Immersive visualization with Ocean™ – Interactive viewpoints & animation techniques

Introduction to immersive visualization techniques with Ocean™

Ocean™’s advanced rendering capabilities offer powerful tools for materials science and product development, ensuring scientific and geometric optics accuracy. To enhance these renderings and create a more immersive experience, various visualization techniques can be applied.

In fact, users may need to employ additional strategies to observe light interactions with their object in an immersive way or to be more impactful to their audience. In keeping with Ocean™ technology, users can create different types of animations to enhance their renderings.

This article lays the basis for understanding how the accuracy of our scientific rendering software can be combined with the impact of immersive visualization techniques. Together, these elements have the potential to significantly improve the communication of scientific concepts through predictive renderings.

Enhancing renderings with dynamic animations

In the context of 3D visualization, we use a virtual camera to define a point of view within a 3D scene. Moving that point of view refers to the perspective and movement of the virtual camera. It allows users to view and interact with the 3D environment by imitating the behavior of a real-world camera, using following principles:

Using Virtual Camera Perspectives: The point of view refers to the position and orientation of the virtual camera within the 3D space. This determines what the viewer sees and how objects are framed within the scene.
Dynamic Camera Movements: The camera can move through the 3D space, changing its position and orientation dynamically. This movement can include translations (side-to-side, up-and-down, forward-and-backward) and rotations (panning, tilting, and zooming). These movements create a sense of exploration and allow users to navigate the virtual environment.
Engaging Animation: Camera movements are often incorporated into animations to create dynamic and visually engaging sequences. This can include cinematic camera flyovers, walkthroughs, or following the movement of specific objects within the scene.
Interactive User Controls: In interactive applications, users may have control over the camera point of view. This allows them to navigate through the 3D environment, exploring different angles and perspectives. User-controlled point of view is common in virtual reality (VR) experiences and 3D games.
Storytelling through Camera Animation: Camera movements play a crucial role in storytelling within 3D visualizations. They guide the viewer’s attention, emphasize important elements, and convey a narrative by framing shots and controlling the pacing of the visual presentation.

Creating animated viewpoints for deeper material understanding

A typical immersive movement is to change the point of view of the current view. Just turning around keeping the same position. It’s like moving your eyes, turning your head or turning on yourself, without moving.

The environment map is always centered to the current camera position. If you change the target of this camera (formally called “forwards” in Ocean™ instrument properties), then you change the viewpoint of this environment map. Giving you the illusion of navigating through it.

Thus, by animating the viewpoint of the camera (not the position), you get an immersive impression.

To change the viewpoint of our instrument, we need to synchronize the coordinates of each camera component from CAD to Ocean™. In CAD, the coordinates of the target camera correspond to the “forwards” property of the instrument in Ocean™, the coordinates of the camera in CAD correspond to the “pos” property of the instrument in our optical simulation software.

In Ocean™ ’s “Render Projects” module, we can animate the view of our instrument/camera, formally named “forwards”. The animation is configured over 20 images/frames, specifying a start and end position.

For each movement of the animation, we get an output file image.

Here is the final result of the camera animated point of view.

Virtual lighting setup in Ocean™ for realistic lighting simulation

ocean sky importer for enhanced predictive rendering

Ocean™’s Sky Importer – A complete guide to realistic lighting conditions

Simulating dynamic lighting with environment rotation in Ocean™:

In 3D visualization, environment rotation typically refers to the ability to rotate the virtual environment or background surrounding a 3D scene. This rotation can be used to change the orientation of the environment, providing different perspectives and enhancing the overall visual experience. Simply rotating on its Z axis at 360°, the environment changes the reflections and lighting. Then, we can observe these subtle variations interacting on the static main object.

Dynamic Lighting Changes: By allowing the rotation of the environment, designers and engineers can simulate changes in lighting conditions. This is particularly useful for applications such as architectural visualization or product rendering where different times of day or lighting scenarios need to be showcased.
Realistic Reflections: Reflections on surfaces within the 3D scene can change based on the orientation of the environment. This adds to the realism of materials, especially for shiny or reflective surfaces.
360-Degree Videos and Virtual Reality: In applications like 360-degree videos or virtual reality environments, the ability to rotate the background enhances the sense of immersion. Users can explore a virtual space with a changing background, making the experience more engaging.

The animation is configured over 20 images/frames, specifying a start and end position for the environment map rotation. In Ocean™, the environment can be rotated on every 3D-axis. We are rotating only on its Z-axis.

The problem is, rotating a photograph of the environment is like rotating the whole world around us, it is not a natural behavior. If we don’t see this animated environment but only the effects onto the 3D scene, it is like seeing evolution of surrounding lighting, it’s acceptable.

Another, more natural, lighting evolution technique could be to animate the sun’s path over a given period. In this way, we can create a timelapse of the sun over the course of a day.

Using one of the three procedural sky proposed in Ocean™ (Hosek-Wilkie, Preetham-Wilkie, Perez Sky), we can animate the sun coordinates (latitude, longitude).

Result of a sun rotation during a day with a Preetham-Wilkie procedural sky:

Conclusion - Ocean™ scientific rendering enhanced with immersive visualization techniques

This is a brief introduction to how to create animations with our scientific rendering software, Ocean™, from dynamic camera movements and interactive user controls to simulating dynamic lighting with environment rotation. The ability to manipulate light, environment, and viewpoints is fundamental to understanding the optical behavior of objects and materials. These elements are crucial for creating impactful animations that provide deeper material understanding and facilitate a smoother decision-making process.

By effectively changing lighting conditions and environmental perspectives, designers and engineers can simulate realistic reflections and dynamic lighting scenarios to enhance the overall visual experience. These techniques not only enrich the viewer’s experience but also enable more accurate and insightful evaluations of the materials, leading to better-informed decisions and innovations in product development and research.

In a following article, we focus on the different techniques used to create an immersive representation of virtual scenes and how Ocean™ can help create them with scientific accuracy.