On the third day of the third week in the third month, we celebrate National 3-D Day. This day falls on March 23 and the point of this holiday to explore the technologies and art that’s used to make 3-D.

3-D means 3- Dimensional. It can be used in any kind of computer animation, but it’s commonly used in things such as math. We’ve all seen 3-D shapes in our math notebooks.

When hearing the term 3-D, we often think of those red and blue glasses for some amusement park rides or theaters. That is Anaglyph 3-D, which is the stereoscopic (the technique for creating an illusion of depth in an image) 3-D effect by encoding each eye’s images with filters. The filters use different colors, normally chromatically opposites, which is typically red and blue.

According to Wikipedia, anaglyph 3-D images contain the two differently filtered colored images, one for each eye. Looking through these colored coded anaglyph glasses, each of the two images reach the eye it’s for, and exposes the stereoscopic image. The visual cortex of the brain turns this into the impression of a three dimensional scene.

Virtual Reality experiences use 3-D, and video games and some animation use 3-D modeling and effects. Mario, Genshin Impact, Fortnite, and most other popular games use 3-D models and rendering. 3-D rendering is the process of converting 3-D models into 2-D, or two dimensional, images on a computer.

There are many different kinds of 3-D. 3-D computer graphics, 3-D films, 3-D modeling, 3-D printing, 3-D television, and stereoscopy. There are other uses such as 3-D projection, 3-D rendering, and 3-D scanning, and potential careers in the field have expanded with the pandemic.

Wednesday, March 23, is National 3-D Day, so don’t miss it! Explore the concept of 3-D in your fun and favorite ways!