3DVIA Shape and 3DVIA Scenes are simple tools which allow anyone, even school-aged children to build and express their ideas with just a computer and the internet…no glue necessary.

Like my disguise?

]]> http://www.3dvia.com/blog/the-classroom-of-the-future-is-now/feed/ 5 http://www.3dvia.com/blog/virtual-home-remodeling-with-3dvia-part-1/ http://www.3dvia.com/blog/virtual-home-remodeling-with-3dvia-part-1/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:10:39 +0000 Cliff http://www.3dvia.com/blog/?p=12557 See your home redesign before you make any purchase.  Pick out cabinets, flooring, counter tops, with just a few measurements and 3DVIA Shape.

This video walks you through how simple it is to build a 3D space.  I am currently remodeling my kitchen within 3DVIA Shape which allows me to make critical decisions on cabinets, flooring, counter tops, colors.  It’s very simple to do.

Be sure you make the right decisions before you make a single purchase – visualize it in 3D.

See the following 3DVIA Shape Tutorials for more detail on how to build this:

#7 – How to use Existing Elements to Draw

#31 – How to Adjust Textures

#32 – How to manipulate similar textures

This is only part one….there’s more to this story, which I will show you next week…There’s a better way to truly visualize the new kitchen.

Here is my kitchen remodel design that I created in 3DVIA Shape for this video.

With advanced computing power, and internet speeds, we still need our 3D models is their top shape when used on the web and real-time environments (i.e. gaming).  Dr. Polycount goes over five common problems with my models, and the cures.

3D modelers of all levels can benefit from Dr. Polycount’s advice in this video.

Don’t miss the cameo from Dizzy the Dragon created by Toymaker.

This video details the texturing functions within 3DVIA Shape, but these fundamentals could be used within all 3D modeling applications.

Cliff gets some help in this video from one of our favorite user-submitted (textured) models: Texturesaurus-Rex.

For more detailed Texturing tips using 3DVIA Shape, check out tip numbers:

• #31 – How to Add and Adjust Textures
• #32 – How to Align Textures with Geometry
• #33 – How To Manipulate Similar Textures

Now, let’s hear from you;  Any other texturing tips you want to add?

Special thanks to IsaacMiller1993 for the T-Rex model.

The process is very simple: ANY model in ANY format you upload to 3DVIA.com gets automatically converted into a DAE file as well as a 3DXML file. The
DAE format includes any model you create in 3DVIA Shape, which is a great quick tool for creating 3D content.  This content can now be used in most digital content applications like Adobe Photoshop and 3D applications used for film and gaming.

Yippee!

Check out this video, and you are sure to pick up some useful modeling tips:

Be sure to review all the detailed 3DVIA Shape Video Tips and Tricks for more modeling tips.

Here at 3DVIA, we receive many questions about 3D formats and standards, which we want to answer, so we started a new series of Cliff’s Clips titled:  “3D Format Spotlight”.  In this first episode we wanted to clarify the two most common exchange formats:  STEP and IGES.  We wanted to better explain these formats in layman’s terms for all of our users, and to explain why these formats are important.

For the next “3D Format Spotlight” we want to know what other formats you would like to know about, or a comparison of formats.  There are so many 3D formats out there, and we think some clarification could help.  Tell us which format(s) you would like to know more about, and why.

More Cliff’s Clips on 3DVIA-TV here…

Delving into the software that power our 3D interactive environments or Game Engines can get very technical and daunting.  Considering the number of solutions out there, and the different terminology used to describe them, it can also get very confusing.  In this article we will define what a Game Engine is, a few different types of engines and some of the most popular engines out today, along with what they can do.  I’ve also linked the images in the blog to either their source material or movies showcasing the subject of the image, so there is alot more information directly available in this post than it would first seem. 

What are they, and what do they do?

Don’t be misled by the name, a Game Engine is a software package designed for the creation and development of real-time interactive applications.  Games are just the fun, colorful, entertaining and more visible slice of the pie. Game Engines are used in marketing demos, architectural visualizations, military and medical training simulations, modeling environments, weather forecasts, accident reconstruction, material stress testing and so much more. They also serve as the proving field for new visual technologies and procedures that enhance products to their next generation.

Modern Game Engines are some of the most complex applications you’ll find anywhere.  Balancing a multitude of internal and third party systems, they create a seamless interactive staging for any content and context that feels real and  alive.  A few of the more common systems you’ll find in a Game Engine include a physics engine, artificial intelligence (AI), rendering engine, networking code, and a scripting system for controling in-game events.

Think of it as the ultimate technology in visualization and simulation, with games blazing the trail and blurring the lines of what is real and what is fiction.

In games, 3D guided tours, games, environmental demos, games, architectural presentations, games; no matter the scene, the purpose is always to make the user feel like he’s actually in your demo.   To create the illusion of being part of the world, developers use various techniques to maintain the illusion throughout the experience. In this article we will explore some of them, starting from the inside towards the outside boundary.

Naturally Blocking Line of Sight (LOS)

Almost every 3D environment starts out as a cube, or box shape.  Our job is to make you feel like you are in a fully realized world with no boundaries.   The first step in this process is to limit where the user can go while making it seem like the area stretches on for miles.  Whenever we constrain the player by blocking his progress, the player needs to feel like it’s a natural obstacle that he can go around, not the “end of the level” wall.  The realism of the scene comes in the illusion of vastness, of a complete world, not a shoe box.

Depending on your environment, there are many natural ways to block both line of sight and movement of the player.  In a city scene, you can use a car pile-up, construction, ending the lane in a large building like a library or museum,  police road block due to accident or robbery, the list goes on as far as your imagination.  All of these will make the player feel like he’s in a real environment and serves the purpose of hiding the level border and adding realism.

Perspective Range

The 3D version of “Smoke and Mirrors”.  Think of a level as having 3 stages of distance in order to provide the perspective of range and distance.   The inner level is the playable field, with natural boundaries to constrain the player within it.  The mid-level contains simplified geometry to provide ambience and a sense of scale.  The outer level provides a sense of place or location in the world.  This is mostly in part because of our perspective. As it changes, objects that are closer appear to move faster than objects that are far away.

Another great tool is distance fog. Representing the aspect of visual range, its a rolling fog that increases in strength the further away an object is.  Its also a great way to represent heat haze and smog.

Skydome vs. Skybox

The cherry on top, you can’t have a world without atmosphere, sky and clouds.  There are two popular ways to add this, Skydome and Skybox.

A Skydome is a sphere or half sphere that goes around your entire level.  Effects like lens flare and animated clouds can add dynamic realism to the scene.  It’s very easy and quick to make, but it adds more geometry to your scene and the slight spherical skewing may be noticeable.

A Skybox gives the  sense of limitless sky and distance.  It achieves this through a camera trick. In the development environment or game engine you create a cube outside of your box shaped level. To this you apply 6 seamless skyline images to each of the internal walls of the cube.  With the cube as a reference, you tell the walls of your main level to “look through” the cube walls.  Its almost better to describe it as a portal to a wall in the small cube, but since you can never reach the walls, its a visual illusion.  And as it encompasses the entire level, it feels like a seamless sky.

God rays, or light cones and light bloom effects really add realism to the entire environment. Crisp shadows take care of all the rest.

Keeping all these techniques in mind when you create a level along with game play elements or directional flow of the tour/action will give you a very professional end product.  And the entire reason we do all this work is so that no one notices that we DID do all this work, it has to feel natural.  Mother Nature is a hard task master. ;)

-Juan

I recently posted a 3D Model on 3DVIA that asked you to spot the fake crate from the “real” crate.  I am going to go through the process of how I made it in this blog.

Modeling the full detail Crate

This was fun to make! A nice simple crate that everyone can make at home.  I started with a cube in Maya.  Made a few cuts around the sides and pushed the faces in.  I then did a similar step to the top and bottom by selecting the face, extruding, shrinking it a little and pushing it in.

Next I made a long cube . Make it just the same length as the pushed in sides.  I then used the bevel tool to smooth the corners of the this cube along with the corners of the crate. I then duplicated the long cube and scaled it so that it became thinner, and used it as the wood paneling on the sides, top and bottom.  Crate Complete.

 Texturing
This is where all the work happens.  In order to make the simple box look like the real box, I used an occlusion and a normal map.  I’ve spoken about occlusion before.  Its a process by which you create realistic shading based on distance to other object, giving everything a real weight. 
A Normal map, is a process that records the surface normals of an object as a texture, so when light passes over a bumpy object, it changes accordingly. Now because this object is the same on each of its sides we can either render the occlusion and normal maps to a texture (this process is called “baking”) or we can do an occlusion and normal render of one side of the crate and repeat the texture on each side by stacking the uv shells.  I chose to stack my uv shells for this demo.

Layer the occlusion with the wood texture in Photoshop and then apply to both the simple crate and the real crate.  They should look pretty much the same now except for one thing.  You can still tell the box is flat compared to the real crate.  This is where the normal map makes its magic. After I apply it to the box, the light will react to the flat surface as if it had all the groves and bumps of the real crate, making them really difficult to distinguish.

These techniques are the foundations of great game modeling, able to keep the quality of a high polygon model with the speed of the low polygon version.  Go ahead, try to Spot the Fake!

http://www.3dvia.com/jdelrio/media/9159758799ABBD8F

UV’s

UV’s are 2D representations of vertices on your 3D Mesh.  It’s best to think of your 3D model as wearing a skin tight wrap, and in order to put a flat texture on a 3D wrap, you are going to have to make some cuts and flatten it out evenly. After you apply the texture to the 3D model, any wrinkles or overlaps on your UV’s will show up as distortions on your texture. Luckily you have some tools to help you in this process.  In the image above you can see the UV’s on the cylinder on the left, and the UV’s in the editor on the right.  3D in a 2D space.   Notice also how I’ve moved some of the UV’s and it hasn’t affected the shape of the cylinder. UV’s only affect the texture space on the model.  Great UV’s mean great textures.

UV Editor/Unwrap UV Modifier

The UV Editor is your first tool for sorting out the unique problem presented by a 3D object in a 2D space. Your first step to a great texture is to apply a checked material to the model as you fix the UV’s.  This way you can get rid of the big distortions and make sure each shell (sections of uv meshes) is relative in size to the rest of the model. Next up you want to make sure there are no overlapping UV’s.  In the image above you can see the top set of UV’s has overlapping, and the checkered texture comes out garbled and stretched.  The lower set of UV’s removed the overlap by setting the top and bottom caps separately, and by having the vertical faces all laid out flat and uniform. UV’s are normally a longer process than actually creating your 3D Model so make sure you give yourself the time to do it correctly.

Pelting

Like the hunters of old, pelting is a process by which you can take your mesh and flatten it out almost automatically, by selecting seams along your UV mesh.   If you had a 3D model of a bear, and you used a pelting tool, your UV’s  would looks like a bear rug after the process.  Seams are UV shell borders.  Pelting works by taking the seams you marked and unfolding the UV’s through a mathematical process. This images are from the pelting tool from Hydralab.  There are other pelting/UV unwrap programs out there to make your job easier.  Another great one is the Headus UV Layout.

 After all this, the good news is you get to paint canvas like a traditional artist and wrap it on a 3D Model, like the modern artist that you are.

-Juan

Baking Textures

One way to do it is to fake it, by “baking” the high poly information into a texture and then using that texture on the material of the model. Baking is the process by which render information is transferred to an image file like a jpeg or targa format. To achieve the quality of models you see today in games like Gears of War, Crysis, and Unreal Tournament III each character model has a high polygon and a low polygon version. The high polygon version is used to bake all the detailed information into images, used in the textures of the low polygon version or game model. A combination of renders, including: Normal, Occlusion, Specularity, Diffuse, Bump, Displacement, Glow, and Reflection maps are created from renderings of the high poly model. When used on the game model, they reproducing all that super detail at a fraction of the processing cost to the game engine.

This is done for every object, from a massive space monster to the toilet in the dungeon. The end result is one really beautiful game, with really simple, low poly models, pretending to be super high detailed models. Many of the house models on 3DVIA follow this example, texture over geometry.

Level Of Detail Models

One other way to achieve a smooth 30 frames per second is to use Level Of Detail Models. Have you ever seen objects in a game that look fuzzy from far away but as you get closer they look better and better. This is done by swapping models at certain distances. For example, you have a dwarf that is 2000 polygons, up close and up to 5 ft away he looks great! 10ft away he’s now 1000 polygons and he’s looking ok. 20ft away and he looks like a bop up inflatable punching bag at 500 or less polygons. The texture sizes also decrease per model so that the furthest away the model is, the less resources it uses to be displayed. This is used most often in Massively Multiplayer Online Games. In order to give the player a rich experience they give the area around him all the attention, and anything further away from the player gets less resources.

I’ve had to make a few LOD models in the past and its painful to take a beautiful 2500 model down to a 100 or less LOD model. But in game you really don’t get to see the 500 polygon model as its always the size of a peanut on screen, and as you get closer to inspect the bop up doll, it magically turns into this awesome crazy dwarf!!

-Juan

We have a wide variety of content on the site now, and I wanted to go through and detail what these models that we are all making could be used for. This is so in the near future we can start sections dedicated to each discipline. 3D Models are used in 3 main mediums; Real time render, Offline render/Batch rendering, and still images.

Real Time Rendering

In real time rendering, the computer has to render everything on the screen 30 times per second, including all AI computations, special effects and in-game cinematic. For this medium, efficiency and loading speed is the key for these 3D Models. Conservative polygon use and smaller texture sizes all contribute to a smooth running application, be it a game or Virtual Earth. As an example, a GI-Joe Skyhawk, a game model I made under 2000 triangles. Thanks to increasing technology, today’s game models range in the 2,000-10,000 polygon neighborhood. Another good example of a game ready model is this Boat. For more game ready models in this polygon range visit this 3DVIA page.

Game Model of a GI-Joe Skyhawk, occlusion render.

Pre-Rendering

Pre-Rendering is the opposite, this is used in commercials, movies or animations. All the rendering is done beforehand and then compiled into a compressed movie format. For this medium, the sky’s the limit on polygon count and textures, the main rule it to make it look GREAT. This is the movie version of the same Skyhawk seen above. Its 25 times more complex than the game model, at 55,000 triangles. Any computer would have a hard time rendering this vehicle, 30 times per second, but it would look fantastic in a movie. Another good model like this would be this Spaceship. For more movie models in the 100,000 range visit this 3DVIA page.

Movie Model of the GI-Joe Skyhawk, occlusion render.

Digital Art
Lastly there are still images. These are models you start in a 3d application and complete in sculpting or image editing programs to create a final image. For example, you can start a simple horse in 3Dmax, add all the vein and hair details in Zbrush or Mudbox, add the eyes, nose and other details in Photoshop, then paint in the grass and composite all the different layers to create a beautiful piece of digital art.

So when modeling for a particular use, a game, a 3d world or a movie, keep in mind their medium, and find out any polygon and texture limits beforehand. Then as you make the model you can optimize it for any medium. Not only will this save you work later on, but it will be easier for others to work with you and your models and create fantastic worlds and movies.

-Juan