Applications for Computer Animation - A study by Frameboxx

There are a variety of uses for computer animation. They can range from fun to practical and educational ones. As you will find out in the following links, computer animation has found its way into fields which you might have not thought that there were any uses for. Here is a list of some of the places where computer animation is used:

Advertising

One of the most popular uses for computer animation is in television advertising. Some of the models that the commercials would call for would be extremely difficult to animate in the past (ie. Saxophones, boxes of detergent, bathrooms, kitchens etc.) The modeled objects would then be animated, and incorporated with live video. The process involved in modeling and creating the animation could take a many weeks.

Archeology

The study of archeology can tell us a lot about the past. Archeologists gather data from various expeditions and digs which can later be used to make computer models models of the site. Up to now, they have made physical models, which are very fragile, take a long time to make, and need to be cared for.

Architecture

One of the reasons for the development of virtual reality (which is actually a form of computer animation) was that it was going to be very useful to architects. Now that has proved to be true. A person can hire an architect half way across the world over the internet or other network. The architect can design a house, and create a walkthrough animation of the house. This will show the customer what the house will actually look like before anyone lays a hand on a hammer to build it.

Art

Just like conventional animation, computer animation institute is also a form of art. A multitude of effects can be created on a computer than on a piece of paper. An artist can control a magnitude of things in a computer animation with a few clicks of a mouse than he can do in the conventional animation methods. A light source can be moved very easily, changing the way an entire scene looks. Textures can be changed just as easily, without redoing the whole animation.

Chemistry

Computer Animation is a very useful tool in chemistry. Many things in chemistry are too small to see, handle, or do experiments on, like atoms and molecules for example. Computer animation is the perfect tool for them. Chemists can create realistic models of molecules from the data they have and look at the way these molecules will interact with each other. They can get a full 3D picture of their experiments and look at it from different angles.

Education

People are always looking for new ways to educate their children. If they are having fun, they learn better. Computer animation can be used to make very exciting and fun videos into which education can easily be incorporated. It is much more interesting to learn math for example when the letters are nice and colorful and flying around your TV screen instead of solving problems on plain black and white paper. Other subjects such as science, English, foreign language, music, and art can also be taught by using computer animation.

Engineering

CAD has always been an imperative tool in the industry. For instance in automobile design, CAD could be used to model a car. But with the advent of computer animation, that model could now be changed into a full 3-d rendering. With this advantage, automobile makers could animate their moving parts and test them to make sure these parts don't interfere with anything else. This power helped the makers a lot by ensuring that the model of car will have no defects.

Entertainment

Virtually every game on the computer uses computer graphics or animation. This includes PacMan, where simple sprites (graphics) are moved up and down on the screen, to such games as Doom, where the action is viewed from the first person perspective and the graphics are rendered on the fly. Some CD games are actually interactive computer rendered movies such as "The Seventh Guest."

Films & Cinematics

Computer animation has become regular and popular in special effects. Movies such as "Jurassic Park", "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", and "The Abyss" have brought computer animation to a new level in their films. Scale models are a fast and cost effective method of creating large alien scenes. But animation has done just as well in animating fire, smoke, humans, explosions, and heads made out of water.

Flight Simulation

Using computer animations in flight simulation is a very useful tool. Using animation a programmer can replicate real time flying. By creating a camera showing the view through the cockpit window, a pilot could fly through either virtual worlds or real animated places with all the natural disasters, and difficulties that could happen if flying a real plane.

Forensics

Accidents happen every minute. Very often, there are no witnesses except for the individuals involved in the accident or worse yet, there are no surviving witnesses. Accident reconstruction is a field in which computer animation has been very useful in.

Medicine

It is very hard for a doctor to get inside a living human body and to see what is happening. Computer animation once again comes in very useful. Every single organ in the body has already been modeled in a computer. A doctor, for example, can fly through these models and explore the area of the body he or she is going to be operating on in order to get a better picture of the operation and possible increase the success rate.

Military

In order to enter the military, one has to go through a lot of training. Depending on whether you want to be in the army, navy, or the marines, you might be working with equipment worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. The military wants to be sure you know how to use this equipment before they actually let you use it.

Multimedia

Multimedia is the use of various media to present a certain subject. This presentation itself is a multimedia presentation in the sense it brings together graphics and text. Multimedia presentations can include text, graphics, sounds, movies, animations, charts and graphs. Using computer animation in multimedia presentations is growing excessively popular since they make a presentation look more professional and more pleasing to the eye. Computer animation is also very useful in demonstrating how different processes work.

Scientific Visualization

In the 1970s, a 12 inch drum plotter was the normal computer graphics machine. The plotter was run by a large mainframe which had about 24 kilobytes of memory. This machine was basically used for creating graphs which helped in the foundation of scientific visualization.

Space Exploration

As of now, the farthest point away from earth that the human was on is the moon, but we continually want to learn more. A trip by a human to another planet would take way too long. This is why we have sent satellites, telescopes, and other space craft into space. All of these space crafts continually send data back to earth. Now all we have to worry about is presenting that data so it makes sense. This is where computer animation comes in. It can show an incredible amount of data visually, in the way that humans perceive it the best.