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Gibson’s Feelies (Laser Scans: Phillips & Egan)
Flip Phillips
Professor of Motion Picture Science • Rochester Institute of Technology
My research and teaching focuses on the human perception of materials, 3D shape, and motion — primarily through vision and touch. My trajectory spans undergraduate training in architecture and computer graphics at OSU’s Computer Graphics Research Group, UI and animation at Pixar Animation Studios (where I was the original ‘Animation Scientist’), and cognitive science, neuroscience, and mathematical modeling at OSU, Skidmore, and RIT.
Affiliations & Links
- Email: flip.phillips@rit.edu
- Appointments:
- Lab GitHub: github.com/ritmps
- Personal GitHub: github.com/flipphillips
- Scholarship: Google Scholar • Neurotree
- Current Courses: Virtual Production I & II, Intro to Imaging
- Music: History of Jazz Drumming
- “Part machine — titanium, Dacron, and cow”
Interactive Research Artifact
All 3D Datasets →Gibson’s Feelies in 3D
Direct laser scans of J.J. Gibson's historic tactile stimuli, cleaned and prepared in Mathematica for 3D printing and haptic shape discrimination experiments.
Gibson's Feelie #1 (NextEngine Laser Scan)
Click & drag to rotate in real-time. Toggle solid/wireframe or pause rotation.
Loading 3D Laser Scan geometry...
NextEngine Laser Scan • CC BY-NC-SA 4.0View Dataset on GitHub →
Archival Chronicles
All 24 Stories →Folklore: Pixar, Bowie & Computer Graphics
Firsthand stories from the pioneering days of computer animation, reference stunts in parking lots, and uncanny encounters.
Folklore
I Was a Teenage (well, 22 yr old) Model for a Lamp
In which I jump over a trash can. We did a lot of reference footage, back in the day. Here, specifically, in the mid 1980s, we wanted some reference for Luxo, Jr. So, out to the parking lot…
#animation#folklore#history
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Folklore
Hayao Miyazaki gave me this Cat Bus. No you can't have it.
Back in the late 80s, Hayao Miyazaki came to visit Pixar. He brought gifts. He had something for everyone, he gave the animation group a Seiko Talking Pyramid Clock. Craig Good and I spent the afternoon trying to…
#animation#catbus#folklore
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Folklore
David Bowie Wants Ideas
I grew up just down river from Ann Magnuson, one half of Bongwater. They informed the world of David’s needs in this wonderful song. In between leaving Pixar and starting back to grad school, I connected with then-former…
#appalachia#bongwater#bowie
Read →Selected Research
All 67 Works →Recent Publications & Preprints
Visual perception, volumetric motion capture, material reflectance, and haptic discrimination.
2026Journal Article✦ Selected Work
Spectral rendering techniques to improve color matching in virtual production
V Simion, S Farnand, DL Long, F Phillips
SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal, vol. 135, num. 6
2026Conference Proceeding✦ Selected Work
Rolling Through the Pipeline: A Course Model for Virtual Production Education
F Phillips, DL Long, A Montag, CY Peng
Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH Educator’s Forum (SIGGRAPH ’26), Los Angeles, CA
2026Article✦ Selected Work
Compression and recompression of JPEG: stability, artifacts, and iterative image collapse
F Phillips
Wolfram Community (Staff Pick)
🔗Article Link →(PDF available upon request)
2024Journal Article✦ Selected Work
Perceptual plausibility of exaggerated realistic motion
F Schmidt, L Noejovich, G Chakalos, F Phillips
Cognition, vol. 251, art. 105880