It has been said that four countries have provided leadership in 3-D computer animation: the United States, Japan, Canada and France. One could expand that list to include other countries, such as England; but in any case, France is certainly one of the leaders.

Dino Island produced by Ex Machine for Iwerks

A Little Bit of History
Three-D computer animation is not new in France. Its history goes back to the 1960s and the experimental works of Peter Foldes at Service de recherche de l'ORTF, an experimental art/technology lab run by Pierre Schaeffer. (Its beginning, of course, actually dates back to the flight simulators used by the French Army, which are much the same as those that now run on personal computers.) Soon after, a firm called Sogitec emerged from this prehistoric period and eventually became the largest company of its kind in Europe, and is now known as Ex Machina.

At the time, more than 15 years ago, the computers being used were big, expensive and slow. The pictures Sogitec/Ex Machina generated were flat, ugly and expensive. Very few classically trained were interested in this new way of making films.

In the early 1980s, the French government gave a lot of money to spur the growth of this new industry and a film festival, Imagina, was set up to showcase 3-D pictures from all around the world.

Production companies, and especially post-production companies, began to buy equipment to produce 3-D pictures for TV commercials and advertising. They used, and still use today, a very complete software package called Explore, from Thomson Digital Image (a division of Thomson, a French company specializing in computer and hi-fi equipment). And when these companies could not find the right software to create the images they wanted, they wrote one themselves.

Today's Hardware and Software
As is customary elsewhere, a variety of software is used in France. A large percentage run on Silicon Graphic work stations, a platform that uses the old, but powerful Unix operating system. It is a very flexible platform, which allows each individual animator to customize his or her own setup with small, personalized programs. The amount of software that runs on UNIX is large and today even includes small applications written for personal computers. These work stations are often linked with PCs and Macintoshes, where one can prepare the "maps" (the textures you can see on the shapes of the 3-D objects). Frequently, several programs are used in making a single film: each one has its own niche, as an all-purpose software still doesn't exist.

The hardware and software used today are the same around the world. The main exception being the in-house software developed for internal use at various companies. For instance, MacGuffline has developed an excellent program to do morphing; Duran has a program that quickly integrates several layers of imagery, while Ex Machina has one that one can handle muscle distortion; K.O. Kid was made at Buff with software that creates an animation of a "3-D flat" character; etc., etc.