Alien Resurrection: The beast enters the cyberworld

(still collating)

leading from

Alien Resurrection: Alien beast CGI:

a) Traditional polygons too complicated and expensive

If they had used traditional polygonal-type models, the alien would have required millions and millions of vertices.

That would have made the CG model incredibly data heavy and difficult to animate and render with the computer itself being overworked.

1.  By using NURB (non-uniform rational B-spline component) data instead of polygons to create their CG model, Blue Sky was able to create a much more dexterous alien. 
   (http://www.theasc.com/magazine/nov97/reanimate/pg1.htm)  
2. Kopelman: "If we had used traditional polygonal-type models, the alien would have required millions and millions of vertices, That would have made the model incredibly heavy and difficult to animate and render.(http://www.theasc.com/magazine/nov97/reanimate/pg1.htm)

b) Taking the NURB route

By using NURB (non-uniform rational B-spline component) data instead of polygons to create their CG model, Blue Sky was able to create a much more dexterous alien.

Their homebred renderer, CGI Studio program enabled them to work with the alien model in its natural NURB state, which reduced the amount of data going into a scene while allowing them to increase the amount of detail in the model. and thus the computer didn't have to keep track of all the tons of data.

1. By using NURB (non-uniform rational B-spline component) data instead of polygons to create their CG model, Blue Sky was able to create a much more dexterous alien.  (http://www.awn.com/animationworld/ray-tracers-blue-sky-studios)
2. Kopelman: If we had used traditional polygonal-type models, the alien would have required millions and millions of vertices, That would have made the model incredibly heavy and difficult to animate and render.  (http://www.awn.com/animationworld/ray-tracers-blue-sky-studios) 
3. Kopelman: Fortunately, our homebred renderer, CGI Studio, enabled us to work with the alien model in its NURB state, which reduced the amount of data going into a scene while allowing us to increase the amount of detail in the model. When we finally rendered our CG images, CGI Studio left things in their natural NURB state, so [the computer] didn't have to keep track of all the tons of data." (http://www.theasc.com/magazine/nov97/reanimate/pg1.htm)

Steve Wang working on an alien maquette