Pioneers of 3D Graphics, Democratization and Ptex

Pioneers of 3D Graphics

3D Graphics as we know it today has come a very long way since the start of modern technology. Many amazing and talented artists have played vital parts in shaping the way that games and films look today. However, behind every great digital artist, is a great computer scientist that made their work possible. These computer scientists are often artists themselves too. Some of these people created the foundations when the industry was only starting to sprout many years ago. Some people take this foundation work and refine them. A couple of the pioneers were:

Ed Catmull - Texture Mapping, Anti-aliasing, Subdivision Surfaces, Z-Buffering

Subdivision Surface

Texture Map  

Jim Blinn - Blinn-Phong Shader Model, Bump Mapping

Blinn-Phong Shader Model

Bump Mapping

Loren Carpenter & Robert Cook - Reyes Rendering

Ken Perlin - Perlin Noise, Hypertexture, real-Time Character Animation, Stylus Based Input Devices

Pat Hanrahan & Henrik Wann Jensen - Subsurface Scattering, Photon Mapping

Arthur Appel & Turner Whitted - Raycasting & Raytracing Algorithms

Paul Debevec - Image Based Rendering & Modeling, HDRI

Krishnamurthy & Levoy - Normal Mapping

Normal Mapping

Ofer Alon & Jack Rimokh - Founded Pixologic, created ZBrush

William Reeves - Motion Blur Algorithm

For more information, see this link.

Democratization of 3D Graphics 

Democratization in the 3D graphics industry means that the divide between the larger studios and freelancers is becoming smaller. With more and more tools becoming easily affordable for not just studios but freelance artists, the lone ranger that are freelance are able to create equal quality work as a large studio could produce. 

Until very recently, freelance artists could own well-equipped workstations but be restrained by the specs. Their ability to render scenes would be severely crippled by this, as was the amount of polygons they could use before their system would struggle to load it all. Recently, the option for freelance artists to send your files off to a dedicated render farm after having done test renders.

Ptex

Ptex is a texture mapping system developed by Walt Disney Animation Studios for production quality rendering. Ptex does not require UV assignment, as it applies separate texture to each face of a subdivision. I think Ptex will allow future assets to have higher definition texture and make creations look even closer to being life-like. By what I have been reading, it sounds like a lot more effort than texturing as we do it now, because of the possible need to texture every single face individually instead of assigning a single plane of texture to several faces using UV mapping.