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

[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...

[reedyd]

Hi, I've posted a couple "cleaner" versions transferred from laserdisc.

Suffix ?v=_-W0ktaNsLg with original audio and ?v=pgMAJnK5Bgk with remixed audio.

[cc213t]

Thanks. You could probably send a DMCA takedown notice and get this version removed, but please don't... it would be a shame to lose some of the great comments here. Dr. Arvo has passed away and won't be posting again.

[Kee Hinckley]

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.

[About4Ducks]

Thank You Based Grips

[Anarchoaltruist]

KNOWN FOR IT, HAD TO DO IT, HACKED INTO IT

[crow33215]

This is great

[Dantizzle Scaglione]

Teachin bitches how to animate

[TheSnoozeFox]

haha nice

[TheSynthExperience]

I know I've seen footage of this before, it sounds familiar.

[skater910]

All this early computer animation makes me feel like a ho. Don't it?

[Raymond Rivera]

What a fantastic job you and your coworkers did creating a perfect synthesis of music and animation. I first saw this as part of the special Computer Animation Magic aired on PBS in the late 80s on a gorgeously vibrant CRT TV. A true landmark of CGI! I'll never forget it.

[Joe Callaghan]

KNOWN FOR IT

[FearOfPeople]

a neat video of retro animation. and yes, Death Grips sampled a part of this track for "known for it"