Code Curiosities

The Great Emu War of Computer Graphics: How a Bird Nearly Broke Hollywood

Episode Summary

In 1995, a single computer-animated emu in Disney's 'Dinosaur' caused rendering farms to crash, budgets to explode, and animators to question everything they knew about feathers. This is the story of how one stubborn bird exposed the dirty secret of early CGI: sometimes the most innocent-looking creatures are the hardest to bring to life.