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He's the guru of computer-generated movie magic

By Ajay Singh
Today Staff Writer

From “Jurassic Park” to the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, the films that Computer Science Professor Demetri Terzopoulos finds most enjoyable all have one thing in
common: a significant amount of computer-generated animation.

Terzopoulos is a guru of the art himself. In fact, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bestowed on him one of its prestigious Scientific and Technical Academy Awards on Feb. 18, which Terzopoulos shared with John Platt, one of his former colleagues from Microsoft.

The award was for their use of physically based computer-generated (CG) techniques to simulate the motion of realistic cloth, whether a coat or a skirt — one of those seemingly mundane facets of daily life that can give animators sleepless nights.

Terzopoulos shared the Oscar for a 1987 paper he co-authored. Titled “Elastically Deformable Models,” it was recognized by the Academy as “a milestone in computer graphics.” In the late 1990s, animators at Pixar Animation Studios and elsewhere began applying variations of Terzopoulos’ pioneering approach in motion pictures, including “Star Wars” (Episodes II and III), “Harry Potter” and the “Lord of the Rings” films.

Photos courtesy of Demetri Terzopoulos

“Today, a fair number of graphical characters wear virtual clothes modeled with realistically simulated cloth,” said Terzopoulos. Before the advent of physics-based cloth simulation, “it was essentially impossible to animate by hand the complex motion of clothing on a digital character,” explained Terzopoulos.

Terzopoulos grew up with a passion for science. He dreamed of becoming a chemist but ended up majoring in electrical engineering because, as he put it, “I also liked electronics and felt that it would ultimately provide better job opportunities.”

By the time he entered graduate school, “my love/hate relationship with computers had completely consumed me, and I became passionate about studying artificial intelligence,” he recalled. That led to studies in “computer vision,” in which he earned a doctorate from MIT, and eventually to computer graphics — “a wonderful field that spills over into most of the other sciences.”

Terzopoulos’ peers in computer graphics routinely pay tribute to his technology. “However, I imagine that the average artist/modeler/animator would not necessarily be aware of its early roots, nor would they need to in their work,” he said.