Application of 3D

Application of 3D

The use of 3D objects far exceed video games. It is used a lot in the media industry. A very notable example being 3D animated movies.

Most animated films which are given theatrical releases these days are animated in 3D. Pixar and Dreamworks are the most notable companies who produce 3D animated movies.

Dreamwork's Shrek (2001). A very popular movie franchise animated in 3D.

Pixar are noted for the popularity of 3D animated movies. They started making shorts in the 1980s. Their first short was Luxo Jr. (1986) which features a Lamp who then went on to become Pixar's mascot.

Luxo Jr.

In 1996, Pixar's first feature length animated film was released by Disney, Toy Story. The film became a huge worldwide commercial success and made Pixar massive. From then on, CGI animated movies started to get more and more popular and today it has become very common in cinema.

Just like how computer hardware is upgraded allowing users to create more detailed models in games, the same applied for movies. The difference is between games and movies is that a CGI movie doesn't need extremely good hardware to view (although HD has become more common which would require a HD TV and an updated player like a Blu-Ray player). CGI films are fully rendered video files and aren't running in real time, so they can be viewed on any device which allows video viewing. The file size depends on the quality of the movie (HD is more larger in size than Standard Definition films) as well as how long it runs. So it's not any different than any other movie.

Brave (2012) by Pixar. As software and computer hardware got better, they were able to make much more visually appealing movies. Brave also makes use of physics, giving the character more relaistic features (like hair rendering) which gives it more of a realistic feel when compared to earlier movies like Toy Story and A Bug's Life.

3D animation has also been known to have been used in 2D animated cartoons, like Futurama.

In scenes of Futurama (like when the Planet express ship is flying through space), objects in the scene rotates around the ship very smoothly, these are often cel-shaded objects.

It's also used in live action movies for special effects. For example, putting a character like a dragon in. They would have been created using 3D software.

James Cameron's Avatar (2009). The movie used a lot of 3D software and the hardware required for it was very intense and expensive. The entire movie costed between $280 and $310 million to create.