Pacific Data Images

**Pacific Data Images** (**PDI**) was an American computer animation production company bought by DreamWorks SKG in 2000. DreamWorks Animation renamed the company to **PDI/DreamWorks**, and they owned them.

Founded in 1980 by Carl Rosendahl, PDI was one of the pioneers of computer animation. It produced over 700 commercials, contributed visual effects to more than 70 feature films, and made and contributed to many of DreamWorks Animation's films, beginning with DreamWorks' first animated film *Antz* (1998). PDI's final animated film before its closure was *Penguins of Madagascar* (2014).

## History

PDI was founded in 1980 by Carl Rosendahl with a loan of $25,000 from his father, and Richard Chuang and Glenn Entis joined him in 1981 and 1982, respectively. Richard and Glenn wrote the foundation of the in-house computer animation software they 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 more than 400 workers. On January 22, 2015, DreamWorks announced they were shutting down the studio.

### 1980–1987: Early years

The first computer at PDI was a DEC PDP 11/44 with 128 kilobytes of memory, which was a lot of memory as the computer only had 64 kilobytes (16-bits) of address space. It had a 20-megabyte disk. Attached to this was a $65,000 framebuffer, which had a resolution of 512×512 and was 32 bits deep.

Animators rendered the first 3D image at PDI on March 12, 1982, which was simply a four by four by four grid of spheres of varying colours. The spheres were not polygonal, implicitly rendered and 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 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 an extensive 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). These tools were written in C and deployed on a variety of machines running various flavours 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 its last location in Redwood City in 2002. Profits financed the growth of the company. The company's an open book; PDI shared monthly financial reviews with the entire company, and a detailed monthly financial report was released. PDI never took money out, which maintained a 7% investment in R&D. PDI was debt-free when acquired by DreamWorks in 2000.

PDI's first client was Rede Globo, Brazil's largest TV network, which PDI needed to fund the creation of most of its early software. He sent PDI into the business of TV motion graphics and logo animation. PDI designed some early show openings and other special projects for Rede Globo. They wrote and gave Rede Globo software, which is the only time PDI gave the in-house software to another company. The contract ended in the mid-1980s, but Rede Globo continued to use the software for many years.

PDI spent most of the 1980s creating broadcast graphics for most television networks around the world. They worked concurrently for ABC, CBS, NBC, HBO, Cinemax, MTV, VH1, TNT, Nine Network Australia, Sky One and Showtime, and focused on direct to video production instead of film output at other early studios. PDI modified the interface to a Sony BVH-2000 using parts put together from a toy store trip to do a single-frame recording. PDI did all the rendering 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 the first mass producer of computer animation. One year producing two major networks' graphics packages meant precisely 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 worked with Atari, also in Sunnyvale, in the early 1980s on a couple of projects. In 1982, PDI hired Rosendahl to calibrate Atari's computer animation film recorder system for video game footage in *Superman III*.

PDI planned and proposed a feature-length CG animated film in 1985, but they could not raise the funding needed to produce it.

PDI outlived all the other computer graphics studios that existed in the early 1980s. One of the reasons for this is that PDI never went into significant debt by purchasing expensive hardware. While other studios purchased or leased supercomputers, PDI bought cheaper hardware, treating it as a commodity that they would soon replace, enabling lower operating costs.

### 1987–1990: transition

PDI's early focus was on network TV productions since they captured over 50% of that market in 1985. However, in 1990, PDI introduced the digital film scanning process, which they used to popularize automated rig removal and image touch-up. PDI was also instrumental in introducing performance animation for theme parks, ads, and movies, which started with a joint project in 1988 with Jim Henson's Creature Shop on a real-time performance character called Waldo C. Graphic for *The Jim Henson Hour*.

During these years of transition, PDI moved away from the motion graphics market and focused its attention on commercials and 3D visual effects for feature films. Notable among the commercials were the first Pillsbury Doughboy created in CG. Pillsbury was the first company to move an established icon to CG. Before this, the company did all previous animated commercials with stop-motion. Other notable commercials include the "Bud Bowl" and "Scrubbing Bubbles" spots.

Early in the 1990s, Thaddeus Beier and Shawn Neely developed a morphing method that resulted in a much more natural and expressive morph. This technique is called "feature-based morphing." PDI used this technology to create various well-known sequences, including the Exxon car-into-tiger morph and the extended morph at the end of the "Black or White" music video from Michael Jackson. These morphing jobs were easy to do with PDI's software, and the effect was in high demand. The algorithms invented by Beier and Neely were published at the annual SIGGRAPH conference and are now the basis of most image morphing tools. For many people, their first exposure to these algorithms was the SGI IRIX software called "Elastic Reality." PDI also did the opening sequence for the 1990s revival of the classic game show, Let's Make A Deal.

PDI broke into the feature film visual effects business with contributions to *Terminator 2* (1991), *Toys* (1992), *Angels in the Outfield* (1994), *Batman Forever* (1995), and *The Arrival* (1996). At the time, PDI's strengths included character animation, lip-synch, rendering effects, the rig mentioned above removal and cleanup, and performance animation.

During this era, PDI transitioned from the Ridge32 computer to SGI workstations running IRIX. They were not alone in this transition, as most of the industry followed suit.

### 1990–1995: character animation

Early in 1990, Tim Johnson and Rex Grignon officially formed PDI's Character Animation Group with the mandate to develop a group of artists with the creative and technical skills needed to produce a feature-length CG-animated film. The group initially consisted of Johnson, Grignon, Raman Hui, Glenn McQueen, Beth Hofer, Dick Walsh, Karen Schneider and Eric Darnell. PDI's commercial character animation skills grew under this group, and they produced numerous notable short films. Among these are *Gas Planet* (1992), *Sleepy Guy*, *Brick-a-Brac* (1995), *Gabola the Great* (1997), *Fishing* (1999) and *Fat Cat on a Diet*.

This character group set the company off in a new direction that set the basis for development goals during this period. The short films were a way to develop animation techniques and test software and pipeline procedures and flow.

PDI allowed animators to pursue individual products and shorts, resulting in several award-winning short films in this category. Some of the more notable productions are *Opera Industrial* (1986), *Chromosaurus*, *Cosmic Zoom*, *Burning Love* (1988), and *Locomotion* (1989).

By 1992, PDI was looking for a partner to produce feature-length animated films. In the meantime, the company (with help from Lucasfilm's Industrial Light & Magic) worked on the 1991 TV special "The Last Halloween" for Hanna-Barbera Productions, which won them an Emmy Award for the CG characters in the otherwise live-action special. This success turned into PDI's first 3D Character Animation pipeline. Using this pipeline, they created a 3D stereo Daffy Duck for Warner Bros. and a CG Homer and Bart Simpson for the "Homer3" segment of 1995 *The Simpsons* episode "Treehouse of Horror VI."

All these projects were a movie deal with DreamWorks SKG in 1995 to make the movie *Antz*. At this time, DreamWorks purchased a 40% share of PDI.

Glen Entis left PDI for the game industry in 1995, first joining DreamWorks Interactive as CEO. When Electronic Arts purchased DreamWorks Interactive, he moved to their Vancouver office to set up their next-generation games research group. He is a founding board member of Los Angeles' Digital Coast Roundtable and is chairman of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.

### 1995–2015: feature films and closure

DreamWorks Pictures released PDI's first feature film *Antz* in 1998. *Shrek* followed this in 2001.

After the success of *Antz*, in 2000, Carl Rosendahl sold his remaining interest in PDI to DreamWorks. PDI was renamed **PDI/DreamWorks** and continued to operate as a stand-alone business unit. Rosendahl left PDI in February 2000 to become managing director for Mobius Venture Capital, where he focused on investments in the technology and media companies. In May 2001, this sale virtually united the two studios, PDI and DreamWorks, into a single entity, which went public a few years later as DreamWorks Animation (DWA). PDI stopped making commercials in 2002. Animators at PDI worked on projects based at the PDI studio and assisted in DWA projects based in the Glendale DWA studio.

In 2008, Richard Chuang, the last of the initial three, left the company to pursue his ventures.

On January 22, 2015, DreamWorks shut down PDI due to its restructuring.

## Animated films

PDI has produced *Antz* (1998), *Shrek* (2001), *Shrek 2* (2004), *Madagascar* (2005), *Shrek the Third* (2007), *Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa* (2008), *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 ninth highest-grossing animated film of all time in the United States.

PDI won their only Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film for *Shrek* in 2002.

## Technical awards

PDI won nine Scientific and Technical Academy Awards. The first was awarded to Les Dittert, along with others, in 1994 for work in film scanning. The second was awarded to Carl Rosendahl, Richard Chuang and Glenn Entis in 1997 for the PDI animation system's concept and architecture. In particular, this award 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, PDI gave their global illumination rendering system first used on *Shrek 2* to Eric Tabellion and Arnauld Lamorlette. This film was the first use of global illumination in an animated feature film, a technique that is commonplace today.

In 2013, PDI gave an award for their lighting tool, called "light" to Lawrence Kesteloot, Drew Olbrich and Daniel Wexler. This tool was developed in 1996 for PDI's first feature film, *Antz*, and was used until 2015 at PDI and DreamWorks Animation some 25 films later.

In 2015, PDI awarded Scott Peterson, Jeff Budsberg and Jonathan Gibbs for the studio's foliage (trees and vegetation) system. PDI first used this system on *Shrek*, and they continue to use it today. At the same ceremony, PDI awarded Karl Rasche and engineers from HP to create the "DreamColor" monitor.

Richard Chuang, Rahul Thakkar, Mark Kirk and Stewart Birnam, and DreamWorks engineer Andrew Pilgrim, won a 2016 SciTech technical achievement award for their work on digital movie review systems.

## Filmography

### Film effects

PDI contributed visual effects, animation and other services to the following films:

* *Electric Dreams* (1984)
* *Scrooged* (1988)
* *Ghost* (1990) (uncredited)
* *Solar Crisis* (1990)
* *Terminator 2: Judgment Day* (1991)
* *Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare* (1991)
* *Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country* (1991)
* *The Last Boy Scout* (1991) (digital compositing)
* *Body Parts* (1991) (trailer)
* *Freejack* (1992) (uncredited)
* *Sleepwalkers* (1992)
* *The Babe* (1992)
* *Lethal Weapon 3* (1992) (digital compositing)
* *Batman Returns* (1992)
* *Toys* (1992)
* *Robocop 3* (1993)
* *Cliffhanger* (1993)
* *Dennis the Menace* (1993)
* *Rookie of the Year* (1993)
* *Heart and Souls* (1993) (Visual effects and title sequence)
* *Freaked* (1993)
* *Carlito's Way* (1993)
* *Lightning Jack* (1994)
* *Beverly Hills Cop 3* (1994)
* *Angels in the Outfield* (1994)
* *True Lies* (1994)
* *Airheads* (1994)
* *Natural Born Killers* (1994)
* *The River Wild* (1994)
* *Double Dragon* (1994)
* *Speechless* (1994)
* *Batman Forever* (1995)
* *Bushwhacked* (1995)
* *Broken Arrow* (1996)
* *Executive Decision* (1996)
* *The Arrival* (1996)
* *Eraser* (1996)
* *Batman and Robin* (1997)
* *A Simple Wish* (1997)
* *The Peacemaker* (1997)
* *Titanic* (1997)
* *Forces of Nature* (1999)
* *The Out-Of-Towners* (1999)
* *Supernova* (2000)
* *Mission: Impossible 2* (2000)
* *The Legend of Bagger Vance* (2000)
* *The Road to El Dorado* (2000)
* *The Deep End* (2001)
* *The Mexican* (2001)
* *Evolution* (2001)
* *A.I. Artificial Intelligence* (2001)
* *Minority Report* (2002)
* *People I Know* (2002)

### Shorts

* *Teddy Bear Maelstrom* (1983, Glen Entis)
* *Elephant Bubbles* (1984, Don Venhaus)
* *Max Trax* (1985, Adam Chin)
* *Cosmic Zoom* (AKA *Comic Zoom*) (1985, PDI Staff)
* *Chromosaurus* (1985, Don Venhaus)
* *Max's Place* (1985, Adam Chin)
* *Opéra Industriel* (1986, Adam Chin, Rich Cohen)
* *Burning Love* (1987, PDI Staff)
* *Locomotion* (1989, Steve Goldberg)
* *The Wave* (1989, Scott Miller)
* *Slide Show* (1991, Glenn McQueen)
* *Frankie & Johnny* (1991, PDI Staff)
* *Happy Dog* (1992, PDI Character Animation Group)
* *Gas Planet* (1992, Eric Darnell)
* *Big Smoke* (1993, Eric Darnell)
* *Sleepy Guy* (1994, Raman Hui)
* *Brick-a-Brac* (1995, Cassidy Curtis)
* *Gabola The Great* (1997, Tim Cheung)
* *Basic Insect* (1998, Marty Sixkiller)
* *Millennium Bug* (1998, Lee Lainer)
* *Fat Cat On a Diet* (1999, Raman Hui)
* *Fishing* (1999, David Gainey)
* *Metropopular* (2000, Jonah Hall)
* *Sprout* (2002, Scott B. Peterson)-Final independent work.

### Other work

* *The Jim Henson Hour* (Computer Animation) (1989)
* *The Last Halloween* (Character Animation) (1991)
* *Muppet\*Vision 3D* (1991) (Waldo Character Animation)
* *The Simpsons* Treehouse of Horror VI (1995) ("Homer3" Segment)
* *Marvin the Martian in the Third Dimension* (1996) (Theme Park Ride/Short Film)
* *Cartoon Sushi* (1997) (Gabola The Great Segment)
* *CyberWorld* (2000) (IMAX film, *Antz* and *The Simpsons* segments)
* *Shrek 4-D* (2003) (Theme Park Ride/Short Film)

## See also

* Pixar
* Rhythm & Hues
* DreamWorks Animation