Ed Zajac's paper Computer-Made Perspective Movies as a Scientific and Communication Tool (1964) makes the point that the basic transformation needed to make a perspective drawing is mathematically trivial and, with the faster computers now available, could be generated at a reasonable cost.

Early on it became clear that enhanced visualisation of 3D objects was possible via computer animation showing a sequence of different views of the objects. Michael Noll in his paper Computer Generated Three-Dimensional Movies (1965) noted that 3D presentations that require time as a fourth variable can be displayed as a two-dimensional perspective movie with monocular depth clues if made from two different viewpoints.

He also discussed the use of stereographics in his paper Stereographics Projections by Digital Computer .

Cyrus Levinthal, in his paper Molecular Model-building by Computer (1966) showed how a chemist could investigate the three-dimensional arrangement of the atoms.

Ruth Weiss at Bell Labs produced BE VISION A Package of IBM 7090 FORTRAN Programs to Draw Orthographic Views (1966) with hidden lines omitted.

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Another problem that the faster computers could solve was the amount of structured data required to simulate a complex object and display it. Two papers early on were:

Art Appel at IBM was a major developer of 3D computing and two papers Some techniques for shading machine renderings of solids and The Interactive Design of Three-Dimensional Animation are of interest.