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Pacific Data Images (PDI) was an American visual effects and computer animation production company based in Redwood City, California, that was bought by DreamWorks SKG in 2000. It was renamed PDI/DreamWorks and was owned by DreamWorks Animation.
- Overview
- History
- Animated films
- Technical awards
- Shorts
- For Other Studios
- Films
- Film effects
PDI (originally an initialism for Pacific Data Images and also known as PDI/DreamWorks) was an American computer animated production company that was bought by DreamWorks SKG in 2000. and became half of DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc., the public company formed by uniting PDI and the feature animation division of DreamWorks.
PDI was founded in 1980 by Carl Rosendahl with a loan of $25,000 from his father. He was joined in 1981 by Richard Chuang and in 1982 by Glenn Entis. Richard and Glenn wrote the foundation of the in-house computer animation software that was to be used for the next two decades. They started work on 3D software at the end of 1981, and 3D production started in the fall of 1982. The initial goal of the company was "Entertainment using 3D computer animation". By the time PDI reached its 25th anniversary in 2005, it had completed over 1000 projects and grown to over 400 employees.
1980-1987: Early yearsThe first computer at PDI was a DEC PDP 11/44 with 128 kilobytes of memory. This was a lot of memory given that the computer had only 64 kilobytes (16-bits) of address space. It had a 20 megabyte disk. Attached to this was a $65,000 framebuffer which has a resolution of 512x512 and was 32 bits deep.
The first 3D image rendered at PDI was done on March 12, 1982. The image was simply a 4 by 4 grid of spheres of varying colors. The spheres were not polygonal, they were implicitly rendered and were fully anti-aliased. The resulting image was 512 by 480 by 24 (8 bits for red, green and blue channels) which took 2 minutes to render.
The PDP-11 was soon replaced by a DEC VAX-11/780 and later PDI shifted to another superminicomputer called the Ridge32. This machine was 2-4 times faster than the VAX-11/780 at a fraction of the cost.
The original in-house software evolved into a large suite of tools which included a polygon scan-line renderer (called p2r), an interactive animation program (called e_motion), an animation scripting / scene-description language (called script) and a lighting tool (called led). All of these tools were written in C and deployed on a variety of machines running various flavors of Unix.
The initial investment to start the company was $250,000, about $600,000 in 2005 dollars. Its original offices were in Sunnyvale, California working out of a garage owned by Carl's father. PDI moved to its first real offices in 1985 (Sunnyvale), to its second offices in 1995 (Palo Alto) and to its current location in Redwood City in 2002. The growth of the company was financed solely through profit. The company was run as an open book; monthly financial reviews were shared with the entire company, and a detailed monthly financial report was released. Money was never taken out of the company which maintained a 7% investment in R&D. PDI was debt-free when acquired by DreamWorks in 2000. This was quite an accomplishment for a low margin service business with a lot of risk.
PDI has produced many box-office hits with Antz (1998), Shrek (2001), Shrek 2 (2004), Madagascar (2005), Shrek the Third (2007), Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008),Shrek Forever After (2010), Megamind (2010), Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012), Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014) and Penguins of Madagascar (2014). With US$ 441.2 million in domestic box-office ticket sales, Shrek 2 is currently the seventh highest grossing animated film of all time in the United States.
PDI won their only Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film for Shrek in 2002.
PDI has won seven Scientific and Technical Academy Awards. The first was awarded to Les Dittert, along with others, in 1994 for work in the area of film scanning. The second was awarded to Carl Rosendahl, Richard Chuang and Glenn Entis in 1997 for the concept and architecture of the PDI animation system. This award in particular recognized their pioneering work in computer animation dating back to the founding of PDI 17 years earlier. Nick Foster was given an award in 1998 for PDI's fluid animation system (flu), and in 2002 Dick Walsh was given one for the development of PDI's Facial Animation System.
In 2010, Eric Tabellion and Arnauld Lamorette were given one for PDI/DreamWorks's global illumination rendering system first used on Shrek 2. This was the first use of global illumination in an animated feature film, a technique which is commonplace today.
In 2013, Lawrence Kesteloot, Drew Olbrich and Daniel Wexler were given an award for PDI's lighting tool, called "light." This tool was developed for PDI's first feature film, Antz, and is still in use today at PDI and DreamWorks Animation some 25 films later.
In 2015, Scott Peterson, Jeff Budsberg and Jonathan Gibbs were awarded for the studio's foliage (trees and vegetation system). This system was first used on Shrek and continues to be used today. At the same ceremony, Karl Rasche was awarded along with engineers from HP for his part in the creation of the "DreamColor" monitor.
•Teddy Bear Maelstrom (1983, Glenn Entis)
•Chromosaurus (1984, Don Venhaus)
•Max's Place (1984, Adam Chin)
•Cosmic Zoom (1985, PDI Staff)
•Opera Industriel (1986, Adam Chin, Rich Cohen)
•Burning Love (1987, PDI Staff)
•MTV ID Competition: M Spring (1988, PDI Staff)
•The Jim Henson Hour (Computer Animation) (1989)
•The Last Halloween (Character Animation) (1991)
•Muppet*Vision 3D (1991) (Waldo Character Animation)
•Marvin the Martian in the Third Dimension (1996) (Theme Park Ride/Short Film)
•Cyberworld (2000) (IMAX film, Antz and Simpsons segments)
•Antz (1998)
•Shrek (2001)
•Shrek 2 (2004)
•Madagascar (2005)
•Over the Hedge (2006) (Uncredited)
•Shrek the Third (2007)
•Electric Dreams (1984)
•Scrooged (1988)
•Solar Crisis (1990)
•Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
•Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
•Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
Pacific Data Images était une société de production d' animation par ordinateur qui a été achetée par DreamWorks SKG. Elle est maintenant connue sous le nom PDI/DreamWorks .
Early short film created at Pacific Data Images (later of Shrek, Madagascar fame) circa 1989, has appeared in a computer of computer animation compilations since then.
- 4 min
- 6,5M
- VintageCG
Au travers de DreamWorks Animation et en collaboration avec PDI, elle produit des films d'animation en image de synthèse ou en animation traditionnelle (Le Prince d'Égypte), mais aussi les films du studio Aardman Animations, dont Chicken Run, et des studios ImageWorks et Blue Sky (L'Âge de glace).
27 oct. 2020 · Learn how Richard Chuang, Glenn Entis, and Carl Rosendahl founded Pacific Data Images (PDI) in 1980 and built a successful CGI studio. Read about their challenges, achievements, and legacy in the industry.
Pacific Data Images & PDI/Dreamworks 1980-2015 PDI started in Sunnyvale in 1980 and went on to be awarded the first Best Animated Feature for Shrek. San Fran...
