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I'll tell you now, AOL completely butchers the images.

I'm not really sure why I created this page... I guess I needed an explanation to remind me why I stay up until 3am trying to align a cylinder and a torus just perfectly...

What this is: assorted ramblings on my part about the neat parts of 3D graphics.
What this is not: A detailed lesson in 3D graphics theory and technicalaties.

Anyway, this will be a sort of walkthrough of my mind (hardhats required) as far as 3D graphics are concerned. I hope you find it interesting.

I sort of enjoy drawing perspective scenes in pencil, but I hate trying to figure out exactly which way the angles should go and where the shadows should fall. When it does get finished (if ever), I'm quite pleased with the results. I usually draw surrealistic sort of contraptions rather than realistic things. I like computer graphics because I can create these contraptions fairly quickly - without bothering to ever draw them. The following should explain this a little better. I'll be talking about POV-Ray, which is the best renderer I have ever seen - and it's completely free. Check out www.pov-ray.org for more info.

Let's say I want to start with a simple sphere. I say simple, even though anyone who's ever done any of this kind of drawing knows how hard they are to shade, etc. But anyway, a sphere:

   sphere {
     <0, 0, 0>, 1                //center is at origin, radius is 1
     texture {pigment{White} finish {
        diffuse 0.7 ambient 0.2  
        phong 0.75 phong_size 40 
        reflection 0.15          //the sphere will be slightly reflective
        brilliance 3
     }
   }

I'm not trying to focus on code here, so suffice it to say that this creates a sphere with a radius of 1 at the origin of the "universe", that has a shiny metallic texture.

Now, just set up a camera to view this scene through, add a light and render. The result?

Not bad for typing a few lines, eh? Of course, it doesn't look all that interesting with just the sphere and a light. It needs some surroundings... since I like the checkered background so much, let's add that. I'm not going to bother with code, but this is all I have to tell POV-Ray:

• Create a plane with normal (facing) on the Z-axis, offset 5 units down.
• Give the plane a texture with tiles of black and white.

I'm not changing the original sphere at all. Re-render this little text file and you get:

Wow! The sphere automagically reflects the tiled ground, just because we told POV-Ray earlier that the sphere was somewhat reflective.

I hope you're beginning to see what I like about 3D graphics. Simply by making the following statements:

• Create a sphere with radius of 1 at the origin. Give it a shiny metal finish.
• Create a plane with a Z-axis normal offset 5 units down. Give it a tiled black-and-white texture.
• Put the camera 3.5 units back from the origin, and point it toward the origin.
• Put a white light above, to the right, and slightly behind the camera.

We've created a scene that is quite realistically shadowed and reflected, just by typing a few lines. Granted, creating more complex scenes is a little more difficult, but the point is that you can spend your time creating the thing itself, rather than drawing it.

By the way, I created the separator bar just below this paragraph in about 1 minute. Create a cylinder with a metallic finish, put a blue light slightly above and to the left, and a red light slightly below and to the right. Render, and I have a separator bar. :)

I hope you've enjoyed this little essay... given enough response, I might write some more, I don't know. It's hard not to get too technical, but I do enjoy doing this kind of thing. Let me know what you think about it at xidus@xidus.net.

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This webpage is maintaned by: Jeremy Weatherford (xidus@xidus.net)
Please feel free to send any comments, questions, or problems you may have. (problems with the webpage, that is. :)

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