History of 3D Animation & Motion Tracking in TV Pres

Sorry this is a rather specific topic, but being a CG animator myself and also interested in TV pres, i wondered if anyone would know the answer to this.

I've recently been watching some old David Letterman shows on YouTube, and couldn't help but notice the title sequence here from the show which i think was around 1995.



Title sequence starts at about 50 seconds in.

If you look at the title sequence, it has a few examples of some very detailed motion tracking in it, i.e. pasting clips from the show on moving camera shots. It also has what i believe to be a 3D motion tracked CG graphic on the building where it says 'Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra'. I don't think that's actually real. Though it is hard to tell with the VHS quality. Could it be? The Late Show graphic on the Ed Sullivan Theater building is obviously real.

I thought that motion tracking, especially 3D motion tracking only really became affordable in the 2000s. How would they have done it in those days?

And to open the topic out a bit, when were the earliest examples of proper 3D animation in title sequences and pres? The earliest i remember were the sublime 1993 Sky idents (and these Letterman graphics certainly remind me of them with their animation and design), but i remember seeing the amazing Doctor Who title sequence from 1987, which was fully 3D CG!

Quantel offered ALF (Auto Lock Follow) which allowed you to tie a DVE move to contrasting points in a source video from the very early 90s. It was an option on both Henry and HAL I think. This was sold to allow logo replacement on pack shots (shoot a JIF logo but replace it with CIF etc.).

However those clips are so short they could easily have been done manually. They're just a flat corner-pinned DVE move that could be tracked at either end of the shot and in-betweened, and then tweaked if it didn't quite fit.

(Henry, HAL (and Harry before them) were combined hard disc storage, DVE and Painting suites (including a Paintbox) that were operating in the uncompressed SDI domain. (No compression - 270Mbs SDI all the way through. Impressive for 1985 when Harry first arrived with a whole 50" of storage))

Great post as always, thanks noggin.

How much would those units have cost in those days? And blimey i didn't realise SDI was actually that old.

Quantel virtually invented the SDI spec, and it predates 1985 - the DPE series of picture manipulators used it too, though from memory it might have only have been 8 bits rather than 10. Noggin?

According to this article from 1985, a Paintbox cost £100,000 and a Harry cost £200,000:
https://books.google.com/books?id=BF3_grAqcacC&lpg=PA31s&pg=PA31

As for the more general question, it depends on what you mean by "proper 3D animation". Early applications of computer animation consisted of wireframes transferred to film. One example would be the 1976 titles for The New Avengers where a computer generated animation that was colourised by hand (although they were not 3D).

I've previously posted this ident for Rediffusion Starview from 1981 which I believe uses computer-generated 3D animation with a wireframe look:



Lambie-Nairn were initially experimenting with this technique for the Channel 4 idents, but decided to go to America to have the blocks animated with "solid" surfaces.

It probably does, though it was effectively a proprietary standard until ratification by SMPTE in 1989.

I do recall, even by 1990, a lot of Quantel kit with parallel digital video interface, and some horrible orange
converters that they supplied that bolted onto the D-Type back panel connectors, to provide SDI connectively.

Happy days !!

No. Quantel only adopted SDI along with the rest of the industry.

They DID use their own proprietary parallel (SDI=serial) system on 50 way D-types prior to the CCIR Rec 656 Parallel standard, which used 25 way D-types (and ECL). ISTR Quantel used separate luminance and chrominance buses, whereas 656 multiplexed them onto the same lines.

(Or was there a 50-pin variants for 656? My memory is a little vague on this. I remember that the serial version proposed in 656 WASN'T SDI and was never really adopted. I also have fond memories of connecting a Henry to a Sony D1 VTR with a 25-way D-type. It was odd to think that 270Mbs was travelling down something very similar to a PC printer cable...)

Yes - Quantel adopted SDI at the same time as the rest of the industry. I think bluecortina is talking about Rec 656 parallel digital video (not serial SDI)

Actually - Harry used parallel digital video not SDI - the SDI interface is c.1990/1, but the parallel predecessor dates back to the early 80s (and Quantel had their own very similar version internally)

Harry, Encore and Paintbox were all interlinked with parallel digital video, as were the early V-series Paintboxes and Harriet (which had a 12" RAM corder added to a Paintbox).

I think Henry had SDI from the start - though I may be wrong and it may have initially been parallel digital video.

I should have been clearer and said 270Mbs digital video (I fell foul of using SDI as an abbreviation for a data format not a physical carriage standard)

IF you really want your head to explode (literally) google Quantel Mirage (and find the demo reels on YouTube). Quantel delivered live DVE effects in 1985 that you can't do live in an HD studio gallery now (nobody has an equivalent HD box on the market now - though Sony System G and Questech Charisma CLEO both delivered similar live effects in SD, though I'm not sure how many System Gs actually got sold - if any?)

Yes, I was. Interestingly (!) when LNN built their news studio in 1992, and was therefore one of the first digital studios in the UK, their Quantel kit only had parallel outputs and used Parallel to Serial convertors to work outside the graphics area. (Paintbox and Harriet). Whereas the Sony mixer in the gallery was SDI in and out. I always found that very curious, but I think Quantel were in the process of updating various models within their ranges.

I had great fun in 1992 too at a foreign broadcaster site. Quantel GFX and DVEs and Sony mixers and edit controllers.
I even remember differing BNC connectors supplied from the two SI companies wouldn't mate with each other properly, resulting in SDI 'sparklies'. We quietly worked together to resolve the problem, both teams eager to fly back home !