New York Institute of Technology (NYIT)

Alex Schure, a wealthy entrepreneur from Westbury New York, was interested in making a feature length movie, and wanted to use computers to do it. In 1974, he made a committment to the project by establishing the Computer Graphics Laboratory at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), which he founded and was president of. He put together the most sophisticated studio of the time, employing CGI equipment and state of the art computers, but also top end analogue devices for doing special effects. He also was interested in the top talent, and travelled to the University of Utah to find them. He hired Ed Catmull (then at Applicon) to run his facility, who was soon joined by Lance Williams, Fred Parke, Garland Stern, and others from Utah. He also attracted other technology experts and artists, including Ralph Guggenheim, Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Emshwiller.

The staff at NYIT were very prolific in the design of influential software during the period from 1975 to 1979, including the animation program Tween, the paint program Paint, the animation program SoftCel, and others. They also contributed to image techniques involving fractals, morphing, image compositing, texture mapping (the famous Mip-Map approach) and many others. The Paint program was sold to Ampex and became the main components of the Ampex AVA system which was used by artist LeRoy Niemann to do interactive painting during Superbowl 78. The scan and paint system eventually became the CAPS system used at Disney. A New York City office was established to market and sell the technology developed in Westbury. Called CGL, it focused on the emerging television advertising and promotions industry.

A great deal of effort at NYIT went into the development of the film "The Works", which was written by Lance Williams. For many reasons, including a lack of film-making expertise, it was never completed. Sequences from the work in progress still stand as some of the most astounding animated imagery of the time. The quality of the imagery, along with the other work at NYIT attracted the attention of George Lucas, who was interested in developing a CGI special effects facility at his company Lucasfilm. He recruited the top talent from NYIT, including Catmull, Smith and Guggenheim to start his division, which eventually spun off as Pixar.

A great compilation of NYIT information can be found at Paul Heckbert's site at

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ph/nyit/

Frame from Sunstone, by Ed Emshwiller

Paint program used for animated sequences

Curved shadows, Lance Williams

Compositing CGI over live action

Mip-mapping the NYIT frog

Inside a Quark, Ned Greene

Kraftwerk, Rebecca Allen

Kraftwerk, Rebecca Allen

Rasberries of Kyoto

Mondo condo, Ned Greene

Rotating Masks, Rebecca Allen (for Will Powers)

Robot with wallpaper, Ned Greene

Dimetrodon, Dick Lunden