MDU115 - Week 3

This week's blog takes a differnt route - instead of my usual ramblings, It seems I've been given structure (ugh) and as such I must address some questions. So in order to keep myself on the right track (and because I have a boat-load of documentation to write for my 3D production pipeline after this) I'll be structuring this entry in a Q&A format.

Highlights and pioneers of the history of 3D Graphics:

Wow, this is a doozy. I've been a gamer for most of my life. I used to have an Atari 7800; you

know, the one where even if you didn't have any games, 'Asteroids' was already built in - good times. I missed the Nintendo band wagon and spent a few years on the Mega Drive, then the N64 came along and blew my freakin' mind. The PlayStation fanboys would boast about their FMV sequences, but the N64 camp had double their polygon count. Fast forward some years and I looked to PC gaming, the previous and now current gen consoles and to be perfectly frank, I LOVE that I grew up in the generation I did because I've seen the landscape of gaming absolutely terraformed time and time again. The technological advancements made in just 25 years has been staggering and from a purely graphical perspective (because this is a 3D class) I'm now playing games on the way to Uni, in transit with better graphics than the best computers of the mid 2000's. I mean c'mon, that's impressive.

I remember some key era's throughout this timeline - I remember when Valve dropped Half-Life 2 and gamers around the world stopped. I remember figuratively shitting my dacks when GMan spoke and HIS FREAKING MOUTH SYNCED WTH EVERY WORD. That was unheard of before then. Now it's the norm (with some exceptions - looking at you Fallout 4).

Unreal Engine came along thanks to Epic Games and gave us UT in 1998 but then became the engine used in Mass Effect and a host of other titles. Even to this day they're still utilising it and it's only getting better. Have you seen Unreal 4? Holy shit, the demo of the room? Here, watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3ZNf6-SDZA

Who remembers rag-doll physics? Older FPS like Soldier of Fortune; you'd shoot a baddie with a shotgun and he would literally go flying until he ricocheted off a wall. Well I loved it, but of course it detracted from the immersion and I'm not sure if physics like that were the precursor to engines like Havok's Havok (Havok is the name of the company as well as the engine) but it was invetable none the less. Ok I just did some reading and it seems the ragdoll physics is still a thing - I do have fond memories of FUS-RO-DAHing NPCs in Skyrim and watching them flail around.

Collisions and other animation appear much more lifelike due to Havok's technology and the interactions between elements are much more authentic because of it.

Did anyone else realise their PC had aged terribly when Crysis came along? I was one of those people. I quickly remidied it by going out and doing a full re-build - I had twin Radeon cards bridged via SLI after that and STILL couldn't get ultra settings and reasonable frame rate on Crysis. Regardless, the powerhouse behind this game (at least in part) was Crytek's CryEngine. Apparently they named it that because games utilsiing it made you cry that your PC wasn't good enough. (I just made that up). But their IS a rumor that Crytek developed CryEngine to demonstrate the sabilities of NVIDIA's latest card technology in 2004 and that 'demo' went on to become Far Cry! The tell tale signs of the CryEngine are the stunning graphics - the engine also uses shaded pixels to create flowing water and leafy green forests - I don't actually know what shaded pixels are, but that's what they do.

These are just a few of the game-breaking (enhancing) engines that's I'd had the absolute pleasure of experiencing first hand and although there are many others and there will continue to be many others, I beleive that the above 3 are a great representation of big players in the 3D space and the advancements they've brought to the field.

Discuss the implications of the democratisation of the 3D graphics industries.

What a wordy question! Well, here goes.

2006 I was enrolled in a Multimedia course - it aimed at teaching us the fundamentals acorss the board - you know, web design, animation, 3d modelling etc. For 3D we were running with 3DS MAX. Oh the memories, the frustrating memories. I remember we had to create a short animation of an object of our choosing; I created a fridge and my animation was said fridge, committing suicide by jumping off a building and then exlloding in all it's fridge-like glory upon impact. We would use the old G5 Apple Mac Desktops - these towers were HUGE, in fact I'm sitting next to my ANTEC Tall Boy now and it's of similar size. We would render scenes multiple times to critque it, then go back and make changes if necessary but the kicker was as soon as I or many other students would start rendering, we would then stand up and leave the class room for a break. 10 - 15 seconds of video would take HOURS to render. Our teacher knew and was compeltely fine with it, becuase what else were we meant to do? Our computer was essentially locked up until the rendering completed.

As with everything technology related, the landscape has blasted off into the futuer, or th now, or however you want to look at it. Back then there was no Adobe Creative Cloud, there weren't any big companies like Autodesk giving out 'Free Trials' willy nilly and there weren't any Data Center's hosting the ethereal 'cloud' all the noobs like to refer too. (I worked in a DC so I'm jaded about that word).

Now the landscape is one where you can pick up a mediocre laptop, sign up for a free trial of your preferred 3D modelling software and utilise the processing power/storage space of a farm somewhere, watch some tutorials and start modelling. OK I compeltely oversimplified that scenario, but it's more or less the truth. We now live in a world where this kind of graphics work isn't limited to the elitests at PIXAR or enormous games studios - it's now accessible, affordable and feasible enough that the majority of enthusiasts have a fair chance at dipping their feet in and that to me is a key factor moving forward.

It's a business axiom that if you lower the bar of entry you then create more openings for people willing to put the work in - with greater numbers you're basically playing a game of logistics in the sense that you're increasing the probablility of finding talent amongst those new entrants. The same rule can be applied to the graphics industry: If you make it EASIER for people to access the tools and learning materials necessary for this line of work then you're extending your reach as an employer to find talented designers. I'm not involved in this line of work professoinaly so I can't soeak as to the nature of the industry in terms of employment, but even if we get to the point where the industry is over saturated with talentd graphic desginers, isn't that a nice problem to have? As a gamer and consumer it's an absolute dream. It means that the industry isn't in need of talent - devs have the resources needed to bring their ideas to life and because of that they don't need to cut corners on the polish of their titles. (Even though some do - looking at you AGAIN Fallout 4).

What is Ptex and how will it affect asset creation?

Taken directly from Ptex.us:

Ptex is a texture mapping system developed by Walt Disney Animation Studios for production-quality rendering.

Apparently there are many people who don't enjoy the UV process of the 3D pipeline. And there are some, like Jodi, who find it cathartic. Walt Disney studios however did not and in an attempt to quicken the process they devloped Ptex as a way to eliminate the UV part of the pipeline compeltely. They first showed this off with a demo of a T-Rex with 2,694 textured faces, none of which utilised UV wrapping. They then went on to create the feature film 'Bolt' using Ptex exclusively and as of writing this, Ptex is now the primary texture mapping method for all productions at Walt Disney Animation Studios.

There seem to be quite a few downsides to using Ptex over UV thoughm however I won't speak on some of them because frankly, I don't understand it and itd jus tbe copy pasta. I do realise however with Ptex that you can’t work with 2D textures like you could with traditional UVs, in an application likePhotoshop and or games it can be much quicker to create textures in a 2D application like PS, or if you just need to create a texture that doesn’t need a lot of detail.

Another downside that I understand is that Ptex is a relatively new conecpt and and such not all the relevant applications have Ptex capabilities yet which make it a gamble for those who wish to utilise it for large projects, or any project where cost becomes a decisive factor. It's always a business savy decision to go with industry standard applications for reasons that I explained a few years back when I majored in Information Systems.

A fun fact for somebody liek me who's new to this whole envinronment is that I can see that for allt he bells and whistels that Ptex has to offer, it pays for me to invest the time and have a very firm understanding of UV before experimenting with anything like Ptex. From the little I've read, I liken it to programming - before I learned how to code in Java, I had to learn machine language, hexadecimal conversion and all that other super fun stuff because it was integral to laying the foundation that I would need to understand the LOGIC behind advanced, higher level languages.

As far as the future is concerned it's hard for me to say anything really - I'm a scrub and have no idea what the industry is like. But as for Ptex isn't industry standard - it makes sense for animated movies because the renderednquality must be extremely high and movie deadlines are usually very strict, therefore the efficiency and capabilities of Ptex suit it to a T, however video games are rendered real-time with the help of beefy VGA cards and in that sense Ptex doesn't really have a place. If nothing else in this ridiculously long blog, you should realise that technology moves at an astonishingly quick pace and so the future of any tech reliant environment could change at a moment's notice.

So there you have it: Week 3 Blog. Jodi If you're still reading these, good for you! You're literally the only other person in the world who is doing so and because of that I beseech you, don't ask so many questions in the weekly blogs to come - it's so much cumulative work for 25%!

- Ryan