3D Life Cycle

I often feel guilty when I work with computer games during research. I frequently feel the need to quickly minimise the screen when anyone walks past in case they think I am not doing any real work. However if anyone ever comments, I find it relativly easy to explain why computer games are an essential piece of the 3D lifecycle puzzle.

When it comes to 3D, computer games are at the cutting edge, often outstripping other software in terms of interactivity, performance and quality. With good reason. Software sales in 2008 totaled over (USD)$10 billion so you can imagine the industry attracts large investment and large talent. 

But that is just the start of why the computer gaming industry is so interesting from a research point of view. More important than the games themselves are the applications of the technology that games are based on. A trend in the industry is to encourage the users of the software to build their own content, creating a community that constantly updates and uploads their designs. To enable this, an open source model involving the provision of editing tools along with the games is becoming standard in many genres and these editing tools are often a lot more versatile and powerful than one may expect.

For example, purchase any first person 3D game these days, and you are likely to inherit an editor that lets you create your own environments, levels, scripts, and objects. Building a 3D world is a relatively simple affair, and so is populating it with intelligent content. Here is a screen shot of an environment I made using the Sandbox editor based on the Farcry engine. It took me a few hours to learn and then a few more to make.

The applications of this, outside the world of entertainment are actually quite vast. A few applications that quickly spring to mind are training, communication, configuration and sales. All these areas already have multiple specialised software packages dedicated to them, however these specialist programs are more often than not, several years behind in usability and graphics. Doing minor research yielded this paper on virtual reality surgery simulators, and another paper that details the ins and outs of using computer game engines  for visualisation.

Configuration and creation through gaming environments is becoming more and more common place. Spore is a great example. This game comes with several configurators that let you design a species and then their buildings, cars, boats, aircraft and finally spacecraft. However the flexibility in these editors let you create objects far outside this scope. Below is my 5 minute attempt at creating a cell phone using the building configurator. 

But a quick search of youtube will show many many more inspired designs, most of which have been created with the character creator, giving an organic quality to inorganic objects.  Take for example this video of a chair.

This is obviously a tool which has outgrown the designer’s original intentions and it would not take much to turn this configurator into a tool that could be used to rapidly prototype product ideas in 3D. 

Second Life is a great example of a 3D environment filled with user created content. It even has its own economy (complete with an excahnge rate linked to the real world) based on buying and selling user created content. Several well known brands like Nike have already picked out real estate and sell their products in stores inside the game. In these stores you can configure how you want your products to look before purchase.

Other companies freely or cheaply offer merchandise like cars to advertise their real world counterparts  which allows users to not only see a 3D visualisation of the product but to experience driving it, or how it sounds. This is obviously a big step in the world of mass customisation, and online sales. Most current online configurators only offer 2D representations, and limited viewing options. While I am unaware of  any link between second life and realword stores, it would not be a technically difficult step.

Little Big Planet is another game, aimed at children that allows a high level of customisation. Take a look at this video of a player created excavator.

Not only are these games offering us new technology platforms, but they are creating a culture of 3D in society. There are more free tools available on the internet to create 3D content now than ever before and more reason to create this content. In several years, it could well be the case that when someone is trying to explain a concept they won’t bother to try and draw something on a piece of paper or white board, they will instead model it quickly in 3D. With that amount of data being created, it would not be long until right next to Google images, would be Google 3D.

 

It has been along time coming but my article has finally been published in the International Journal of Mass Customisation. You can check it out now on the left side bar. I will also get around to adding other publications authored or co-authored by me in the near future.

This paper outlines the changes to communication flows when a configurator is added to an organisation. I have provided two pictures below that sums it all up quite nicely.

The traditional communication flow in a manufacturing organisation:

The communication flow in a mass customising firm where the marketing team and design team work on product platforms that are offered to the customer through a product configurator:

If you want to know more then you will have to read the article!

Welcome, to my blog ! A place for my musings throughout my research. I start with the humblest of intentions of focusing my thoughts, keeping me writing (something I am woefully inadequate at), and to hopefully receive feedback from the community to further my thoughts.

Now my motives are out of the way, my name is Richard Cross and I am a PhD candidate at The University of Auckland researching in the area of design communication throughout the product lifecycle in SMEs . Focusing on 3D as a universal medium to capture and confer design intent. Now I am not just talking about between the engineers and the designers, but looking at its uses throughout the value chain by all the relevant stakeholders. Much of this research is aimed at the area of PLM, and that is where my literature readings have started, however I come from a background of Mass Customisation and thus am also interested in agile manufacturing and catering to the needs of markets of one.

I have several affiliations being a researcher with the INNOVATIONZ group, a director of KBS (an SME consultancy) and managing mass customisation at Criterion Ltd, a New Zealand furniture manufacturer. I have also authored/coauthored several publications both in the area of sustainability and mass customisation.

I aim to write biweekly and expect to be seriously chastised if this does not become the case!