Meet Carl Rosendahl, The ETC Faculty Member Who Built The Computer Graphics Industry

Before Carl Rosendahl joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) as a Distinguished Professor of the Practice, he was busy inventing the very industry many of his students now aspire to join.

"I started out in the computer animation and visual effects world, and actually started a company straight out of college called Pacific Data Images (PDI). That was in 1980, before there really was a computer graphics industry,” Rosendahl said. “I ran that company for 20 years, and eventually it became part of Dreamworks Animation."

For Rosendahl, the early days of computer graphics were an exercise in pure invention.

"We built it up to a company that did feature-length fully computer-animated films from absolutely nothing," he said. "It was an amazing experience, from developing the technology — because nothing was off the shelf, we had to create everything from scratch — to understanding the entire film and television industry to learning how to be storytellers with these amazing tools."

That journey from technical experimentation to cinematic storytelling laid the foundation for his later career. Dreamworks acquired PDI in 2000. “[PDI’s technology] is basically the foundation of the pipeline that DreamWorks uses to this day," Rosendahl said.

Rosendahl left PDI to explore the world of venture capital during the Internet bubble of the early 2000s. “I got exposed to a lot of other companies and the way that they work, and in that way I continued my education about entrepreneurship and business. I did another startup in the youth media space that didn’t really take off, but it was a great experience… and then I was just trying to figure out what to do next.” That’s when Rosendahl discovered the ETC. In 2007, a mutual friend working at Electronic Arts (EA) introduced him to the ETC’s director at the time; he invited Rosendahl to be part of a new program hosted at EA’s Silicon Valley headquarters. Over the next 15 years, Rosendahl would go from being part-time faculty there to running it.

The Silicon Valley program had the same project-based curriculum as the ETC in Pittsburgh, but the difference was that the students were immersed directly in the industry.

"We were embedded inside of Electronic Arts (EA), and they were incredibly generous with giving us space and attention and projects," Rosendahl said. “We had two to four teams each semester, and two faculty members embedded with them. And as faculty, we were on the same floor as the students in cubicle land. It was a really amazing experience, because as faculty members, we worked on a daily basis with all the teams."

The Silicon Valley faculty also taught electives of their choosing. Rosendahl taught a class on entrepreneurship, specifically designed to prepare students for the realities of the professional world — whether they planned to launch startups themselves or simply to be a part of a larger company.

"The one thing I guaranteed all the students in that class was that — whether they ended up starting their own company, or working at a small company, or being part of a team inside of a big place like EA — 100% of what they learned would be relevant to their job," Rosendahl said. "Even if you're a member of a team in a large company, you have budgets, you have clients… you have to justify your team's existence every day."

He also was able to explore his own interests by pitching projects for the students to work on, the majority of which focused on augmented reality (AR).

“Usually, it was about bringing AR agents into the real world,” he said. “Even now the technology isn’t quite there, but it definitely wasn’t then. This was way before the Quest 3, which was the first headset to really allow you to see through to the world around you.”

Rosendahl’s projects utilized early prototypes of VR technology — some which were built custom at the ETC back in Pittsburgh — to explore what the future of those technologies might look like.

"Yes, the technology wasn’t where you wanted it to be — it’s low resolution, the frame rate sucks, there’s delays — but that wasn't the problem we were trying to solve. We wanted to simulate what it could be like if that wasn’t the case, and to play with the human interaction with these characters and make it interesting and believable and engaging."

One standout example was the 2019 team Ako where students were tasked with creating an AR experience that taught users how to play a tabletop game.

"They designed this really cute little character who taught you how to play this card game, and they had him standing on your desktop, interacting with you by voice, and you could poke him like the Pillsbury Doughboy. And they had to overcome a lot of technical hurdles to make that happen," Rosendahl said. "But it was a really compelling example of what eventually we'd be able to do."

In 2020, the program at EA closed in the wake of COVID. “Even if we still wanted it to exist, I don’t think it really could,” said Rosendahl. “There’s no reason to be in someone’s offices anymore because no one’s in the offices. But it was a great run. It was really fun and exciting.”

Rosendahl still maintains his relationship with the ETC, serving as a part-time faculty member and visiting campus in Pittsburgh for one week each semester to meet with students.

"Being a resource face-to-face is just more interesting and more valuable," Rosendahl said. "Plus, it's just an exciting environment to be in… to kind of feel that energy and see what's going on, it’s really different than being on Zoom."

He makes a point of being accessible both in-person and online, frequently meeting with students to advise them about their projects and careers. When he does, he draws from his lifetime of experience working with new technologies.

“In your career, you’re going to be learning new tools all the time because they’re changing so fast,” he said. “It’s about staying on top of how technology is changing and where it’s going, and figuring out how we can use that in really interesting and creative ways.”

Feature image caption: In-progress graphics from PDI's first film, Antz