primary and secondary imagery

primary and secondary imagery

primary imagery is a term used for gathering image’s of a person or inanimate object with a camera of your own. this means that it is more accustomed to your needs, so if you need images of a car from multiple angle’s then you can find your vehicle and take images of it from all the different angles required. this could be used for 3d work in maya or as design reference in photoshop. however this can be difficult if you need unique things like famous landmarks or rare vehicles. primary imagery was used by ubisoft when developing assassin’s creed 2. they flew the team out to florence, italy to make sure that when they recreated the city it was accurate in scale and detail.

secondary imagery is when a person takes images from the internet or book for their reference to something in particular. like if you are making the leaning tower of pisa they they can go get images for it easily on the internet. this is particularly easy because it is difficult to get primary imagery when you are very far away from the imagery you need. the big ben in central london was included in mass effect. the developers probably used images from the internet to get this accurately correct. this is just one of many examples that lots of people use on a daily basis.

when comparing the 2 different types they can both be very useful. if you need only one image of something then the internet would be good for it. if you need lots of images to accurately map out something then primary is going to be easier because you can get the perfect angles you need. the internet may not have the angle you need.

in the gaming industry i assume is used very often.