FOVO: A new 3D rendering technique based on human vision by Robert Pepperell on 05/27/20 02:46:00 pm The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
Here’s a question for your next virtual pub quiz: what do linear perspective projection, the first commercial photographic process, the first photographic negative, digital image transmission, and the bullet-time effect used in The Matrix all have in common? Answer: they were all invented by artists: Image technologies invented by artists: The technique of linear perspective — the basic geometry that underpins all computer graphics engines — was discovered by the painter and architect Brunelleschi and his associates in Florence in the early 1400s, and later refined by Leonardo da Vinci. The first commercial photography process was invented by the scene painter Louis Daguerre as a way of speeding up production of his virtual-reality panorama displays that were a hugely popular form of entertainment in early nineteenth-century Paris. Around the same time, Henry Fox Talbot developed the photographic negative at his country house near Bath in England out of frustration at not being able to paint his plant specimens accurately enough. Samuel Morse, another painter and inventor of the eponymous Code, contributed to the commercial development of telegraphy, which quickly led to telegraphic image transmission. And Tim Macmillan was an art student when he invented the original ‘Time-Slice’ process, often dubbed ‘Bullet-Time,’ to create photographs that looked like Cubist paintings.