MAT200A 02W
schedule MAT200A 02W
Report by: Ayoub Sarouphim
Computer Generated Images
"To create a computer rendered 3d image, a computer calculates path of light around a model, which has specific textures, patterns, and translucency, to illuminate the model as the human eye could see it."
Computer Generated Images are everywhere in today's society, including
medicine, movies, agronomy, architecture, military , games...
Computer rendered images excel when it is important to show fine details
and relationships in an accurate, photo-realistic way, or when photography
might not be possible or cost-effective.
The true power of 3D modeling is that the designer has complete control over everything the eye would see: perspective, lighting, scale, point of view, and the 3D models themselves.
Controlling every aspect of the 3D models makes computer rendered images useful for:
Medical graphic artists produce computer generated scientific graphics for various purposes, including surgery visualization , experimentation, interactive instalations, slide presentations, journal and textbook publications...
Installations:
"With virtual reality, the computer generated images became interactive or, more precisely, remained interactive, revealing the strength of their initial affinity with the cinema. True, the calculations and logical models which are the basis of such images set them outside the tradition of photography. But in order to appear, to find a form of realization, they soon turned to the media of film and video. In this sense, they belong to the tradition of film animation. On the one hand, the work done by a graphics system has analogies with drawing techniques and can be seen as a form of animated cartoon which has acquired a greater autonomy and greater coherence with its medium. On the other, the modeling and simulation of spaces, forms and light effects, behavioral animation, real time animation and all these state-of-the-art techniques, with their propensities towards photographic realism, were bound to lead automat images which can be almost seamlessly hybridized with shot footage." Jean-Louis Boissier.
Facial animation is now attracting more attention than ever. Imaginative applications of animated graphical faces are found in sophistical human-computer interfaces, interactive games, VR telepresence experiences, and as always, in a broad variety of production animation. Graphics technologies underlying facial animation now run the gamut from key framing to image morphing, video tracking, geometric and physical modeling, and behavioral animation. Supporting technologies include speech synthesis and artificial intelligence.
"The main objectives for the use of computer generated images in Plant evolution is to identify general plant organization and functioning principles, to evaluate the variability of plant architecture with a view to breeding or genetic improvement, to explain and model integrated plant and plant stand functioning with a view to quantitative and qualitative production forecasting. To represent landscapes and their evolution with a view to rural and urban land development, to characterize the geometric structure of biological entities with a view to diagnosis."(CIRAD)
Installation:
Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau
Virtual Architecture and more recently Transarchitecture, introduced
by Marcos Novak are a direct result of the unlimited possibilities that
computer generated images provide.
"The term "transArchitecture"describes a transformation
or transmutation of architecture that is intended to break down the polar
opposition of physical to virtual and propose instead a continuum ranging
from physical architecture to architecture energized by technological
augmentation to the architecture of cyberspace. It is offered as a way
to expand and enhance the scope and relevance of architecture in an information
age , and to allow the consideration of alternatives beyond the scope
of narrow disciplinary boundaries.
transArchitecture examines aspects of the technological and theoretical
augmentation of space and their relation to the exploration of diverse
spatial modalities that have been previously impossible to pursue.
Computers must be seen as both tools by which to investigate these spatial
modalities and instantiators of a new species of architectonic space.
Ideas are the invisible scaffolds upon which the real is constructed.
The history of architecture is a history of the increasing elaboration
of invisible scaffolds, such as those that hold up arches and vaults as
they are being constructed: there are scaffolds of industry, such as the
factories that persuade raw materials to combine, harden and form into
the structures and skins of our cities; and there are information scaffolds
that connect human interests and activities across the vastness of distance
and knowledge.
transArchitecture ,architecture beyond architecture, is an architecture
of invisible scaffolds."(Marcos Novak)
"The gulf war brought home the profound changes which are affecting the world of images today. If this war confirmed the importance of television image, the effects of which remain essentially ideological or psychological, it also revealed the terrifying efficiency of the virtual image. Invisible to the eye of the public, these images had their own logic, a logic not of communication but of commutation. The images allowed aircraft or guided missiles to hit their targets with tremendous precision, by means of calculators which, at each instant of the flight, compared the image of the terrain flown over by radar or infrared scanning to the virtual map system loaded in their memory, containing all the information needed for the mission."(Edmond Couchot)
Installation:
World Skin, by Maurice Benayoun
The evolution of computer generated images designed for computer games, or other stations (Playstation, Nintendo...) has rapidly evolved during the last twenty years. Images look more realistical and the game and movie industry are becoming closely related.
Actualite du Virtuel-CD ROM