Monday, 21 May 2012

3D the Basics: The Uses of 3D


                                                          Uses of 3D


3D is found in most places now, you can go down the cinema and watch the latest blockbuster, you can go down the pub and watch the football, you can play the latest consoles, you can get photos taken in it and phones are being designed with 3D screens. 3D has truly expanded and got a foothold in most of the entertainment industry .It seems like it’s the new big thing like HD was not too long ago and although the quality is better than the old red and blue glasses 3D we had only a few years back, it’s still not perfect and is still being worked on to get the most out of it. Right to start with I’m going to do a brief timeline of the use of 3D. You’d probably be surprised at how long this technology has actually been about and how much it’s developed.

Within this article, I'm going to describe the uses of 3D technology in the following fields:
• Games
• Education
• Web
• Medicine
• Engineering
• Architecture
• Product Design
• T.V and Films

Use of 3D in Games:

Use of 3D technology in games has made a revolutionary change in the gaming experience of gamers.
In games 3D is needed to create detailed world, items and characters, 3D can offer games a spectacular amount of realism for games. Games started to transition to 3d, when games like Star Fox, and virtual racer used 3D to move around in environments. However, 3D really hit it off on the Nintendo 64, with games like crash bandicoot. The ability to move away from the classic side scrolling such games, allowed for more complex and interactive games and genres. Due to games transitioning the use of cartridges went down as developer’s use CD’s due to the more storage capacity.
Most games now are developed in 3d, with each generation of games making more complex systems to use. Creating realistic environments and characters for the players to get attached to the game, a metaphor for games being live-action novels would be appropriate. With more and more detailed 3d animations the characters and environment become more and more realistic. 

Watch the following videos for more info:





Use of 3D in Education:

A lot of science-based training can benefit from 3D. For example in the medical field, CGI animations are often created to show internal organs and processes within the body. These same animations would be even more effective in 3D. And for CGI in particular, the upgrading to full 3D is fairly easy as the artist can define a 2nd virtual camera in the CGI scene and output the 2 views to make it 3D.Any educational image can be made more effective in 3D. Viewers will enjoy exploring the photo and spend more time with it as they learn what the photo has to present to them.
3D technology is used effectively to create educational tools and content. The software allows creating environments to use as diagrams while in the classroom, as well as bringing in objects to study, or you are able to walk through 3D environments, all of this to help educate students in the classroom. The full environments, such as the Roman City and Pond Ecosystem, allow teachers and pupils to explore and discover in a virtual environment. Using the camera function in the Viewer, teachers may individually determine and control the path they wish to travel inside any selected 3D environment. For instance, take the classroom on a virtual tour of ancient Giza or on an underwater hunt for tadpoles. In addition to the novelty factor, the extra information in 3D images can greatly enhance an educational experience. The immersive nature of 3D images engages the viewer, encouraging them to view the images longer and more deeply, and the enhanced visualizations make for more memorable learning.

Use of 3D in Web:

3D graphics can give web page designs a range of 3D illusions, which are powerful devices for managing attention. Using 3D graphics in web design can also add significantly to overall page file size.


3D effects in a web page can suggest a rich, multi-layered, realistic, believable environment.
The golden rule is: use with care
Nothing works if it’s applied to everything – things need something to stand out *against*.
Two things to remember about all 3D/shading effects is that they’re both light effects and illusions. For the illusion to work, the user needs to believe that what they’re seeing could be real. To create a physical illusion, you need a plausible facsimile of reality, and consistency in treatment.
For example, if you had an element appearing to be both behind and in front of another element, the illusion effect could be broken.
One of the most common mistakes in 3D effects is to use different lighting sources on different elements. It’s OK to have more than one light source, and a lot of design does that today, because it produces lighter and softer effects. However, the overall light environment has to be just believable enough.

Use of 3D in Medicine:

In medicine, 3D technology can be used to make models of the body organs to understand their functionality and the diseases inside them for deeply and it can also be used for training purposes.




Use of 3D in Engineering:



In engineering, the engineers can use 3D techniques to draw their models and designs in more depth and detail.




Use of 3D in Architecture:

The use of 3D in architecture enables architects to draw 3D environments and buildings.





Use of 3D in Production Design:

Designers use 3D in product design to draw and visualise their product ideas and be able to finalise their products easily.
3D models can be used to present a product idea to others in the company, or to potential customers, and can be changed quickly to incorporate new ideas and suggestions. The company's marketing efforts are enhanced, too, because models can be animated to showcase the product's features and abilities. The computerized information can also be used to program and automate the company's production machinery. 3D models look realistic and can be used with video-editing software. Companies can use them in their marketing campaigns, inserting them directly into commercials. These models models can be animated, which is useful for showcasing exactly what the product can do and what the customer can expect when using the product. The computerized information stored in 3D models can be sent directly to factory machinery, enabling a company to automate the machines on an assembly line and produce the product with pinpoint accuracy.




Use of 3D in TV and Films:

3D films are one the most revolutionary changes in the film and media industry. Use of 3D in films give the films a more realistic, detailed look.
It is now common for films to have 3D aspects in them; full-length 3d animation films are also in commonplace.
Compositing:
Compositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all the elements are parts of the same scene. Today, most, not all, compositing is achieved through digital image manipulation, in the digital method of compositing, software commands designate a narrowly defined colour as the part of an image to be replaced. Then every pixel from another image, aligned to appear as part of the original. For example, a TV weather person is recorded in front of a plain blue or green screen, which compositing software replaces only the designated blue or green colour with weather maps.

3D hardly appeared on television until 1994, when a Canadian production company called Mainframe Entertainment, released a CGI TV series called ReBoot. The series was credited to be the first ever full-length, completely computer animated TV series. As the cost of production has gone up, production values have started to mirror those of the film industry.

One of the most recent films in 3D was Titanic 3D:


Special 3D glasses are designed to get the most out of the 3D films. Following link describes how 3D glasses work. 
































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