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| BUILDING INTERACTIVE WORLDS IN 3D
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Virtual Sets and Pre-visualization for Games, Film & the Web
To order this title, and for more information, click here
By
Jean-Marc Gauthier, Professor at New York University in the graduate studies department of Interactive Telecommunications; consultant; award-winning 3D artist.
Description
In Building Interactive Worlds in 3D readers will find turnkey tutorials that detail all the steps required to build simulations and interactions,
utilize virtual cameras, virtual actors (with self-determined behaviors), and real-time physics including gravity, collision, and topography.
With the free software demos included, 3D artists and developers can learn to build a fully functioning prototype. The book is dynamic
enough to give both those with a programming background as well as those who are just getting their feet wet challenging and engaging
tutorials in virtual set design, using Virtools. Other software discussed is: Lightwave, and Maya. The book is constructed so that, depending
on your project and design needs, you can read the text or interviews independently and/or use the book as reference for individual tutorials
on a project-by-project basis. Each tutorial is followed by a short interview with a 3D graphics professional in order to provide insight
and additional advice on particular interactive 3D techniques?from user, designer, artist, and producer perspectives.
Audience
intermediate-level 3D animators, game designers, and virtual reality programmers world-wide.
Contents
Chapter 1 - A short history of computer simulations
History of interactive 3D, from early flight simulaters during World War 2 to state
of the art low cost virtual sets.
- Inverview: Ken Perlin, Director of CAT/NYU, special effects supervisor for Tron, Disney.
Cahpter
2
3D basic kit
- Solutions to practical and conceptual problems
- Modeling and texturing for interactive 3D
- Alpha channels and
transparencies
- Photorealistic real-time 3D rendering on a PC or on a Mac
- Project:designing a skybox
- Interview: Benjy Bernhard
about creating virtual sets for the AMNH's Planetarium
Chapter 3
Adding interactivity
- Director
- Virtools
- Reusable behaviors
- Scripting interactions
- Simulating natural laws or physics in a virtual set
- Controlling interactions with input devices: dragging
3D objects
- Project: 3D artist, Tamiko Thiel, about museum installations
Chapter 4
Animation basics
- Keyframed animation: simple
animation in Maya and Lightwave
- Morphing
- Animated textures
- Exporting animated 3D models
- Character animation: bones and biped
- Exporting animate dcharacters
- Scripted animation in Lingo
- Advanced interactive animation
- Capturing real-time motion
- Project:
Interactive showcase for virtual actors
- Interview: dancer-animator, Liza Herlinger-Thompson, Troika Ranch, about character animation
Chapter 5
Interactive Lighting
- Natural lighting
- Indoor lighting
- Distant light
- Spot light
- Point light
- Building a virtual
light studio: a virtual set for TV
- Adding interactivity
- Testing the virtual light studio on a movie set
- Advanced interactive
lighting: particle animation, special effects and volumetrics
- Project: Interactive lighting of a character isnide a virtual set
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Interview: interactive 3D artist, Florent Aziosmanoff about lighting for virtual sets
Chapter 6
Virtual Cameras
- Virtual cameras
adapted from Hitchkok and Stanley Kubrick's movies
- Steadycams
- Movie previsualization
- Parent-child scripting and targets
- Controlling
virtual cameras
- Advanced interactivity for virtual cameras: artificial intelligence, portals
- Tutorial: 3D interactive adaptation
from a scene from "Night Hawks" from E. Hopper
- Interview: director of photography, Kaminski, AI, Minority Report, discusses using
virtual sets for movies
Chapter 7
3D sound
- Introduction to immersive experiences
- Synchronization of display and sound
- Spatialized
sound
- Controlling several sound streams
- Real-time 3D sound
- Sound envelopes
- Tutorial: sound mixer
- Interview: 3D Sound inventor
and engineer, Bo Gehring, discusses spatialized sound for virtual sets
Chapter 8
User interface and input devices
- Linear and non-linear
story telling
- User testing
- Testing playback performance
- Building input devices: serial inputs
- Midi inputs
- Interactive
phones
- PDAs
- Project: Designing a new interactive camera: the "cocktail camera"
- Interview: Interactive designer, Bill Tomlinson,
Synthetic Character Group, MIT MediaLab about input devices for virtual sets
Chapter 9
Following a terrain with a remote controlled
car
- Modeling and texturing a terain
- Modeling the car and obstacles
- Collision against the terrain
- Collision between a character
and walls and other collisions
- Adding physics: springs
- Other methods: ray calculations
- Project: an online 3D game
- Interview:
game designer, Sokal, creator of Syberiade, about virtual sets for game design
Chapter 10
Communication environments
- Communication
from and to the virtual set
- Introduction to multiplayer 3D games
- Serial communication
- Web communication
- Interactive phone
communication
- Example of online multiplayer 3D game
- Project: a robot talks to a virtual set
- Interview: bio-robotic specialist
Robert Full, Director of the Polypedal Lab, Bugs Life, Disney and Pixar, about using virtual sets to stimulate robots inspired by insects.
Chapter 11
Advanced interactive 3D characters
- Advanced character animation: blending motions
- Cloning motions
- Crowd control
- Path finding and terrain analysis
- Project: characters from a movie set are controlled by cellular phones
- Interview: virtual
sets designer, Colin Green, from Pixel Liberation Front, The Matrix, Panic Room, discusses movie previsualization for virtual sets
Chapter
12
Artificial intelligence and gameplay for virtual sets
- Introduction to AI
- Decision making and self-determination
- Managing
crowd in an open space
- Integrating AI in a game with AI
- Project: virtual agora in the antique city of Aphrodisias
- Interview:
3D interavtive designer, Zach Rosen, about using AI inside virtual sets
Chapter 13
Multi-user server and database
- Database administration
- Connection to database
- Saving and loading
- Managing characters in multi-player environment
- Chat in 3D world
- Project: Multi
player virtual movie set
- Interview: CEO of SIA-TV, Adrian Simonovitch, about database driven virtual sets for interactive TV games
| Bibliographic details |
Paperback, 448 pages, publication date: APR-2005
ISBN-13: 978-0-240-80622-8
ISBN-10: 0-240-80622-0
Imprint: FOCAL PRESS
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Price:
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USD 60.95
GBP 45
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Last update: 7 Sep 2009
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