Gary Yost
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Gary Yost (born 1959) is an American
filmmaker Filmmaking or film production is the process by which a Film, motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, beginning with an initial story, idea, or commission. Production then continues through screen ...
,
musician A musician is someone who Composer, composes, Conducting, conducts, or Performing arts#Performers, performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general Terminology, term used to designate a person who fol ...
and
software design Software design is the process of conceptualizing how a software system will work before it is implemented or modified. Software design also refers to the direct result of the design process the concepts of how the software will work which co ...
er, best known for leading the team that created
Autodesk 3ds Max Autodesk 3ds Max, formerly 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max, is a professional 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations, models, games and images. It is developed and produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. It has modeling capa ...
.


Antic Software

Yost created the
Antic Software Antic Software was a software company associated with ''Antic'', a magazine for Atari 8-bit computers. Bound into issues of the magazine, the Antic Software catalog initially sold Atari 8-bit games, applications, and utilities from the recently de ...
publishing unit for Antic Magazine in 1984 after
Jack Tramiel Jack Tramiel (, ); born Idek Trzmiel (; December 13, 1928 – April 8, 2012) was a Polish- American businessman and Holocaust survivor, best known for founding Commodore International. The Commodore PET, VIC-20, and Commodore 64 are som ...
bought
Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French holding company Atari SA (formerly Infogrames) and its focus is on "video games, consumer hardware, licensing and bl ...
Computer from Warner Communications and shut down the
Atari Program Exchange Atari Program Exchange (APX) was a division of Atari, Inc. that sold software via mail-order for Atari 8-bit computers from 1981 until 1984. Quarterly APX catalogs were sent to all registered Atari 8-bit owners. APX encouraged any programmer, not ...
. Yost met Tom Hudson at the Fall 1985 Comdex trade show and they began planning a suite of 3D animation tools for the
Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...
line of microcomputers, which became the Cyber Studio suite of animation products, beginning with CAD-3D 1.0, released autumn 1986. Stereo CAD-3D 2.0, released in late 1987, was built on an
open-architecture Open architecture is a type of computer architecture or software architecture intended to make adding, upgrading, and swapping components with other computers easy. For example, the IBM PC, Amiga 2000 and Apple IIe have an open architecture supp ...
framework and incorporated support for creating stereoscopic animations using the Tektronix “StereoTek”
liquid crystal Liquid crystal (LC) is a state of matter whose properties are between those of conventional liquids and those of solid crystals. For example, a liquid crystal can flow like a liquid, but its molecules may be oriented in a common direction as i ...
shutter 3D display. The StereoTek display was the first low-cost mass-market 3D display for microcomputers.


The Yost Group, Autodesk and beyond

In 1988 Yost left Antic Software to form “The Yost Group” when Autodesk offered him a software licensing agreement to create a suite of affordable animation tools for the IBM PC, beginning with Autodesk 3D Studio and Autodesk Animator, which was a 2D cel animation tool written by
Jim Kent William James Kent (born February 10, 1960) is an American research scientist and computer programmer. He has been a contributor to genome database projects and the 2003 winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award (Bioinformatics), Benjamin Franklin Aw ...
for The Yost Group. An obscure fact about Yost in 1988 is that, along with Computer Graphics pioneer
Jim Blinn James F. Blinn (born 1949) is an American computer scientist who first became widely known for his work as a computer graphics expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), particularly his work on the pre-encounter animations for the Voyag ...
, he played percussion on the
Todd Rundgren Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the bands Nazz and Utopia. He is known for his sophistica ...
album "Nearly Human," which was recorded at
Fantasy Studios Fantasy Studios was a music recording studio in Berkeley, California, United States, at the Zaentz Media Center, known for its recording of award-winning albums including Journey (band), Journey's ''Escape (Journey album), Escape'' and Green Day's ...
in Berkeley, California. Working with Tom Hudson, Jack Powell, Dan Silva, Rolf Berteig and Gus Grubba, Yost led the team that created Autodesk 3D Studio versions 1-4 for the MS-DOS platform. Don Brittain, former VP of Research for
Wavefront Technologies Wavefront Technologies was a computer graphics company that developed and sold computer animation, animation software used in Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film, motion pictures and other industries. It was founded in 1984, in Santa Barba ...
, was brought into the Yost Group to help create the re-designed 3D animation program called
Autodesk 3ds Max Autodesk 3ds Max, formerly 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max, is a professional 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations, models, games and images. It is developed and produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. It has modeling capa ...
, based on the Microsoft Windows NT platform and it was first shown at the Association for Computing Machinery’s
SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference centered around computer graphics organized by ACM, starting in 1974 in Boulder, CO. The main conference has always been held in North ...
conference in Los Angeles in 1995 before its 1996 release. Yost and his engineering team applied for and received eight US patents for the technology they invented for Autodesk 3ds Max and in 1997 they sold their rights to the source code and inventions to Autodesk, ending Yost’s involvement with the product. In 2004 Yost joined Berlin-based mental images, GmbH & Co. as Executive Vice President of their US-based operation. Yost and mental images’ founder Rolf Herken had formed a relationship when Yost licensed the mental ray rendering library and other software components from mental images for Autodesk 3ds Max. mental images was acquired by
NVIDIA Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...
, and Yost’s involvement wound down by 2011. In 2013, Yost joined Rolf Herken’s Mine Innovation as an engineering advisor. In 2020, Yost was interviewed about his life's experience in CGI on the 300th episode of the CG Garage VFX podcast.


Photography, Filmmaking and Virtual Reality.

Yost has been a photographer for over 50 years and began pursuing photography more seriously in 2012 when he created the viral video “A Day in the Life of a Fire Lookout,” about the Gardner Fire Lookout on Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County, California. That video won a Vimeo Staff Pick award. He spent seven years working with the
Marin Municipal Water District The Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD) is the government agency that provides drinking water to southern and central Marin County, California. Chartered in 1912, it became California's first municipal water district. It serves 191,000 customers ...
and the
Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy is a nonprofit cooperating association that supports park stewardship and conservation in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area—the most visited national park in the U.S. Recognized as one of the ...
on a trilogy of films about Ground Equipment Facility J-33, the abandoned Mill Valley Air Force Station on the West Peak of
Mount Tamalpais Mount Tamalpais (; ; Miwok languages, Miwok: ''Támal Pájiṣ''), known locally as Mount Tam, is a mountain, peak in Marin County, California, Marin County, California, United States, often considered symbolic of Marin County. Much of Mount Tama ...
in
Marin County Marin County ( ) is a county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael. Marin County is ac ...
, California. Yost's Mt. Tamalpais film series covers a wide range of topics, including a short doc about artist Zio Ziegler and his Mill Valley mural that was inspired by the
Sitting Bull Sitting Bull ( ; December 15, 1890) was a Hunkpapa Lakota people, Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against Federal government of the United States, United States government policies. Sitting Bull was killed by Indian ...
monument on Mt. Tam. The first film in the trilogy, “The Invisible Peak” was created by Yost with help from
Peter Coyote Peter Coyote (born Robert Peter Cohon; October 10, 1941) is an American actor, director, screenwriter, author, and narrator of films, theater, television, and audiobooks. He worked on films, such as ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' (1982), '' C ...
and George Daly. It has been a selection at 16 film festivals, and has won awards for Best Documentary, Best of Show, and Outstanding Environmental Vision. The most-recent work in Yost's Mt. Tamalpais film series is "The Way it's Supposed to Be" featuring performances by Marin County musicians
Bob Weir Robert Hall Weir ( ; né Parber, born October 16, 1947) is an American musician and songwriter best known as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. After the group disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with the Other Ones, later known as the Dead ...
,
Maria Muldaur Maria Muldaur (born Maria Grazia Rosa Domenica D'Amato; September 12, 1942) is an American folk and blues singer who was part of the American folk music revival in the early 1960s. She recorded the 1973 hit song " Midnight at the Oasis" and h ...
,
Ramblin' Jack Elliott Ramblin' Jack Elliott (born Elliott Charles Adnopoz; August 1, 1931) is an American folk singer, songwriter and story teller. Life and career Elliott was born in 1931 in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of Florence (Rieger) and Abraham Adno ...
and Matt Jaffe In addition to the filmmaking work he has accomplished on Mt. Tamalpais, Yost has been working on films that document the cultural life of Fijians in 2015. His other videos include a project with Puddles the Clown, which has garnered nearly 10 million views on YouTube and an innovative use of infrared cinematography for a project with the YASSOU band, featuring synchronized swimmers from LA-based
Aqualillies Aqualillies is a professional synchronised swimming/dance company founded in 2008 with teams in California, New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Canada, France, and Australia. They are known as pioneers in the renaissance of water ballet as entertainment. ...
. Yost has been actively promoting the use of time-lapse to tell stories, and was a judge for the LA-based 2016 Timelapse Film Festival along with
Godfrey Reggio Godfrey Reggio (born 1940) is an American director of experimental documentary films. Life Reggio was born in New Orleans in 1940 to a Catholic family. He left home at age 14 to join the Catholic Christian Brotherhood. He became a monk, and spe ...
, the producer of the seminal time-lapse film
Koyaanisqatsi ''Koyaanisqatsi'' is a 1982 American non-narrative documentary film directed and produced by Godfrey Reggio, featuring music by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. Described as an "essay in images and sound on the state of American ...
. In 2017 Yost was the recipient of the Mill Valley Creative Achievement "Milley" award from the Mill Valley, California Arts Commission, joining previous recipients including
Dan Hicks (singer) Daniel Ivan Hicks (December 9, 1941 – February 6, 2016) was an American singer-songwriter and musician, and the leader of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. His idiosyncratic style combined elements of Folk music, cowboy folk, jazz, Country musi ...
,
John Korty John Korty (June 22, 1936 – March 9, 2022), was an American film director and animator, best known for the television film '' The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman'' and the documentary '' Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen K ...
,
Joyce Maynard Joyce Maynard (born November 5, 1953) is an American novelist and journalist. She began her career in journalism in the 1970s, writing for several publications, most notably '' Seventeen'' magazine and ''The New York Times''. Maynard contributed ...
,
Sammy Hagar Sam Roy Hagar (born October 13, 1947), also known as the Red Rocker, is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He rose to prominence in the early 1970s with the hard rock band Montrose before launching a ...
,
Jane Hirshfield Jane Hirshfield (born February 24, 1953) is an American poet, essayist, and translator, known as "one of American poetry's central spokespersons for the biosphere" and recognized as "among the modern masters" who writes "some of the most import ...
and
Bob Weir Robert Hall Weir ( ; né Parber, born October 16, 1947) is an American musician and songwriter best known as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. After the group disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with the Other Ones, later known as the Dead ...
. In both 2018 and 2019 Yost won the Best Indie Filmmaker reader's choice award in
Marin County, California Marin County ( ) is a County (United States), county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat a ...
from the
Pacific Sun (newspaper) The ''Pacific Sun'' is a free distribution weekly newspaper published in Marin County, just north of San Francisco in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is the longest running alternative weekly in the nation and is published on Wednesdays. Since Oc ...
and he began working in the field of immersive cinema. He was the director of photography for "Circle of Dreams," a virtual reality project with the legendary SF-based art collective
The Residents The Residents are an American art collective and art rock band best known for their avant-garde music and multimedia works. Since their first official release, ''Meet the Residents'' (1974), they have released over 60 albums, numerous music vid ...
.


The WisdomVR Project and Inside COVID19

Yost launched the nonprofit WisdomVR Project as a 501(c)(3) with strategic partnership support from
Oculus VR Reality Labs, formerly Oculus VR, is a business and research unit of Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) that produces virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware and software, including virtual reality headsets such as the Qu ...
and the
Long Now Foundation The Long Now Foundation, established in 1996, is an American non-profit organization based in San Francisco that seeks to start and promote a long-term cultural institution. It aims to provide a counterpoint to what it views as today's "faster ...
in early 2019. As of September 2019, WisdomVR participants include
Ram Dass Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert; April 6, 1931 – December 22, 2019), also known as Baba Ram Dass, was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and writer. His best-selling 1971 book '' Be Here Now'', which has been d ...
, Betty Reid Soskin,
Gavin de Becker Gavin de Becker (born October 26, 1954)Reagan, Ronald (January 19, 1989)Designation of Gavin de Becker as a Member of the Board of Governors of the United Service Organizations, Incorporated.via Reagan archive is an American security specialis ...
,
Peter Coyote Peter Coyote (born Robert Peter Cohon; October 10, 1941) is an American actor, director, screenwriter, author, and narrator of films, theater, television, and audiobooks. He worked on films, such as ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' (1982), '' C ...
, Shelton Johnson,
Gaelynn Lea Gaelynn Lea Tressler (born January 21, 1984) is an American folk singer, violinist, public speaker and disability advocate from Duluth, Minnesota. She won NPR's 2016 Tiny Desk Contest. Early life and education Gaelynn Lea was born with osteog ...
, L. Frank Manriquez,
Anna Halprin Anna Halprin (born Hannah Dorothy Schuman; July 13, 1920 – May 24, 2021) was an American choreographer and dancer. She helped redefine dance in postwar America and pioneer the experimental art form known as postmodern dance and referred to her ...
,
Todd Rundgren Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the bands Nazz and Utopia. He is known for his sophistica ...
,
Wavy Gravy Hugh Nanton Romney Jr. (born May 15, 1936), known as Wavy Gravy, is an American entertainer and peace activist best known for his role at Woodstock, as well as for his hippie persona and countercultural beliefs. Romney has founded or co-founde ...
,
Joan Jeanrenaud Joan Jeanrenaud ( Dutcher; born January 25, 1956) is an American cellist. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, she played with the Kronos Quartet from 1978 until 1999, when, after a sabbatical, she left to pursue a solo career and collaborations with ...
,
Malcolm Margolin Malcolm Margolin (born October 27, 1940) is an author, publisher, and former executive director of Heyday Books, an independent nonprofit publisher and cultural institution in Berkeley, California. From his founding of Heyday in 1974 until his r ...
, Reuben Heyday Margolin, John Law (artist),
Stanislav Grof Stanislav Grof (born July 1, 1931) is a Czech-born American psychiatrist. Grof is one of the principal developers of transpersonal psychology and research into the use of non-ordinary states of consciousness for purposes of psychological hea ...
,
Huey Johnson Huey Johnson (January 6, 1933 – July 12, 2020) was an American environmentalist, noted as a prolific organizer of NGOs. Among other organizations, he founded the Trust for Public Land and the Resource Renewal Institute (RRI), a non-pro ...
and Pearl E. Gates from
Pearl Harbor and the Explosions Pearl Harbor and the Explosions was a musical act from San Francisco, California, United States. Forming in 1979, the new wave band had limited success in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with their debut single, " Drivin'", reaching the lower e ...
. In late 2020 the 501(c)(3) WisdomVR Project launched the stereoscopic 360° documentary Inside COVID19, funded by
Oculus (brand) Reality Labs, formerly Oculus VR, is a business and research unit of Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) that produces virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware and software, including virtual reality headsets such as the Met ...
, which told the story of an American ER doctor who nearly died from the novel coronavirus and featured over 10 minutes of 360° stereoscopic molecular animation designed by Andrew Murdock and created in
Autodesk 3ds Max Autodesk 3ds Max, formerly 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max, is a professional 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations, models, games and images. It is developed and produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. It has modeling capa ...
.
Alvy Ray Smith Alvy Ray Smith III (born September 8, 1943) is an American computer scientist who co-founded Lucasfilm's Computer Division and Pixar, participating in the 1980s and 1990s expansion of computer animation into feature film. He is one of the 50 F ...
, co-founder of Pixar, stated “WisdomVR's 'Inside COVID19' production was excellent and the interviews felt more intimate than normal (hence showing off VR in an unexpected way). The computer graphics were stunning, and the best explanation I’ve seen of COVID at work. It shows what really can be done in this new medium.” and
John Carmack John D. Carmack II (born August 21, 1970) is an American computer programmer and video game developer. He co-founded the video game company id Software and was the lead programmer of its 1990s games ''Commander Keen'', ''Wolfenstein 3D'', ''Do ...
, founding CTO of Oculus tweeted "Inside COVID19 is a high production value documentary that just happens to be done in stereo 360, rather than a tentative exploration of a new medium. Things are maturing.” The Inside COVID19 VR documentary was nominated for the 2021
Emmy Awards The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the year, each with their own set of rules and award categor ...
in the Outstanding Interactive Program category, won the Festival of International Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories "People's Choice" award for best immersive video in February 2021, is a 2021
Webby Awards The Webby Awards (colloquially referred to as the Webbys) are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over three thousand industry experts a ...
Honoree and was selected to be featured in the 2021
SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference centered around computer graphics organized by ACM, starting in 1974 in Boulder, CO. The main conference has always been held in North ...
VR Theater.


Blending poetry, original music and video about Mt. Tamalpais.

Yost released a series of devotional original musical videos dedicated to Mt. Tamalpais entitled “Songs from the Last Place” in August 2024, inspired by the beat poet
Lew Welch Lewis Barrett Welch Jr. (August 16, 1926 – May 23, 1971) was an American poet associated with the Beat generation literary movement. Welch published and performed widely during the 1960s. He taught a poetry workshop as part of the University o ...
’s “The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings.” The project's foundational video was featured at the Bolinas Film Festival in September 2024.


References


External links

*
Songs from the Last Place, YoutubeSongs from the Last Place, VimeoVimeo channelYoutube channelWisdomVR website"Inside COVID19" VR film websiteFijian music and dance cultureMill Valley Public Library Oral History Project interview with Gary Yost (02:10:25)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yost, Gary 1959 births 21st-century American photographers Software design Living people People from Bergen County, New Jersey