CSE 380 – Computer Game ProgrammingIntroduction

ITS 102 – 3D Modeling for GamesIntroduction

Who am I?

Richard McKenna E-mail: richard@cs.stonybrook.edu

Phone: 631-632-9564

Office: CS Room 1436

Office hours: MF 12pm – 1pm

TuTh 1pm - 2pmand by appointment

http://www.cs.stonybrook.edu/~richard

Course Homepages• http://www.cs.stonybrook.edu/~richard/its102/

– syllabus– schedule (lecture slides, hw, etc …)– etc.

• http://blackboard.stonybrook.edu– grades

Course Description• A seminar for students in the College of Information and

Technology Studies. Seminar topics vary annually by section and cover a variety of subjects under the scope of information, technology, and engineering studies.

Seminar Description

This course will examine the tools and techniques used for creating animated, textured, 3D models via modeling software. Students in this course will do hands-on exercises using modeling tools and will create their own animated characters using Blender3D.

Course Goals

• To impart a strong sense of academic community

• To acquaint first-year students with a full-time member of the faculty engaged in ITS-related studies

• To provide students with an opportunity to engage directly with an academic topic in a small setting

• To allow for experimentation in curriculum design

Seminar GoalsAt the end of the course you should have the

following knowledge and skills:

• Understand how to construct the geometry for an interesting 3D model using a modeling tool

• Understand how to specify material properties for a 3D model

• Understand how to make custom textures and to use them to custom texture map your model

• Understand how to rig and animate your model

• Understand how your animated 3D model may be used by a game application

Course Topics• 3D Concepts

• Using Blender3D

• Meshes

• Materials

• Textures

• 3D Animation

• The Blender Game Engine

Grading

• All First-Year 102 seminars are graded on an A - C/U basis. Students will be evaluated on the basis of attendance, participation, and work

Course Requirements

• Class Attendance/Participation

• Insect Project

• Game-Related Event Participation– Nerdfest: Friday, 2/14 @ 6pm in SAC Ballroom

– Gamers Guild Playtest Night: Thursday, 5/1 @ 7pm in CS Lobby

– Game Programming Competition: Friday, 5/16 @ Wang Center

• ITS Requirement

Why study games?

• To get game development jobs

• Because it is fun

• Because they are complex

• Because they push the envelope of computing technology

• Bottom line:– games are natural

learning devices

– making games is a great way to learn other things

To really join the industry

Modern Games are Complex

• Can be very complex

• Technologies used:– 2D & 3D Graphics– Sound & Music– Networking– Artificial Intelligence– Physics Simulation– Parallel Processing– Custom scripting languages– Etc.

• All of it must be implemented efficiently

Pong by Atari, released to public 1975

Battlefield 3 by Electronic Arts/DICE

Blizzard’s World of Warcraft

• Over 10,000,000 subscribers– thousands play simultaneously– players in countries around the world

• Requires:– Rich graphical environment– Complex networking– Semi-nude dancing

• Needs an army to make it. And:– maintain– update– count profits

The Development Team/Army

Designers

Artists

Audio

Engineers

Producers

Programmers

Why Blender3D?

• It can make great content

• It's widely used

• It's free

Download & Install

• http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender

• Latest version 2.65a

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro

• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

What can blender do?

• Create 3D content• Create 3D worlds• Produce realistic, beautiful, fantastic 2D projected

renderings of 3D content/worlds

First, some formal definitions

• What's a 3D model?– an abstract version of an object

– renderable

– data (vertices, edges, textures, etc.)

• What's modeling?– Process of making 3D models

Model Data

• Vertices

• Edges

• Faces

• Surface Normals

Steps in the Modeling Process

• Object modeling

• Shading

• Lighting

• Rigging

• Posing

3D World Construction & Rendering

• Based on Geometry• Imagine a model of this room• Everything needs a position in 3D space

– think 3D coordinates (x, y, z)– Where's the origin (0,0,0) of our room?

Blender3D Axes

• X, Y, Z– Cartesian Coordinates– Are negative coordinates ok?

• Right-handed System, Huh?

Axes of Rotation

• We'll want to rotate stuff

• How do we denote a rotation?

• We need 2 things:

– Axis of rotation– Angle around axis

• Right-grip rule

Coordinate Transformations

• Changes an object's coordinate values in some way

– Moving an object (translation)– Rotating an object (rotation)– Enlarging or shrinking an object (scaling)

Translation, Rotation, & Scaling

Multiple Transformations

• They can be combined on an object

• Order of processing matters

Projections

• Our 3D worlds are projected onto 2D screens

– Orthographic vs. Perspective projection

Orthographic

Perspective

Orthographic views can be useful. Why?

Perspective Projection uses Foreshortening

• What's that?

– nearby objects rendered larger than faraway objects– gives the illusion of depth and distance

What's a vanishing point?

• Imagine looking down a set of train tracks• They appear to converge at a point on the horizon• This is the vanishing point

The Projection Plane

• Depends on camera position and orientation

Blender Coordinates

• Global Coordinate System

– each scene has its own– fixed origin & orientation– virtual camera may be moved about

• Local Coordinate System– each object has its own