Alvy Ray Smith

Computing Graphics Pioneer

Alvy Ray Smith is an Academy Award-winning computing graphics pioneer who cofounded Pixar and Altamira. He was the first director of computer graphics at Lucasfilm as well as an original member of the Computer Graphics Lab at the New York Institute of Technology. Smith invented the first full-color paint program and the HSV (or HSB) color transform. He also coinvented the alpha channel, directed the Genesis Demo in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, proposed and negotiated the Academy-Award-winning Disney animation production system CAPS, and was active in the development of the HDTV standard. Smith holds four patents and is the author of A Biography of the Pixel. He has been published widely in topics such as theoretical computer science, computer graphics, and scholarly genealogy. Smith is also an advisor to Baobab Studios, a VR startup in Silicon Valley.

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