the.com/cgi
the art of lying to your eyes with math, one polygon at a time.
means computer-generated imagery: visuals built from code and geometry instead of cameras and physical sets.
from the term dates to 1960s computer graphics research, but it entered pop culture through 1970s-80s film effects, hitting escape velocity with jurassic park in 1993, when a t-rex made of vectors ate the industry's doubts.
first feature usewestworld, 1973, used pixelated 2d cgi
toy story1995, first fully cgi feature film
uncanny valleyterm coined 1970 for near-human cgi discomfort
render farmssome films use thousands of computers for months
for instance
jurassic park — 1993 dinosaurs convinced audiences cgi could feel alive
the matrix bullet time — 1999 blended cgi with practical camera rigs
avatar — 2009 pandora built almost entirely from digital assets
thanos — 2018 motion-captured villain, josh brolin's face reimagined pixel by pixel