TABLE OF CONTENTS Up to this point in the book we have been looking at rendering 3D objects in order to create a single picture or animations. When we were in our 3D package we had full control over where we looked, we could move all around the space and view the object from any angle. After just a short while you were able to imagine that that space was part of reality. Working in three dimensions is the natural thing to do as we live in a 3D world, but our resulting output was flat and 2D. It showed an illusion of three dimensions that is convincing because, as humans, we are conditioned to seeing things that way.
We have introduced some interactivity to rendered animations, by using the mouse to trigger their playing. In theory these animations could be very complex, incorporating many camera angles, zooming in and around. The upside of this is that we can have an almost photorealistic high quality environment, but the downside is file size and flexibility. We are trying to make 3D for the Web and as everyone knows, waiting for huge files to download can be a real turn off. So what can we do about it? The answer is to use a real time 3D engine that will make use of the user's computer graphics (CG) card to display your objects as you move about, changing your camera angle.
Working in 3D requires lots of programming to...
