libDraw was a library for doing real-time interactive drawing on the Pixar Image Computer.

Back in the 1980s I wrote a bunch of software as part of the volumetric medical imaging system we designed for Philips (nee Picker) Medical. We used to document our code in those days. I was digging through some archival stuff of mine, looking for an implementation of Bresenham’s line algorithm I wrote for Mathematica, and this document popped up.

I wrote it when I first got to Pixar in 1987 and passed it along as I moved on to the animation group.

It’s not terribly interesting in itself, basic stuff. But maybe someone out there cares about it for historical purposes.

This stuff was usually archived as a “Pixar Technical Memo” but I think, with the three successive decimations of the Pixar technical staff (which I only survived because I was part of the animation group when those started) we stopped archiving this sort of stuff by then.

I’d be happy to add it as PTM-87-99 or whatever. There’s a pretty good chance the source code for it is in an SCCS directory on a 9-track tape I have in a box in the basement, if anyone needs it.

Those of you with early experience writing code for the Macintosh / QuickDraw will see certain similarities or ‘inspirations’ if you will. You can view / download it here –

Anyway – let me know if this is useful / historically interesting to any of you. It was a rush down memory lane for me. I also wrote a resource compiler that was used on a few projects. Also Macintosh like. Also ‘inspired’.

Note also I have good stories about all this stuff, Jack Bresenham, Alvy, etc., I’m happy so share sometime if anyone cares.