| abstract | - The 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's first client was Rede Globo, Brazil's largest TV network. This gave PDI the major client they needed to fund the building of most of the early software. This also sent PDI into the business of TV motion graphics and logo animation (flying logos). PDI designed some early show openings and other special projects for Rede Globo. The software written was also given to Rede Globo and is the only time the in-house software was given to another company. The contract ended in the mid-1980s, but Rede Globo continued to use the software for many years. Most of the 1980s were spent creating broadcast graphics for most television shows around the world. PDI was working concurrently for ABC, CBS, NBC, HBO, Cinemax, MTV, VH1, TNT, and Showtime. PDI focused on direct to video production as opposed to film output being done at other early studios. PDI modified the interface to a Sony BVH-2000 using parts put together from a trip to a toy store in order to do single-frame recording. All the rendering was done on fields at 60 or 50 frames per second (depending on the video broadcasting standard used locally). PDI controlled a large percentage of this market during this time and they were really the first mass producer of computer animation. One year producing two major networks' graphics packages meant specifically rendered images for over 400 local television stations. Some of the early production contracts included Globo, Entertainment Tonight (produced for Harry Marks), ABC Sports 84 Olympic promos, and NBC News. PDI planned and proposed a feature-length CG animated film in 1985, but they were unable to raise the funding needed to produce it. While not the first computer graphics studio founded, PDI was the longest lasting. It outlived all the other studios which existed in the early 1980s. Of many reasons for this, one is that PDI never went into significant debt by purchasing expensive hardware. While other studios purchased Cray supercomputers, PDI only bought cheaper hardware, treating it as a commodity which would soon be replaced, enabling lower operating costs.
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