Bluerock’s Flight Studio offers OpenFlight artists an efficient pipeline into Discreet’s 3ds max software.

Software toolsets have been another problem. Whereas entertainment animators have been using readily available toolsets such as 3ds max, Softimage and Maya (which allow a great deal of interchange and porting between them), military animation was dominantly in OpenFlight, a format created by MultiGen (now MultiGen Paradigm, at www.multigen-paradigm.com). OpenFlight files have a lot going for them — they can be very precise, and are oriented to faithfully following terrain from real-life GIS (Geographic Information Systems); they were thus ideal for the requirements of the military community and other very demanding customers. In addition to being used to create innumerable tanks, aircraft and cities for military simulations, for instance, MultiGen-Paradigm's CreatorPro modeling software was recently used by the Israel Antiquities Authority to create a stunning 3D recreation of the city of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago that visitors can "walk" through. But no one was able to port MultiGen files into the formats used by the entertainment community, at least not without risking catastrophic loss of detail and textures. This held true until recently, when Bluerock Technologies developed Flight Studio, a complete set of OpenFlight importing, editing and exporting tools for the 3ds max 6 toolset.

"OpenFlight artists now have an efficient pipeline into Discreet's 3ds max software with Flight Studio," said Brian Blau, the ceo of Bluerock Technologies. Flight Studio can be bought from Turbo Squid (www.turbosquid.com), as can thousands of royalty-free 3D models and animations created in OpenFlight. This creation of Flight Studio as a rosetta stone that can translate freely between two distant communities could have profound effects on both. That could be opportune for all concerned. The military community is world-class at building terrain that looks like and corresponds to real-world geography, and creating high-res models of vehicles such as tanks and helicopters that can be precise within inches, but it is relatively poor at creating stories, emotions and people, or simulations that fit on small screens (of the type that foot soldiers in the field are likely to have). The entertainment community is great at generating animated content, emotions and people, but has not generally used realistic terrain (with a few exceptions such as Grand Theft Auto) or built hyper-realistic models. The opportunity now exists for the communities to share their skill sets and the many hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of models, content and databases that they have already created.

"We're excited about the potential that Flight Studio brings to the 3D world. Flight Studio opens the door for the film, video and games community to interact with the GIS and Military community. For the first time these worlds can share 3D creations efficiently to take advantage of each other's talents," notes Dan Lion, vp of sales & marketing for Turbo Squid.

In short, there's a lot of potential out there, as 3D toolsets get easier to use and the many different communities of practice such as medical, forensic, entertainment, design, imaging, gaming, education and simulation draw closer together in their animation requirements and approaches. Animation experts that have experience in more than one of these fields are still relatively rare, and command premium salaries and positions in companies that span several disciplines. The best opportunities these days may arise for animators curious enough to step outside of what's familiar, and network, network, network.

Christopher Harz is an executive consultant for new media. He has produced video games for films such as Spawn, The Fifth Element, Titanic and Lost in Space. As Perceptronics svp of program development, Harz helped build the first massively multiplayer online game worlds, including the $240 million 3-D SIMNET. He worked on C3I, combat robots and war gaming at the RAND Corp., the military think tank.