inside a computer, inside a big virtual environment, what techniques should you use? Parts of the film were done by shooting live action then doing rotoscope and other optical techniques over the top of it, but the stuff that really looked cool and stood out was the stuff that was computer generated."

1 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. CGI, what's that. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Maybe using an acronym in the title isn't such a good idea. (Unless your idea is to attract reader by confusing them.)

    CGI may mean:

            * Computer-generated imagery, a film-making technology
            * Common Gateway Interface, a technology used in web servers
                        o CGI.pm, a Perl module used for dealing with it
            * CGI Group, a Canadian headquartered information management company (formerly Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique C.G.I. Inc.)
            * Computer graphics interface, a low-level interface between the Graphical Kernel System and the hardware
            * Clinical Global Impression, a scale to assess treatment response associated with mental disorders
            * Clinton Global Initiative, a forum created by former President Bill Clinton to discuss global problems
            * Corrugated Galvanised Iron, molded sheet-metal
            * Cape Girardeau Regional Airport (IATA airport code: CGI) in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, United States
            * Cuerpo Guardia de Infantería, an Argentine police riot control service
            * Stratified Charged Gasoline Injection, a gasoline direct injection by the German automobile and truck manufacturer DaimlerChrysler for Spark-ignition-Engines
            * Championship Gaming Invitational, a Video Game tournament themed show shown on DirecTV
            * Cell Global Identify, unique identifier of a cell site in cellular networks such as GSM and UMTS

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGI

    Tron? Many /. readers weren't even born when Tron came out.