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Hi, this is Paul Kaiser for goodlearning.com. I'm going to explain the difference between
"2D Graphics" and "3D Graphics." 2D stands for 2 Dimensions. That's the width and
height. Those are the dimensions in 2D. Well, when you're working in a 2D graphic, it's kind of
like you're drawing or painting on a piece of paper. Fairly simple. Now, if your image is in
2D - 2 Dimensions - you're looking at the front of a house, and you want to see the side of
the house - you're out of luck. You either have to go redraw your image, or you're going to
have to go take a new photograph. We do have what are called "Layers" in 2D images.
Those are like different pieces of paper that we can lay on top of each other. We can move them
around independently, but don't confuse that with true 3D graphics. To animate a 2D image
into some sort of movie, you're going to have to redraw each individual frame. Now that's a
lot of work! Now, with the use of Layers, we could simply move a few things around for each
frame, but it's still kind of a tedious process. 3D graphics are a bit different. Working with 3D
graphics is like modeling clay or play dough into shapes, and these are all called "Objects."
If I'm looking at a house in a 3D graphic - the front side, maybe - and I want to see the
other side, I can rotate it, because the image I'm looking at is made of an object that has
all sides. It has a width, a height, but also a depth. Depth is the third dimension in a 3D
graphic. 3D images are made up of different objects that can be scaled, changed, moved around,
rotated. So, we can do a lot more things with our 3D graphic. A lot more flexible tools.
Animations with 3D graphics can be really easy to make, because you just program a series of
movements and tell the camera to follow them, or even tell the camera to move, recording each
one of those moves frame-by-frame, and then build your movie out of that. In the end, 3D
graphics usually end up in the 2D world, either as a printout on a piece of paper, or an
animated video. But you can see that working with 3D files can be, well, really a lot of fun. I
hope you enjoyed this little introduction.