California State University, Los Angeles
Art & Design
Reproduced with permission from NeXT Computer, Inc.
A Reference Guide to NeXT in Higher Education, Fall 1992
ยช 1992 NeXT Computer, Inc
NeXTdimension and animation
Tony Longson, associate professor of art at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA), began using computers in his art 20 years ago.
"I was able to generate ideas; solve visual problems; and, to some extent, manufacture the three-dimensional constructions that I call space drawings," Longson said during the SIGGRAPH 1991 panel he chaired, 'What Next: A Provocative Look at Creativity, Curriculum, and Organization in Teaching Artists and Designers to Use Computers.' "I was so excited by the potential that I began to show students how they could use the computer in their creative work. Graphics software was limited to 'move' and 'draw' commands, and output was to plotter or microfilm-there were no frame buffers. Teaching consisted of explaining the tools, emphasizing visual problem solving, and encouraging innovation where the tools and processes inspired the ideas and offered novel solutions.
"Things have changed in many ways," he continues. "The introduction of the personal computer has established a place for graphics computing in industry and has opened the door for educators, with laser printing providing acceptable printed output; the wholehearted acceptance of computers in graphic design and output; the convergence of video and digital technology; the proliferation of software; networking and the challenge it raises for effective communications among users; and object-oriented programming, which makes it easier to write applications and easier for applications to communicate with one another."
Longson frequently speaks and writes on the implications of technology for art and design. At CSULA, he is part of a team of nine faculty members from six departments-biology, chemistry and biochemistry, fine arts, geology, mathematics and computer science, and physics and astronomy-who are developing interactive learning tools using NeXT computers.
"In most computing environments," Longson says, "encouraging creativity is difficult because more time is spent surviving the network than is dedicated to teaching-teachers must constantly reinstall software, manage disk space, and organize files. The NeXT is much easier to administer. It extends our ability to teach."
Using Interface Builder, Longson created an application called "zz" on a NeXTdimension, so students in his computer graphics animation course could produce animated films. They use Longson's application, which functions as a sequential video editor, to collate images they have created on various platforms onto a NeXTdimension connected to a Sony videodisk recorder. Students use Pixel Magician to import any nonnative file formats to the NeXTdimension in the appropriate file format and bit depth.
"Students create TIFF files from these images on the NeXT machine, sequentially collate them on NeXTdimension, call them up on the screen, and then transmit them to the Sony recorder to be played," says Longson.
This year, Longson's students are collaborating with 15 schools to produce a computer-based animated film for SIGGRAPH 1992. Each school creates 15 seconds of animation that will be combined into a five-minute program. Longson say she eventually hopes to create a NeXTSTEP application in which students can combine different images-digitized, hand drawn, and painted, for example-into a film.
"I'm very pleased that NeXT bundles a 3D Graphics Kit with NeXTSTEP 3.0," he says. "RenderMan is a terrific tool. It runs across the network and speeds the frame generation process incredibly."
He adds, "I really appreciate NeXT's multitasking capability for recording animation and computing frames. A 10-second video requires 300 frames. It can take up to 150 hours to create that, during which time we couldn't do anything else on single-tasking system like the Macintosh, which we previously used for animation work. In the NeXT environment, we can be working on other projects as the computer sequences the film. The NeXTdimension is a wonderful machine-its 32-bit color capability and integrated video capabilities are paramount to our work."
For more information, please contact:
Tony Longson
Associate Professor of Art
California State University, Los Angeles
5151 State University Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90032-8201
(213) 343-4034
tony@art_next.calstatela.edu