An Introduction to 3D Art Chakrit Watcharopas Reference: The Essential Blender: The Official Guide to 3D Creation with the Blender Open Source Suite   Author Roland Hess Publisher No Starch Press Publication Date 2007-09-27

An Introduction to 3D Art This chapter gives an analogy for 3D art It would give you inspirations some day It shows general examples of what can be done

Taking Pictures of Tiny Little Houses 3D Art is more than building a model and taking a picture of it Did you ever build a little setup with toy houses, put miniature figures in it? Did you take a picture of it, close enough to the ground to try to make it look like the town was real?

A street scene created with miniatures and raw materials

3D Art more than building a model and taking a picture of it You would spend many hours trying to make the whole thing as realistic as possible The essence of 3D art would start by creating and taking pictures of models There are still more deeper topics in 3D Art

Raw Materials What would you need, to build a miniature of a downtown street? boxes, for the buildings knife or scissors, to cut windows and doors marker, to draw them on colored paper and cardboard, to make things like the road, the sidewalks and curbs, the trash bins and benches etc.

Computer Generated 3D Art After miniature was built, you could use a digital camera to frame up the picture You could move the camera to get shots from different angles You could have some action figures taped to sticks running around the place while being recorded with a digital video camera Working in computer generated 3D art is almost exactly like the explanation above So, you build a model, you paint it, you arrange your models, and start snapping pictures

Building Models 3D art is commonly referred to as CG - Computer Graphics, CGI - CG Imaging, or simply 3D In 3D art, almost all models are built from triangles These are triangles

Building Models (2) Some modeling tools let you work with quadrangles, etc., but in the end, it's all triangles These are quadrangles

Building Models (3) Computers are really good at calculating and drawing triangles There are tools that allow you to work with triangles From triangles, you can build a quadrangle With triangles and quadrangles, you can build anything, e.g., a box, a monkey or something beautiful, etc.

A simple 3D model, showing its triangle construction on the right Building Models (4) A simple 3D model, showing its triangle construction on the right

A monkey head (Suzanne, Blender's mascot), showing triangles Building Models (5) A monkey head (Suzanne, Blender's mascot), showing triangles

Detail of "Miracle" by Robert J. Tiess Building Models (6) Detail of "Miracle" by Robert J. Tiess

Building Models (7) Modeling tools let you move triangle corners, edges or the whole thing at once They let you duplicate them, smooth the angles between them, split them apart and weld them together They let you push them around like clay, order them in rows or rotate them in space around an arbitrary axis

Modeling Tools In Blender, you have access to a number of different basic models to help get you started Some of the available primitive shapes The primitive shapes accessible through the toolbox

Modeling Tools (2) You can use the other tools to grow, shape and refine your model Available Tool : the Extrude tool

Modeling Tools (3) You can make each arm grow in the middle Available Tool: the Loop Cut tool

Modeling Tools (4) You might think the edges are too sharp Available Tools: a combination of the bevel tool and the smooth tool

Materials In Computer Graphics, you can get your materials in many ways You must tell the computer about properties you want your material to have Should it be shiny or dull? Rough or smooth? How should it react to light hitting it from different angles? All of these questions are answered by using different Shaders

Materials (2) In Blender, you can choose from a variety of shading models, each suited to slightly different tasks Lambert

Materials (3) Oren-Nayer shading is good for rough surfaces More 'physical‘ to the diffusion phenomena, taking it into account the amount of microscopic roughness of the surface

Materials (4) Comparison between Lambertian Model and Oren-Nayar Model Images from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oren-Nayar_Reflectance_Model

Materials (5) Minnaert shading is good for velvets and cloths working by darkening parts of the standard Lambertian shader ผ้าไหม ผ้ากำมะหยี่

Materials (6) Toon shading simulates cartoon-style coloring 'un-physical' shader, not meant to fake reality but to produce cartoon cel styled rendering

Materials (7) If you want to get more complex, e.g., to make your material look like bricks, you need to add Textures

Materials (8) There are a few more things to worry about, how to orient the texture on the model, so things look right

Lighting Good lighting makes a model set come to life; great lighting can make the most simply built and textured model look like a real physical object

Lighting (2) Blender gives you many options for lighting your models, allowing you to create setups that mimic natural conditions

Animation In CG, there are basically three ways to create motion First is to tell certain objects where to be, and at what time Essentially, you say: "Car, I would like you be at this side of the street when I start rolling the camera, and over at the other end of the street three seconds later. Can you handle that?" The second division, Character Animation, is really just keyframe animation - the same basic procedure of telling "where" and "when", but it requires a different set of skills

Animation (2) Some people might think that character animation is the same as clay and model based stop-motion animation. Not so. Character animation is a combination of technical skill, imagination, acting ability and puppetry Certain high-profile animation studio's in- house character package is called "Marionette", a well set up system of controls for character animation will react more like a complex puppet

Animation (3) In Blender, the structure that controls character animation is called an Armature Armatures can resemble skeletons

Animation (4) The clever armature and controls move the model of a person, causing it to change shape as it does so

Animation (5) This change in shape is called Deformation

Animation (6) The third method of animation is called Simulation or Procedural Animation, just different ways to say "the computer figures it out for you."

Animation (7) All natural processes, like a block wall collapsing on itself or the motion of poured water splashing into a glass, are governed by the laws of physics