[Freddy]

Thought this was interesting...

In 1972 Ed Catmull (founder of Pixar) and his colleagues created the world's first 3D rendered movie, an animated version of Ed's left hand. This is the film that they produced. It includes some "making of" footage (around 1:30) and some other early experiments.

[Data]

They could do that in 1972  , if I hadn’t seen it I wouldn’t have believed it.

The faces looked as good as the Haptek player faces do today, boy are they behind the times .

Nice vid. 

[Bragi]

Did you see how they digitized the hand: dot for dot, manually... Man, that must have taken ages.
@Datahopa: what they didn't say was how long it took to render those videos. I don't think they could do that real-time back in those days.

[Freddy]

Yes 1972...Bizarre isn't it..  I'm still trying to do that today 

I agree, must have taken ages and been so fiddly and if it was real time I will eat someone's hat   

[Bragi]

another thing, how did they make it into a movie: there were no screen capturing tools? Hell, you were even lucky if there was a screen to capture something from.

[Freddy]

Well I have been digging around as like you two I was a bit surprised and thought it might be a hoax.  Apparently Pixar have made hoax adverts in the past :

http://socialtimes.com/pixar-leaks-fake-retro-toy-commercials-to-youtube_b11591

But that did not really nail it.  However a lot of people seem to think it is real and there is this blog entry that appears to substantiate it :

http://nerdplusart.com/first-3d-rendered-film-from-1972-and-my-visit-to-pixar

There doesn't seem to be anything proving it is a fake really.  I tried googling, but got nothing in that respect, so I guess it's real.

[Bragi]

I wasn't really doubting it's authenticity, just how they did it. it's possible that they simply put a camera in front of a screen.