Extreme 3D
Macromedia is preparing Extreme 3D, the successor to MacroModel. It should
be shipping by the time you read this. Extreme 3D is a polygonal surface modeler
that uses spline-based modeling and familiar 2D drawing tools to create its
models (see screen 4). Although it's billed as CAD-accurate to 15 decimal
places, the strength of Extreme 3D is really in organic modeling. The accuracy
and drawing tools in Extreme 3D are serious competition for the other programs
in this mini-roundup, but the program's interface in the Beta 3 version I
reviewed seriously hampers it.
An important consideration Macromedia developers had when designing Extreme
3D was its compatibility with the Macintosh version and Macromedia's other
products. Thus, the product is a good choice for anyone who uses Director or
Freehand or works in a mixed-platform environment. It uses an old Macintosh
interface that has trouble adapting to the 1024 x 768 or higher-resolution
displays most designers use for their graphics. Dialogs and the status bars use
a painfully small proprietary screen font, and important commands are buried
beneath several menus. These commands are available via hot keys, but some of
the key combinations, such as Ctrl+Z for undo, come from the Mac background and
not from Windows. The developers are aware of these problems and promised to try
and address some of them in time for the final release.
A single window can support multiple render styles for different objects.
This means that once you've set the textures for an object, you can switch it to
display as a bounding-box or a wire-frame for improved display speed while you
work on other objects in shaded mode. The animation tools are easy to use and
allow you to have independent control over any object, light, camera, or
material property. Users can edit all the paths and objects in their animations.
For example, paths can be edited as splines. The program also supports
time-based and frame-based animation, as well as cross-platform distributed
rendering. This means that an animation can be rendered across multiple machines
in a network, including the Mac and Windows. Extreme 3D uses the same "score"
as Macromedia Director to control the time and frame aspects of an animation and
will produce high-resolution images, up to 8000 x 8000, for output to print.
If developers bring the interface up to the usability level of CorelDream
(see the sidebar "3D by Corel" on page 87) and TriSpectives, Extreme
3D will be a strong competitor. For instance, CorelDream and TriSpectives allow
users to click on an object and bring up an editable properties dialog where
users can scale, move, rotate, stretch, and otherwise modify the object. Extreme
3D allows some of this in a properties box you can access with a hot key, but
the other two programs offer more control. All three programs offer
tree-structured hierarchical views of the objects, lights, and cameras in a
project, but CorelDream and TriSpectives let you edit the objects directly from
the tree.
Challengers
There are other 3D products that are ready to challenge these four. Ray
Dream did not sit still after letting Corel have the core of its Designer 3.0.
The company has just shipped its latest offering, Ray Dream Studio 4.0. The
product is designed around the Windows 95 user interface and features a
simplified command structure, improved camera and light manipulations, and a
variety of wizards. The wizards include a Modeling Wizard and a Scene Wizard,
which are used to create indoor, outdoor, and studio scenes ready for the
placement of objects. Studio incorporates Ray Dream Animator and features
high-end tools such as rotoscoping and inverse kinematics. With rotoscoping, you
can use movie clips as texture maps or backgrounds to create sophisticated
animations. Inverse kinematics is a method of linking objects so that pulling on
one will pull another. For example, if you pull a dog's leash, its head will
turn toward you and it will dig its feet into the ground to resist you.
TrueSpace 2.0 from Caligari is a well-designed and well-rounded product. It
includes Boolean capabilities, rotoscoping, procedural textures, Adobe Photoshop
plug-in support, and interactive rendering with Intel's 3DR application
programming interface (API). It has excellent surface deformation tools, and
navigating the 3D workspace is easy. Similar to TriSpectives, TrueSpace 2.0 will
produce VRML files. Its unusual interface is almost entirely based on icons, the
sheer number of which can cause problems if you're trying to use the program on
a high-resolution display. This 16-bit application requires a fast machine for
designers who want to use it under NT. The company is also working on a Windows
95 version of TrueSpace 2.0. Unfortunately, Intel is steering away from
development of 3DR in favor of Microsoft's Reality Lab/Direct 3D, and this could
leave Caligari in the lurch.
Real 3D Version 3 from Realsoft International is a 32-bit that program that
includes extensive modeling, animation, and rendering features, including spline
modeling, rotoscoping, collision deformation, and inverse kinematics. You can
draw a spline on an uneven surface and build a new object from it while
conforming to the initial surface.
New Horizons for NT
Each of these programs has its strengths and its weaknesses. TriSpectives is
best at quickly creating accurate and complex models, is well-suited for
engineering and architectural visualization, and can quickly output rendering.
Visual Reality is best suited for creating stunning renderings and animations
from its 3D clip art and images or from models you create in other programs. The
output it generates will rival that of any product available on any platform. A
combination of Visual Reality for rendering, and any of the others for modeling,
will bring excellent results.
Windows NT is taking over where the Commodore Amiga left off and going
head-to-head with the high-end graphics workstations. A $4000 computer can
produce the same graphics you used to output on a $30,000 workstation just a
year or two ago.