love with it,
it just blew everything else away.
'Cause here was a program in which
there was art, science, programming,
all together in one place, in a new field,
and it was wide open.
You could just go out
and discover things and explore,
you were right at the frontier.
NARRATOR: Ed's computer-animated
film of his own left hand
was the first step in the development
of creating curved surfaces,
wrapping texture
around those surfaces,
and eliminating jagged edges.
The footage debuted years later
in the science-fiction film Futureworld,
which became the first use
of 3-D animation in a live-action film.
Ed graduated with a PhD
in a new technology ahead of its time.
There was only one institution
in the country
willing to put millions of dollars
into its further development.
The word of any center of activity
spread rapidly,
and it quickly became known
that the place was New York Tech.
CATMULL: There the charter was
"Let's make computer graphics
usable in filmmaking. "
That's exactly what I wanted to do.
NARRATCR: Alex Schure,
the president of New York Tech,
hired Ed to spearhead the new
computer graphics department
to develop paint programs
and other tools
to create art and animation
using the computer.
Ed himself developed software
called "Tween"
that transformed hand-drawn
animation into a digital medium.
Artists could now draw and paint
directly into the computer.
We were creating a revolution
and the older techniques
were really gonna be passe.
NARRATOR: These developments led
Ed to the far-reaching goal of someday
creating the first feature-length,
computer-animated film.
SCHURE: We were impacting
the conventional industry
and it was gonna be tremendous
because of the applications
that it would have.
NARRATOR: The applications
of Ed's developments
led Stor Wars director, George Lucas,
to see their potential
in live-action filmmaking.
LUCAS: After I did Stor Wars,
I decided that I would begin to move
into the world of computer animation.
We had made this computer controlled,
motion-control camera,
but I really wanted
to get to the next level.
I had a lot of ideas
that couldn't be conquered
in the traditional film technology.
NARRATOR: George Lucas brought
Ed Catmull aboard
to form a new computer division
at Lucasfilm
to invent digital production tools,
including a new digital-editing system
called EditDroid,
a digital sound system,
a laser scanner
and a powerful graphics computer.
Ed recruited the most talented team
of computer scientists
to create the futuristic tools for Lucas.
ROB COOK: Everybody who did it
got there in some really odd way.
People came from architecture,
from physics,
from art, from computer science,
from everywhere,
and somehow ended up
in this new area.
At that time
there was almost no graphics,
it was a pretty small thing.
And we were inventing
the techniques we were using.
We had no computers.
My wife remembers those days
because I came home at night, right?
You know? I didn't have any computer
to stay and hack on
or anything like that,
so I'd come home at regular hours
and she woes the days
when we started getting computers
and I would get carried away.
LUCAS: They really were kind of
the outlaw outfit, the rebel group,
and so that was kind of fun
because, you know,
we were doing all these things
that nobody really
understood the value of.
COOK: There was a big
breakthrough to start
doing things that were more artistic.
VoI Llbre, Loren Carpenter's film
in 1 980, was a huge deal,
and not just because
it illustrated his academic technique,
but it was a huge deal
because it was a work of art.
CARPENTER: I've always been
interested in what's possible,
and, what's beyond
the boundary of what's known.
When I came to Lucasfilm,
these people were all very good,
and it was refreshing and exhilarating.
COOK: Even in those days,
everybody's dream
was to make a feature-length