By the end, with any luck, you might:

• Be a stronger person
• Have questioned (or confirmed) your faith
• Rediscover yourself as a strategist for the organization, optimization, and implementation of web-ready 3D geometry

Now about that theory…

Part I: The Ontology of Space

So where did 3D come from? Let’s start at the beginning…with Genesis, Chapter One:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved…”

Wait, what’s that? You’re curious as to how the Spirit could it detect its own movement if it existed in a void with no point of reference? Well, gentle dualist, if you did your Sacred Geometry homework (a wonderful companion to any Sunday school course), you’ll undoubtedly recall the meticulous reasoning of the great Pharaoh Akhenaten, the first step of which is concisely paraphrased here by contemporary author Bob Frissell:

“[…] Spirit projected itself out as far as it could go in all six directions—up and down, forward and backward, and left and right. This can be conceived on three axes marked x, y, and z. The amount of projection is irrelevant; even if only one inch, it is enough.”

Store that concept of a scalable world in a tight pocket, for at this moment we fast-forward from the beginning of time to—you guessed it—this moment. Our Pharaoh’s legacy has been all but effaced, his logic disavowed in favor of old mysticism, and so it was until over three millennia later, we find ourselves using the same geometric model to describe our existence—long, wide, and tall.

And lo, it was good.

So how might one initiate play with a long, wide, and tall geometric…supermodel? With respect, of course. With respect to its origin—the point at which its three axes intersect, coordinate [0, 0, 0]. As its name suggests, the origin is the initial point of reference from which we derive that naggingly persistent concept of space. (Go ahead; try to imagine reality without it!) Elementary though this must seem, we only wish to reinforce our ability to discern space (brought to you by the arbitrarily positioned number zero) from the aforementioned spaceless void.

With that intellectual equipment and a little perseverance, humankind has devised a nice set of standards for measurement of the physical world, as well as a burgeoning host of tools for reproducing nature in scalable digital formats with unprecedented likeness. Not that you're trying to play God…necessarily…but your artist's canvas now includes the dimension of depth.

‘Depth? But I’m staring at a flat screen,’ you chide. Indeed. Coupling the inherent complexity of 3D geometry with the obvious limitations of such sculpture on a flat medium (e.g., drafting paper or the display presumably burning this blog into your retinae), it would be exceedingly difficult to produce a marketable model without some kind of aid. Enter the orthographic projection: a 2D (flat) representation of a 3D object from a given angle.

Decidedly, the most efficient combination of orthographic projections exposes the top, front, and one (usually the right) side of a given object, as though the object were enclosed in a glass cube and viewed from each respective face. This power trio provides enough information to realize the object in 3D space. Scale drawings of these views enable traditional industrial illustrators to produce an accurate perspective rendering. Similarly, a digital 3D artist armed with reference images (e.g., sketches, photographs, or anything in between) of her object from these three orthographic views can get down to business with far greater confidence that she will end up with her desired result.

If the shoe fits

Groovy. We’re all dressed up and have some place to go. All that remains is the trip. In polygonal modeling, it is common to start with primitive, let’s say a cube—the steadfast building block from early childhood. To this, one can cut and extrude and bevel and poke and prod and and and…

…what size cube, you ask? Hmmmm….

Now is a good time to dig out of that tight pocket the concept of a scalable world. As it were, so long as our proportions are constrained, we can grow and shrink this world to the reaches of sanity, while the world itself—as well as everything in it—will never notice the difference. Of course, you already know why: without a relative body, there’s no way it can tell it’s changing at all. Call me smitten, but it is this very scalability with which we identify the intrinsic beauty of vector art in general.

So, now that you know you can scale to taste, the initial size of the primitive is, as Mr. Frissell articulated, irrelevant. The truth is we may never be concerned with the scale of the whole model if we didn’t intend to port it across applications. If the 3D production pipeline ended with a render, that would be that. However, as we the interactive puppetmasters are of a peculiar breed, so our puppets tread a peculiar path. Indeed, our pipeline affords no such render. Rather, the creation of our model marks only the beginning of its life. Therefore, in the second article, we’ll get knuckle-deep into some nonfiction to make damn sure we end up with properly sized, web-optimized geometry.

“You Are Innnnvited!”

…to spawn a little commentary for posterity. Looking forward to the second article, we’re curious: did this one tickle your fancy? Did it rub you the right way? And least importantly, did you learn something? As with daily business, if any form of inequity met your palate, we beg you a shot at rectification. By the way, should you e’er quest for a more thorough history of technology, you would do well to consult the undeniable James Burke (assuming, of course, Mel Brooks isn't more your speed). If it’s technical guidance for which you itch, however, hold fast; the dope’s cooking.