现代三维动画竟起源于皮克斯的左手

These days we take CGI for granted, with almost every modern movie and video game full of spectacular effects and animation.

现如今，我们认为电脑三维动画理所当然，几乎所有的现代电影和视频游戏都蕴含着奇妙的效果和丰富的动画。

Archive film showing possibly the first example of digital rendering, made by Pixar co-founders Ed Catmull and Fred Parke in 1972, was stumbled upon by the son of Robert Ingebretsen, who also set up the world-famous U.S. studio.

电影资料显示第一次数字渲染可能出现于1972年，由皮克斯公司的共同创始人艾德?凯特摩和弗雷德?帕克制作。是罗伯特?英格布雷森的儿子，也就是举世闻名的美国电影制片厂的建立者偶然发现的。

It has been at the very forefront of 3D animation technology, having produced spectacular films such as Toy Story, The Incredibles and Up, which portray animals and humans in amazing detail.

这一三维动画技术走在世界前沿，造就了很多让人眼前一亮的电影，如：《玩具总动员》和《超人特工队》，这些电影都在细节上很好的刻画了动物和人物。

Pixar’s first foray into computer graphics was, however, a simple hand. Little did Catmull and Parke realise that their technology would become the foundation for all special effects in huge Hollywood movies and countless video games.

皮克斯公司由一只简单的手开始首次涉足电脑绘图。凯特摩和帕克几乎没有意识到这一技术将会奠定众多好莱坞大片和视频游戏特技效果的根基。

Star Wars, Superman and Tron were among the first films to use the technique they invented, while the hand animation itself got a cameo role in 1976’s Futureworld, alongside a computer generated face.

《星球大战》、《超人》和《电子世界争霸战》是第一批运用这一技术的动画片，然而其实一只动画绘制成的手在1976年的《未来世界》就得到一个“配角”角色——出现在由计算机生成的脸旁边。

Ingebretsen’s son, Robby, found the movie in the form of an 8mm reel of tape while rummaging around in his family’s archives. He then digitised it and spliced it together into a short documentary. First it shows the finished hand rotating in 3D space, then explains how the computer built the image using polygon points placed on Catmull's left hand. He said: “It's really neat.”

英格布雷森之子罗比在家族档案中乱翻时发现了这个8毫米长的磁带轴。接着，他将其数码化，拼接成一个短小的纪录片。首先，他显示了三维空间里手旋转的完成，随后解释了如何用电脑对凯特摩的左手进行多边形点定位，从而制作图像。他说：“这真是太棒了！”

Today animators and programmers produce photo-realistic images, but they’re given a helping hand by slightly more powerful computers than were available in 1972. Even super-computers back then only had around 800MB of storage capacity, which even today’s mobile phones surpass.

现在动画师和图像程序员可制作相当逼真的图像，但是他们借助的是比1972年能使用的功能更加强大的电脑。当时的超级电脑运算速度才只能达到800M，现在的智能手机都比它要强。