Lance Williams

Lance Williams is a prominent graphics researcher who made major contributions to texture map prefiltering, shadow rendering algorithms, facial animation, and antialiasing techniques. Williams was one of the first people to recognize the potential of computer graphics to transform film and video making.

Education

Williams holds a double major in English and Asian Studies from Kanas University. He was drawn to the University of Utah by a "Humanistic Computation" summer seminar. He joined the graduate Computer Science program at the University of Utah in 1972. At this time in the early 70s, the University of Utah was the hub for much of the pioneering work in computer graphics. Lance left Utah (without completing his degree) in 1974 to join the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT). While at NYIT, Willaims invented the mipmapping technique for texture filtering, which is ubiquitiously used today by graphics hardware for PCs and video games. Lance was later awarded his doctorate from Utah based on a rule allowing someone who published three seminal papers in his field to bind them together as his thesis. The three papers are Casting Shadows on Curved Surfaces (1978), Pyramidal Parametrics (1983) and View Interpolation for Image Synthesis (1993).

Professional Career

Williams joined the Advanced Technology Group at Apple in 1987. He collaborated with Eric Chen to pioneer early image based rendering work. He also worked on motion capture and animation systems. In 1997, Williams joined Dreamworks SKG. He presently works at Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Recognition

On August 15, 2001, Williams won the ACM SIGGRAPH Coons Award for Oustanding Creative Contributions to computer graphics. On March 2, 2002, Willaims was awarded a 2001 Technical Achievement Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for "his pioneering influence in the field of computer-generated animation and effects for motion pictures."

External links

* 2001 Coons Award Announcement

 

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