Models can be manipulated, animated, and scaled. Functionality can be built on and around a 3D model.
That means it can be examined, but it’s special in the way that it can be interacted with. Smaller schools can have access to a greater pool of materials, and that is good for everyone.
There is a fair amount of overlap in the models being created, but the ability to add regionally exclusive content to a global repository would be an amazing benefit to science at large. Many schools and universities around the world are digitizing their collections and sharing them.If that same skull was scanned and made into a 3D model, each student could examine it simultaneously, for as long as they need. If there are 30 students in the course, each student will have only a short amount of time to examine the specimen. If you have a biology lab, and the students are looking at skull morphology, there’s a distinct possibility that you would have a skull on hand to examine.3D models give students unlimited time with a specimen.This has even bigger benefits to distance students, as they don’t have to be anywhere near the collection to examine its contents. Having digital proxies for these rare and fragile specimens will allow students access to otherwise unknown information. Normally these collections break down quickly, so instructors are hesitant to include rare and fragile specimens. If you are involved in teaching a course with physical specimens, you are no doubt familiar with the concept of a “teaching collection.” A teaching collection is a high-turnover collection that gets handled and examined during class.3D models are easily examined and manipulated without damage to physical specimen.If you’re still not convinced that 3D models hold any benefit to you, I’ll explain a few ways in which they can enrich your course materials. Those graphics are rendered on the screen from 3D models! How can they help me as an educator? Modern interfaces for computers and smartphones are awash in 3D graphics. Sometimes entire worlds are created with 3D models for use in virtual and augmented reality. 3D models are also used to generate toolpaths for 3D printers.ģD models are used in movies, animations, and video games. 3D models are used to generate toolpaths for small and large machines to manufacture parts more consistently than a human could ever hope to. They have been used in industrial applications extensively. They are everywhere.ģD models, in digital form, have been around for decades. There probably isn’t a day that goes by where you don’t experience a 3D model in some way. Where did they come from, and how are they used? The composition and inner workings of 3D models are complicated, for sure, but you don’t need to be an expert to benefit from them. You’re probably thinking to yourself now, that 3D models are too complicated to be of use in your courses, but that’s not necessarily true. These textures can have physics-based properties that interact with light to produce effects such as transparency, reflection, shadows, etc. UVs are a complex topic in and of themselves, so it’s good enough that you just know they exist conceptually. The texture will be wrapped onto the surface of the geometry with the help of a set of instructions called UVs. The surface texture, at its most basic, is an image, mapped onto the surface of the polygon mesh.Ī texture can be as simple as a solid color, or as complex as a high-resolution photograph. For what should be clear from the previous sentence, polygon meshes are often referred to as simply “geometry.” There are a lot of other technical terms associated with polygon meshes, but in practical application, you may never need to learn them. There are three main components that make up this shell: vertices (points), edges (lines), and faces (planes). The polygon mesh is a “shell” comprised of the different surfaces of a 3-dimensional object. 3D models generally consist of a polygon mesh and a surface texture. What is a 3D model?ģD models, in this case, are digital representations of physical objects. A 3D model is essentially another media type with a lot of unique qualities.
Standard media types, including text, photographs, illustrations, audio, video, and animation, are crucial to the online learning experience. If you’ve ever needed an excessive amount of photographs or diagrams to accurately describe a physical object for your class, you may benefit from a 3D model.