User talk:Dharmrdr03

Applications of computer Graphics

There are a variety of uses for computer animation. They can range from fun to practical and educational ones. As you will find out in the following links, computer animation has found its way into fields, which you might have not thought that there were any uses for. Here is a list of some of the places where computer animation is used:

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 * 1) Advertising
 * 2) •	Archeology
 * 3) •	Architecture
 * 4) •	Art
 * 5) •	Chemistry
 * 6) •	Education
 * 7) •	Engineering
 * 8) •	Entertainment
 * 9) •	Film
 * 10) •	Flight Simulation
 * 11) •	Forensics
 * 12) •	Medicine
 * 13) • 	Military
 * 14) •	Multimedia
 * 15) •	Scientific Visualization
 * 16) •	Simulation
 * 17) •	Space Exploration
 * 18) •	Television
 * 19) •	Video

Advertising:One of the most popular uses for computer animation is in television advertising. Some of the models that the commercials would call for would be extreamely difficult to animate in the past (ie. Saxophones, boxes of detergent, bathrooms, kitchens etc.) The modelled objects would then be animated, and incorporated with live video. The process involved in modelling and creating the animation could take a many weeks. Since modelling is a very difficult and time consuming job, some short cuts that the animator would do is to only model the sections of the object that would be shown in the commertial. This is a very frustrating process because if all of a sudden the storyboard changes then that object would have to be modelled again in the right perspective. Selecting the right texture, lighting, and colors for the object can cause the animation to be rendered over and over again.

In most cases, advertising needs media to be inserted. Usually, animation is used with images derived from live film. Sometimes the animation detail is so high, that viewers can't tell if what they are seeing is real or not.

Arciology: The study of archeology can tell us alot about the past. Archeologists gather data from various expeditions and digs which can later be used to make computer models models of the site. Up to now, they have made physical models, which are very fragile, take a long time to make, and need to be cared for. With the advent of the computer, the archeologist has aquired a new tool: computer animation. A model of an object can be made relativly quickly and without any wear and tear to the artifact itself using a 3D digitizer. All the scenery is modeled and put together into a single scene. Now the archeologist has a complete model of the site in the computer. Many things can be done to this model. The exact position of artifacts is stored in the computer and can be visualized without visiting the excavation site again.

The computer model can also be used for another purpose: recreating the original scene. This can also be done on a conventional model, but modifications are harder. In a virtual world, objects can be moved into any location desirable, even if the laws of physics might not allow it in the real world. This eliminates the use of ugly supports which can really get into the way.

Because the technology is fairly new, it is still not very widely used, but in the near future, the computer might be found more and more in this field of science.

Architecture: One of the reasons for the development of virtual reality (which is actualy a form of computer animation) was that it was going to be very usefull to architects. Now that has proved to be true. A person can hire an architect half way across the world over the internet or other network. The architect can design a house, and creat a walkthrough animation of the house. This will show the customer what the house will actually look like before anyone lays a hand on a hammer to build it.

Computer animation can also be helpful to architects so that they can see any flaws in their designs. This has proved to be very cost and time saving because no one has to build anything. This is one field in which computer animation has proved to be extremly useful.

With the computer as the architect's tool, the whole process of drawing the initial layout, and creating a 3D model can be sped up dramatically.

Many architects still use their traditional tools for their work, but with faster, cheaper, and easier technology this is slowly changing.

Art: Just like conventional animation, computer animation is also a form of art. A multitude of effects can be created on a computer than on a piece of paper. An artist can control a magnitude of things in a computer animation with a few clicks of a mouse than he can do in the conventional animation methods. A light source can be moved very easily, changing the way an entire scene looks. Textures can be changed just as easily, without redoing the whole animation.

Computer graphics are not very likely to replace conventional methods anywhere in the future. There are still many things that can not be done on the computer that an artist can do with a paintbrush and a palette. Computer graphics is simply just another form of art.

Chemistry: Computer Animation is a very usefull tool in chemistry. Many things in chemistry are too small to see, handle, or do experiments on, like atoms and molecules for example. Computer animation is the perfect tool for them. Chemists can create realistic models of molecules from the data they have and look at the way these molecules will interact with each other. They can get a full 3D picture of their experiments and look at it from different angles.

Computer animation also allows chemists to do things that would be extremely hard to do in real life. For example, a chemist is able to construct models of molecules out of little spheres with sticks conecting them and then explore them. These so called ball-and-stick models are very usefull, but when molecules with hundreds of atoms have to be constructed, it would be highly impractical to use ball-and-stick models. it is much easier to model these molecules on a computer.

Education: People are always looking for new ways to educate their children. If they are having fun, they learn better. Computer animation can be used to make very exciting and fun videos into which education can easily be incorporated. It is much more interesting to learn math for example when the letters are nice and colorful and flying around your TV screen instead of solving problems on plain black and white paper. Other subjects such as science, english, foreign language, music, and art can also be tought by using computer animation.

Instructors can also use computer animation to demonstrate things visualy exactly how they want to since they have control of every aspect of the simulation. It can be used to show how things come together and work together. In science for example computer animation might be used to show how our solar system works, and in math, a computer animation might show a student how one can algebraicly manipulate a equation.

Engineering: CAD has always been an imperative tool in the industry. For instance in automobile design, CAD could be used to model a car. But with the advent of computer animation, that model could now be changed into a full 3-d rendering. With this advantage, automobile makers could animate their moving parts and test them to make sure these parts don't interfere with anything else. This power helped the makers a lot by ensuring that the model of car will have no defects.

One very useful use of using animations for industry is for stop-frame animation. For instance an oil rig crew would want to know the exits or the rig in case of an emergency. With stop-frame animation, a photographer would have to take a picture of every frame. This process could take two to three days. To save time and energy, an animator could make a model in a CAD program and then animate it so it seems like the viewer was "flying" through the rig to the exits.

Entertainment: Virtualy every game on the computer uses computer graphics or animation. This includes PacMan, where simple sprites (graphics) are moved up and down on the screen, to such games as Doom, where the action is viewed from the first person perspective and the graphics are rendered on the fly. Some CD games are actually interactive computer rendered movies such as "The Seventh Guest."

Film: Computer animation has become regular and popular in special effects. Movies such as "Jurassic Park", "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", and "The Abyss" have brought computer animation to a new level in their films. Scale models are a fast and cost effective method of creating large alien scenes. But animation has done just as well in animating fire, smoke, humans, explosions, and heads made out of water. A major part in integrating live film and the computer animation, is to make absolutely sure that the scale and perspective of the animations are right. The scale is important to making the animation beliveable. The animators go through a great deal of work to make sure this is right.

Usually computer animation is only used when the scene needed would be impossible or very difficult to create without it. Computer animation takes a long time to render. Let's assume that you have five minutes of computer animation at a rate of 25 frames per second. This requires about 7500 pictures, and if these pictures are of high quality, then each fram could take fifteen minutes to render. With all these variables, the entire animation could take 1875 hours to render! That's over two months if rendered on one computer. Usually there are many animators working on one animation, each with a powerful workstation, so this time is cut drastically.

Storyboards play an important role in creating animation, but there would probably never be a storyboard for something as simple as a flipping logo or a bouncing ball. Take for example the movie "Terminator 2: Judgment Day". There was a scene in that movie when one of the characters walks through fire. The animators would have to perfectly model the character to the greatest detail. They would then make thier model mimick the live characters movement and make him walk throught the fire. Then they would morph the two images (that of the animated one and the real one) together.

Flight Simulation: Using computer animations in flight simulation is a very useful tool. Using animation a programmer can replicate real time flying. By creating a camera showing the view through the cockpit window, a pilot could fly through either virtual worlds or real animated places with all the natural disasters, and difficulties that could happen if flying a real plane.

In this virtual world, the pilot would witness the usual distractions that a real pilot would, for instance, transport buses move drive along the runway, and other planes take off and land. the programmer can put any type of weather condition or scenario into the animation. Fog can be made for any thinkness, and simulating clouds is just as easy. In lightning storms, the programmer can program the animation to ligth up the screen each time there is a lightning bolt.

Creating the animations for the flight simulators can take up to eighteen months to create. The reason for this long wait is that major airports are usually located near cities, and the animators have to animate the buildings that stand out, or that are well known. Large buildings have to be modelled three or four times and different detail levels each time to make the illusion of the building growing larger and more detailed as the pilot fly closer.

Forensics: Accidents happen every minute. Very often, there are no witnesses except for the individuals involved in the accident or worse yet, there are no surviving witnesses period. Accident reconstruction is a field in which computer animation has been very usefull in. The use of computer animations in court cases has been very contovercial. People arguing against it say that the animation is based on no factual evidence and happens the way the artist wants it to happen. People arguing for it say that it offers the ability for the court to witness the accident from more than just a bystanders perspective. Once the reconstruction has been done, the camera can be placed anyway in a scene. The accident may be seen from either driver's perpective, or even birds eye view. Another reason for which computer animation in accident reconstruction may be usefull is that it may show that a certain view was obstructed by an object.

New animation systems allow detectives to recreate terrains and surroundings and actually calculate different things such as angles of bullet shots or levels of visisbility. This is extremly usefull since very often, the site of an accident may have changed a lot since the time of the mishap.

Medicine: It is very hard for a doctor to get inside a living human body and to see what is happening. Computer animation once again comes in very usefull. Every single organ in the body has already been modeled in a computer. A doctor, for example, can fly through these models and explore the area of the body he or she is going to be operating on in order to get a better picture of the operation and possible increase the success rate. Another very important use of computer animation in medicine is to loko at living tissue or organ of a patient and to explore it and to see what if anything is wrong with it without even making a single incision. Data can be gathered from a living specimen painlessly by the means of various sensing equipement. For example an MRI (Magnetic Resinance Imaging) scan takes pictures of cross sections of a part of a body (brain for example) every half a centimeter. Then the data is transmitted to a computer, where a model is constructed and animated. A doctor can get a very clear picture of undisturbed tissue the way it looks in a body. This is very helpfull in detecting abnormalities in very fragile parts of the body such as the brain.

With recent advances in the computer industry, people have developed faster and better computer hardware. Systems are underway which allow doctors to conducts operations with only a couple of small incisions through which instruments can be inserted. The use of virtual reality has allowed the doctors to train on virtual patients using this procedure without once opening up a cadaver.

Military: In order to enter the military, one has to go through a lot of training. Depending on whether you want to be in the army, navy, or the marines, you might be working with equipment worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. The military wants to be sure you know how to use this equipement before they actually let you use it. Training in simulators instead of on the battleground is proving to be a much cheaper and safer approach. Let's take the air force for example. One has to learn how to fly a fighter jet. Using a flight simulator instead of the real thing is better in many ways. If you are sitting in front of hundreds of dials, levers, and controls, you are much more comfortable and less nervous knowing that you will not crash when you use the wrong one. A second reason why it is better to use a flight simulator instead of a real jet is that it is cheaper and faster. One real jet might cost more than the development and building of one simulator, and you can't crash the simulator. You don't have to refuel and do safety checks on a simulator and a second student can use right after the first one has finished. Third, it is safer to fly a simulator since you can't crash it. Finally, using a simulator, the instructor can gather a lot of data about the student and point out mistakes much easier. Computer animation can also be used to simulate the landscape in which an operation will be going on. A satelite altitude picture can be converted into a 3D model using software and then animated with trees and under different weather.

Multimedia: Multimedia is the use of various media to present a certain subject. This presentation itself is a multimedia presentation in the sense it brings together graphics and text. Multimedia presentations can include text, graphics, sounds, movies, animations, charts and graphs. using computer animation in multimedia presentations is growing excesivly popular since they make a presentation look more professional and more pleasing to the eye. Computer animation is also very usefull in demonstrating how different processes work.

Scientific Visualization: In the 1970s, a 12 inch drum plotter was the normal computer graphics machine. The plotter was run by a large mainframe which had about 24 kilobytes of memory. This machine was basically used for creating graphs which helped in the foundation of scientific visualization. From those days many new and useful machines have been invented (i.e. The PC, graphics workstation, minicomputers, massive mainframe systems, and the super computer). Even with the birth of these machines, graphs are still being drawn by hand. But now with the machines, the graphs can be displayed rather quickly in full color with full three dimensional surfaces. The advent of computers has made sciences such as geology, astronomy, oceanography, and high-atomic physics much easier by sorting its data sets. The only problem with data sets is that most of them have more than two variables (i.e. pressure, temperature, velocity, direction, stress, direction etc.).

Simulation: There are many things, places, and events people can not witness in first person. There are many reasons for this. Some may happen too quickly, some may be too small, others may be too far away. Although people can not see these things, data about them may be gathered using various types of sensing equipement. From this data models and simulations are made. Using computer animation for these simulations has been proven very effective. If enought data has been gathered and compiled correctly, a computer animation may yield much more information than a physical model. One reason for this is that a computer animation can be easily modified and simply rerendered to show changes. It is not that easy however to do this with a physical model. Another reason for using computer animation to simulate events as opposed to models is that variables can be prgrammed into a computer and then very easily changed with a stroke of a button.

Space Exploration: As of now, the farthest point away from earth that the human was on is the moon, but we continually want to learn more. A trip by a human to another planet would take way too long. This is why we have sent satelites, telescopes, and other space craft into space. All of these space crafts continually send data back to earth. Now all we have to worry about is presenting that data so it makes sense. This is where computer animation comes in. It can show an incredible amount of data visually, in the way that humans perceive it the best. Much of the data sent from space craft can be input into a computer which will in turn generate an awsome looking animation so that one may actually navigate, explore, and see the distant worlds as if we were actually there. Computer animation can also be used to design satelites and other space craft more effitiently. Another possible use of computer animation is to plan the routes of future ships to make sure there is nothing wrong with the path and so that a ship can gather the most data possible.

Television: Computer Animation plays a great role in television. Most of the titles on the television programs, news casts, and commercials, are done with computer animation. In the past when computers were not a part of the process, animations were done with live video, cel animation, scale models, and character generators. Now with the advent of computers, special programs could be used (ie. computer painting, 3-D animation, motion control, and and digital compositing programs).

Computer animation has made television program titles quite easy and to make. Because of the versatility of computer generated animations, almost anything is possible. An animator can have a totally computer generated animation or have an animation with live video intergrates, oor even live video with animation integrated.

Computer animation has advantaged the media also desires. With computer animation, professional animators can use pre made templates to create animations for broadcasting within minutes of recieving the news.

Video: Everyone heard of animated cartoons. There is a new era of cartoons emerging on television. Computer animation. Computer animated cartoons can be produced much faster than cell animated ones. This is because the animator does not have to draw every single frame, but only has to create keyframe and the computer generates the in between frames. Computer animation also has a better look most of the time. It looks more realistic. Sometimes it is even possible to create computer animations that look so realistic so that a person might not be able to tell if it is real or not by simply looking at it.

Computer animation can be done on a variety of computers. Simple cell animation requires nothing more than a computer system capable of simple graphics with proper animation software. Unfortunatly, most of the computer animation that you see on television and in other areas is done on extremely sophisticated workstations. This page is broken into two sections, software and hardware. In the hardware section, all the different computer platforms on which computer animation is done are explained. The software is explained in the software section. Only the most popular and most well known software is explained, since it would be practically impossible to name all computer animation programs because there are so many of them.

Hardware Hardware comes in many shapes, sizes, and capabilities. Some hardware is specialized to do only certain tasks. Other kinds of hardware do a veriety of things. The following is the most common hardware used in the field of computer animation.

SGI:The SGI platform is one of the most widely used hardware platforms in proffesional or broadcast quality computer animation productions. SGI stands for Silicon Graphics Inc.SGI computers are extremely fast, produce excellent results, and operate using the wide spread UNIX operating system. SGI's are produced by Silicon Graphics. They come in a veriety of types, ranging from the general purpose Indy®, to the high power Indigo2 Extreme® used to produce animations, to the mule of the horde, the Onyx®, which is especially suited to do the complex calculations involved in rendering. Almost all major production studios use SGI's state of the art software like Wavefront, Alias, and SoftImage are ran on SGI's.

PC's:PC's are very versetile machines. They have been around for years and are favorites of many computer users. Because of their combination of flexibility and power, PC's have proven to be very useful for small companies and other businesses as platforms to do computer animation. Applications such as 3DStudio and Animator Studio are used on PC's to make animations. PC's are relatively cheap and provide pretty good quality for their price. Recently though, PC's have been getting a lot of attention from different production houses because of their relatively small price and the quality of the finished products.

Macintosh:Mac's were originaly designed to be graphic and desktop publishing machines. Macs did not become that widely known until recently, when newer faster models came out. Many people consider Mac's slow and inefficient, but that is not necessarily true. Right now with the advent of the Power Macintosh, the Mac is a pretty useful tool for small scale companies wishing to do nice looking applications. Many companies are producing computer graphics and animation software for the Macintosh. Some of these are Adobe with products such as Photoshop and Premiere and Strata with Strata Studio Pro. There are also a few applications that were ported to the Macintosh from the SGI¹s such as Elastic Reality and Alias Sketch (a lower end version of Alias). Lately, a lot of production studios strted using Macs because of their graphical abilities for smaller scale projects.

Amiga:Originaly owned by Commodore, Amiga computers have held a position in the computer animation industry for a number of years. There are two software packages that Amiga¹s are basicly known for: Video Toaster and LightWave 3D. The Amiga is based on a Commodore, but it has been greatly customized to be a graphics machine. Many television shows use Amaiga¹s for their special effects and animations.

Software You might have the best hardware in the world, but without a good software package, your hardware can do nothing. There are literally hundreds of computer animation and graphics software packages out there, however, only a few are considered industry favorites. The software mentioned here is only the tip of the iceberg. These are some of the most popular software packages used by companies, schools, and individuals all around the globe.

3DStudio Max The successor to 3DStudio 3.0. 3DStudio Max runs under WindowsNT. It is entirely object oriented, featuring new improvments such as volumetric lighting, spacewarps, and an all new redesigned inteface.

3DStudio 3DStudio is a 3D computer graphics program. 3DStudio runs on PC's. It is relativly easy to use. Many schools and small time production studios use 3DStudio to satisfy their needs. 3DStudio is created by AutoDesk. 3DStudio consists of a 2D modeler in which shapes can be drawn, a 3D Lofter, in which 2D shapes can be extruded, twisted, or solidified to created 3D objects. Then there is a 3D modelet in which a scene is created. Finally there is a animator in which key frames are assigned to create an animation and a material editor in which a great veriety of textures can be created. Overall this is a great program.

LightWave3D LightWave 3D is another high end PC 3D computer graphics software package. Originally developed for the Amiga platform, LightWave 3D is now also avilable on the PC. LightWave 3D is used in quite a few television productions such as Babylon 5 and SeaQuest. Many people debate that LightWave3D is the best 3D product for the PC.

Adobe Photoshop Although Adobe Photoshop is not a computer animation application, it is one of the top of the line graphics programs. It is created by Adobe. Photoshop runs both on Mac's and PC Windows, and even on SGI's. It can be used to touch up digitized images or to create graphics from scratch.

Adobe Premiere Adobe Premier, just like the name says, is created by Adobe. It is a tool used to composite digitized video, stills, and apply a veriety of transitions and special effects. Adobe Premiere runs both on Macintoshes and PC Windows.

AliasIWavefront Alias is one of the topmost computer animation packages out there. Alias was produced by the company that used to be Alias, but now it joined with Wavefront and is known as Alias | Wavefront. It runs on SGI's. Alias is well known for its great modeler which is capable of modeling some of the most complicated objects. Also, this software package is very flexible, allowing for programmers to create software that will run hand in hand with Alias.

Animator Studio Animator Studio is a cell animation program from AutoDesk. It's predecessor was Animator Pro for PC DOS. Animator Studio runs under Windows. It has a multitude of features that minimize the animation creation time.

Elastic Reality Elastic Reality is one of the top of the line morphing programs. Elastic Reality runs on Mac's and SGI's. One of the great features of Elastic Reality as opposed to other programs is that it uses splines as opposed to points to define the morphing area. Elastic Reality allows to morph video as well as still images.

SoftImage One of the three top most computer animation software packages. SoftImage is used in many top production studios around the country and around the world.

Strata Studio Pro Strata Studio Pro is probably the most known 3D graphics application on the Mac. It is created by Strata Inc. Strata Studio Pro is mainly a still graphic rendering application, but it does have animation capabilities. Graphics for some games such as Myst were created in Strata Studio Pro.