An Object Oriented Design of a Graphics Animation System

The software literature has many papers expounding the benefits of object oriented systems for developing complex software systems. Some feel that object oriented programming will be in the 80's what structured programming was in the 70's. This paper investigates the application of the object oriented philosophy to the design of a 3D computer graphics animation system currently under development at the General Electric Corporate Research and Development Center. After a general description of object oriented systems, the paper offers a design methodology which can be used regardless of the object oriented capabilities of the implementation language. This methodology is used to design the animation system itself. The proposed system will provide an animation script interface to a suite of analysis, modelling, rendering, display and filming software and a sequence database to track the progress of the animation through its various stages. The animation system will produce high quality film and video animation of industrial applications such as robotics, structural analysis, molecular modelling and factory simulation. The system is targeted for users who are familiar with their own analysis but not with the intricacies of computer graphics displays and software. A flexible system is proposed which allows the integration of new analysis, modelling and rendering software. /