Michigan - Use CAD to Create Rich Virtual Worlds

The state of Michigan has a number of great opportunities ahead of it and it just takes a change in perspective to recognize this.

One such opportunity is the ability of Michigan to take advantage of the film and video industries which Governor Granholm has targeted.

As an industrialized state, there are hundreds or thousands of CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) capable professionals in Michigan. These professionals, with a bit of training can create digital models for use in presentations, advertisements and movies. I have been blessed with training CAD students to create interactive presentations and found that these individuals need modest coaching to create truly solid productions.

The CAD skills needed to design cars, furniture and manufactured goods are easily retargeted to those needed in the advertising/video/film industry. They are also targetable to the video game market which has recently superseded the film industry in annual income.

Not only can CAD designers create “virtual worlds” within video games and movies, the CAD designers can use their digital models to create physical items from the digital model through the use of rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing techniques. This would provide for sales of dolls, characters, spaceships and architecture based on the intellectual property of the film or game, and could potentially lead to the manufacturing of such items in the state of Michigan.

With the right software, a CAD designer can not only create virtual models, a CAD designer can also create realistic looking animated products in video, or interactive models on the web. This creates the opportunity to design a product and demonstrate its functionality before making the investment in manufacturing. Companies could sell products based on a digital video promotion – created from CAD, and take orders (and income) before committing to production in order to gauge interest.

Yes - In order to present virtual products in animated videos there will need to be some retraining. However, being faced with a loss of income provides a powerful incentive, a motivation for such activity. Entrenched professionals from the CAD profession need to be shown an upgrade path and a way out of the doldrums that Michigan finds itself in these days. Creating virtual characters and worlds for the video and videogaming industries is one solution.