Technology
Metacreations Makes 'Creative' Changes.
MetaCreations, a renowned provider of graphics software, announced
that the Board of Directors has made the baffling decision of effectively
dropping their range of graphics products to concentrate purely
on their MetaStream technology. This decision comes shortly before
the release of Carrara, MC's "next-generation 3D software for
print, video and the Web." On the third line of their Carrara
announcement, MetaCreations stated that it would continue to support
their existing graphics products. However, this ongoing 'support'
of the products has done nothing to settle the angry MetaCreations
community, as users fire up a "boycott MetaStream" action
in protest of the recent announcement. Many of MetaCreations' products
have cult-followings, and although they are unlikely to reverse
this bewildering decision by the company's businessmen, the mass
of users and their protest will almost certainly cause them a lot
of grief. Some users are going as far as calling for the head of
the man they believe to be responsible for these decisions, one
Gary L. Lauer (ex-President and ex-Chief Executive Officer, now
Chairman of the company). Disembodied heads aside, this is a serious
issue. Around 100 MetaCreations employees have already been laid
off, or will be in the near future. Also affected by this 'change
in focus' are the third-party developers who create plug-ins for
MetaCreations graphics products, publications that make giving away
and writing about these products a primary selling point, and of
course, the artists who use the software. But through all of the
controversy, questions and confusion, the fact remains that MetaCreations
have yet to announce the exact future of their products. There is
still a possibility that they will be sold to other companies. However,
there is also the possibility that they will not. A wise decision
would be to sell their assets to gain capitol for their new venture.
Whatever happens, MC users will most likely continue to create work
with the products they love, supported by the company or not. It
seems the businessmen behind the "creative Web company"
have been making some very creative business decisions indeed.
TGS Announces Amapi 3D V.5. Template Graphics Software (TGS)
announced that its modeling and animation software Amapi, was receiving
an upgrade. The new release will be 'officially' announced at the
Mac World Expo in January, however, the new version is available
now. It features Dynamic Geometry, which allows users to edit an
object dynamically by changing its outline, profile or basic structure,
through the software's ability to remember the construction history
of the object. The upgrade also has a new Decimation tool, which
reduces the density of complex meshes while preserving their key
data points and polygons, allowing game designers to control the
density of their meshes dynamically. Other additions include new
Deformation Tools, new Filleting Tools, new Display Modes and a
new 3D Text tool which displays edited text in real-time. But Amapi
5's most exciting addition is probably TGS' ZAP technology. ZAP
is a revolutionary technology which makes it possible to publish
your animated 3D creations on a Web site at interactive speed. With
this new technology, models, textures and animation can be reduced
to a few kilobytes making transfer over the web lightning fast.
An extremely compact 3D player, which is freely distributed by TGS,
reconstructs the full geometry on the client machine and animates
objects in real-time. The new version is available now from TGS
at a price of US$399 dollars.
3D Studio Max 3.1 Now Shipping. Discreet released a maintenance
update to 3D Studio MAX 3 which, in the coming weeks, will be distributed
free of charge to all registered users of the software. The announcement
comes shortly after the company declared success at clearing well
over 100,000 copies, and are reinforcing their commitment to users
by bringing them new features so soon after the initial release
of the software. The update includes data containers for use by
the mental ray renderer (a separate product, to be shipping in early
2000). Discreet also claims that "3DS MAX Release 3.1 requires
substantially fewer resources when running under Windows 98."
In addition to these two new features the update also, of course,
brings to a close issues (bugs) brought to Discreet's attention
by the users of the software.
Final Cut Pro 1.2.Quite A Bundle. In promoting post-production
on the MAC platform, Apple recently bundled a number of 3D and 2D
tools with its Final Cut Pro system. MAXON, Terran Interactive,
and Puffin Designs have announced that their software will be bundled
in with Final Cut Pro at no extra cost. MAXON's Cinema 4D GO --
their entry level 3D package (in short, a cut down version of their
very popular Cinema 4D XL package) -- will by included in the Final
Cut Pro package as a full working version, allowing users to create
'flying logos' and other simple 3D imagery for use in their productions.
Terran Interactive, a subsidiary of Media 100, announced that their
Media Cleaner EZ 4 for QuickTime will also be bundled with Final
Cut Pro. As with C4D GO, Media Cleaner EZ 4 will be included as
a full product (although, like GO, it is in fact a cut-down version
of Terran's full product, Media Cleaner Pro). Final Cut Pro users
will be able to output their work quickly and easily for use on
the web with Media Cleaner EZ's tool set, which gives options to
optimize for 56K, DSL, cable and other methods of Internet connectivity.
Finally, Puffin Designs Commotion DV will also be bundled with Final
Cut Pro, this time as a promotional copy, however. The promotional
copy of Commotion DV will not include the FX Feature Set that is
found in the standalone package, and will be available separately
for $99.00 through Puffin Designs. Final Cut Pro is available now
at US$999, with Cinema 4D GO, Media Cleaner EZ 4, and Commotion
DV (without the FX Feature Set) included at no additional cost.
Boris FX Launches Boris Red. The creators of Boris FXT and
Boris AET, recently launched a new resolution independent 3D compositing
and title effects plug-in. The 3D compositing tool is aimed at commercial
television post-production professionals, and is available as a
plug-in for Avid systems. Boris RED makes use of Z-Space, a technology
which allows compositors to animate elements in true 3D space, and
have them intersect, overlay and cast shadows. Boris is also pushing
RED's "3D title animation" capabilities. The suite includes
a set of tools which allows one to create, extrude, bevel, texture,
light and animate 3D text in 3D space. RED's sophisticated text
animation allows one to create multi-page rolls and crawls or more
complex title treatments such as individual character animation
with animated tracking, light sources and video texture mapping.
Title capabilities are also integrated with over 50 effect filters
and DVE distortions. Also included in RED are standard effects tools
such as keying technology, spot color correction, 3D motion blur,
displacement mapping, curvilinear distortions, natural effects,
lighting tools, mattes, blurs, and more. Combine these features
with Boris' support for After Effects plug-ins, and you have an
affordable (US$1995) 3D compositing tool that will make you see
RED.
Newtek Introduces Lightwave [6] For Mac. At San Francisco's
MacWorld which ran from January 4-8, NewTek introduced LightWave
[6], the product's most significant upgrade in 10 years. The new
version of the already popular 3D tool boasts more new features
than ever introduced to the product in previous upgrades, many of
which have never been seen on the Macintosh system before. On the
modeling side of things, LightWave [6] introduces a whole new modeling
paradigm, which gives users control over the manipulation and animation
of their models to a degree never before seen in LightWave. The
software offers infinite layers of projection -- procedural, gradient
and UV maps -- and these layers can feed into each other for texture
blending and manipulation. On the animation side of things, particularly
character animation, [6] has some exciting new additions. Unique
to LightWave [6] is a new kind of character animation toolset: InelligEntities.
IntelligEntities consist of Skelegons, Endomorphs and Multi-meshes,
which allow objects to carry data well beyond simple geometry. Skelegons
are a type of polygon which appears like traditional 3D bones, however,
as you make modifications to your model, the 'bone' structure is
automatically updated along with it (how useful!). Endomorphs allow
lip-synch and other complex morphs to be created with the greatest
of ease, by simply training a single model. And the final tool in
the IntelligEntities toolset is Multi-meshes, which are hierarchical
objects that can be saved as a single, complete model with all of
the user-defined relationship and pivot data included. The new version
of Lightwave also includes a new hybrid Inverse/Forward Kinematics
engine, and a completely re-written curves editor, giving users
ever more precise control over their animation. And of course, rendering:
version [6] introduces a number of new rendering technologies into
LightWave, including radiosity and caustics rendering; a 320-bit
IEEE floating point rendering pipeline; sub pixel displacement rendering
(used for volumerics); and High Dynamic Range Imagery to name a
few. LightWave [6] is an exciting release for 3D creatives on the
Macintosh platform, and if the product can do even half of the things
NewTek says it can, then it will vastly increase the LightWave user's
toolset, and with that, the standard of their work and workflow.
Empowering The People With Puppettime. PuppetTime Inc. announced
that it has released version 1.0 of its PuppetTime Producer software,
an easy to use 3D character animation program that the company claims
makes "the TV-watching generation, the TV-making generation."
PuppetTime Producer is not a character animation package for animators,
but a package for non-animators which allows them to create 'movies'
quickly and easily without any knowledge of animation technique
at all. Users can create 3D animation in minutes simply by selecting
characters, typing dialogue, recording sounds and voice-overs, and
choosing actions. The finished animation can then be saved as a
QUICKTIME file, rendered to video tape, or it can be used to create
an animated storyboard (animatic). Packages that adopt this approach
are rarely useful or even interesting to animators, but to younger
students it will no doubt be a huge hit -- giving them instant results
without months of hard work. And if it sparks up interest in animation
amongst the younger generation, surely that can't be a bad thing.
Alias|Wavefront To Develop Maya For Intel's IA-64 Processor.
Alias|Wavefront announced that they would be developing a version
of their Maya software for Intel's forthcoming IA-64 Itanium processor,
and Microsoft's 64-bit Windows NT operating system. The IA-64 operating
system uses a 64-bit architecture and offers the robust performance
required by data-intensive 3D visualizations and computer graphics.
Alias|Wavefront is among the first software developers to port their
software to Itanium, and in doing so it will allow its customers
to take full advantage of the speed and flexibility IA-64 has to
offer. Alias|Wavefront's Maya will be certified on workstations
from a number of industry leading hardware vendors who have announced
plans for the production of IA-64 systems. Itanium will be released
in the second half of 2000, no doubt along with a newly optimized
version of Maya.
