Lance J. Williams (September 25, 1949 – August 20, 2017[1]) was a prominent graphics researcher who made major contributions to texture map prefiltering, shadow rendering algorithms, facial animation, and antialiasing techniques.
[2] Williams was an Honors student majoring in English with a minor in Asian Studies at the University of Kansas and graduated with a B.A.
He was drawn to the University of Utah by a "Humanistic Computation" summer seminar held by Jef Raskin at KU.
Lance left Utah (having completed his PhD course work and exams except the writing of a thesis) in 1977 to join the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT).
While at NYIT, Williams invented the mipmapping technique for texture filtering, which is ubiquitously used today by graphics hardware for PCs and video games, and wrote and directed the abandoned project The Works which would have been the first entirely 3D CGI film had it been finished in the early 1980s as intended.
Williams was awarded his PhD in 2000 from the University of Utah based on a rule allowing someone who published three seminal papers in his field to bind them together as his thesis.
While there he collaborated with Eric Chen to pioneer early image based rendering work, developed "Virtual Integral Holography," (with Dan Venolia), created 3D paint systems and contributed to QuickTime VR.