Look How Far We’ve Come: Modeling Then and Now By Steven Schain While today’s modeling tools are highly developed and refined, that wasn’t always the case. This tour through the history of modeling is a great reminder of just how much 3D modeling software has evolved over the last forty years. University of Utah, which, to interject a little trivia, is also the birthplace of the Utah Teapot - a standard model available in 3ds Max. Created by Ed Catmul and Fred Parke, this early animation used a physical model and a 3D digitizing rig to craft a digitized hand. The digitizer captured individual points that were then connected by lines to create discreet 3D faces. The faces were then rendered, using one of the only two methods available: flat or smooth shaded. CAD software has been in use since the mid- 1960s, when Ivan Sutherland developed Sketchpad while at MIT. The ability to use 3D modeling for visualization and animation, however, wouldn’t come around until the early 1970s, when some of the earliest 3D models were created by individuals like Ed Catmul and Fred Parke. Since then, 3D modeling has come a long way, with the tools and capabilities improving in every new software release. The Early Days In the beginning of computer graphics development, modeling 3D objects was a painstaking task. One of the earliest examples of 3D modeling and animation was created at the 22 www.cadlearning.com Ed Catmul digitizes and animates a model of a human hand. Throughout the remainder of the 1970s, there was a flurry of activity around the development of modern 3D modeling and animation software. Companies like Autodesk, Alias Research, Wavefront, and Omnibus were leading the way. Some early 3D software used a series of written