Quest: A Long Ray's Journey Into Light

Early computer animated film produced in 1986 at Apollo Computer. Directed by Michael Sciulli and Melissa White and released the same year as Pixar's Luxo Jr.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• early
• computer
• graphics
• animation
• animated
• short
• film
• apollo
• cg
• cgi
• 1986
• 1980s

[cc213t]

This film is available on a DVD called COMPUTER ANIMATION CLASSICS. However, I rented it and found the quality to be only marginally better than this version, plus it's horizontally squeezed a bit and the credits are lopped off (even before the word "apollo" is formed at the end). Thumbs down...

[jrarvo]

I was the "technical director" for this animation and I'm very happy to see it posted here. It really brings back memories. One fun fact about this project is that ALL the software (modeling, animation, rendering, recording, and even sound generation) was written from scratch, all the design work was done, and (almost) all the frames were rendered between the SIGGRAPH 84 conference and the film submission deadline for SIGGRAPH 85, where it was first shown. And it was a "spare time" project!

[cc213t]

You've made such terrific contributions to the field of computer graphics, Dr. Arvo! It must have been fun working on this film back in the day. I'm so glad you don't mind my posting the video.

[cc213t]

This is one of the early CG short films that inspired me to pursue a career in computer animation. Unfortunately, I have only a 20-year-old VHS copy of it. This is the result of transferring it using the best industrial SVHS deck I could find in conjunction with a timebase corrector and inverse telecine processing. At least the color is fairly decent. Hopefully a better version will eventually surface...

[KeeHinckley]

I was pretty startled to discover this on YouTube, although I wish there were a higher quality version available. I wrote a texture/pattern editor specifically for this project; it was used for creating some of the textures and patterns in the movie. All the software for designing the scenes, rendering the frames, and distributing the work had to be created from scratch. And while a modern PC could certainly do this, even now it probably wouldn't use pure raytracing for rendering. It's too slow.

[KeeHinckley]

Technical Director Jim Arvo has died. I can't seem to put a link here, but you can Google "jim arvo obituary"

[themitchv]

i love the idea that this incredibly abstract geometric animation was "based on a story". ha ha. very cool flash to the past and nice work everyone

[smithrs]

Thanks for posting this. Even though the sophistication that goes into something like Cars 2 is on a higher level, they're just standing on the shoulders of the people who did this. So much cool stuff was happening in the 80's. And the fact that few people knew about it, you had to seek out obscure animation festivals and midnight movies only made it cooler.

[sheatheman]

@cc213t this version is better than a cleaner one

[eddillinger]

I gotta write another comment. I really really love this film. I watch it almost weekly if not more. Definatley my favorite and not just for it's rich nostalgia. I think the absolute triumph of this little gem of a cg short is that it touched on the shear possibilities that a CG world could offer by setting such a complex scenario (at the time) in a daylight setting. It really hit home to me that creating other dimensions was within our grasp and that this was just a glimpse into that world. Ed

[motherthing]

I love this video! It's from what I consider to be the "fun days" of computers. And before HP bought Apollo. And what the heck happened to HP?

[Duvmasta]

@jrarvo RLY?

[Waxer3929]

I remember seeing this short in "The Mind's Eye", I've always wondered what the source material was. Thanks so much, you definitely made part of my childhood complete in solving this mystery.

[dragonheadthing]

Looks like the world that inspired the show Reboot.

[melbrooksjew]

Have no idea what this means but one of the greatest animated shorts ever made should of won a acadmy award whoever did this I wish them great sucess in life seriously in 1986 this was groundbreaking i still can't get over this i would like to know what they were thinking when someone came up with the consept of this not in a mean or cruel way but this is great and very catchy tune also. Bravo to whoever came up with the consept of this they should be greatly prould of themselfs!!!!