OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Acting Up: Understanding 3D Modelling (Future Potential of 3D)

OUAN504 - Understanding 3D Modelling:


Animation isn't just used for entertainment. It can have a variety of purposes and all are beneficial in some way or another. Medicine and surgical animation isn't the first thing that springs to mind when thinking of 3D. However, there's a growing industry for this kind of animation.

"Virtutopsy/"Virtopsy"", or MRI-assisted virtual autopsy, is the ability to inspect body parts or objects that are far too damaged to interact with physically. Medical animations have become quite popular in legal cases and forensics where constructions of crime scenes, objects, and even potential suspects are created in order to help understand something that can't physically be seen. The idea of animation being purely virtual means that we can explore alternate or possible realities to help us understand past events.

A passage from the National Centre for Biotechnology Information states some of the positives of using this method: "Virtopsy can be employed as an alternative to standard autopsies for broad and systemic examination of the whole body as it is less time consuming, aids better diagnosis, and renders respect to religious sentiments."


3D technologies are used for MRI, CT and PET scans to give the medical professional an inside view of parts of the body that they would otherwise be unable to reach successfully. They are incredibly vital to modern medicine and have changed procedural methods.


3D software and animation doesn't just have to be hospital based. Interactive animations can be used in a teaching environment to give users a hands on experience of certain organs, diseases, and conditions. Nifty, compact animated presentations can be viewed in the comfort of your own home with the intent of educating. For instance, I came across this wonderful interactive website that allowed you learn about psychological diseases such as Alzheimer's where a 3D brain is shown, allowing you to scroll around the brain to view which parts of the brain are affected, how, and why. This is brilliant for students and wouldn't be possible without 3D technology.

Genes to Cognition - Click to View Website

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Acting Up: Understanding 3D Modelling (Insight Into Polys)

OUAN504 - Understanding 3D Modelling:

Polygons, or polys for short, are the pieces that make up a 3D model. They are the shapes that play the important role of the model's foundations and are stitched to each other by vertices and edges in order to make up the final product.

But what exactly does it mean to have a set poly count limit when it comes to professionally creating models for clients? Why do high poly counts mean slower rendering and loading times? I went on a little hunt to find out more about the polygons that make up a 3D animator's life.

This image from Fallingpixel.com is an easy way of demonstrating the difference between low-poly and high-poly models. You can see that the model with a higher count of polygons has an increased level of detail. Lower counts often look blocky and are better used for models that don't have much screen time in an animation or aren't to include much interaction in a game.

If you can find the balance between a good-looking model and a low enough poly count, then it will make matters much easier if importing into other software such as Unity as most programs have a poly limit of some description for each model or set. The image below by Matt Coombe shows that sometimes you don't need to overcomplicate things as with a poly count of 6,707, you can still create a model that looks utterly brilliant and will work much better too. Personally, I prefer the model on the left with the lower poly count as it doesn't seem too "smooth" and "perfected". In fact, there are very few minor differences between the two aesthetically, whereas the difference in polygons is astounding!

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Acting Up: Understanding 3D Modelling (A Brief Look into Lighting)

OUAN504 - Understanding 3D Modelling:

It may be all well and good creating a fantastic looking model, but without proper lighting, a multitude of sins can stick out like a sore thumb! I thought it would be interesting to research popular tools and methods used to give subtle light to environments for a more realistic look, harsher lights, and so forth.

To begin, Radiosity, an illumination algorithm, is an addition to many of the render methods that exist in 3D modelling and animation. Unlike various other methods (Mental Ray and Raytrace are another couple of lighting algorithms), Radiosity is slightly unconventional in some respects as it doesn't focus on the usual method of "reflection of light ray>directly to an object>eye". It is based around the more natural idea that a ray from a light source will reflect on many objects and then back to the eye, thus allowing a mix of colours depending on the colours of the light source and the objects. This is particularly useful when lighting interior environments as walls and other multiple rooms may not be in the direct path of a light source, so it will heavily rely on the reflections from other objects. Although from Wikipedia, here is an image perfectly depicting the use of Radiosity with a comparison against another more unnatural lighting technique.  Radiosity uses GI (Global Illumination) which is a way of following natural light behaviour i.e. casting rays by following realistic rules. Many renderers use GI.

Many people's opinions on internet forums seem to sway more towards Mental Ray as the choice for rendering and lighting as apparently it is more predictable. Some have argued that it is all a matter of personal preference and that the only way to truly decide on the best renderer is to try them all and do tests. I personally think that it is important to test out as many methods as you can in order to have a valuable opinion on what works for you. As a student, we have only been given Mental Ray as the renderer of choice - possibly because it is reliable - and I do wish to play with many more to get an idea of what they all do.

Mental Ray has a feature called caustics which allows a ray of light to say for instance, shine onto a wall in a room and then reflect the light onto other surfaces. "A Look At Caustics" by Jeremy Birn - http://www.3drender.com/light/caustics.html - is a very helpful guide on how caustics work in animation. Below is an image from his article showing a side by side comparison on how a rendered image looks with and without caustics to enhance lighting properties. 

A Raytraced image (Left) and Raytrace enhanced with caustics (Right)

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Acting Up: Understanding 3D Modelling (Concepts, Principles & Limitations)

OUAN504 - Understanding 3D Modelling:

A Short History of Rendering

Way back when, early 3D models consisted of wireframe shapes that were simple representations of the everyday geometric shapes we know today. The beautifully rendered shapes and models we are able to create in this age started out with hidden algorithms. These began in the 1970's and allowed us to render curved surfaces as well as non-spherical objects.

In 1978, a wonderful gentleman named Jim Blinn who started out working for NASA creating computer graphics and animation for such things as the Voyager project. He went on to do a "simulation of wrinkled surfaces" - collgran.wordpress.com.  There is a shader named after him in Maya, this is probably why as he such an influence over 3D animation.

I wish to go on with the historical aspect of rendering and 3D animation, however, it would be more practical to look at some of issues I have come across when using 3D software and certain limitations I have experiences even though I touched on them in a previous post.

Experienced Limitations

Although I haven't been using 3D software for very long and have a huge way to go in order to at least get some sense from using it, I still believe that everyone's experiences are different and we all encounter different problems.

I find that when it comes to physically creating a model or character, it is incredibly complex to use textures with them that aren't the shaders (Blinn, Lambert etc.) as creating your own textures is a completely different skillset entirely and is baffling!

Poly count. Even though we haven't got round to creating insanely complex environments or characters just yet, I have noticed that when modelling smaller environments (grassy fields with mountainous rocks in the background for instance), if the poly count is high, it can take a good while to load up and even render. There has to be a compromise between quality of model and poly count as larger poly counts can mean in-game crashing if to be used for such purpose and long loading times.

The size of the files created when using 3D modelling is immense and can often lead to issues with inadequate computer space or processors. Not all animators are wealthy and having to fork out on the latest in computer hardware can be a bit of a setback.

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Acting Up: Understanding 3D Modelling (Tomb Raider - Evolution & Motion Capture)

OUAN504 - Understand 3D Modelling:

In terms of how far 3D animation has come as a process, I think it would only be fair and logical to talk about how the popular Tomb Raider games franchise has improved over the years. I remember playing one of the first Tomb Raider games when I was a toddler, and although being a toddler I couldn't make comment on the technologies of the time, I did think it was an amazing game as I simply couldn't put it down!

Tomb Raider has had a lot of stick though due to feminists screaming "exploitation". Though this hasn't (thankfully) affected the way Lara Croft has been developed as a character. This little gem was found on the website Fanpop (see image below) showing the fantastic evolution of Lara Croft over the past couple of decades since it was first released on Playstation One in 1996. I think it is phenomenal to show the changes she has undergone.

The new Lara looks much more realistic and conforms to a more natural-looking female body shape in comparison to the 90's Laras with breathtakingly thin waists and exaggerated proportions. The advance in 3D technologies is very obvious in this image and has allowed for better clothing texturing, lighting, smoothness and complexity of body shapes, and many other features. This isn't just a feature of the Tomb Raider franchise however. I plan to explore the growth of design and modelling within other animation later on in my blog.

Lara Croft's animation today is undergone using the performance capture method. Early techniques of motion capture (performance capture) were done using many cameras in order to calculate the object or person's positions within a space. There are various advantages that come with using motion capture. Some of these are as follows:

Rapid, real-time results can be accurately captured.
Traditional techniques such as 2D or stop-motion can vary in intensity of work and complexity.
Secondary animation, exaggeration, and subtle movements can be easily caught.

In contrast, the disadvantages are:

Expensive to acquire suitable software and hardware.
Specifications in order to use hardware and software vary such as capture space etc.
Unnatural movement is hard to replicate as you cannot really tamper with captured movement.
Added emphasis and unnatural movement (linear/robotic/overexaggerated) is easier to achieve with other methods.

I am actually very thankful that Lara's chest is no longer triangular in shape as it may have given men unrealistic expectations of what women should strive to look like. Thank technological evolution for allowance of more polys and better software! (Apologies.)

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Acting Up: Understanding 3D Modelling (LAIKA)

OUAN504 - Character and Narrative:

LAIKA Studios' Techniques on Facial Features

In LAIKA Studios' latest release, The Boxtrolls (an animated film in which cheese means status and where box-wearing trolls are the lowest of the class system), the intuitive technique of mixing stop motion with 3D printed faces that are digitally painted from scratch and then slotted onto the characters is big business!

This imaginative means of animating has lead this film to be not only very successful, but incredibly popular in terms of how it was made. It isn't just animators that are talking about this! LAIKA have literally been applying century-old techniques to their work but with 21st century technology. They started out in using computer generated imagery and effects since their 2009 Coraline and has been used by them ever since.

The photograph above is from SIGGRAPH 2014 and shows some of the 3D printed faces of one of the characters. These are then simply exchanged and reused throughout the film. Here, you can see Fish, one of the characters, being put together:

An interview carried out by The Los Angeles Times was a very interesting watch as it gave an honest opinion from the LAIKA team on how difficult it was to actually use stop motion as a method for making the film. One scene even took them 18 months to complete!