P1 Understand theory and applications of 3D
P1 Exercise
Research the below terms and post to your blog by the 30th September.
What do the below terms mean?
How can they affect 3D Modelling?
Applications of 3D: 3D can be seen in multiple different industries, both media-centred and more industrialized.
These include films, games, TV series, Visual effects and Product design/Architecture. All of these industries use 3D modelling to aid in their work, whether it be modeling characters or assets for a game, characters for a movie and visual walkthroughs for architectural design.
Displaying 3D polygon animations
Application programming interface, eg Direct3D, a Windows API that renders 3D objects in places such as video games.,
Rendering techniques (radiosity, ray tracing) - Ray tracing is the process of generating images by tracing the paths of light and stimulating effects with virtual objects.
Rendering engines
Distributed rendering techniques
Lighting - How a 3D scene is lit, using spot lights/point lights etc as light source. Furthermore, radiosity and ray tracing are commonly used for lighting.
Textures - 2D graphics that are applied to 3D objects and meshes. The textures offer a higher level of detail and can give the object more depth. Every asset in a videogame would require a texture.
Fogging - Fogging is used to give a game a feeling of distance. Objects and assets in the distance are blurred, and look distorted.
Shadowing - Shadowing is used to enhance the light features and textures of an object. Shadows vary based on the sharpness, darkness and intensity of the shadow.
Vertex and pixel shaders
Level of detail - The level of detail in a scene will correlate with the memory usage and file size of the scene. If a scene uses too many polygons, so the level of detail is very high, the program may struggle to run correctly and smoothly, which could result in a crash. If the level of detail is too low, the scene looks rough or basic, so finding a middle ground is essential for high quality work.
Geometric theory
Vertices - Corner/Apex of a primitive shape. 8 vertices on a cube.
Lines - Horizontal and vertical connections of vertices
Curves - Vertices which can change direction to curve lines
Edge - The outside lines of an object.
Polygons - Objects with multiple edges
Element - Specific part of an object to create a mesh
Face - 3 or more vertices together creating a face.
Primitives - Geometric shapes generated with computer graphics
Meshes, for example wireframe - an object with a set number of elements
Coordinate geometry (two-dimensional, three-dimensional) - Vertices on an X/Y/ axis for 2 Dimensional, and an additional Z axis for three dimensional.
Surfaces - A set of vertices with no depth
Mesh construction
Box modelling - Box modeling is a technique in 3D modeling where a primitive shape (such as a box, cylinder, sphere, etc.) is used to make the basic shape of the final model. You can start with a simple box and by manipulating the nodes and using tools.
Extrusion modelling - Modeling where the final model is created by using the extrude tool to extrude the faces of shapes.
Using common primitives, for example cubes, pyramids, cylinders, and spheres.
3D development software
There are a number of professional 3D modelling and Animating software available, including 3D Studio Max, Maya, Lightwave, AutoCAD and Cinema 4D. These programs use the following file formats accordingly: .3ds, .mb, .lwo, .C4d and a series of plug-ins.
Constraints
- Polygon count - The more polygons a 3D graphic program uses, the higher the detail of the game/asset. With a large number of polygons, the higher detail, the larger the file size and the longer the rendering time.
- File size - More detail means more data. If a file has a lot of data, the size of the file will be large, which will be harder to store on networks, hard drives and cloud storage etc.
