A History of CGRG/ACCAD at
The Ohio State University

In 1984, Ohio State University competed for an NSF supercomputer center, but were unsuccessful. So the University took the proposal to the state legislature, who established the Ohio Supercomputer as a state center in 1987. One of the reasons for the success of the proposal was the connection with Ohio State's very highly regarded Computer Graphics Research Group, which became the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design at about the same time. The connection was made formal when the Ohio Supercomputer Graphics Project of ACCAD was made part of the OSC structure. Researchers from OSGP set out to develop a visualization package based on the dataflow paradigm, and in 1988 the apE (animation production Environment) software was released. It was originally distributed free of charge to any users who wanted to use it, and it allowed for these users to write their own modules to extend the capabilities. apE was the precursor for several commercial scientific visualization products, including AVS and Explorer.

In 1991 OSC decided to commercialize this popular free software, and contracted with Taravisuals, Inc. to maintain and distribute it. Unfortunately, at about the same time, Iris Explorer was released and was freely bundled with the SGI workstation, one of the more popular apE platforms, and the apE effort was discontinued.

D. Scott Dyer. A dataflow toolkit for visualization. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 10(4):60--69, July 1990

Researchers at OSGP included Scott Dyer (Nelvana), Bob Marshall, Peter Carswell, Barbara Dean, Jeff Faust, Jeff Light (ILM), John Berton (ILM), Steve Anderson (Electronic Arts), Joan Staveley and others at the Ohio Supercomputer Graphics Project (OSGP) who contributed significant results for apE.

OSGP Personnel
Bottom row - Steve Spencer, Jeff Light, Joan Staveley
Middle row - John Berton, Pete Carswell, Michelle Messenger, Barb Helfer
Top row - Steve Anderson, John Donkin, Jeff Faust, Jill Kempf, Bob Marshall

Screen shot from apE from the Ohio Supercomputer Graphics Project at Ohio State

Several other computer graphics activities were also taking place at Ohio State in parallel with the CGRG/ACCAD program. They all involved collaboration to some degree, but were focused on different applications of the technology.

• Chris Yessios was the first PhD under Chuck Eastman at Carnegie Mellon in 1973. His interest was in the area of automated design using computers, and he brought that interest with him to a faculty appointment at Ohio State's School of Architecture. He started a special program in the School in 1978, providing an opportunity for graduate students to specialize in Computer Aided Design and Drafting, at first using a Tektronix display and an IBM mainframe. With the introduction of personal computers, in particular the Macintosh, Yessios and his students saw an opportunity to extend the CAD technology and began rewriting much of the software that was used on the mainframe. In 1990 he and a student, Dave Kropp, formed a company called autodessys (AUTOmated DESign SYStems ) to take this software to the commercial world, and the result is the form•z software environment. autodessys was formally incorporated in 1991.
• As ACCAD began focusing more on the connection between the computer and the arts, Rick Parent left to become a faculty member in the Department of Computer and Information Science, and started building a viable program of computer graphics within the Department. Whereas many of his students remained connected with ACCAD, others developed a research environment that could support their more specific computer science research directions. Wayne Carlson joined the CIS program briefly before moving to ACCAD as its Director, and Roni Yagel was hired from SUNY Stonybrook to head up the evolving visualization program. Roger Crawfis later came to OSU CIS from Lawrence Livermore. More details of the CIS program can be found at the CIS CG Lab web site. (Early CIS graphics faculty included Tony Lucido, Frank Crow, Parent, Carlson, and Ed Tripp.)
• The Center for Mapping was established as a NASA Commercial Space Center to develop technologies related to remote sensing, geodesy, geographic information systems, image processing, and other areas, including graphical representation of geographic information.

For more information:

Go to ACCAD Home Page

Some CGRG/ACCAD movie clips

Some more CGRG/ACCAD/CCP images

Created: 10/97

Updated: 08/03

email: Wayne Carlson