Tuesday 11 October 2016

Understanding Theory and Applications of 3D

Understanding Theory and Applications of 3D




Used in many industries, 3D is often used to create things such as art, movies and games, with this being an increasingly popular trend within the last two decades. Its increased popularity has lead to more and more ambitious, detailed and complex results and techniques from the medium.
3D models are used to create and render almost everything in things such as video games and movies animated in this manor. Within movies the 3D models and CGI had been used as an addition to the more traditional ways of making movies but in 1995 the first feature length 3D animated film was released by Pixar, Toy Story. The models used were cutting edge at the time and the techniques where new and exciting to most who saw the movie upon its release but compared to today's examples of 3D models, even within the Toy Story franchise, it is very visible how dated they have become especially when comparing the level of detail characters of the series contain. The improvement in modelling techniques and the software have led to vastly superior and near lifelike models as well as a vast array of unique art styles.  Animation within 3D projects has also vastly improved over time with techniques such as keyframing being a simple but effective means of animation in which the animator sets certain points within the animation that which the animation will then flow seamlessly between, creating a fluid animation that the model will then follow.

The place this wide and varied use of 3D is most evident is within the video games industry, where games like battlefield use 3D to create models and environments designed to closely mimic objects and environments found within the real world, this style became particulary popular among First Person Shooters during the seventh console generation where games became more focused on simulating realistic combat reflecting that of real world's conflicts at the time t, or games like the popular team shooter Overwatch that use a cartoony art style to create a distinct look, for a while this art style mostly saw popularity among the Indie game industry and saw very little success on the mainstream consoles of the generation, but as time passed people became tired of the now over saturated realistic artstyle and these more outlandish and unrealistic art styles have been increasing in popularity since.




Polygonal 3D models are also now often used in architecture whereby architects will use it to incorporate all the 2D information within a 3D space, with architects using it as a key part of the planning stage when designing structures such as bridges and buildings. it benefits the process by allowing the architect to look for errors that may have occurred during the drawing process, helping to get a better visualisation of the project and also works effectively as a marketing tool. Another area to recently adopt 3D modelling is that of art. it is becoming increasingly popular for artists to create their pieces within 3D modelling software such as Maya. A prominent example of such anj artist is Ray Caeser, who using 3D models creates art that is beautiful and disturbing. 






A key part of 3D modelling is geometric theory. Within geometric theory a basic initial mesh is used for an object that is later improved upon using different textures, with the mesh being built up of different polygons. Polygons are simple 2D shapes that contain three components, the vertice, the edge and the face. The first two are created upon the forming of a single line with the latter requiring roughly three at a minimum making up a basic triangular polygon. the vertice is the point the polygon, the edge is the lines making up each side of the polygon and the face is the large area in the centre of all edges and vertices. Adding more vertices creates more complex shapes such as quads, hexagons and decagons. These polygons are what is added together to create the complex models and environments used in many forms of media, this is known as mesh construction which is the most basic part of creating a 3D model upon which the rest is developed


No comments:

Post a Comment