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Black Magic

Ferraro built a programming language for Blue Sky's animation software to use ray tracing, which automatically produces lighting effects instead of manual lighting used in other software at the time. To accomplish this, Ludwig studied how light interacts with water, ice, and crystals to program those properties into the software. After struggling for two years to find clients following the 1987 stock market crash, Blue Sky landed their first job animating a company's logo flying over the ocean at sunset, but needed help from another studio to finish it on time due to limited computing resources.

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63 views1 page

Black Magic

Ferraro built a programming language for Blue Sky's animation software to use ray tracing, which automatically produces lighting effects instead of manual lighting used in other software at the time. To accomplish this, Ludwig studied how light interacts with water, ice, and crystals to program those properties into the software. After struggling for two years to find clients following the 1987 stock market crash, Blue Sky landed their first job animating a company's logo flying over the ocean at sunset, but needed help from another studio to finish it on time due to limited computing resources.

Uploaded by

jananey
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Ferraro began to build a programming language specifically tailored for Blue Sky's

proprietary animation software, CGI Studio.[3]:12-13 At the time, scanline renderers


were prevalent in the computer graphics industry, and they required computer
animators and digital artists to add lighting effects in manually; [3]:13 Troubetzkoy,
Ferraro, and Ludwig developed CGI Studio to use ray tracing,[5] which allows the
renderer to simulate the physical properties of light and produce lighting effects
automatically.[3]:13-14 To accomplish this, Ludwig examined how light passes through
water, ice, and crystal, and programmed those properties into the software. [3]:13
Following the stock market crash of 1987, Blue Sky Studios did not find their first
client until about two years later: a company "that wanted their logo animated so it
would be seen flying over the ocean in front of a sunset." [3]:13-14 In order to receive
the commission, Blue Sky spent two days rendering a single frame and submitted it
to the prospective client. However, once the client accepted their offer, Blue Sky
found that they could not produce the entire animation in time without help from a
local graphics studio, which provided them with extra computer processors. [3]:14

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