External links
- Head Modeling, 3D Studio Max tutorial Archived 2009-12-16 at the Wayback Machine
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In computer graphics, non-uniform rational mesh smooth (NURMS) or subdivision surface technique is typically applied to a low-polygonal mesh to create a high-polygonal smoothed mesh.
NURMS are used in commercial 3D packages such as Autodesk 3ds Max to perform mesh smoothing operations. The mesh smooth modifier in 3ds Max operates by applying this algorithm to a low-polygon mesh and creates a high-polygon smoothed mesh. The new mesh can be dynamically manipulated by the low-polygon mesh to achieve the desired results. There is also an Adobe Illustrator filter that uses the same algorithm of smoothing for 2d curves.
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Autodesk 3ds Max, formerly 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max, is a professional 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations, models, games and images. It is developed and produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. It has modeling capabilities and a flexible plugin architecture and must be used on the Microsoft Windows platform. It is frequently used by video game developers, many TV commercial studios, and architectural visualization studios. It is also used for movie effects and movie pre-visualization. 3ds Max features shaders, dynamic simulation, particle systems, radiosity, normal map creation and rendering, global illumination, a customizable user interface, and its own scripting language.
In 3D computer graphics, normal mapping, or Dot3 bump mapping, is a texture mapping technique used for faking the lighting of bumps and dents – an implementation of bump mapping. It is used to add details without using more polygons. A common use of this technique is to greatly enhance the appearance and details of a low polygon model by generating a normal map from a high polygon model or height map.
In 3D computer graphics and solid modeling, a polygon mesh is a collection of vertices, edges and faces that defines the shape of a polyhedral object. The faces usually consist of triangles, quadrilaterals (quads), or other simple convex polygons (n-gons), since this simplifies rendering, but may also be more generally composed of concave polygons, or even polygons with holes.
In the field of 3D computer graphics, a subdivision surface is a curved surface represented by the specification of a coarser polygon mesh and produced by a recursive algorithmic method. The curved surface, the underlying inner mesh, can be calculated from the coarse mesh, known as the control cage or outer mesh, as the functional limit of an iterative process of subdividing each polygonal face into smaller faces that better approximate the final underlying curved surface. Less commonly, a simple algorithm is used to add geometry to a mesh by subdividing the faces into smaller ones without changing the overall shape or volume.
In computer graphics, level of detail (LOD) refers to the complexity of a 3D model representation. LOD can be decreased as the model moves away from the viewer or according to other metrics such as object importance, viewpoint-relative speed or position. LOD techniques increase the efficiency of rendering by decreasing the workload on graphics pipeline stages, usually vertex transformations. The reduced visual quality of the model is often unnoticed because of the small effect on object appearance when distant or moving fast.
Low poly is a polygon mesh in 3D computer graphics that has a relatively small number of polygons. Low poly meshes occur in real-time applications as contrast with high-poly meshes in animated movies and special effects of the same era. The term low poly is used in both a technical and a descriptive sense; the number of polygons in a mesh is an important factor to optimize for performance but can give an undesirable appearance to the resulting graphics.
In 3D computer graphics, polygonal modeling is an approach for modeling objects by representing or approximating their surfaces using polygon meshes. Polygonal modeling is well suited to scanline rendering and is therefore the method of choice for real-time computer graphics. Alternate methods of representing 3D objects include NURBS surfaces, subdivision surfaces, and equation-based representations used in ray tracers.
In electrical engineering and computer science, Lloyd's algorithm, also known as Voronoi iteration or relaxation, is an algorithm named after Stuart P. Lloyd for finding evenly spaced sets of points in subsets of Euclidean spaces and partitions of these subsets into well-shaped and uniformly sized convex cells. Like the closely related k-means clustering algorithm, it repeatedly finds the centroid of each set in the partition and then re-partitions the input according to which of these centroids is closest. In this setting, the mean operation is an integral over a region of space, and the nearest centroid operation results in Voronoi diagrams.
Mesh generation is the practice of creating a mesh, a subdivision of a continuous geometric space into discrete geometric and topological cells. Often these cells form a simplicial complex. Usually the cells partition the geometric input domain. Mesh cells are used as discrete local approximations of the larger domain. Meshes are created by computer algorithms, often with human guidance through a GUI, depending on the complexity of the domain and the type of mesh desired. A typical goal is to create a mesh that accurately captures the input domain geometry, with high-quality (well-shaped) cells, and without so many cells as to make subsequent calculations intractable. The mesh should also be fine in areas that are important for the subsequent calculations.
Pixologic ZBrush is a digital sculpting tool that combines 3D/2.5D modeling, texturing and painting. It uses a proprietary "pixol" technology which stores lighting, color, material, orientation and depth information for the points making up all objects on the screen. The main difference between ZBrush and more traditional modeling packages is that it is more akin to traditional sculpting.
Mudbox is a proprietary computer-based 3D sculpting and painting tool. Currently developed by Autodesk, Mudbox was created by Skymatter, founded by Tibor Madjar, David Cardwell and Andrew Camenisch, former artists of Weta Digital, where it was first used to produce the 2005 Peter Jackson remake of King Kong. Mudbox's primary application is high-resolution digital sculpting, texture painting, and displacement and normal map creation, although it is also used as a design tool.
Digital sculpting, also known as sculpt modeling or 3D sculpting, is the use of software that offers tools to push, pull, smooth, grab, pinch or otherwise manipulate a digital object as if it were made of a real-life substance such as clay.
3DS is one of the file formats used by the Autodesk 3ds Max 3D modeling, animation and rendering software.
Simplygon is 3D computer graphics software for automatic 3D optimization, based on proprietary methods for creating levels of detail (LODs) through Polygon mesh reduction and other optimization techniques.
Polygon Cruncher is 3D computer graphics software for generating 3D-optimized meshes based on reduction and other optimization techniques. Polygon Cruncher is also available as an API through an SDK.
In 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling is the process of developing a mathematical coordinate-based representation of any surface of an object in three dimensions via specialized software by manipulating edges, vertices, and polygons in a simulated 3D space.
3D-Coat is a commercial digital sculpting program from Pilgway designed to create free-form organic and hard surfaced 3D models from scratch, with tools which enable users to sculpt, add polygonal topology, create UV maps, texture the resulting models with natural painting tools, and render static images or animated "turntable" movies.
In 3D computer graphics, a smoothing group is a group of polygons in a polygon mesh which should appear to form a smooth surface. Smoothing groups are useful for describing shapes where some polygons are connected smoothly to their neighbors, and some are not. For example, in a mesh representing a cylinder, all of the polygons are smoothly connected except along the edges of the end caps. One could make a smoothing group containing all of the polygons in one end cap, another containing the polygons in the other end cap, and a last group containing the polygons in the tube shape between the end caps.
In computer graphics, tessellation is the dividing of datasets of polygons presenting objects in a scene into suitable structures for rendering. Especially for real-time rendering, data is tessellated into triangles, for example in OpenGL 4.0 and Direct3D 11.