For a quick 1984 demo of reflection mapping, NYIT’s Computer Graphics Lab decided to show off a 14-second scene between a human woman and a shiny CGI robot.
A plain old sphere would’ve been enough to demo reflection mapping. But that’s boring. “I’m going out tonight, so…you don’t have to wait up,” the woman says, and suddenly we have a short and slightly uncanny scifi narrative, with a dash of early CGI miracles. You can see her reflection glide across the robot’s surface, even as she walks away.
Four decades ago, we were already imagining the future of relationships between robots and humans, and what companionship might look like, driven by the excitement of personal computers and advancing home tech. So what we end up with here is the first display of reflection mapping used to tell a short story, shown on a robot waving goodbye.
But what’s that robot really thinking, you know? Especially when the discordant synth voice kicks in. That’s the story.
The rest of NYIT’s 1984 SIGGRAPH reel is just as surreal. The whole thing is over on the Internet Archive. Also part of the reel is 3DV (DynaDigiDatavac), a proof of concept for 3D robot show hosts, along with some of the early work done for NYIT’s unfinished animated 3D film The Works.
