Nebula/nebula.bin/Newsletters/NeXTNuggetNewsDigest/vol.04.17.txt

Text File | 1993-01-27 | 18KB | 430 lines

NeXT Nugget News Digest (vol. 4, issue 17, September 15, 1992)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

      I.  Stone Design Announces 3D Modeler for NeXTSTEP
     II.  Announcing CIC - ComposeInColor for NeXTSTEP
    III.  Software Ventures Ships Microphone Pro for NeXT
     IV.  Talus announces pVisor, 3D molecular visualization

____________________________________________________________________

This is vol. 4, issue 17 of the 1992 NeXT NUGGET NEWS DIGEST - a
collection of items of interest for the NeXT User Group members.
There are more than 379 NeXT User Groups in 38 countries on all
continents around the world.

To submit articles or announcements to appear in the Nugget
Digest, please send your contributions to the following address:

    [e-mail].


Conrad Geiger
Manager, International NeXT User Groups

____________________________________________________________________

I.  Stone Design Announces 3D Modeler for NeXTSTEP

News
For Immediate Release

For more info contact:
Cliff Baltzley
Phone: [phone]


        Stone Design Announces 3D Modeler for NeXTSTEP


ALBUQUERQUE, NM, Sept. 8, 1992 - Stone Design Corp. introduced today
3D   Reality(TM), a 3D modeling and picture-creating program for
NeXTSTEP computers that sets a new standard for ease of use and
flexibility.  Just as Stone Design's revolutionary graphics package
Create provided a user interface that makes all the power of
PostScript accessible to mere mortals, so 3D Reality allows users to
take advantage of the myriad of features provided by the 3DKit in
NeXTSTEP 3.0 as well as the underlying RenderMan architecture.

3D Reality will be shown in the NeXT Computer Inc. booth at the
Seybold Conference & Exposition, September 22-24 in San Francisco.

"Reality revolutionizes the way 3D graphics are made," said Andrew
Stone, CEO of Stone Design. "Our goal was to create an environment
that allowed first-time users to make fantastic  graphics by just
dragging and dropping icons, but to also provide experts with the
entire power of Interactive and PhotoRealistic RenderMan. And to
really bring this power to the end user, we are introducing this
product for only <under one hundred dollars> until the end of 1992."

"3D Reality is a beautiful example of an application that utilizes
the 3DKit, one of the four new object kits in NeXTSTEP Release 3.0,"
said David Springer, Project Manager of 3D Software at NeXT Computer.
Based on a RenderMan standard, 3DKit allows developers to both add
three-dimensional graphics to existing NeXTSTEP applications and
build 3D applications from scratch. "With 3D Reality, Stone Design
takes full advantage of 3DKit's object and rendering framework to
create a very sophisticated 3D package from the ground up in record
time," Springer said.


With an easy-to-understand and powerful drag-and-drop user
environment, 3D Reality will make the joys of 3D modeling and
rendering available to a wide variety of users for creation of
everything from logos, ads, headlines and flashy graphics to entire
scenes.

3D Reality offers:

o Basic features:
 - lathe for turning objects
 - extrusion of 2D objects into 3D objects
 - direct inspection of shape hierarchy
 - full drag-and-drop interface for shaders,textures,shapes,RIB code
 - multiple perspective or orthographic views of 3D world
 - grouping/ungrouping of objects
 - scaling of individual objects and entire scene.

o Text rendering
   3D Reality supports full 3D extruded text with special text
effects such as letter bloating, movement of individual letters,
shaders, textures and so on. It can also turn any PostScript font
into a 3D font.

o  Drag and drop of RIB-format clip 3D artwork
   Users can drag and drop RIB code from any external source. 3D
Reality adds the RIB (whether it is a single object or a whole scene)
code as if it were an object in the hierarchy.

o Composite Solid Geometry
   Combine primitives, use one to "cut away" part of another, or take
the intersection of the two.  Composite groups can be used within
another composite group; one shape can modify another for effects
such as drilling and cut-outs.

o Powerful texture and shader environment
   Create RenderMan textures from any EPS or TIFF source. Textures
are automatically installed in the texture library and can be applied
to any object by dragging and dropping. Users can apply any of six
different kinds of shaders to an object (Surface, Light,
Displacement, Image, Volume and a surprise shader), save favorite
shader parameters into a shader library, and drag and drop saved
shaders from the library onto shapes in the image.  3D Reality also
supports creation of custom shaders and textures, bump-mapping and
texture wrap around any object.

o Powerful control and constraints environment
    Constrain motion (scaling, rotation or translation) to any axis
or combination of axes, or to a 3D grid. Users can also constrain to
any coordinate system that exists within the scene.

o Previewing
    Stone Design's unique InstyRender(TM) allows users to easily
render all or part of a scene in varying levels of accuracy,
providing an extremely fast method of previewing an image.

o Network rendering
    Selection rendering can be done either on the local machine or
within the network pool. An Image Manager allows users to view all
currently active and finished jobs as well as non-image-oriented
jobs.

o Interapplication Communication
     Services provided by 3D Reality include the ability to send
32-bit color images to applications such as Create, Mail and Edit, or
accept any EPS or TIFF file for wrapping as a texture.

o Full access to RenderMan programming environment
     For the serious RenderMan user, 3D Reality provides an
extensible, customizable RIB management and development environment.
Users can develop shaders and textures quickly for use in complex
scenes. A programmer's API will provide endless number of ways to
customize and augment 3D Reality's functionality through direct
access to underlying RenderMan functionality.  3D Reality supports
dynamic loading of objects.  Included with the package are several 3D
geometry projects with full source code, to demonstrate how easy it
is to make custom shapes.

3D Reality has a suggested retail price of <under five hundred
dollars> and will be available directly from Stone Design or your
local NeXT dealer in the fourth quarter of 1992.  The program will
carry a special introductory price of <under one hundred dollars>
until January 1.

Stone Design Corporation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, founded in 1984,
develops a variety of business and design productivity applications
for NeXTSTEP computers.

# # #

3D Reality, InstyRender and Create are trademarks of Stone Design
Corporation. NeXT is a trademark of NeXT Computer, Inc. All other
brand names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of
their respective owners.



____________________________________________________________________

II.  Announcing CIC - ComposeInColor for NeXTSTEP

CIC - ComposeInColor is the first application for professional
image processing and retouching on NeXT computers.
In addition to the usual features of an image processing and
retouching application, features include a special low-resolution
technology, freely definable retouching tools, scripts and databases.

CIC is available at sonata (128.210.15.30).

        'sonata.cc.purdue.edu:/pub/next/submissions' or
        'sonata.cc.purdue.edu:/pub/next/2.0-release/demos'

Note: the file size is 10.3 mb.

CIC will run in demo mode until you enter an activation code.

There is also an update for users of the previous demo versions.
        'ComposeInColor_1.0.update.tar.Z'

File size: 1.7 mb


Enjoy!

UNTER ECKER SOFTWARE
Email: [e-mail]


____________________________________________________________________

III. Software Ventures Ships Microphone Pro for NeXT


For Immediate Release
Contact: Eileen Ebner
McLean Public Relations
415-358-8535

Paul P. Schmidman
Software Ventures
510-644-3232

SOFTWARE VENTURES SHIPS MICROPHONE PRO FOR NEXT -- POPULAR
COMMUNICATIONS  SOFTWARE NOW AVAILABLE FOR NEXTSTEP

Offers Interface Builder Support, Other Tools to Build Graphical
Interfaces

Berkeley, Calif., Sept. 1, 1992 -- Software Ventures Corporation
today announced that it is shipping MicroPhone(TM) Pro Version 1.0
for NeXT, the only commercially available communications software
program that takes full advantage of the advanced features of the
NeXTSTEP operating system, including  Interface Builder, Drag and
Drop, and Services.

MicroPhone Pro for NeXT gives NeXT computer users an unprecedented
set of tools to transfer data, communicate with remote computers,
build custom scripts and design graphical interfaces. One noteworthy
example is Loran, a MicroPhone Pro settings document, which was
created using a combination of MicroPhone Pro scripting tools and the
NeXT Interface Builder.

Loran gives users a consistent graphical front end, which shields
them from unfriendly interfaces and arcane commands when
communicating with remote hosts. Presently, Loran includes a
graphical mail interface to CompuServe mail, Internet mail and
Software Ventures' BBS. A single interface connects a user to
all three.

MICROPHONE PRO SCRIPTING AND OTHER KEY FEATURES
AUTOMATE DAILY COMMUNICATION ACTIVITIES

"Corporations look for the best computing platforms to accomplish
tasks," said David Hindawi, president of Software Ventures. "The NeXT
platform is an important, emerging platform for corporate sites.
We've now developed MicroPhone for three platforms -- NeXT, Macintosh
and Windows -- and incorporated script compatibility across them,
which is very important for corporations with mixed environments."

MicroPhone Pro for NeXT automates communications, freeing users from
memorizing log-in and navigation sequences to information services.
Two innovative tools harness MicroPhone Pro's scripting power:


* Watch Me. Records any communications action for later replay at the
touch of a button. Users don't have to learn a single script command
to build their own custom scripts.

* Built-in script editor. Offers users more than 300 prewritten
commands and functions to create or edit scripts, simply by pointing
and clicking. This eliminates script syntax errors.

MicroPhone Pro for NeXT supports the key features of the NeXTSTEP
operating system. With NeXT Services, users can designate MicroPhone
Pro to send and receive information directly from other applications.
For example, Services could use MicroPhone Pro to send a page layout
document to a type output bureau for printing. NeXTSTEP also includes
spell checking capabilities so that users can ensure the accuracy of
their messages before sending them.

With NeXTSTEP's Interface Builder and MicroPhone Pro's extensive
script language, users have a complete set of tools to create custom
front ends for communicating with remote computers. They can build
simple log-in script files or sophisticated front ends like Loran.
Software Ventures provides documentation and examples that permit
users and value added resellers (VARs) to build custom front ends.


Multi-session capability in MicroPhone Pro for NeXT allows
interaction with more than one information service at a time. For
example, users can automate MicroPhone Pro to download the day's
stock quotes from the Dow Jones News Service and place the
information in a spreadsheet, while retrieving messages
from CompuServe and sending the weekly sales report to the head
office. They can launch these scripts using the drag and drop
capabilities of NeXTSTEP, dragging and dropping an iconized file onto
MicroPhone Pro's Icon Bar.

MicroPhone Pro for NeXT implements a comprehensive set of file
transfer protocols to send text, graphics and sound files -- anything
stored on a NeXT computer can be quickly and reliably transmitted.
Protocols supported include Text/ASCII, XMODEM, YMODEM, ZMODEM and
Kermit. Terminal emulation includes TTY, VT100, VT102 and VT220.


By virtue of being a UNIX-based product, MicroPhone Pro for NeXT
includes full TCP/IP support, allowing users to connect directly to a
TCP/IP network, such as the Internet. "Having just introduced Telnet
connectivity for our MicroPhone Pro for the Macintosh communications
package, Software Ventures is poised to become a dominant force in
the TCP/IP community, the fastest growing networking arena," Hindawi
said. "We also intend to add TCP/IP connectivity to our Windows
communications package."

OWNERS OF PRERELEASE VERSIONS OF MICROPHONE II
WILL RECEIVE FREE UPGRADES TO VERSION 1.0

Because of user demand, Software Ventures earlier this year offered
prerelease versions of MicroPhone II for NeXT. Initial feedback
allowed Software Ventures  to incorporate several key features
critical to NeXT users into the final 1.0 release of MicroPhone Pro
for NeXT, including:

* Kermit file transfer protocol.
* Remappable keyboards.
* International character sets.

MicroPhone Pro, version 1.0, for NeXT is available immediately
through NeXTConnection and Software Ventures dealers and
distributors.  Registered users of MicroPhone II 0.9 and 0.91, the
prerelease versions, will receive version 1.0 at no charge. For
further information, including corporate site licensing, contact
Software Ventures at [phone].

ABOUT SOFTWARE VENTURES CORPORATION

Founded in 1985 as a privately held corporation, Software Ventures
Corporation of Berkeley, Calif., is the leading developer and
supplier of interactive communications software and internetworking
solutions for the most popular graphical environments. They include
the Apple Macintosh, IBM PCs and compatibles running Microsoft
Windows, and the NeXT workstation. Software Ventures also develops
customized, private label versions of its programs for corporate
environments.

With a history of technological firsts, Software Ventures enjoys the
largest installed base of communications software for the Macintosh.
MicroPhone II for the Macintosh has won consecutive (1990-1992) World
Class awards from Macworld and the first (1991) Target Award for
telecommunications excellence from MacWeek. In the United States and
Canada, Software Ventures markets MicroPhone products through Ingram
Micro, Kenfil, Tech Data and Merisel distributors, dealers, Value
Added Resellers and OEMs; worldwide distribution is through a
network of international distributors.

###

For more information about Software Ventures and its products, call
[phone] or fax to [phone]. MicroPhone is a trademark of
Software Ventures Corporation. All other product names are trademarks
or registered trademarks of their respective companies.


____________________________________________________________________

IV.  Talus Corporation announces pVisor, 3D molecular visualization

Talus Corporation and the Electronic & Computer Science Center (ECSC)
of the Moscow Institute of Physics & Technology are happy to announce
the beta release of the first program written in Russia for the NeXT
computer.

Their first program, "pVisor",  is a 3D molecular visualization
program that allows the user to display any complex-molecule on the
screen, rotate the molecule in space and clip the molecule. There are
several ways to display the molecule using the surfacing mode, lines,
and balls, in any combination.  It uses a very fast renderer and
gives the user extremely flexible control over the molecule display.
pVisor will read Cambridge Structural Database, Protein Data Bank,
Alchemy, and pVisor proprietary formats.

The French version of pVisor was ready for beta testing on August
15th, and was followed by the German version in late August.  A
Kanji version of pVisor  will be released to coincide with the
release of the Kanji version of NeXTSTEP 3.0.

The ECSC expects to have their second program, PhysicsED, released to
beta sites in September.  PhysicsED is a course consisting of a
physics guide and a group  of simulation programs designed to
demonstrate various physical processes and phenomena.  The course
targets universities and secondary education, and was designed for
use in both lecture demonstrations as well as for individual study.

Talus Corporation will distribute and support ECSC products in the
U.S., Europe and Japan.  Talus Corporation expects to release a new
Russian written NeXTSTEP software product every two months through
1992.  New product releases for September and October are already
scheduled.

If you're interested in assisting us in the beta testing process,
please send us the following information:

    1) Name & position
    2) Name of school or company
    3) Address
    4) Office & home phone
    5) E-mail address
    6) The NeXT hardware that you'll be testing it on.
    7) Your profession, along with a brief description of your
       field of expertise and how you might make use of a
       molecular visualization program.

Please send your information to: [e-mail]

The final release of pVisor is scheduled for September 15th, 1992.
Thanks for your help and please feel free to drop us a line in
Moscow...just to say hi.


--
Erik DASQUE
Systems Engineer,
Talus Corp.
Seattle-Moscow-Houston

MOSCOW:
Tel : [phone]
E-Mail : [e-mail]  (NeXTmail happily accepted...)
HOUSTON:
Tel : [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail]  (NeXTmail happily accepted...)




____________________________________________________________________
end