* Adobe Atmosphere, a 3D computer graphics product by Adobe Systems

The Academy of Interactive Entertainment ( AIE ) offers courses in computer game development and 3D animation.

The Accelerated Graphics Port ( often shortened to AGP ) is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics.

This may induce strong distortions into the computer generated 3D model dataset.

Rendering is one of the major sub-topics of 3D computer graphics, and in practice always connected to the others.

Raycasting is primarily used for realtime simulations, such as those used in 3D computer games and cartoon animations, where detail is not important, or where it is more efficient to manually fake the details in order to obtain better performance in the computational stage.

Modern computer animation usually uses 3D computer graphics, although 2D computer graphics are still used for stylistic, low bandwidth, and faster real-time renderings.

For 3D animations, objects ( models ) are built on the computer monitor ( modeled ) and 3D figures are rigged with a virtual skeleton.

Another early step in the history of computer animation was the 1973 movie Westworld, a science-fiction film about a society in which robots live and work among humans, though the first use of 3D Wireframe imagery was in its sequel, Futureworld ( 1976 ), which featured a computer-generated hand and face created by then University of Utah graduate students Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke.

Developers of computer games and 3D video cards strive to achieve the same visual quality on personal computers in real-time as is possible for CGI films and animation.

* Dungeon Master ( video game ), an early 3D realtime dungeon-hack computer game

Duke Nukem 3D is a first-person shooter computer game developed by 3D Realms and published by GT Interactive Software.

Global illumination is a general name for a group of algorithms used in 3D computer graphics that are meant to add more realistic lighting to 3D scenes.

Category: 3D computer graphics

Starting with the Wolfenstein 3D franchise and continuing with the Doom and Quake series, Id pushed the boundaries of video game technology — particularly 3D computer graphics technology — and creates game engines that are heavily used throughout the video game industry.

The company's breakout product was 1992's Wolfenstein 3D, a first person shooter ( FPS ) with smooth 3D graphics that were unprecedented in computer games, and with violent game play that many gamers found engaging.

Eighteen months after their release of Wolfenstein 3D, in 1993 Id Software released Doom which would again set new standards for graphic quality and graphic violence in computer gaming.

Id Software is the only game development company ever honored twice by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, having been given an Emmy Award in 2007 for creation of the 3D technology that underlies modern shooter computer games.

PowerPC upgrades with Wide SCSI controllers, PCI busboards with Ethernet, sound and 3D graphics cards, and tower cases allowed the A1200 and A4000 to survive well into the late nineties.

* Cinema 4D, a 3D graphics application

Though the technical details of rendering methods vary, the general challenges to overcome in producing a 2D image from a 3D representation stored in a scene file are outlined as the graphics pipeline along a rendering device, such as a GPU.

In the case of 3D graphics, rendering may be done slowly, as in pre-rendering, or in real time.

Pre-rendering is a computationally intensive process that is typically used for movie creation, while real-time rendering is often done for 3D video games which rely on the use of graphics cards with 3D hardware accelerators.

Digital techniques, such as ray-tracing ( graphics ) | ray tracing, can also render 3D models with shallow depth of field for the same effect.

Direct3D ( the 3D graphics API within DirectX ) is widely used in the development of video games for Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360 and some Sega Dreamcast games.

It is widely recognized for having popularized the first-person shooter genre, pioneering immersive 3D graphics, networked multiplayer gaming, and support for customized additions and modifications via packaged files in a data archive known as " WADs ".

Dooms primary distinguishing feature at the time of its release was its realistic 3D graphics, then unparalleled by other real-time-rendered games running on consumer-level hardware.

Category: Video games with stereoscopic 3D graphics

Layer-based compositing is very well suited for rapid 2D and limited 3D effects such as in motion graphics, but becomes awkward for more complex composites entailing a large number of layers.

# REDIRECT Video game graphics # Fixed 3D

In real-time 3D graphics, the diffuse inter-reflection component of global illumination is sometimes approximated by an " ambient " term in the lighting equation, which is also called " ambient lighting " or " ambient color " in 3D software packages.

The other console's games had a blip sound and cruder graphics, while the Intellivision featured a realistic swing sound and striking of the ball, and graphics that suggested a more 3D look.

The method is important in microbiology for fast but crude morphological identification, but can also be used as the basis for high resolution 3D reconstruction using EM tomography methodology when carbon films are used for support.

Python has been successfully embedded in a number of software products as a scripting language, including in finite element method software such as Abaqus, 3D animation packages such as Blender, Cinema 4D, Lightwave, Houdini, Maya, modo, MotionBuilder, Softimage, the visual effects compositor Nuke, and 2D imaging programs like GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus and Paint Shop Pro.

Optical ray tracing describes a method for producing visual images constructed in 3D computer graphics environments, with more photorealism than either ray casting or scanline rendering techniques.

In the early 1990s, shareware distribution was a popular method of publishing games for smaller developers, including then-fledgling companies such as Apogee Software ( now 3D Realms ), Epic Megagames ( now Epic Games ), and id Software.

Since 3D models are the typical primary output for CAD design, users in these industries require an efficient and accurate method of generating 2D computational drawings directly from the 3D models.

This CLSM design combined the laser scanning method with the 3D detection of biological objects labeled with fluorescent markers for the first time.

Another method for testing is industrial CT scanning, which can generate a 3D rendering of the board along with 2D image slices and can show details such a soldered paths and connections.

* A method of rendering sprites in 3D computer graphics

Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture ( a bitmap or raster image ), or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model.

In 3D computer graphics, it is sometimes ambiguously referred to as Phong shading, in particular if the model is used in combination with the interpolation method of the same name and in the context of pixel shaders or other places where a lighting calculation can be referred to as “ shading ”.

One method of creating the 3D illusion involves polarizing the light from the two images.

Most 3D displays use this stereoscopic method to convey images.

The catenoid may be also defined approximately by the Stretched grid method as a facet 3D model

* Parallax occlusion mapping ( computer graphics ), a method to add 3D complexity to textures

Forward kinematic animation is a method in 3D computer graphics for animating models.

Origami techniques can be used ( replacing the traditional paper method with the serviette / napkin ) to create a 3D design e. g. a crane ( bird ).

The high speed of calculation made ray casting a handy rendering method in early real-time 3D video games.

3D and 2D accelerated video and animation may be added to windows using this method.

Accelerated 3D games under Windows XP and earlier relied totally on this method, as these games would not have been possible to play in windowed mode.

Oblique drawing is also the crudest " 3D " drawing method but the easiest to master.

* Anaglyph 3D, a method of encoding a three-dimensional image in a single picture by superimposing a pair of pictures

* Model based definition, a method of using 3D CAD information to provide product specifications

In recent years, some proposals to extend the method to 2D and 3D have been put forward, extending the definition of the Matrix Product States.