Computer graphics techniques and computer-generated movies

Abstract The JPL Computer Graphics Laboratory (CGL) has been using advanced computer graphics for more than ten years to simulate space missions and related activities. Applications have ranged from basic computer graphics used interactively to allow engineers to study problems, to sophisticated color graphics used to simulate missions and produce realistic animations and stills for use by NASA and the scientific press. In addition, the CGL did the computer animation for “Cosmos”, a series of general science programs done for Public Television in the United States by Carl Sagan and shown world-wide. The CGL recently completed the computer animation for “The Mechanical Universe”, a series of fifty-two half-hour elementary physics lectures, led by Professor David Goodstein of the California Institute of Technology, and now being shown on Public Television in the US. For this series, the CGL produced more than seven hours of computer animation, averaging approximately eight minutes and thirty seconds of computer animation per half-hour program. Our aim at the JPL Computer Graphics Laboratory (CGL) is the realistic depiction of physical phenomena, that is, we deal primarily in “science education” rather than in scientific research. Of course, our attempts to render physical events realistically often require the development of new capabilities through research or technology advances, but those advances are not our primary goal.