Jim Blinn Home Page

I've been involved in computer graphics since 1967 and have devoted most of my career to using computer graphics in various educational projects. Recently I have moved to the Computer Graphics Research group at Microsoft as their second Graphics Fellow (after Alvy Ray Smith). Here's my story....

• About Me
• Professional Activities
• Personal Preferences

By the way... what do the following items have in common?

• The La Brea Tar Pits
• The River Avon
• Mount Fujiyama
• Pizza Pie
• PIN Number
• VLC code

Click here for the answer.

About Me

Education

1970 B.S. University of Michigan, Physics and Communications Science

1972 M.S.E University of Michigan, Computer, Information and Control Engineering

1978 Ph.D. University of Utah, Computer Science

Awards

1983 -- NASA Exceptional Service medal for Voyager Fly-by animations.

1983 -- The first Siggraph Computer Graphics Achievement Award for work in lighting and surface modeling techniques.

1989 -- IEEE Outstanding Contribution Award for Jim Blinn's corner.

1991 -- MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of and to allow continuation of my work in educational animation.

1995 -- Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the Parsons School of Design for contributions to computer graphics. (Here's my graduation address).

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Professional Activities

Past Projects

• Voyager Fly-by Animations (1977-1987),
  Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Animations depicting various space missions to Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus.
• COSMOS (1979-1980),
  Computer graphics animations for the Carl Sagan PBS series.
• The Mechanical Universe (1983-1986),
  Animated sequences for the 52 part telecourse produced by the California Institute of Technology to teach college level physics.

Current Activities and Projects

• Jim Blinn's Corner,
  a regular column in the IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications journal.
• Project Mathematics!
  a series of animated videotapes to teach High School mathematics, produced at Caltech
• The Geometry Center
  External Advisory Board member.

Major Publications

• Texture and Reflection In Computer Generated Images,
  CACM, 19(10), October 1976, pp 542-547.
  (The original teapot paper. Introduces environment mapping.)
• Models of Light Reflection for Computer Synthesized Pictures,
  SIGGRAPH 77, pp 192-198.
  (Introduces the Torrance-Sparrow highlight model.)
• Simulation of Wrinkled Surfaces,
  SIGGRAPH 78, pp 286-292.
  (Introduces Bump Mapping.)
• A Generalization of Algebraic Surface Drawing,
  ACM Transactions on Graphics, 1(3), July 1982, pp 235-256.
  (Introduces Blobby Modelling.)
• Light Reflection Functions for the Simulation of Clouds and Dusty Surfaces,
  SIGGRAPH 82, pp 21-29.
  (Lighting model for rings of Saturn.)

Miscellaneous Papers

Some of these are a bit old, but they may be interesting for historical reasons. I'm trying to put some more recent mathematical papers here but the mathematics doesn't come out well in HTML. I might ultimately do them in Acrobat.

• Realism In Computer Graphics 1979. Some thoughts on the realism that was attainable at the time.
• Image Processing: The Future Vital Link? 1979. A talk I gave a while ago at a conference in England.
• The Jupiter and Saturn Fly-by Animations 1980. A description of how they were done.
• Systems Aspects of Computer Image Synthesis and Computer Animation 1982. More details on how the Space fly-bys were generated.
• The Ancient Chinese Art of Chi-Ting July 1984?. Siggraph course notes for Image Rendering Tricks.
• Visualization March 1991. Some thoughts on the V word.
• Animation Tricks May 1994. Siggraph 94 course notes for Animation Tricks course.
• Graduation Address to Parsons School of Design, May 16, 1995
• Designing the Animation for Project Mathematics! 1995. Siggrraph 95 course notes.
• Designing the Mathematics of The Mechanical Universe 1995. Siggraph 95 course notes.

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Personal Preferences

In the spirit of total disclosure that is endemic to the WWW, here are some more personal things.

• My wife Amanda's Home Page at Voyager
• Movie Recommendations
• Interesting Music
• Books that have changed my life
• Favorite computer games
• Interesting WWW links

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Movie Recommendations

I'm going to concentrate mainly on the more obscure movies that I have liked a lot. There are various obvious selections like, say, Forbidden Planet, but you've probably already heard of them. This list is largely those you might not have heard of.

• One Crazy Summer
• Deathstalker 2
• The Spirit of 76
• Earth Girls are Easy
• Amazon Women on the Moon
• The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao
• Beach Babes from Beyond
• The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T
• The Brady Bunch Movie

TV Programs

• The Simpsons
• The Legendary Journeys of Hercules
• Twin Peaks
• Moonlight Over Miami (cancelled)
• Love and Curses (cancelled)

Music Recommendations

• Isao Tomita http://weber.ucg.ie/tomita.html
• Juan Garcia Esquivel (Space Age Bachelor Pad Music)
• Angleo Badalamente, Twin Peaks music
• Mike Oldfield

Favorite Books

Really Good Books That Have Changed My Life

• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information Edward R. Tufte, Graphics Press, Cheshire, Connecticut, 1983
• How to Lie with Statistics Darrell Huff, W. W. Norton & Co, 1954
• The Psychology of Everyday Things (The Design of Everyday Things) Donald A. Norman
• Relativity in Illustrations Jacob T. Schwartz, Dover, 1962
• Mr Tomkins in Wonderland George Gamov, Dover
• 123 Infinity by George Gamov
• The Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles & Diversions by Martin Gardner, Simon and Schuster, 1959.
• Relativity by Lillian Lieber
• Mc Elligot's Pool by Dr. Suess
• The Illusion of Life Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston,

Other Interesting Books

• anything else by Martin Gardner
• anything else by Lillian Lieber
• anything else by Dr. Suess, especially The Lorax, Oh Say, Can You Say? (note reference to "Pinner Blinn", You're only old once (reference to "Dr. Blinn"), and Oh the places you'll go (read at my wedding by Linda Stone)
• The Art of Making Dances Doris Humphrey, Grove Press, Inc., New York, 1959
• Elements of Graph Design Stephen M. Kosslyn, W. H. Freeman and Co., New York, 1994
• Timing for Animation Harold Whitaker and John Halas, Focal Press Ltd,, London and New York, 1981
• Graphical Methods for Data Analysis John M Chambers, William Cleveland, Beat Kleiner, Paul Tukey, Wadsworth and Brooks/Cole Publishing , 1983
• Envisioning Information Edward R. Tufte, Graphics Press, Cheshire, Connecticut, 1990

Favorite Computer Games

Here are some games that Amanda and I have like enough to play completely through to the end.

• Wishbringer - Infocom
• Trinity - Infocom
• Day of the Tentacle - LucasArts
• Sam and Max Hit the Road - LucasArts
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis - LucasArts
• Monkey Island 1 - LucasArts
• Monkey Island 2 - LucasArts
• The 7th Guest - Virgin/Trilobyte
• Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender - MicroProse
• Lost in Time - Coktel Vision
• Putt Putt Joins the Parade - Humongous Entertainment

You might detect a pattern---LucasArts seems to consistently come up with the most interesting games.

Interesting WWW links

blinn@microsoft.com