The Art and Science of Digital Compositing, 2nd Edition

Chapter One. Introduction to Digital Compositing

An alien spacecraft hovers over New York, throwing the entire city into shadow. Massive armies converge on a battlefield. A giant ape faces off against a Tyrannosaurus Rex. And the Titanic, submerged for decades, sails once more.

Usually the credit for these fantastic visuals is given to “CGI” (computer-generated imagery) or “computer graphics,” an attribution that not only broadly simplifies the technology used but also ignores the sizeable crew of talented artists who actually created the work. Computer graphics techniques, in conjunction with a myriad of other disciplines, are commonly used for the creation of visual effects in feature films. But the term “computer graphics” is broad and covers ...