Instant Rendering

Toy Story's Mr. Potato Head, composed of about a million individual polygons, took up to two hours to render with background and all. Ned Greene, senior research scientist for Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group, created this rough replica of the Empire State Building out of 167 million polygons in about ve minutes.

Greene dramatically cut the production time of his 40-second animation, Naked Empire, by employing a unique, timesaving algorithm that renders only the visible parts of the building in each frame of animation instead of the entire structure, most of which is hidden from the viewer at various times during the sequence.

The algorithm, says Greene, could be used to create special effects, architectural walk-throughs, and animated features quickly, while still generating high-resolution images.

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