2000s
| Film | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within | 2001 | First feature-length digital film to be made based on photorealism and live action principles. The first theatrically released feature film to utilize performance capture (motion capture) for all of its characters actions. |
| Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius | 2001 | First CGI feature length movie made using off-the-shelf hardware and software. |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring | 2001 | First use of AI for digital actors (using the Massive software developed by Weta Digital). |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers | 2002 | First photorealistic motion captured character for a film. First virtual actor to win an award (Critics' Choice Movie Awards by Andy Serkis playing Gollum), in the newly-created category Best Digital Acting Performance |
| The Matrix Reloaded | 2003 | The Burly Brawl - the first use of "Universal Capture", the combination of dense (rather than point-based) motion capture and per-frame texture capture. |
| Able Edwards | 2004 | First movie shot completely on a green screen using digitally scanned images as backgrounds. |
| Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow | 2004 | First movie with all-CGI backgrounds and live actors. |
| Elephants Dream | 2006 | First CGI short movie released as completely open source. Made with Open Source software, theatrical and DVD release under Creative Commons License. Unique that all 3D models, animatics and software are included on the DVD free for any use. |
| Flatland | 2007 | First CGI feature film to be animated by one person. Made with Lightwave 3D and Adobe After Effects. |
| Beowulf | 2007 | Entirely made in CGI, features motion capture for all actors and has realism as its foremost goal. The largest team ever assembled for an Imageworks-produced movie (as of 2007) generated new animation tools for facial, body, and cloth design especially for the movie, and elements of keyframe animation were incorporated into the movie to capture the facial expressions of the actors and actresses. |
| PlumÃferos | 2009 | First CGI feature length movie made using Open Source/Free Software for all 3D models, animation, lighting and render process, under GNU/Linux operating system. |
| Avatar | 2009 | First full length movie made using performance-capture to create photo-realistic 3D characters and to feature a fully CG 3D photo-realistic world. The first Virtual Art Department (VAD) and complete Virtual Production pipeline was developed by director James Cameron and team to create the film in real-time. |
| Coronation Street Live (2010) | 2010 | First use of CGI in a live broadcast |
Read more about this topic: Timeline Of Computer Animation In Film And Television