Trans RINA, Vol 153, Part C1, Intl J Marine Design, Jul - Dec 2011
scene is ray-traced by drawing imaginary rays from the viewer's eye, through a window representing the screen, until each ray hits a point on an object within the scene. The colour of that point determines the colour of the pixel in the window through which the ray passes.
To determine the point's colour the illumination of the point is then calculated by drawing rays from the point to each light source, taking into account any other objects on the way. The absorption, opacity, transparency and reflectivity of each surface have to be taken into account. Note that this exactly reverses the process by which the viewer perceives the scene. Given the large number of pixels in a high-definition scene (several million) and the complex path a ray may take from light source to viewer's eye, this is an exceedingly complex task that can hugely affect
rendering times if there are a lot of
reflective or refractive materials such as glass and water which has meant that in recent years a realistic animation of a boat in an ocean has proved to be incredibly difficult to produce and also incredibly costly.
One of the main reasons that most companies shy away from high end animation is due to the production volumes within the industry. For example within the automotive industry producing an animation for a new vehicle is expensive but when you compare this to the production
and sales figures were several
Blender is a free open source animation and rendering package that is becoming increasingly popular among freelance
artists and smaller studios. This user community package
although not as complex as the packages above is free and has already produced a number of feature lengths animation movies thanks to online
hundred
thousand units will be produced then the original outlay for the animation seems rather minimal whereas in the marine industry were a company may produce a handful of vessels per year within a model range then in recent years the outlay to produce an animation has not been deemed cost effective or necessary.
3. CURRENT INDUSTRY SOFTWARE
Pixar's Renderman (abbreviated PRMAN) is the most widely used rendering solution
for feature films,
responsible for rendering most of the 3D scenes in productions made by Pixar, Industrial Light and Magic, and other top companies.
Lightwave is a popular and easy to use choice that is widely used for video and television production around the world.
3D Studio Max dominates the video game development industry, is a popular 3D programs with hobbyists, and some companies use Max in film and television production as well.
Houdini - While few studios use Houdini for the entirety of their work, many larger companies have at least a few copies of Houdini, or would use it when special problems that could be harder to solve in other applications. At many companies, Houdini
is known as a tool for
technical directors, although some animators use it as well.
projects. The blender community has already created a number of its own online render farms that although they are nowhere near the scale of the major production companies it does allow artists and companies to produce much higher quality work in a much shorter time period.
4. Approaching
APPROACHING PHOTO-REALISM photo-realism
Softimage XSI is the latest big player in the high-end 3D animation software market, and is being developed by the company that once ruled the market with their earlier Softimage 3D product. Softimage lost a lot of market share to Maya during the years that they were developing XSI, but have recently began gaining some ground back now that XSI has shaped-up as a formidable competitor to Maya.
Maya is the current market leader in high-end 3D animation software: over the past six years it has become the established leader in character animation for feature films. More recently, with the benefit of lower pricing, Maya has also become a strong player in video game development, although it is still not as popular as 3D studio Max for games.
has required many
algorithmic innovations to cope with simulating partial reflection and refraction, shading and texturing. Work on fractals has made generating mountains, trees and other landscape features easier. Realistic skin, hair and fur are a recent achievement, as is realistic animal movement. It is not accidental that the first computer-animated full- length feature, Toy Story, had a cast made largely of plastic, wood and metal, with simple jointed limbs and a limited range of expressions. The dog and human beings in the film are the least convincing characters.
Hardware power determines how long it takes to achieve rendering of a given level of realism. It is now possible for a home computer to do it in real time 15 times or more a second what would have taken hours or days on a mainframe computer 30 years ago. However the levels of realism in a film like Shrek are still a long way from being achievable
in anything approaching real-time.
Statistics for Toy Story are shown in Table.1 which was state of the art in 1995 [1] Given the time it takes to render a frame and the large number of frames in a feature-length film, a whole battery of computers (render farm) is required. Even with a render farm it can take more than a year to complete a film.
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©2011: The Royal Institution of Naval Architects
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