Lighting

API stands for Application Programming Interface, API is a source code interface which is used by operating systems or libraries to supports request for services to be made of it by computer programs. To simplify that an API is a piece of software that sits between the programmer and a program. The program comes already set up with functions but it needs some more code to be entered to perform those functions. To get the functions to work the programmer types the code into the API which places it into the programme which then performs the task. Here are some examples of API’s, OpenGL, DirectX, Google Maps API, Youtube API and MediaWiki API.

 Here is an example of some API coding.

OpenGL offers 3 forms of lighting. The first is per polygon lighting the second is per vertex lighting and the third is per pixel lighting. In vertex lighting you determine how many polygons are touching one of the vertex’s, them take the mean of all the polygons orientations which we call the normal and assign the normal to the vertex.

The advantage of vertex lighting is that the hardware will help complete the task faster by using hardware transform and lighting (T&L). The disadvantages of this is that shadowing will not be produced on the model. For example, both arms on the model will be lit the same way, even if the light is on the right side of the model, the left arm will be lit the same and no body shadow will be cast.

Shaders are a graphic resource that are used to render graphical objects in a 3D world. The shader is actually a part of the renderer, which is used to calculate the colour of an object.

Gouraud is a method of shading that is used to differ the effects of light and colour on a 3D object. Gouraud is used to smooth lighting across low-polygon object without the heavy computational requirements used by calculating the light for each pixel.

Phond shading is a layered version of shading. It begins with an ambient, it then adds a diffuse and specular. This reveals the fully lit 3D model.

I would use the phong method as it is an easier method in my opinion.

Here is an example of some shading.

YSP Video Plan

I would like the mood of the video to be a documentary that has comedic value. I’d rather that it not be too serious because it would be boring to watch. I hope to film a large amount of shots so that there is more choice in what goes into the final cut.

I would like alot of chase shots as we walk from statue to statue and some mid shots as we talk about each statue. I would also like to have mid shots for the intro and also the outro.

After researching the sculpture park, I have seen that it contains many large statues that will make great focal points as we move around the park. There is also a few indoor areas which may contain piece which could be of some interest. I also found out that statues created by Henry Moore are on show there so it will probably be a good idea to research him to learn more about him and his work.

The planning will be very important for the video to be completed on time. We will need to have the ruff cut completed within the first couple of editing sessions. Then we will have to clean up the editing and add effects to the video. Finally we will have to publish it and create the director commentary.

Anti-Aliasing

Anti-Aliasing is where the 3D card takes a look at what has been rendered and blurs the edges of the polygons to get rid of jagged pixel edges.

There are 2 ways for the 3D card to generate anti-aliasing images. The first approach is at the individual polygon level, which requires you to render the polygon from back to front of the view, so that each polygon can blend with what’s behind it. The second approach is where you scale the whole frame to a much larger resolution than it will be displayed at, then when you scale the image down the sharp edges tend to be blended away in the scaling.

 The good thing about the first approach is that it is very high quality, the bad thing about this method is that of you render out of order you will end up with some sort of strange effects. The good thing about the second second approach is that it is alot easier to use but you need alot of memory bandwidth and a large memory footprint.

What is Genre?

Genre is the categorisation of films, TV, books, games, music, etc. Genre is a very vague area with no set boundaries. Many people confine the scope of the word “Genre” to art, culture and especially literature, but it has been used in rhetoric for a long time.

Genre is in all media, for example it is in TV, music, movies, video games and literature. People tend to favour specific genres because that genre appeals to them and their interests.

Bit Depth

Bit depth is a computer graphics term which describes the number bits used to make up a single pixel in a bit-map

Pixels

Pixel is short for Picture Elements, pixels are small point of a graphic image. Graphic monitors display pictures by dividing into thousands or millions of pixels all aligned in rows and columns. They are so close together that it appears that they are joined together.

The number of bits used in a single pixel will vary depending on how many colours or shades of gray can be seen. For example, and 8-bit colour mode will use 8 bits for each pixel. 

On colour monitors, pixels consist of only three dots - a red, a green and a blue dot. The three dots should converge at the same point but some monitors have convergence errors which makes the colour pixels look fuzzy.

The quality of a display system depends mainly on the resolution, how many pixels it can display and how many bits are used to represent each pixel.

The History of Video Games

Origins

The first known concept for a video game was a device called the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Devicewhich was created in the US by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann in 1948. The device would use vacuum tubes to simulate a missile being fired at a target and the player would use knobs to adjust the speed and ark of the missile.

Regarded to be the first true video game that wasn’t a representation of pen-and-paper or board game was created in 1958 on an oscilloscope by the American physicist William Higinbotham. The game was called Tennis for Two, it simulated a game of tennis using the oscilloscope. The player used an analogue computer to control the game and it consisted of mostly resisters, capacitors and relays but when the ball was in play transistor switches were used.

Culling Methods

Three hundred thousand triangles pose a problem because it creates alot of work for the CPU and the graphics card. To tackle this problem programmers created culling, a process in which the engine removes all invisible and non-essential polygons.

The difference between marketing and real world polygon rates is that the marketing polygon rate is the rate that the card can theoretically reach and the real world rate is what the card can actually achieve.

The lowest rendering unit that can be achieved is a primitive, which for most hardware is a three-point polygon (triangle).

The advantages of using a higher-order surface like patches is that it can create a higher polygon rate and has been the basis of new and experimental technologies. The disadvantages of using it are that it is not standard over all graphics cards and that it is somewhat of an expensive to buy a card that does support higher-order surfaces like patches.

There are two main types of occlusion culling. The first type is called PVS (Potentially Visible Sets), this method divides the scene into regions and pre-computes the visibility of them. These visibility sets are then indexed at run-time to obtain high quality visuals sets quickly. The second type is called portal rendering. This method entails dividing the scene into cells/sectors (rooms) and portals (doors), and computes which sectors are visible by clipping them against portals.

These are the five stages of the Basic Graphic Pipeline.

Stage 1: The Game determines what objects, models, textures and animations that will be in the game world. It also determines the positioning of the camera.

Stage 2: The game passes this information to the renderer. In the case of the models, the renderer will look at the size of the model and where the camera is located, and then it will determine if it is onscreen or off.

Stage 3: Then the world visualization system determines where in the world the camera is located, and what sections polygons are visible from the camera viewpoint. This can be done in numerous ways, from a brute force method of splitting the world up into sections, to the more elegant BSP (Binary Space Partitioned) worlds.

 Stage 4: Then the renderer transforms all the polygons that pass through according to their world mathematics and it’s local mathematics, it then examines the polygone to determines if it is back-faced or not. Those that are back-faced are thrown away. Those that are not back-faced are lit.

Stage 5: The renderer then looks at what textures the polygon uses and it ensures that the graphics card/API is using that texture at it’s rendering base. At this point polygons are fed off to the rendering API and then onto the card.

Z buffering makes the rendering of textures less important but it does not make polygons that have transparency in them less important. They have to be rendered after all the non translucent polygons are done, so what’s behind them can be shown correctly in the scene.

Here are two examples of API’s. The first is DirectX for Microsoft Windows and the second is OpenGL which is a cross platform graphics API.

Hardware-accelerated transform & lighting is a program that is used to render polygons and what ever you are trying to drawat the correct angle and position in the world relative to where the camera is positioned.

The benefit of patches are that instead of listing masses of polygon positions in the gaming world, it uses a mathematical expression instead. This makes it alot easier to build and deform a mesh of polygons by changing the equation.

Retesselation is when a low polygon mesh is converted to make a higher polygon mesh. This makes the mesh alot smoother and better looking. 

Genres

Film

Horror – Intended to scare the audience.

Action – Generally involves a moral interplay between “good” and “bad” played out through violence or physical force.

Romance – Focuses on romantic love.

Comedy – Intended to make the audience laugh.

Mystery – The progression from the unknown to the known.

Adventure – Generally involves danger, risk and/or change, often with a degree of fantasy.

Drama – Focuses on character development often in situations familiar to the general audience.

Thriller – Intended to provoke excitement and sometime nervousness within the audience.

Music

Rock – A popular form of music with a prominent vocal melody which is accompanied by guitars, drums and bass.

Folk – Traditional music that has been made popular due to the way it relates to the common people.

Reggae- Jamaican music developed in the late 1960’s, made popular by the unique rhythm styling that it has.

Country – Music developed in rural areas, it is a blend of popular music and folk music.

Jazz – Music which originated around the early 20th century in African American communities.

Pop – Popular music that can belong to any number of musical styles that are accessible by the general public.

Heavy Metal – Genre of music that was developed in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. With roots in blues and psychedelic rock.

Hip Hop – Style of popular music developed in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, originating from Jamaica and the South Bronx, New York in the early 1970’s.

Blues – Vocal and instrumental style of music which originated in the southern United States in the late 19th century.

Electronic – Music that focuses on the use of electronic instruments. It originates from the late 19th century and the early 20th century.

TV

Children’s Television – Popular form of television which focuses on a child audience presenting shows which are made for children.

Situation Comedy – Genre which started on radio but made the transaction to television. Sitcoms focus on a group of recurring characters in a common place.

Game Shows – Genre which focuses on contestants attempting to win money or prizes through a series of games or challenges.

Reality Television - Genre of television which focuses on unscripted comedy, dramatic events which involve real life people.

Sports Television - Genre of television which focuses on sport.

Science Fiction Television -Television which focuses mainly on science fiction senarios often involving some sort of fantasy.

Video Games

Action Games -The video game equivalent to an action movie. They portray the on going battle between “good” and “evil”.

Adventure Games - Game involving danger/risk and some sort of prize at the end.

Shooter Games - Games revolving around guns and weapons. The majority of these games are either 1st or 3rd person shooters.

Role Playing Games -Game genre where you take control of a character and go on a quest through many different environments to find something.

Platform Games -Game involving a character who travels from platform to platform, many of these game are side-scrollers.

Simulation Games -The aim of this genre of game is to simulate an expirience, whether it be flying and aircraft or fighting a war.

Sport Games - Game which focuses on a sport activity whether it be playing the sport or managing a team.

Horror Games – Game genre which intends to scare the audience and make them jump.

Strategy Games – Game which requires the player to think and strategies to win.

MMO Games - Game type which is played online with many other players. This genre tends to be Role Playing Games.

Level Design

To be a successful games designer the quality that I would value most is a tremendous experience in traditional art or architecture because if it doesn’t look nice no one will want to play it.

A digital architect is a person who creates spaces and buildings in a virtual world; they are usually employed by either games companies or architectural firms. They would build levels for a game company or build 3D representations of a future building for an architectural firm.

With Moore’s Law in place the processor speed of the games engine doubles every eighteen months which means that the quality of the builds that are created will increased tremendously.

Level designers are often referred to as chefs because instead of just throwing stuff into the pot they have to judge what will work and what will not to make a successful game that is going to sell.

 Peer criticism can be a good thing because it can help a game become better. This can be done by telling a designer about areas that can be worked on and areas that can be removed if necessary, though sometimes it can be bad if it is not constructive or helpful.

To make a good level it is best to plan everything out on paper first and then use some improvisation during level design to make it a little bit better.

Frame rate is important because it will depict if a game runs smoothly. Frame rate can be sacrificed for more detailed levels. Sometimes when the games pace slows down the frame rate can be lowered to increase the detail in a particular part.