3.4.

Hidden Solid Removal

The hidden solid removal issue involves the view of solid models with hidden line or surface
eliminated. Available hidden line algorithm and hidden surface algorithms are useable to hidden
solid elimination of B-rep models.
The following techniques to display CSG models:
1. Transfer the CSG model into a boundary model.
2. Use a spatial subdivision strategy.
3. Based on ray sorting.
3.4.1. Ray-Tracing algorithm
A ray tracing is a method for creating an image by tracing the path of light via pixels in
an image plane and reproducing the effects of its meets with virtual objects. The procedure is
capable of creating a high degree of visual realism, generally higher than that of usual scan line
techniques, but at a better computational. This creates ray tracing excellent suited for uses where
the image can be rendered gradually ahead of time, similar to still images and film and TV visual
effects, and more badly suited for real time environment like video games where speed is very
important. Ray tracing is simulating a wide range of optical effects, such as scattering, reflection
and refraction.
 Fig.3.6. Ray-Tracing algorithm

Ray-Tracing algorithm

For every pixel in image

{
Generate ray from eye point passing via this pixel
Initialize Nearest ‘T’ to ‘INFINITY’
Initialize Nearest Object to NULL
For each object in scene
{
If ray intersects this image
{
If t of intersection is less than Nearest T
{
Set Nearest T to t of the intersection
Set Nearest image to this object
}
}
}
If Nearest image is NULL
{
Paint this pixel with background color
}
Else
{
Shoot a ray to every light source to check if in shadow
If surface is reflective, generate reflection ray
If transparent, generate refraction ray
Apply Nearest Object and Nearest T to execute shading function
Paint this pixel with color result of shading function
}
}

Optical ray tracing explains a technique for creating visual images constructed in three
dimensional graphics environments, with higher photorealism than either ray
casting rendering practices. It executes by tracing a path from an imaginary eye via every pixel in a
virtual display, and computing the color of the object visible via it.
Displays in ray tracing are explained mathematically by a programmer. Displays may also
incorporate data from 3D models and images captured like a digital photography.
In general, every ray must be tested for intersection with a few subsets of all the objects in the
view. Once the nearest object has been selected, the algorithm will calculate the receiving light at the
point of intersection, study the material properties of the object, and join this information to compute the
finishing color of the pixel. One of the major limitations of algorithm, the reflective or translucent
materials may need additional rays to be re-cast into the scene.

Advantages of Ray tracing:

1. A realistic simulation of lighting over other rendering.
2. An effect such as reflections and shadows is easy and effective.
3. Simple to implement yet yielding impressive visual results.
Limitation of ray tracing:
Scan line algorithms use data consistency to divide computations between pixels, while ray
tracing normally begins the process a new, treating every eye ray separately.

3.5. Shading
 Computer Animation

It will not be an exaggeration to say that animation can bring the dullest of the features

to life. It has the magic of injecting energy and emotions into the most seemingly

inanimate objects. Over the years the advancement of technology has made animation, a

very attractive and much sought after component of multimedia.

What is Animation?

'To animate' literally means to give life to. Animating is moving something that

cannot move on it's own. Animation adds to graphics the dimensions of time, which

tremendously increase the potential of transmitting the desired information. In order to

animate something the animator has to be able to specify directly or indirectly how the

'thing' has to move through time and space.

The Heritage of Animation

It’s interesting to note that the concept of animation has been a focus of study and

research for a long time. Resources indicate that as far back as in1824 Peter Roget

presented a paper titled "The persistence of vision with regard to moving objects" to the

British Royal Society. Later in 1887 famous scientist Thomas Edison started his research

into motion pictures. Two years later he announced his kinetoscope which projected a

50ft length of film in approximately 13 seconds. Winsor McCay is considered by many to

have produced the first popular animation. He used ricepaper to draw images each one

slightly different from the other. Later John Bray (1910) used translucent cels (short for

celluloid) in compositing multiple layers of drawings into a final image as well as the use

of grey scale (as opposed to black and white) drawings. Later in 1915 Fleischer patented

'rotoscoping.' Rotoscoping is drawing images on cells by tracing over previously

recorded live action. Many such innovative ideas were put to test before Walt Disney

burst onto the scene with his film "Alice in Wonderland" in which live action was

combined with cartoon characters. Later in 1928 Walt Disney created the first cartoon

with synchronized sound called "Mickey Mouse." Some of the innovative techniques

used by Disney were the use of storyboard to review the story, the use of pencil sketches

to review motion and the multi-plane camera stand. Multi-plane camera stand is a

powerful technique, which allows a sort of parallax effect, moving the backgrounds at

different rates as the observer pans across an environment to create an illusion of depth

and zooming. (Parent 1998). In1964, the scene of animation shifted to computers for the

first time when Ken Knowlton, working at Bell Laboratories started developing

computing techniques for producing animated movies. The University of Utah is said to

be amongst the earlier pioneers in computer graphics. In the late sixties Chuck Csuri of

The Ohio State University did some initiatory work in computer animation as a member

of the Computer Graphics Research Group. In the early 80s, the research group became

the Advanced Computing Center for Art and Design and continues to produce computer

animation. Since then the scene of computer animation has remained dynamic with new

ideas and path-breaking innovations. Some of the current activity centers include;

University of Toronto's computer Science Department, UC San Diego's Department of

Computer Science and Engineering University of North Carolina's Computer Science

Department and MIT's Media Lab and MIT's Lab for Computer Science
Traditional Methods:

As is evident from the history, animators have used and invented a variety of different

animation techniques. Traditionally most of the animation was done by hand. All the

frames in an animation had to be drawn by hand. Since each second of animation

requires 24 frames (film), the amount of work required to create even the shortest of

movies, can be tremendous. Some of the traditionally used methods are described below.

Key Frames

In this technique a storyboard is laid out and then the artists draw the major frames of the

animation. These major frames are in which a lot of changes take place. They are the key

points of animation. Later a bunch of artists draw in the frames in between. This

technique is, of course, very time and effort intensive.

Cel Animation:

In this technique each character is drawn on a separate piece of opaque paper. Then, at

the time of shooting animation the different characters are overlaid on top of the
background in each frame. This is relatively a less tedious process, as the artists do not

have to draw in entire frames but just the parts that need to change such as individual

character.

Rotascoping:

Rotascoping is a technique where images are copied from a moving video into an

animation. The animator draws the motion and shape of the object by referring to the

video as opposed to imagining in his head. With the help of the rotascoping one can

animate some complex scenes that would be hard to visualize otherwise. The

disadvantage is that one will have to hunt for the exact video that one wants to animate.

Computer Animation

With time the technique of animation has become more and more computer -assisted and

computer- generated. All of such techniques require a trade-off between the level of

control that the animator has over the finer details of the motion and the amount of work

that the computer does on its own. Broadly, the computer animation falls into three basic

categories: keyframing, motion capture, and simulation.

Keyframing

The significance of the term "Keyframing" can be traced back to traditional hand

animation technique. Keyframing requires that the animator specify critical or key

positions for the objects. The computer then automatically fills in the missing frames by
smoothly interpolating between those positions. The characters for a movie called Toy

Story made in 1995 were designed through key frame animation. It's believed that each

character had as many as 700 controls. Keyframing requires that the animator has a well

thought out plan of how the moving objects are going to behave over time as well as the

talent to express that information through keyframed information. The continued

popularity of keyframing is a function of the degree of control that it allows the animator

to exercise over the subtle details of the motion.

Motion Capture

Another technique is Motion Capture, in which magnetic or vision-based sensors record

the actions of a human or animal object in three dimensions. A computer then uses these

data to animate the object. This technology has enabled a number of famous athletes to

supply the actions for characters in sports video games. Motion capture is pretty popular

with the animators mainly because some of the commonplace human actions can be

captured with relative ease. However, there can be serious discrepancies between the

shapes or dimensions of the subject and the graphical character and this may lead to

problems of exact execution.

Simulation:

Unlike key framing and motion picture, simulation uses the laws of physics to generate

motion of figures and other objects. Virtual humans are usually represented as a

collection of rigid body parts. These models though physically plausible are only an
approximation of the human body. With more research and complex models the

simulations are becoming increasingly life like. Simulations can be easily used to

produce slightly different sequences while maintaining physical realism while in other

animations like key framing or motion capture a mere speeding up or slowing down the

playback can spoil the naturalness of motion. Secondly real-time simulations allow a

higher degree of interactivity where the real person can maneuver the actions of the

simulated character. In contrast the applications based on keyframing and motion select

and modify motions form a precomputed library of motions. One drawback that

simulation suffers from is the expertise and time required to handcraft the appropriate

controls systems.

Hardware and Software

Hardware and software are two of the major factors that determine the quality of

computer animation that is produced. As both of these components work in conjunction

with each other it is important to make the right choice for a product that is of lasting

quality and accuracy.

Hardware

Hardware comes in many shapes, sizes, and capabilities. Some hardware is specialized to

do only certain tasks while other hardware are equipped for a variety of things. Some of

the commonly used hardware are:

Silicon Graphics Inc.(SGI)

The SGI platform is one of the most widely used platforms for quality computer

animation productions. SGI computers operate using the wide spread UNIX system.

Produced by Silicon Graphics these computers are extremely fast and produce excellent

results. They come in a variety of types, ranging from the general purpose Indy to high

power Indigo Extreme that is used for animations. Onyx is another type, which is suited

to the complex calculations involved in rendering. Some of the software like Wavefront,

Alias, and SoftImage are ran on SGI’s.

PC’s

PC’s are very versatile machines combining flexibility and power. PC’s have proven to

be very useful for small companies and businesses as platforms to do computer

animation. Applications such as 3DStudio and Animator Studio are used on PC’s to

make animations.

Macintosh

Mac’s were originally designed for graphic and desktop publishing and hence are pretty

useful platforms for producing computer graphics and animation software. Some of these

applications that work well on Mac’s are Adobe Products like; Photoshop and Premiere

and Strata with Strata Studio Pro.

Amiga

Originally owned by Commodore, Amiga computers have held a position in the computer

animation for long. The two software packages that Amiga is associated with are: Video
Toaster, and Light Wave 3D. The new d’Amiga systems has been customized to be a

great graphics machine.

Sophisticated hardware has to be coupled with a good software to produce good results.

There are literally hundreds of computer animation and graphic software packages.

However, only some are considered good enough.

Software

Some of the popular software packages used by the companies, schools and individuals

all around the globe include some of the following;

3Dstudio Max

The successor to 3DStudio 3.0. 3DStudio Max runs under WindowsNT. It is entirely

object oriented, featuring new improvements, such as volumetric lighting, spacewarps,

and all new redesigned interface.

LightWave3D

Light Wave 3D is another high end PC 3D computer software package. Originally

developed for the Amiga platform, it’s considered the best 3D product for the PC. This

software has been used for quite a few television productions such as Babylon 5 and

SeaQuest.

Adobe Premiere
Adobe Premiere is a tool that is used to composite Digitized video, stills, and apply a

variety of transitions and special effects. Adobe Premiere runs both on Macintoshes and

PC Windows.

AliasIWavefront

Alias is one of the topmost animation packages in the market. Produced by two

companies, Alias and Wavefront who work in collaboration, it runs on the SGI’s. Alias

is well known for it’s great modeler which is capable of modeling some of the most

complicated objects. Also, this software package is very flexible allowing programmers

that will allow the programmers to create software that will run in tandem.

Animator Studio

Animator Studio is a cell animation program from AutoDesk. Animator runs on

Windows. It has a multitude of features that minimize the animation creation time.

Elastic Reality

This is one of the top of the line programs used for morphing. Elastic Reality runs on

Mac’s and SGI’s. One of the distinctive features of Elastic Reality 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

SoftImage is 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.
Brief note on computer animation?

• Creating moving images via the use of computers • Subfield of computer graphics

•Applications : –Films –TV programs –Computer games –Web contents

Topics of computer animation

• Character animation (3D animation) – Keyframe animation, motion capture – Skinning, facial
animation – Motion planning, motion editing – Crowd simulation

• Physically-based animation – Rigid objects – Cloth, strands, deformable objects – Fluids (fire,
water, smoke) – Finite Element Method (soft materials)

• Geometric modelling and editing

Character Animation • Controlling characters – humans / cartoon characters / animals – Using

real human movements – Manually creating the movements

Motion capture • Digitizing the human movements • Tracking the movements of the markers •
Apply them to virtual characters

Skinning • Need to decide how the surface deforms according to the movements of the skeleton

Motion Editing • Making use of the captured motions for different scenes • Adjust the
movements so that they satisfy constraints

Motion Planning • How to switch from one posture to another without colliding with other
objects / characters • How to control characters so that they behave smartly

Crowd simulation • Simulating the pedestrians in the streets • How does one's movement affect
those of the others

Facial animation • Animating the face by – Motion capture data – Using musculoskeletal models

Physically-based animation: Rigid Objects • Simulating rigid objects flying, colliding, and
bouncing • Technical issues – Collision detection – Deciding the initial conditions and adding
virtual forces so that the scene appears in the way you like
Physically-based animation: Cloth simulation • Simulating the movements of clothes when the
body moves • How the wind affects the shape

Physically-based animation: Hair • How the hair moves when the wind blows • Need to take into
account – the physical properties of the hair, – Collisions between the hair – The lighting effects

Physically-based animation: Fluids • Simulating liquid, mud, fire, bubbles • How to efficiently
simulate the motion of the fluids • How to control the fluids so that the animator can get what
s/he wants

2D Cell animation • For a 30 minute cartoon, 3000 cell pictures are needed • This requires a
month labour of 50 professional drawers • How to create 2D Cell animation efficiently – Using
3D graphics and render in a 2D cell animation fashion – lighting, shadows, deformation