31–40 of 50 posts
Hold up. This seems forced.
What would've driven this fellow to household recognition? Even his billionaire, surviving peer, Ed Catmull, and the commercial face of Pixar isn't a household name.
> That Bùi’s life story remains so unknown, to others in his field as well as to the broader public, seems to exemplify racist stereotypes about technically skilled but otherwise faceless Asians, and reflects an unwillingness to reckon with Asian American history. Hold up. This seems forced. What would've driven this fellow to household recognition? Even his billionaire, surviving peer, Ed Catmull, and the commercial…
I don't think there's any reason to think Bùi's obscurity is due to any particular prejudice against Asian Americans.
> Nevertheless, our close examination of his publications removes the ambiguity. The cover of his dissertation clearly delineates his family name from his compound given name, and in his final publication, he listed his last name as “Bui.” The preponderance of evidence suggests that he was Dr. Bùi, but the scientific literature misidentifies him as Dr. Phong. > This also suggests that “Phong shading” is a misnomer, b…
> please please please use my given name. I assume, and please correct me if I misrepresent your reason, that you're referring to the fact that most Vietnamese have last names from a very small pool? For those unaware: The 10 most common last names in Vietnam makes up 85% of the population, and nearly half Nguyen alone. I looked it up and Bùi is far less common, but still represents 11% of the population... For compa…
Most Vietnamese would prefer to be called by their given name, there is no implication of a relationship like "on a first-name basis".
Sad to see they are laying off staff from Pixar right after this story. https://variety.com/2024/film/news/pixar-layoffs-175-staffer...
> That Bùi’s life story remains so unknown, to others in his field as well as to the broader public, seems to exemplify racist stereotypes about technically skilled but otherwise faceless Asians, and reflects an unwillingness to reckon with Asian American history. Hold up. This seems forced. What would've driven this fellow to household recognition? Even his billionaire, surviving peer, Ed Catmull, and the commercial…
> That Bùi’s life story remains so unknown, to others in his field as well as to the broader public, seems to exemplify racist stereotypes about technically skilled but otherwise faceless Asians, and reflects an unwillingness to reckon with Asian American history. Hold up. This seems forced. What would've driven this fellow to household recognition? Even his billionaire, surviving peer, Ed Catmull, and the commercial…
People don't know his life story just because he was the first to interpolate normals between the vertices of triangles for smooth shading and created an exponential falloff for a highlight.
If he didn't do that first, someone else would have done it pretty quickly after, but in the 70s 3D computer graphics was so niche there were only a few people in the world with access to enough memory to hold a single color image.
Also the title saying he made toy story possible is ridiculous clickbait. He had nothing to do with toy story and it came many years after his work.
Not only that toy story was done with renderman and curved patches that were broken down into pixel sized polygons with highlights that were probably similar to blinn, so it's actually an example of phong interpolation and shading not being used.
This is overall terrible journalism that makes distant connections to pop culture for clickbait.
I find it rather distasteful that the author chose to drag in an unsupported theory about Phong's tragic illness and death. The school cited was several miles from the closest of the three locations mentioned (Tan Son Nhut), and the military wasn't spraying Saigon. Is it possible he was heavily exposed during the two years when that would have been possible? Many things are possible, of course. Is there any evidence…
It _is_ a bit damning that he died, though, of an ailment that is primarily the outcome of the _carcinogens the US was willingly dumping as an assault on the country_. I mean, it’s not a smoking gun, but does that really matter?
Sad to see they are laying off staff from Pixar right after this story. https://variety.com/2024/film/news/pixar-layoffs-175-staffer...