Digital Productions was a computer animation company in Los Angeles, California , that produced advertisements and special effects for films in the 1980s.
21-528: The company was founded by John Whitney, Jr. and Gary Demos in 1982, following their departure from Triple-I . They received financial support from Control Data Corporation . Whitney and Demos felt that greater computer power was needed to produce effects such as those being made by Triple-I for Tron ; Digital Productions became famous for using a Cray X-MP supercomputer to render their animations. The company referred to its animation as "Digital Scene Simulation." Digital Productions first feature film project
42-552: A maximum resolution of 16384x16384, making it an ideal system for generating either Computer Output Microfilm (COM), computer-to-film negatives for making printing plates , and other computer-generated graphics. However, Triple-I is most notable for its commercially unsuccessful ventures; a number of one-or-two of a kind systems which included CRT based computer displays used at the Stanford AI Lab , an OCR system based on PDP-10's (two were sold), and The Foonly F-1 - which
63-568: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Information International, Inc. Information International, Inc. , commonly referred to as Triple-I or III , was an early computer technology company . The company was founded by Edward Fredkin in 1962 in Maynard, Massachusetts . It then moved (serially) to Santa Monica, Culver City, and Los Angeles California. Triple-I merged with Autologic, Inc. in 1996, becoming Autologic Information International Inc. (AIII). The combined company
84-585: The Pasadena Star-News became the first newspaper to produce full pages electronically, a process of pagination that is now universal among large dailies worldwide. The system was renamed NPS, for Newspaper Publishing System, which The Wall Street Journal later used an adapted version to produce the first " computer-to-plate " system, whereby computer technology produced printing plates that could be mounted on newspaper presses. But Triple-I missed several technology changes which caused its downturn in
105-712: The MIT Architecture Machine Group , and then at Triple-I integrated it into their Digital Scene Simulation System. Larry Malone developed 3D modeling software for the Tektronix 4014 display. Tom McMahon developed a memory-mapped thousand line RGB framebuffer for the Foonly, one of the earliest framebuffers in that class. In 1982, the management of Triple-I decided to shut down the Motion Pictures Product Group. Triple-I
126-620: The 1982 film Tron , they hired four companies to create the 2D computer animation — Triple-I, MAGI , Robert Abel and Associates , and Digital Effects . Triple-I and MAGI were responsible for the majority of the roughly thirty minutes of computer animation. Triple-I created the Master Control Program , the Solar Sailer, and Sark's Carrier. Whitney and Demos left before the end of work on Tron , to found Digital Productions . Partly due to their departure, Triple-I
147-696: The 1990s. DHSS The Department of Health and Social Security (commonly known as the DHSS ) was a ministry of the British government in existence for twenty years from 1968 until 1988, and was headed by the Secretary of State for Social Services . In 1953, the Ministry of Pensions and the Ministry of National Insurance were merged to create the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance . In 1966,
168-717: The Supplementary Benefits Commission (part of the National Assistance Board ) was merged with the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance to form the new Ministry of Social Security , as part of the Ministry of Social Security Act 1966 . In 1968, the Ministry of Social Security and the Ministry of Health were dissolved and their functions merged into a new Department of Health and Social Security by an Order in Council which came into operation on 1 November 1968. Although
189-539: The department was titled 'Department of Health and Social Security', the title of the cabinet minister with responsibility for the department was 'secretary of state for social services'. In 1988 the department was split again into a separate Department of Health and the Department of Social Security . In 2001 the Department for Work and Pensions was formed from the Department of Social Security, absorbing
210-521: The early 1970s for animation, including the first use of computer imaging in a feature film — the "android vision" effect in Westworld . In 1974, Demos and Whitney convinced Triple-I to establish the Motion Pictures Product Group. In 1976, they scanned and animated Peter Fonda 's head for Futureworld , the first appearance of 3D computer graphics in a film. They created an early demo animation called " Adam Powers, The Juggler "; this animation
231-458: The employment functions which had previously been the responsibility of the Department for Education and Employment since the dissolution of the Department of Employment in 1995. Even two and a half decades after its abolition, the initials "DHSS" continue to be used by the general public to describe the Department for Work and Pensions or some of the benefits it provides (such as Income Support ). This article related to government in
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#1732798814575252-511: The publishing industry's gold standard for digital-to-film applications. The company also manufactured film scanners using special cameras fitted with photomultiplier tubes as the image sensor, for digitizing existing films and paper documents. One such successful product of theirs using their precision CRT technology was their FR-80 film recorder introduced in 1968. It was capable of recording black and white (and later color as an option) digital imagery to motion picture or still transparency film at
273-858: The time, and one half to one third the cost, that would have been required if then-traditional methods had been used. Other work done by the company includes effects for Labyrinth , 2010 , and Mick Jagger 's "Hard Woman" music video. In 1986, Digital Productions was bought out by Omnibus Computer Graphics in Toronto for 6 million US$ , who also took over Robert Abel and Associates (7.3 million US$ ) and purchased Triple-I's Foonly computer, all using money from Royal Bank of Canada . Next year in May 1987, Omnibus Computers Graphics defaulted on its loan agreements and with 30 million US$ debt, closed its doors in October 1987. This computer graphics –related article
294-521: The use of PDP-10's directly enabled Triple-I's involvement with computer animation. Triple-I's work in computer animation done by the Motion Pictures Product Group, is probably the most notable first from Triple-I, at least if measured by the eventual success of the technology. They created some of the first computer-generated special effects for major motion pictures, and employed a number of computer graphics pioneers. Computer animators Gary Demos and John Whitney Jr. began using equipment at Triple-I in
315-515: Was a paper-to-digital-to-paper system for reworking U.S. Navy aircraft maintenance manuals, which involved filming and scanning paper manuals, capturing the many diagrams in digital form, and reading the accompanying text. The second was a hand-print recognition system sold to the British DHSS in 1976, which captured data from benefit forms. While none of the OCR research had any lasting impact,
336-474: Was also heavily involved in electronic pre-press systems. Its Automated Illustrated Documentation System, or AIDS, produced technical documents, initially for the aerospace industry. The company manufactured a variety of output devices that could create entire pages with graphic to Microfiche , 16 or 35mm films or truesize film. Later this technology was adopted by Time and Newsweek magazines. In 1982, this technology produced another first for Triple-I when
357-766: Was later used in Miramar's short film All Shapes and Sizes as well as referenced by Pixar 's short film Red's Dream . They were also responsible for effects in the film Looker , and animation tests for films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars . Circa 1976, prior to becoming an artist-in-residence at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory , pioneering computer artist David Em spent nights at Triple-I for eighteen months, learning to use their systems and create his first 3D, shaded, digital imagery. When Disney began production of
378-401: Was purchased by Agfa-Gevaert in 2001. In the early 1960s, Information International Inc. contributed several articles by Ed Fredkin, Malcolm Pivar, and Elaine Gord, and others, in a major book on the programming language LISP and its applications. Triple-I's commercially successful technology was centered around very high precision CRTs, capable of recording to film; which for a while were
399-451: Was the hyperspace sequence in the film, "The Ice Pirates" then went on to create 27 minutes of animation, in 300 scenes, for the film The Last Starfighter . Each frame of the animation contained an average of 250,000 polygons , and had a resolution of 3000 x 5000 36-bit pixels ; they claimed that the imagery was 50 times more complex than the graphics in previous feature films. They estimated that using computer animation required only half
420-557: Was unable to complete as much of the effects as planned, and MAGI took over some of the work. Triple-I sponsored the construction of the Foonly F-1 , the fastest PDP-10 ever made. Jim Blinn , Frank Crow , and others developed the company's rendering software TRANEW for the Foonly. Craig Reynolds created the Actor/Scriptor Animation System (ASAS), a procedural animation language based on LISP , at
441-404: Was used for movie special effects. Triple-I had a very ambitious OCR group which used their core film scanning technology, graphic displays, and a custom binary image processor (BIP); all interfaced to a PDP-10 timesharing computer with much custom software. Although it was continuously under development over a period of over ten years, only two actual systems were ever sold. The first (circa 1974)
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