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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 4.2 - MAY 1999
Technology
New Technology Puts Animators Back In Control. House of Moves, one
of the largest motion capture studios in the world, has created its own motion
capture software technology, dubbed Dominatrix, which it now offers as a value-added
service to its clients. Dominatrix addresses several problems including solving
proportional differences between the CG character and motion capture performer,
as well as virtually eliminating the lack of control that the animator has
to modify or augment the performance. "There's no waiting for delivery
of a mocap skeleton, no need to give your character parts names, no need to
store thousands of mocap files separately, no need to be concerned if the
motion data importer is going to cooperate, and it's not necessary to scale
or pose the character to match the motion capture skeleton," Jarrod Phillips,
Executive Producer, explained. "In effect," Phillips concludes,
"HOM's new Dominatrix technology gives a character more realistic qualities
and allows the client virtually complete artistic control. It's the ultimate
in customized digital motion." For further information, visit www.moves.com.
SGI Launches Digital Media Production Suite. SGI has announced a suite
of digital media content creation tools designed to enhance the digital media
capabilities of the new Silicon Graphics 320 and Silicon Graphics(R) 540 visual
workstations. The digital media production suite brings production-quality
broadcast, audio engineering and video editing capabilities to the desktop,
raising the standard for digital media editing on the Windows NT platform.
The digital media production suite from SGI offers digital media professionals
a complete, integrated content creation system including: the Silicon Graphics
DS1100 disk array, the Silicon Graphics SD1100 dual-stream I/O module option
specifically for Silicon Graphics 540, the PCI-based Silicon Graphics MJ1100
dual-stream motion JPEG compression card and the Silicon Graphics DA1100 digital
audio card. Users can select the complete suite of options or purchase the
products individually, based on their requirements. The suite offers many
new advancements. For instance, the Silicon Graphics SD1100 provides four
(two-in/two-out) 10-bit serial D1 channels for the highest-quality digital
video I/O, capitalizing on the highly sustained throughput of Silicon Graphics
540. Most Windows NT platform-based systems offer a single I/O stream. The
ability to simultaneously capture two streams of uncompressed video and output
two additional streams of video can literally cut production time in half
because users won't have to wait to complete output for one job before beginning
capturing video for the next. Pricing and availability information for the
Digital Media Production Suite options is as follows: DS1100 will begin shipping
in May 1999. Pricing for an entry-level configuration is $6,446 (U.S. list)
for a JBOD LVD tower with four, 9GB 7200RPM LVD drives. MJ1000 is scheduled
to begin shipping in June 1999, with an anticipated list price of $1,695 (U.S.
list). DA1100 is available immediately, priced at $795 (U.S. list). SD1100
is scheduled to begin shipping in May 1999, priced at $1,995 (U.S. list).
SGI is currently showcasing these and other new tools at the Spring Comdex
in Chicago, where its new Silicon Graphics (R) 540 has just won PC Week's
"Best of Comdex" Award. The Silicon Graphics 540 is the industry's
only quad-enabled Intel (R) Pentium (R) III Xenon (TM) system on the market
today. The visual workstation is designed to deliver the industry's most scalable
computing capabilities at mainstream pricing, and supports up to four Intel
Pentium III Xeon 550 MHz processors. Plus, it will also support Intel's Pentium
III Xeon 550 MHz processor when it becomes available. When configured with
an Intel Pentium III Xeon 550 MHz processor, the system is priced beginning
at $6,495, and is scheduled to ship in the second quarter of 1999.
Alias|Wavefront Previews Maya Paint Effects. Alias|Wavefront, an SGI
company, has announced a new brush-based software technology that will be
included with a future version of Maya Complete and Maya Unlimited. When integrated
fully into the Maya 3D user environment, Paint Effects is a tool for the instantaneous
creation of organic elements such as plants, hair, lightning and fire. It
provides complete interaction with the lighting, shadows, depth values and
animation within Maya scenes and boasts a myriad of preset brushes to create
countless forms of real and surreal nature. Alias|Wavefront is previewing
its upcoming Paint Effects technology at the National Association of Broadcasters
(NAB) trade show April 17-22 in the Sands Convention Center, booth S2425,
and at the Maya Skill Center in the Stardust Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas,
Nevada. Maya Paint Effects extends Alias|Wavefront's tradition of artistic
innovation by raising the standard for aesthetic beauty and natural realism
in computer generated imagery. It uses familiar, painterly metaphors to redefine
the way artists add beauty and complexity to 3D scenes, providing users with
the tools to create captivating scenes in a matter of minutes. Paint Effects
is designed to be similar to a traditional paint package, with the added benefit
that Paint Effects strokes actually understand 3D space; artists can paint
on 2D, and on or between 3D objects within Maya. A single Paint Effects stroke
can create anything -- from a field of wheat blowing in the wind, to fully
animated lightning bolt effects, or a plate full of curled spaghetti pasta.
The real-time Paint Effects brushes can be virtually unlimited in number and
variety, and fully animated and customized by the user. Paint Effects features
include paint strokes based on parameters that can be animated and changed
over time, and independent resolution that can be rendered to arbitrary final
image sizes, real time rendering, versatile strokes, brush wrap, and a large
library of preset brushes which include everything from simple oil and wet
brushes, chalks, pencils and markers to complex "natural phenomena"
effects brushes, such as glows, plasmas, trees, plants, hair, and fur. Paint
Effects will be an integral part of Maya and will be included with Maya Complete
and Maya Unlimited in a subsequent release later this year. Maya Complete
has a SRP of $7,500 (US) and includes modeling, rendering, animation, dynamics,
Artisan and MEL, an open interface for programming and scripting Maya. Maya
Unlimited, has a SRP of $16,000 (US) and includes Maya Live, Maya Fur, Maya
Cloth and additional rendering licenses.
Alias|Wavefront Delivers Maya IPR. Alias|Wavefront, an SGI company,
announced it plans to deliver a new Interactive Photorealistic Render software
called Maya IPR as a standard component of Maya 2 software. Integrated seamlessly
into the Maya user environment, the new IPR is designed to allow for near
instantaneous editing of lighting, textures, shaders, lens and glow effects.
The Maya IPR software is a breakthrough rendering solution based on the pioneering
Explore IPR, which was invented and brought to maturity by Alias|Wavefront.
It is designed to bring the speed of on-line video editing to the world of
3D rendering, giving users the ability to match colors, edit material shaders,
and adjust lighting placement on final renderings in real-time, eliminating
the need for multiple test renderings. The company expects that visual effects
artists and animators will save countless hours and produce stunning, quality
work in Maya Complete and Maya Unlimited with the new IPR rendering workflow.
The company will deliver Maya IPR as a standard component in Maya Complete
2 and Maya Unlimited 2 applications. Maya Complete 2 will be available on
Microsoft Windows NT and Silicon Graphics IRIX®, and has an anticipated
SRP of $7,500 (US). Anticipated features include modeling, rendering, animation,
dynamics, Artisan, Maya F/X and MEL, an open interface for programming and
scripting Maya. Maya Unlimited 2 will be available on Microsoft Windows NT
and SGI's IRIX® and has an anticipated SRP of $16,000 (US). It includes
Maya Complete, Maya Live, Maya Fur, Maya Cloth and new Advanced Modeling features.
The company plans to offer favorable upgrade pricing from current versions
of Maya, and provide free upgrades to Maya 2 to customers who purchase Maya
Complete and Maya Unlimited after April 19, 1999 and prior to Maya 2 shipping.
Maya Complete 2 and Maya Unlimited 2 are scheduled to begin shipping by the
end of June 1999. Alias|Wavefront previewed IPR as part of its launch of Maya
2 at NAB, April 17-22, booth S2425 in the Sands Convention Center.
Note: Readers may contact any Animation World Magazine contributor by sending an e-mail to editor@awn.com.