WEEK 4: 3D PRODUCTION PIPELINE

3D Production Pipeline

MDU115 Research an Development Blog

Pioneers

Ed Catmull

One of the greatest contributors to the computer graphics industry. He was a co-founder of Pixar Animation Studio and currently the president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is responsible for the invention of texture mapping, anti-aliasing, subdivision surfaces and z-buffering.

http://ptex.us/ptexpaper.html

Ken Perlin

Another big contributor to 3D graphics. Ken Perlin is responsible for Perlin Noise, Hypertexture, Real-Time Character Animation and Stylus based input devices. All these things are used every day in a 3D production. 

Krishnamurthy and Levoy

These two are the inventors of normal mapping. Without normal mapping video games wouldn't be able to look as detailed as they do these days. Normal mapping allows low polygon models to look like high detailed models.

http://forum.toribash.com/showthread.php?t=497808

Inspirations

Tal Peleg http://www.tp-artwork.com/
Tal Peleg has worked on many projects as an animator. The Last of Us, Uncharted 4 and A Christmas Carol to name a few. But one project that stands out is the Dante's Inferno fan fiction short Dante's Redemption. Tal's credits on this project are Director, Scene Layout, Keyframe Animator, Lighting, Compositing, Editing and Matte Painting.

Written by Blake Head

WEEK 3: 3D PRODUCTION PIPELINE

3D Production Pipeline
MDU115 Research and Development Blog

There are many different aspects and stages in a 3D production pipeline. All are important steps in creating an appealing, believable, 3D product. In this blog I will go through the different steps in this process and what they involve. 

Lighting
In 3D lighting objects are used to simulate how light works in real life. lighting can be used to get the exact feel you want for your shot to help it come alive. You can apply different settings to the lights and materials to achieve what you are after.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/8/prweb8688878.htm

Rendering
Once all elements in your scene have been created and setup the next step is to render it out. Rendering is the process of outputting a shot or image to a final polish. Depending on the complexity of what you want to render it can take minutes or hours to complete.

http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/fable/images/829863/title/fable-2-3d-render-hobbe-screencap

Compositing
Compositing is process of putting it all together. Different elements such as a final render, live action film and special effect like smoke, fire, explosions etc are layered together to complete the final product.

http://andyswi.com/

Written by Blake Head

WEEK 2: 3D PRODUCTION PIPELINE

3D PRODUCTION PIPELINE

MDU115 Research and Development Blog

There are many different aspects and stages in a 3D production pipeline. All are important steps in creating an appealing, believable, 3D product. In this blog I will go through the different steps in this process and what they involve. 


UV Mapping, Textures and Shaders
The next step in a typical 3D production pipeline is 'colouring' your model. This is done using UV mapping, texturing and shaders. By unwrapping your model and turning it into a flat 2D image, colouring that image and attaching the painted image onto a shader you can add colour and much more to your 3D model.

UV mapping is the process of flattening out a 3D model to represent it in a 2D image. This process can be done automatically or manually. Most of the time it is done manually. Which can be a tedious task but needs to be done correctly as the UV map needs to fit into a particular size and format to properly be applied. Once you have your UV map you can export it out to a painting program and start making your texture.

http://goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au/~gl/teaching/Interactive3D/2012/lecture9.html

Once you have exported the UV map to your painting program of choice you can start texturing. Textures are basically the skin of your model. You can paint it from scratch or use photos to create the texture. After the texture has been created you can attach it to a shader.

A shader is how you apply your texture to your model. You attach a shader onto your model and the attach the texture onto the shader. The shader calculates how to show and process the image.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/07/ptex-3d-texturing-becomes-a-reality-at-siggraph/

Rigging and Animation

Once the textures have being completed you can start to rig your model for animation. In bigger productions texturing and rigging are usually done by separate people. If that is the case the rigging can be setup well the textures are still being completed. Rigging involves binding bones and joints to a 3D mesh and attaching handles so they can be easily manipulated to move your model in a desired way. 

http://en.9jcg.com/comm_pages/blog_content-art-16.htm

Next up in the process is animation. As stated before handles are attached to the rigging so you can move the model. By using keyframes to capture certain poses the software will automatically fill in the rest. For example if I were to animate an arm swinging from left to right I would position the arm on one side. I would then attach it to a keyframe. Next I would more up the time line a few frames and adjust the arm to the other side and attach that to a key frame. The program will then make the calculations necessary to fill in the actions inbetween. 

http://austinvisuals.com/how-2d-and-3d-animation-is-made-at-austin-visuals-animation-studio/

Written by Blake Head