Humour

Anything you want—in 3D

3D graphics are more realistic than ever, writes T A Balasubramanian

“Do you recall a time when your computer screen looked flat, filled with boring old letters and numbers, when your info-tech life was about nothing more than email, word processing, and spreadsheets? Well, these days, you have much more—it’s about pulsating YouTube and bubbly iTunes—video and audio, movies and music, 3D living colour and surround sound. While your computer is working harder to tickle all your senses, you are working much less, eh?” says Plato Nick, CEO of Truly Hard Unlimited Duplicity, a brave new business venture popularly referred to as THUD.

Seated across the table, looking somewhat bewildered and bored, are two of his key staffers, Sellina Reddy, Sales Manager, and Euclid Singh, Chief Marketing Manager.

“Well, Boss, I’m certainly working more, not less,” says Singh, with a groan.

“You shouldn’t be, Euclid,” says Nick, wagging a finger. “The complexity under the chassis is rising while your controls are becoming as easy to use as a key, a steering wheel, and a few pedals. If you play a game or run through Second Life, you get drawn into a different dimension. You click on your mouse, and hundreds of parallel graphics computing engines produce the effect of vastly detailed 3D worlds.”

“Well, Boss,” says Singh, still sounding uncertain, “I tried Second Life and I thought it made my real life look better—my avatar got confused trying to navigate from one street to another.”

“Ah, Euclid, you have to give it more time to grow on you. The great visual computing era is upon us, and almost everyone is at least partially aware of it.”

Says Reddy, nodding. “I know another group that has long understood the fun of 3D computing—some of my friends who are graphical workstation users. They design cars, search for oil deposits, or even fashion new drugs—and they have been sending me 3D greeting cards for years.”

“3D greeting cards?” says Singh, frowning. “I get only 2D cards and that too by book-post many days after the festival or the event.”

“Time to join the smart people in this world, Euclid,” says Reddy, smirking.

“Well, Sellina is right. In the old days, a designer working on a car interior or an oil drilling project would hand a bunch of cards to a computer operator and wait a week to get back thousands of pages of continuous stationary. Today all those stacks of complex data pop up as a picture of the car’s insides or an oil rig map showing, in full 3D colour, the contours of a vehicle or a complex image of rock structures under the seabed.”

“I see, Boss,” says Singh, nodding. “But these are very special uses—and the software is unaffordable for the vast majority of ordinary mortals doing ordinary business.”

“That was true for many years, Euclid—but 3D graphical computing has been trickling down into office applications. Today’s 3D graphics are more realistic than ever. Small-budget architects can figure out the engineering headaches of that cantilevered balcony addition the client is demanding. Interior designers can take their hosts through an eye-popping 3D walk-through of their dream houses. Real estate salesmen can show the buyer a crisp simulation of the property from all angles, inside and out, from a laptop in their car as they move around.”

“That’s great news, Boss. So what do we do with all this fancy visualizing?” says Sellina.

“Ah, I am coming to that. We are taking 3D to our business customers—the ones we have on our database. Our first product is called THUD’s Magic Carpet. ”

“So THUD’s Magic Carpet will free up the imaginations of those who are using ancient 2D applications on tired old hardware?”

“Exactly. Then again, we have THUD’s Magic Pop-up. This is actually an on-demand video application that our customers can use to make their general communications more spicy and arresting.”

“That sounds exciting, Boss. It certainly beats having to see things in plain old 2D pop-ups.”

“Behold, let me introduce to you THUD’s Magic Genie. You tell the Genie what you want to make, and out it comes—a shiny, tangible object that you can hold in your hands. Ah, well, it is actually a 3D printer—the models that it makes cannot be too delicate, or they may break. Genie builds the model from the bottom up, constructing it one layer at a time from plaster and water. A thin layer of plaster is deposited; then a binding agent is sprayed on from what is basically an oversized ink-jet printer. Once the ‘printing’ is done, you have to dust off the object and infuse it with a hardener to make it durable.”

“A printer that makes solid models?”

“Yes, indeed. Quite often, there are just not enough dimensions to see all that you want to see—so, instead of looking at a 2D screen to see your 3D models, why not pick them up in your hands and get a good feel?”

“What do we expect to print, Boss?”

“Ah, good question. At the moment, customers can, say, download spare parts for machines and build them in a few minutes, or even prototype their own designs. But eventually, Genie will be like those snazzy replicators on Star Trek—making entire meals at the touch of a button.”

“I hope they will be edible, Boss,” says Reddy.