Joseph Kosinksi, principal of KDLab Inc., sees the lines of division between architecture, gaming and film fading away.

Bridging the Digital Divide
One company that is well poised to serve both ends of the design spectrum -- from the ultimate in detailed engineering/architectural 3D designs all the way to the relatively low-res backgrounds and figures of mobile online gaming (on platforms such as cell phones) -- is Autodesk/Discreet. As Autodesk (www.autodesk.com), it makes CAD/CAM toolsets such as AutoCAD (used by more than 90% of the manufacturing and construction industries, with more than four million customers worldwide), while as Discreet (www.discreet.com), it is familiar for its 3ds max product, the 3D toolset of choice for tens of thousands of animators. A company with this broad a span of experience has obvious advantages for an animator or designer who might need to use both ultra-high-res models mixed in with more conventional models and backgrounds, such as inserting several gleaming BMW Mini Coopers into an action game, the type of product placement that is becoming increasingly popular in the gaming industry. Product manufacturers such as BMW have something in common with present-day gamers -- they want uncompromising accuracy.

"Translation high-res CAD files for something like a car into a game format can look spectacular, but must be done carefully," says Michael Woodcox of Discreet. "The first step is to take a CAD file such as an AutoCAD DWG (.dwg is the AutoCAD file extension name) and bring it into 3ds max. Max contains tools that help you do this. You're starting with the highly detailed shapes of the mechanical design, such as the precise curves of a car hood, say, which may have been created as mathematical shapes (like NURBS). You can see this shape as a fine wireframe in your workstation viewport. This shape is then tessellated (this is the process of converting it into polygons, basically millions of triangles, which are the most economical flat plane that a 3D toolset can paint and manipulate). The trick is to reduce the numbers of polys, which we call decimation, so the game isn't burdened with a gigantic file, but the car still looks like it has all its fine details. Max has all the tools you need to do this and visualize this, but it still takes the fine eye of an artist to do it just right, and then to texture the surfaces and apply proper lighting."

Draining the Swamp versus Fighting the Alligators
John Blackie, the production designer of the Mutant X series, agrees. "It can become a real fine line you have to tread, the tradeoff between file size and realism. You can have that same tradeoff in a live series, where you are deciding between an actor or a digital representation -- the question is, where is the line, where does it become unbelievable?" Blackie, who was also the production designer for the popular Honey, I Shrunk The Kids series, is used to moving between different 3D file types. "We may get a set of CAD drawings for a structure such as the interior of a space ship, render that in 3D for the pre-visualization supervisor, then texture map it with metal and wood paneling and paint for the designers and builders of the actual and virtual sets -- with many changes and approval cycles, of course. At the end it may be re-purposed for the game version of the show, with extensions that are interpreted by the gaming engine to serve as backgrounds for the action of the game. Eventually that 3D structure may be turned back into a CAD design for merchandise manufacturing -- for instance, if the space ship is turned into a toy. Every step of the process should be inspirational to the next person in line -- like passing the puck to the next player in a hockey game."