CMI Digital Media & Interactive Visualization Flashcards

In After Effects for medical animation, which feature allows an illustration layer to follow a 3D anatomical path automatically?

Answer: Motion Path with Auto-Orient

Motion paths with Auto-Orient force a layer to follow a defined path while automatically rotating to align with the path direction, useful for surgical instrument or particle tracking animations.

Which 3D modeling approach builds anatomy by pushing and pulling a base mesh into organic shapes, best suited for soft tissue?

Answer: Subdivision surface sculpting

Subdivision surface sculpting (e.g., in ZBrush or Blender) creates organic, high-detail soft tissue models by sculpting a low-poly mesh that subdivides into smooth curves.

In medical illustration for online publication, SVG is preferred over PNG for diagrams because SVG offers which advantage?

Answer: Resolution-independent scaling with smaller file sizes for line art

SVG vector files scale to any resolution without pixel degradation and are typically much smaller than equivalent PNG files for diagrams, charts, and schematic illustrations.

Which rendering pass in a 3D medical animation pipeline captures shadows separately for compositing flexibility?

Answer: Shadow pass (shadow catcher)

A shadow pass renders shadows in isolation on a transparent background, allowing compositors to adjust shadow intensity and color independently during final compositing.

In augmented reality surgical guidance systems, 'registration' refers to which critical process?

Answer: Aligning the virtual 3D anatomy model with the patient's actual anatomy in real space

Registration aligns the pre-operative 3D model with the patient's intraoperative anatomy using anatomical landmarks or fiducial markers, ensuring the AR overlay is spatially accurate.

Which standard governs the format of medical imaging files (CT, MRI) that medical illustrators use as source data?

Answer: DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine)

DICOM is the universal standard for storing, transmitting, and displaying medical imaging data including CT, MRI, and PET scans used as source material for medical illustration.