Technology

Examine the technology that allows us to display 3D polygon animations: graphics pipeline, e.g. modelling, lighting, viewing, projection, clipping, scan conversion, texturing and shading. Also research Radiosity & Ray tracing rendering techniques.

Examples of the displaying 3D polygon animations: Graphics Pipeline, Application programming interface, rendering techniques, rendering engines.

Application Programming Interface which people also call API, is a set of functions and rules that a computer use to communicate with each other to do certain jobs. A good example of this is Twitter, API is used to receive updates on Tweets.

Graphic pipeline:

• Input data is the finished model ready for rendering this model may or may not be textured.
• Vertex shading work out per vertex what shading need to be applied to the render
• DX10 geometry shading is a more polished configuration in the shading process of the render
• Primitive setup works out where the models will be placed within the render
•  Rasterisation is where the 3D rendering from a given render perspective is converted from a 3D to a 2D image

Modelling

A 3D object is built up from 3 different parts which are as follow vertexes, edges and face.



Lighting

Three-point lighting is a very common lighting technique. Three-point lighting has three separate lights which can be used to control the lighting, shading and shadows of the subject:

• Key light  Key light represents the main light source

• Fill light

 
 

• Back light / Rim light Back light is needed when the contrast between the subject and the background is not enough

 A computer calculates the lighting in a scene, there are two categories that contain different type of light in 3Ds max the two categories are called photo metric and standard.


ViewingTheir are many different views in 3Ds max. The four views used are: 

• Top View
• Side View
• Front View
• Perspective View

Clipping

Clipping in 3Ds max is where edges of a model are to close to the view port or outside so it does not display the edges properly a solution to this is to switch from perspective to orthographic view. Clipping is used to display the inside and outside of the geometry.

Texturing and shading

Texturing is adding colour to the model, texturing is built up of a material that contains maps,their are different types of maps which each do different jobs her are a few defuse map is a coloured painted texture, specular map is a map that contains the information to tell the program how shinny or matte the object or parts of the object are. Shading is a blend of using, shading gives the illusion of 3D by highlighting and darkening parts of the model to create depth and 3D look.