Computer-Generated Three-Dimensional Movies

Notes

Computers and Automation, November 1965, pp. 20-23 (the running feet read “COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for November, 1965” with page numbers 20, 21, 22 and 23). The volume and number are not printed on the article pages; Noll's own later bibliography gives Volume 14, No. 11, which agrees with the supplied citation. Author's affiliation as printed: Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., Murray Hill, N.J.. Self-archived by the author at http://noll.uscannenberg.org/Art%20Papers/3D%20Movies.pdf — Noll posts his own papers on his site at noll.uscannenberg.org, which is where this copy comes from. Hosting here is with his agreement, given to Bre Pettis directly on 6 October 2026. Noll reports the extension of his stereographic still-picture technique, published in the same magazine in May 1965, to moving pictures. He argues that animated film has long been valued for presenting complicated concepts but was made a frame at a time, and that photo-optic equipment under the control of a high-speed digital computer has changed that; he cites the Bell Labs film demonstrating the effects of gyroscope constraints on an orbiting satellite and Kenneth C. Knowlton's animation programming language. Since a movie is a series of related still pictures, the extension to three-dimensional movies was, he says, quite obvious. The method is set out with its bottlenecks. The computer calculates the coordinates of a line drawing, they position the electron beam of a cathode-ray tube, and a 16-mm camera under computer control photographs the tube face. The computer can compute about 20 frames per second but the plotting equipment cannot, so coordinates and camera commands are written to digital magnetic tape and the tape is later fed to the plotter. The projection program computes left and right perspectives from two slightly separated station points and plots both on one frame; to save time it recalculates only the lines that changed since the previous frame. Viewing distance, inclination and rotation are all variable, and single characters can be plotted at specified three-dimensional points. The equipment is named at the end: an IBM 7094 computer with a General Dynamics SC-4020 microfilm plotter fitted with a 16-mm camera. Four figures carry the results. The first three-dimensional movie was a “kinetic sculpture”: 39 line segments sequentially connecting 40 points chosen at random to fall uniformly within a cube, where at random times one point jumps to a new position and the two lines attached to it twist instantly - slowly at the beginning and end, up to one jump per frame in the middle. A second film shows the three-dimensional projection of a rotating four-dimensional hypercube, a cube within a cube, rotated by a matrix operation; the technique generalises to other four-dimensional objects and higher dimensions. A third shows stick figures moving on a stage with programmed arm motion, aimed at computer study of human movement, and Noll mentions films simulating the motion of the basilar membrane of the ear for hearing research. Readers are told how to free-fuse the side-by-side stereo pairs. He closes by noting the hours-long lag before film is in hand and the arrival of real-time displays with light pens. Points of record: Reports the first computer-generated stereoscopic (three-dimensional) movies, including a randomly changing line object Noll calls a form of kinetic sculpture; Equipment named: an IBM 7094 digital computer with a General Dynamics SC-4020 microfilm plotter fitted with a 16-mm camera; The kinetic-sculpture object is 39 line segments connecting 40 random points inside a cube; one point is relocated at random times, up to one jump per frame in the middle of the film; The computer can compute roughly 20 frames per second but the plotter cannot, so frames are buffered to digital magnetic tape; Only lines that changed from the previous frame are recalculated, to save computation; Also reports a movie of a rotating four-dimensional hypercube projected into three dimensions, and stick-figure human motion on a stage; Three-dimensional movies were then being used to simulate the motion of the basilar membrane of the ear for hearing research; Cites Edward E. Zajac's computer-made perspective movies and Kenneth C. Knowlton's animation technique as precedents. Illustrated: Fig. 1 - block diagram of the computer technique for producing three-dimensional movies; Fig. 2 - sequence of frames from the three-dimensional movie of a random line pattern (the kinetic sculpture); Fig. 3 - selected frames from the movie of the three-dimensional projection of a rotating four-dimensional hypercube; Fig. 4 - example of stick-figure representation of human motion on a stage; Figures 2, 3 and 4 are printed as side-by-side left and right stereo pairs for free-fusing. People named: A. Michael Noll - author; biography box: Member of the Technical Staff, Bell Telephone Laboratories since June 1961; first worked on the subjective effects of peak-clipping distortion and sidetone, then transferred to the Acoustics Research Department to investigate vocal pitch detection; BSEE Newark College of Engineering, MEE New York University; member of the Acoustical Society of America, the Audio Engineering Society, Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu, Edward E. Zajac - cited for computer-made perspective movies as a scientific and communication tool (Communications of the ACM, 1964), Kenneth C. Knowlton - cited for a computer technique for producing animated movies (AFIPS, 1964). Noted: Volume 14, No. 11 is not printed on the article pages; only the month, year and page numbers 20-23 appear. Noll's own later bibliography gives Volume 14, No. 11, pp. 20-23, agreeing with the supplied citation. The author's address is printed as “Murray Hill, N.J. 07971”; the Bell Labs Murray Hill ZIP is 07974, so this is either a typesetting error or a scanning artefact. The article refers back to “Stereographic Projections by Digital Computer”, Computers and Automation Vol. 14, No. 5, May 1965 - not part of this batch. Reference 1 (the gyroscope/satellite film) is attributed to Zajac; the article does not credit the stick-figure or basilar-membrane films to anyone beyond Noll's own group. A caption line is mis-set in the scan (“Block diagram of computor technique for producing thro»*cK-menstonal movie*”); read as “Block diagram of computer technique for producing three-dimensional movies”.