In 1975, graphics researching pioneer Martin Newell created a 3-D model that revolutionized 3-D computer graphics technology. He created mathematical data (that at the time was hand figured on graph paper and/or manually typed in, digit by digit) for three-dimensional coordinates that would describe (and therefore allow for replication of) the geometry (the concavity, the degrees of roundness, the challenging saddle-points) of the object being rendered. In this case, he used a household object suggested by his wife in their Utah home one breakfast time. He modeled what has become the infamous Utah Teapot, an object that became the digital rendering icon of the 3-D computer graphics world.
Since, of course, digital rendering has surpassed the tea pot, not in use of the coordinates Newell defined (the student hasn’t necessarily surpassed the master) but in capabilities and realism factors. While the Utah Teapot has stunning actuality»from the curvature to the reflective properties»many more digitally rendered objects have taken on a virtue of realness that make them at times appear more real than the object they are depicting.
For instance, on one site featuring architectural and design plan rendering, the home page introduces services therein by using a digital rendering of one small part of a dining area. The over head light, a series of light panels, is in the foreground (upper right corner), while the glass table and three postmodern chairs are in the left center background»or set back a bid. The light dominates the frame: it creates an obelisk-shaped line of glass and light that warms the whole frame. But more stunning is the use of light and animation: one tight, hypnotic bead of bright light travels, in five different points, the edge of the light»s rim/shape in a thread-thin orbit that pops ever so subtly at exact intervals of time. At the same time that one light point pops and disburses, another of the four remaining points appears, pops, and dissolves at the end of that point»s trail. Simultaneously, it one additional beam, very short and subtle, travels the rim of the glass table»appearing bright where the light (fixture) hits, then fading out as it travels out of sight.
What’s so beyond realism here is not the table, the light, or the reflection(s). It»s the movement of the light. As if we the viewers had shrunk and the light had expanded to a great enough size that we could see light in it»s actual state»that light has properties that dance and travel in ways outside of digital rendering we cannot normally observe with a naked eye. Or that we don»t take time to observe.
As one expert in digital rendering admitted, «the uniqueness of the traditional rendering is in no way to be duplicated 100%.» This is a given. At the same time, what digital rendering does for, say, a new home, an interior, a landscape»for architecture, products, outdoor environs, indoor spaces--that the pre-computer technology traditional rendering does not do is duplicate in a different way. It brings a light that cannot e encapsulated by 2-D paper and drawing implements alone. It brings a motion contained and replicated. And it combines the two to move beyond representation of the real in such a way that the real is surpassed, is fantastic, is 3-D pushing the edges into 4-D.
