3D Modelling software report.

Autodesk Maya: Maya is a 3D modelling system used to create assets for film, television, game development, and architecture. Maya has many features besides the main modelling. Some of these features allow someone to create visual effects for either filming or for objects, these features include; fluid effects, used for creating water, mud, and magma. This effect could also help creating smoke, fire, clouds, and explosions. There are also more features for materials such as classic cloth, fur and nhair. These allow a creator to simulate texture for characters or objects, for example the fur tool could be used to simulate a bear’s pelt and the nhair tool could be used to design a characters head and the classic cloth can be used to simulate clothes.

Blender: Blender is a 3D computer graphics software toolset. Like Maya, Blender offers fluid effects and texture effects which can be used to simulate many assets. Blender also has motion graphics, animating, match moving and rendering. Motion graphics allow someone to simulate motion or rotation this done with pieces of digital footage put together to create an illusion of motion. Match moving is the use of computer graphics added to live-action footage. Animation is to generate an animated image. Rendering is the generating of a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model, this process is also automatic.

Sketch up: Sketch up is a 3D modelling program, like the two above, Sketch up has 3D modelling tools but it mainly allows the creator to use drawing tools. Sketch up is mainly used for architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, civil, and mechanical engineering. Sketch up also has surface rendering which visualises a geometric representation of a surface from a 3D point of view (volume dataset).

Geometric theory

Vertex: A vertex or vertices is the corner point of a polygon, polyhedron, or polytope. Vertices are formed by the intersection of the edges, facets or faces of the polygon (two strait sides that meet at one point).

Edges: Edges are what bounds the polygon, polyhedron, or polytope. They are straight line segment that joins two vertices in a polygon, polyhedron, or polytope. The edges are also on the boundaries otherwise known as a face.

Faces: A face is a flat surface that forms part of the boundary of a polygon, polyhedron, or polytope. Faces make up most of the surface area of a polygon, polyhedron, or polytope and allow us to visualize the shape of the object.

Polygon:  An object made of line segments, faces, edges, and vertices. All these join to create a polygon or polyhedron, or polytope that we can visualize and create within modelling software.

Two-dimensional: Two-dimensional means that there are only two dimensions, such as length and width or width and height or height and length. In 2D and 3D modelling, there are only x and y for two-dimensional objects.

Three-dimensional:  Three-dimensional means that there are only three dimensions, such as length, width and height together. In 2D and 3D modelling, there are only x, y, and z for three-dimensional objects.

Mesh construction

Mesh construction: Mesh construction involves a polygon mesh which is a collection of vertices, edges and faces put together that visualizes the shape of a polyhedral object in 3D computer graphics and solid modelling.

Box modelling: Box modelling is when you start with a simple/basic shape, this shape can be anything from a square and rectangle to a cylinder and a sphere. This shape can then be edited into the final object. This is useful to create an abstract object which can’t simply be made by adding shapes together.

Extrusion modelling: extrusion modelling is when the user creates a 2D shape which traces the outline of an object from an image. Then a second image from a different angle of the object is used and the user then extrudes the 2D shape into a 3D shape by following the shape’s outline. Extrusion modelling is commonly used in creating faces and heads.

Constraints

Poly count: It is the number of polygons or faces used to construct a shape. The more polygons you have the longer the time it takes to render a shape. A problem may occur when something from a game like a boss fight, it will have to have a bigger enemy than anything else in the game, this will have more polygons and will take a longer time to render, but this also depends on the hardware of the gaming system as some can render more polygons than others. So overall the time taken to render may vary.

Rendering time: It is the time it takes for each frame to render. Games have a minimum of 30 fps, so the hardware needs to be able to render 30 frames each second for the game to run on 30 fps. This can be costly because if a game drops below 30 fps the player will notice a performance drop, if many people get this for one game alone it could affect sales for the game resulting in money lose for the producer of the game. Secondly the longer something takes to render, costs more because there will need to be more equipment, electricity, and man power needed to produce a good render time this is known as monitory costs. So a games company needs to be careful when considering to make a game.

File size: 3D games need to be stored somewhere either on disk, hard drive, or in the cloud waiting for a digital download. Files for games need to be efficient, primarily in one file, if it is not efficient it will have to be split between different files which is very costly. This happened with final fantasy 7, it had to be put on three disks because the files weren’t efficient. Secondly, it is costly because it depends on hardware and real time applications. If the file is big you will need more RAM to render the game, less ram could result in game crashes, lagging, overall performance issues.

N-gons: N-gons are polygons or faces with 5 or more sides or edges which are connected to 5 or more vertices. Having n-gons in the models is bad because it can effect rendering time and is not suitable for animation.

LODs: The closer you get to an environment or object within a game the level of detail needs to be a good quality but when you are further the object doesn’t need to be good quality this will lower the render time but if you kept the quality good for everything the game would crash and show performance issues.