Everything about Jim Blinn totally explained
James F. Blinn is a computer scientist who first became widely known for his work as a computer graphics expert at
NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), particularly his work on the pre-encounter animations for the
Voyager project, , his work on the Carl Sagan Cosmos documentary series and the research of the
Blinn–Phong shading model.
Biography
In 1970, he received his bachelor's degree in physics and communications science, and later a master's degree in engineering from the
University of Michigan. In 1978 received a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Utah.
Blinn devised new methods to represent how objects and light interact in a three dimensional virtual world, like
environment mapping and
bump mapping. He is well known for creating animation for two television series:
Carl Sagan's, and the pioneering instructional graphics in
The Mechanical Universe. His simulations of the
Voyager spacecraft visiting
Jupiter and
Saturn have been seen widely. He is now a graphics fellow at
Microsoft Research.
Quotes
- "All problems in computer graphics can be solved with a matrix inversion." —Blinn
- "I like to collect things. When I was young I collected stamps; now I collect empty margarine tubs and algorithms for drawing circles." —Blinn
- "The big problem in making the space movies is that of figuring out where to place the camera and in what direction to point it in order to get an interesting picture." —Blinn
- "The first problem is simply finding something that hasn't been done yet." —Blinn
- "An ancient Greek named Democritus first came up with the idea that the world was made of indivisible particles called atoms. (He didn't base this on any physical evidence — it's just that there were so many Greeks coming up with random ideas that one of them was bound to be right.)" —Blinn
- "Many of you're involved in the microcircuit revolution and tend to think this also applies to the text on your slides." —Blinn
- "There are about a dozen great computer graphics people, and Jim Blinn is six of them." —Ivan Sutherland
Further Information
Get more info on 'Jim Blinn'.
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