Xref: utzoo rec.arts.startrek:14685 comp.graphics:3210 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!epicb!david From: david@epicb.UUCP (David P. Cook) Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek,comp.graphics Subject: Re: Star Trek II graphics: "The Genesis Effect" Keywords: star trek graphics genesis Message-ID: <523@epicb.UUCP> Date: 19 Sep 88 14:10:26 GMT References: <277@pte.UUCP> Reply-To: david@epicb.UUCP (David P. Cook) Organization: Truevision Inc., Indianapolis, IN Lines: 33 In article <277@pte.UUCP> car@pte.UUCP (Chris Rende) writes: >The cover of the book "The Unix Operating System" by Kaare Christian features >a scenic view of a lake and some mountains. The book describes picture as >"a single frame of a one-minute sequence known as the _Genesis Effect_, which >was created in 1982 for the motion picture _Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan_". >The book goes on to explain that the computer group at Lucasfilm used computer >graphics to create the one-minute 1620 frame sequence. No artwork or physical >models were used. > >And of course what operating system was used? UNIX. It took up to 5 hours and >50 programs to produce a single frame. What's your point??? (Pro or Anti UNIX???) The system used to generate the Genesis Effect was a novel application of the original particle system developed by ILM/PIXAR... it is well described in Siggraph liturature. I doub't UNIX played any part of this footage except to shuttle stuff back and forth, and generally, to make the process longer than needed... Somehow, I think this was your point!!! The article describing the particle system is fantastic, and filled with lots of 'goodies'. Including the method they used by which they could go generate any frame of the genesis explosion... even though it was filled with millions of 'random' particles... they could say... go to frame 1:00:30 (in time) and the system would automatically generate the frame exactly... even though the frame was not stored in memory, but recalculated... incredible... and useful... -- | David P. Cook Net: uunet!epicb!david | | Truevision Inc. | "Specialization is for insects" | | Indianapolis, IN | -- Timothy Leary | -----------------------------------------------------------