This simulates the way light appears in the environment giving it a more realistic feel.

In the first image this shows what the lighting would look like in a 3D environment without the radiosity. As you can see, the lighting is very blocky and doesn’t look realistic.

In the second image they have used radiosity. As you can see there is a big improvement in the realism of the lighting and shows the shadows to be much softer like in real life.

The problems with radiosity is that it doesn’t work so well with glossy looking reflections and can’t handle sudden changes in visibilty.

Renderers will normally not add in the radiosity till the very last stage as it makes renderin time much longer.

Local Illumination

This is like an advance 3d environment calculator which will calculate what things should look like realistically, for example if  a usrface should be shiny this will calculate it and make it look shiny.

Ray-Tracing

Ray-tracing is a type of global illumination like radosity.

when light rays hit an object, one of three different things can happen, these are absorption, reflection and refraction. In 3D applications Ray-Tracing creates this illusion.

Basically it traces rays (hence the name ray-tracing) from the camera back thouugh the image plane into the scene.  

Cinema 4D is a very popular application with matte painters in film, this is because of the Body Paint 3D functionality.

Body Paint is an excellent tool for matte painters where it takes the mesh of a model and then cuts u the mesh into a flat image,  bit like a net of a cube. With this net you can then simply paint over the top of the mesh and that material will be applied to the mesh in the exact point of where you pained it, this makes life for painters much easier.

Cinema 4D also has its own runtime scripting and programme language, this language is called C.O.F.F.E.E which is quite similar to the JScript language initially, Cinema 4D was created for Amiga computers but can now be run on most computer today for example Mac OS X and Windows. 

 Maya

Maya was originally released for the IRIX operating system but now runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, but no longer runs on IRIX after the release of the 6.5 version.

The best feature in MAYA is its openness to third-party software this is so you can strip the software completely of its standard look and by using only the kernel you can customize your version of the software. this made MAYA very appealing to large studio who want to be able to use there own custom coding for the software.

Blender

Blender is a free software 3D animation program. It can be used for all types of things like modelling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, skinning, animating and as much as all the other 3D applications.

Blender is availble in most computer operating systems.

Blender is known to be just as good as the high end 3D software with its features like advantaged simulation tools such as rigid body, fluid, soft body dynamics, modifier based modelling tools, powerful character animation tools and a node based material and compositing system.

3Ds Max

3DS Max is the most popular 3D application out of all the other 3d applications

3DS Max is also the most popular applicatio for game development as it is simple to use it is also popular with 3D in TV commercial and is used in alot of college teaching 3D modelling and 3D animation.

The new version of 3DS Max now has tools for adavantaged shaders, advantaged particle systems, radiosity and now can even apply fur or hair to the models which can then be stlyed in any way who want  and 3DS Max is also run using its own scripting language.

French mathematician Rene Descartes first developed the Cartesian coordinate system in 1637 to create this illusion of working in 3-dimentational space. He did this in an attempt to merge algebra and Euclidean geometry.  

The two 2 axes that commonly define the 2-dimentational Cartesian system are the Y and X axis. The point where the XY axes meet is known as the Origin. 

The importance of the Z axis is that it measures the depth of an object and is the axes that enable us to locate any point in 3-dimentational space.  

The correct way of using the X,Y,Z is to right them in that order for example 

59 units along the negative x-axis

100 units along the positive y-axis

50 units along the negative z-axis  

Would be written as (-59,100,-50) 

Most 3D software applications present us with multiple viewports of the co-ordinate system at the same time. These are the ‘Top Viewport’ showing you the X,Y co-ordinates, the ‘Front Viewport’ showing you the X,Z co-ordinates and the ‘Left Viewport’ showing you the Y,Z co-ordinates. These are known as the orthographic Viewports because they only display 2 axes at the same time. Then you have the ‘Perspective Viewport’ showing you the X,Y,Z co-ordinates giving you a more 3-dimentional view. 

The importance of these viewports are that with the understanding of the Cartesian Co-ordinates System you can define and manipulate geometric shapes and with the Viewports this makes it easier to see the geometric shape.