Viewing objects in 3 dimensions with the additional computation required was always going to be of interest in general. That interest would increase as soon as faster computers arrived and the relevant hidden line algorithms had been developed. Some early activities were:
1. Three-Dimensional Visualisation
2. CAMPER for simple 3D animation
3. VISTA - Orbiting Space Craft
Michael Noll produced some additional papers related to multi-dimensional visualisation:
A Computer Technique for Displaying n-Dimensional Hyperobjects (1967)
Computer animation and the fourth dimension (1968)
Nelson Max spent several years making a 3D animation of a sphere being turned inside out. A 1975 paper Computer Animation of the Sphere Eversion highlights the problems of generating the 3D animation. The animation could not have been achieved in any other medium, and could never have been animated by hand.
In the UK, the Cambridge CAD Centre was mainly interest in 3D for CAD applications but they also had contacts with the London-based animators who used their software.The CAD Centre paper A Solution to the Hidden Surface Problem describes their early attempts at producing 3D graphics at a reasonable cost.
Half-tone perspective drawings by computer gives some details of the early Utah activity.
Mike Archuletta at Lawrence Livermore Lab produced a system VPIX 3D that was used by most of the scientists there and it was also made available elsewhere.
A frequently cited paper is Warnock's thesis A Hidden Surface Algorithm for Computer-Generated Halftone Pictures.
Charles Csuri's 1975 paper Computer Animation describes a comprehensive 3-D real-time computer animation system.