Unit 66 - 3D Modelling: 3D: The Basics

Applications of 3D

3D in Games

The first game to be playable on a commercial machine, created by Malcolm Evans just through tinkering in his spare time, Monster maze is considered the forerunner of first person games we play today. The game was created for the ZX81 home computer which in the united states was known as the timex sinclair.
The aim of the game was to see how long you could last in a maze with a tyranisouras rex and your only sources of help were the legs of which you stand on & points were awarded for each step the player took throughout the game, this may seem simple because technology has come a long way since 1981 but this game is what inspired most first person games you play to date.

Mainstream 3D

The fifth generation of games, most developers converted solely to 3D the first ones to reach this goal was games such as star fox & virtua racer.

the next era of games were moving to a more 3D friendly enviroment with games such as mario, sonic & zelda.Which were previously 2D became full 3d spaced games. There were many games that were tradionally in 3D that took the oppertunity for more enhanced game play, this was both great for marketing & created a trend, leaving only some games in 2D. The games industrys focus was now towards the newly announced 3D rather than the traditional side scrollers.

This was a new generation for the games industry and companys such as Rare & nintendo decided to embrace it thus creating the block buster golden eye.

Some time after the creation of golden eye many declined the option of using a cartridge with the now popular CD's which offered more storage than the previous devices.

Current Trends

With the technology used nowadays hyper realism is a standard element to creating a successful game. Because the gameplay for nearly every game is in real time & look almost like a character from a movie, there are now games which are the equivalant to the quality of which is in a movie making the games like an interactive film.

Examples of games which have these qualities are:

The increasing download speed will mean that 3D technology will have a huge part to play in the creation of future games on newly announced consoles such as the xbox one and Playstation 4.

3D in Animation

First 3D Animation

The first known 3D computer generated animation was created in 1972 by Ed Catmull one of the pioneers of 3D technology, and at a later date became one of the founders of the now animation titan pixar.

Pixar tin toy

Tin toy is a short film which was produced in 1988 by pixar & directed by john lassester.

t's about a small toy named Tinny, who is trying to escape from Billy, a baby who wants to play with him and dribble on him. When Tinny tries to walk, his musical instruments on his back play notes. He then begins to run, but is chased by Billy. Tinny soon finds cover under the couch, and when he looks up, he sees that there are several other toyshiding, also afraid of Billy. While walking and trying to find the toy, Billy falls down and begins to cry. Tinny, feeling bad for the baby, tries to go and cheer him up. When he does, Billy just ignores him and plays with the boxes Tinny came in. Mad, Tinny tries to follow Billy to get his attention, but is still ignored. Near the end of the credits, other toys hiding under the couch come out from underneath and begin to play.

Accessing the technology

Whilst there may still be original forms of animation such as cell & stop motion which are still very popular types of animation, over the years computer technology is used more frequently than ever before & because of popular demand it is now accessible to the general public for an affordable price. Allowing people with not much experience to create amzing proffessional quality animations.

Techniques

There are so many other kinds of techniques which can be combined with the 3D animation graphics techniques to make three-dimensional graphics. For example popular and frequently used functions in mathematical like gravity and simulations techniques. Various numbers of 3D animations have been frequently used for creating visual effects in recent movies.

Rigging

Before a 3D character model can be handed over to the team of animators, it must be bound to a system of joints and control handles so that the animators can pose the model. This process is typically completed by artists known as character technical directors or riggers.

A character rig is essentially a digital skeleton bound to the 3D mesh. Like a real skeleton, a rig is made up of joints and bones, each of which act as a "handle" that animators can use to bend the character into a desired pose.

A character rig can range from simple and elegant to staggeringly complex. A basic setup for simple posing can be built in a few hours, while a fully articulated rig for a feature film might require days or weeks before the character is ready for Pixar level animation.

Motion Capture

Motion capture is defined as "The creation of a 3D representation of a live performance." in the book Understanding Motion Capture for Computer Animation and Video Games by Alberto Menache. This is in contrast to animation that is created 'by hand' through a process known as keyframing.

Motion capture (AKA Mocap) used to be considered a fairly controversial tool for creating animation. In the early days, the effort required to 'clean up' motion capture data often took as long as if the animation was created by an animator, from scratch. Thanks to hard work by the manufacturers of motion capture systems as well as numerous software developers, motion capture has become a feasible tool for the generation of animation.

3D in Film and TV

The first 3D animation in film was the clip from earlier that was created by Ed Catmull made up of pollygons & was used in the film future world in 1976.

The breakthrough of 3D in film wasnt until the release of the Jurrassic park though, the release of the film was a titan among many other 3D revelutions to come. Almost every aspect of the dinasours featured were created using 3D software.

In modern times it is now very normal for a film to feature aspects of computerised 3D. Some examples of these are as follows:

Composites

While some people use the terms interchangeably, Rendering in layers is the process of rendering different objects in your scene separately, so that a different image is rendered for each layer of objects. Rendering in passes is the process of rendering different attributes of your scene separately. Here are three examples:

Highlight passes (sometimes called specular passes) isolate the specular highlights from your objects. You can render highlight passes by turning off any ambient light and making the object’s diffuse shading and color mapping to pure black. The result will be a rendering of all the specular highlights in the scene, over a black background, without any other types of shading.

A depth map (also called Z-Depth or a depth pass) is a pass that stores depth information at each point in your scene. Some productions use depth maps rendered in a special depth map file format. Other productions use simulated depth maps which are rendered as standard image files just like any other pass, but with a depth-fading effect over objects with constant white shading.

A shadow pass is a rendering that shows the locations of shadows in a scene. A shadow pass often appears as a white shadow region against a black background, a black shadow against a white background, or a rendering with the shadow shape embedded in the alpha channel. Cast shadows are where an object casts a shadow onto another 3D object or darkens an area of a live-action plate. Separate shadow passes can depict attached shadows, where an object casts shadows onto itself, such as the shadow a character's nose casts onto his own face.

3D Animation on TV

The first 3D show to be made up of soely 3D was reboot created by the canadian production company mainframe in 1994, aswell as attracting many youths at the time of the release the show suprisingly caught the eye of the senior citezens due to the originality.

The setting is in the inner world of a computer system known by its inhabitants as Mainframe. The city is populated almost entirely by binomes, little creatures that represent either 1s or 0s, as well as a handful of Sprites, such as Bob and Dot, who are primarily humanoid creatures of more complex design and are the main characters of the series.

Since the creation of 3D in film and TV the technology has come a long way and in the modern times production costs have lowered dramatically which has created a balance between that of the film industry compared to shows on the TV.

3D in Education

The 3D software we have access to these days means that not just in the game, TV & film industry is this form of work produced & used to a great standard, infact the results of teaching in 3D were significanty better than those who were not.

Comparing two groups of children, one taking 2D and the other a 3D lesson, the researchers have come upon amazing results. The lesson, which normally requires two to three class periods to complete, was taught in just one class period. The test results were astounding: in the first classroom (normal lesson), the control group test scores increased 9.7 percent.
But the group that received its lesson in 3D saw a 35 percent increase!

3D in Architecture

In the olden days, architecture was known as the three dimensional discipline that heavily relied upon models and drawings to deliver information. The development of information technology and architectural advancements such as the Building Information Modeling and Computer Aided Design has totally changed the profession. Today builders and architects develop designs on computers, whereas the conventional style of architectural documentation have been set aside.

3D in Engineering

Social interaction seems to be a hot topic for a number of major brands. Given the expertise in IT and programming from CAD vendors it is no surprise that many of them have jumped into social with their own community. Each of these is positioned to help designers and engineers share their knowledge, learn tricks, and get updates on their favorite (or most used) software, access crowd sourced files, and generally build a community of like minded designers.

3D in medicine

Using 3D technology is a great way to practice in the medical division & a great use to the health sector, most scientists believe that one day in the future it will be possible to 3D print a human liver.

3D in meteorology

This is a great use for meteorologists because it helps predict what the weather is going to be like and the current forecast.

An example of this 3D software is Terra 3D:

The artificial earth is represented by a three-dimensional object with 2 information layers. The first layer describes the terrain with a colored height model. The second layer uses original satellite images for the visualization of the clouds. All object and layer parameters can be modified and animated with a portable graphical user interface. After having adjusted all parameters, a high-quality animation can be rendered.

3D in product design

3D software is used by devellopers to to visualise products in a more defined way than on a standard piece of paper.