Photo-modelling technology can save games developers millions of pounds

Plenoptics, the Scottish-based leader in photo-modelling technologies has won a SMART award worth $50,000 from the Scottish Executive.

The award will be used to develop an automatic 3D computer graphics modelling texture mapping tool. The tool would address problems faced by the computer games and special effects (CGI) sectors in creating 3D computer graphic models.

"Over the past decade the demand from the games and film sectors for computer generated real world images has spawned a multi-billion dollar industry," said Roy Middleton, CEO, Plenoptics. "However, the creation of such images is still as costly and time-consuming as ever and consumes the bulk of the production budget. For example a large computer game project which involves driving around a city can take as much as 100 man years to produce."

Around 40% of production is spent on creating the geometry of the models and approximately 60% on creating the model's appearance. This appearance is stored as 2D images which need to be mapped on to the model's surface.
Creating an efficient map is a highly skilled process and is very time consuming but is crucial for good performance in a game or training simulation. It is particularly time consuming when working with models created from photographs or 3D scanners, rather than generated by hand.
Plenoptics believes that this time can be cut substantially based on its experience of developing advanced photomodelling technologies.

Game players are demanding ever greater levels of realism yet games developers are working to tight margins so even small improvements in efficiency can mean the difference between success or failure of a game.
Research carried out by the company found that the potential for a new innovation in this area would be huge not only from computer gaming and the film sectors but also for training simulation and serious gaming applications.

Plenoptics will use the award to investigate the application of different texturing methods and optimisation of the mapping process and lay the foundations for a fully automatic tool that will potentially save the industry man months per project and therefore millions of pounds per annum.

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