Chris Wallace is President, TOPIX Computer Graphics and Animation, Toronto

Better, cheaper, faster – those were the watchwords that guided topix 10 years ago when we launched the first Wavefront 3D computer graphics and animation company in Toronto.

Omnibus, as some may recall, had gone out of business after a strong run in the early and mid-eighties doing high-profile, high-cost animation for commercials in its Toronto and Los Angeles facilities. Up until then there were no readily available commercial products for sale, and any company that wanted to produce animation or special effects had to create the software routines themselves that allowed them to perform even the most rudimentary tasks.

But a sea change occurred in the production industry in the mid-eighties and it became possible to buy off-the-shelf packages from companies like Alias and Wavefront running on ‘high-end’ Silicon Graphics computers. These turnkey systems let you create computer animation without needing an in-house technical staff of programmers.

Better, cheaper, faster meant that each year from 1986 until today, we watched the computer industry mature so quickly that a desktop computer now (like the Mac I’m using ) has more processing power than the high-end system that topix bought in 1986. And the price for all that power then was a mind-blowing $150,000 not to mention the 3D software applications that cost half as much again.

‘Honey, is it ok if we remortgage the house?’

And what did that get you? Well, there was a heavy emphasis on ‘flying logos,’ especially popular in gold, silver, glass and the perennial favorite, marble.

And why did people do it? Because the mind set of people using the new computer graphics systems came from the world of online black-box systems, like the Dubner Character Generator. A character generator did exactly what its name implies, and Wavefront and Alias let you do it in 3D – cool! Not really. Because soon there were too many bad looking graphics cluttering up our television screens.

Yet faster computers and the accompanying software programs were also becoming very good at simulating real-life properties and the look of computer animation became more and more believable.

Programmers, the earliest users of the technology, gave way to artists and animators who started using the systems to produce photo-real worlds where impossible things could happen. Soon we had legions of spaceships joining in the on-screen fun with the flying logos and, even better for topix, packs of Lifesavers pounding out music on piano keys.

The pace of change in technology grew quicker and quicker and each year the engineers at Silicon Graphics doubled and tripled the speed and capability of the previous year’s systems. At the same time, costs were coming down so that by 1990 topix was able to buy hardware that performed at 50 times the speed of our 1986 systems for a third of the price.

Not everyone warmed to the idea of using cgi (computer-generated imagery, as it was coming to be known) because it had a cold, unnatural feel and cameramen and directors felt that computers couldn’t replace many of the classic production methods.

There was no way that the texture and subtlety of reality as captured on film was ever going to be duplicated by a computer. Computer chess, maybe, but certainly not a Buick or, saya dinosaur.

By the mid-nineties public acceptance was high as computer animation and effects were showing up in feature films, television and commercials. New techniques were being developed that allowed for morphing a scene or animating animals and chrome cops right into the live-action scenes in a movie.

Entire films were generated on computers – Toy Story set new records for film box office receipts. Audiences liked it, they paid to see it, talked about it, it caught their attention. Hollywood wanted it. Agencies wanted it. What developed is a worldwide market, and a seemingly insatiable appetite, for things digital.

Computer animation and effects have found a niche that allows them to create an impossible world that acts according to its own rules or to trick us into seeing things that aren’t really there.

Current research and development is delving into areas like motion capture for automating the animation process and more natural looking physical effects (wind, rain, volumetric lighting, etc.) and human characteristics (hair, skin, kinematics, etc.).

Many of the analog techniques and tools that artists use in production (drawing, painting, film opticals, the media of tape and film) now end up in the digital domain. Computers have advanced the way we work in the post-production world – that environment has become a disc-driven, digital-based technology filled with Flints, Flames and Infernos, Harrys, Henrys, Hals and Harriets.

What is coming up in the future? Developments on many fronts that make it hard to say when and what. But at least we can be sure of one thing: it will be better, cheaper, faster.