Easy 3-D package features enhanced modeling and animation tools.
David Biedny and Nathan Moody
Artists who want to break into the world of 3-D graphics and animation can dive right in with Infini-D 3.0. The upgrade has more-powerful animation tools, more modeling tools, and a renovated interface that bolsters its continuing strengths: ease of use and an extensive feature set for the price.
Close Curves
The biggest improvement to Infini-D is the addition of spline-based modeling tools, which provide an impressive level of control for creating objects that can twist, taper, and bend. You can turn these spline-based objects into polygonal-mesh objects.
Texture control has always been, and still is, Infini-D's strength above all else. As before, you can layer an unlimited number of textures on your models. Textures can comprise single or layered PICT still images (with or without embedded alpha channels), PICS sequential images, and QuickTime movies. You can also apply an image as a decal on your textured object. This ability is useful, especially considering Infini-D's new spline modeling tools, because a decal will flex more realistically along an object's surface when you distort the object whereas standard texture maps can give you undesirable results.
Infini-D's interface has been improved throughout. In the modeling-window toolbox, Infini-D 3.0 has tools color-coded by function -- shape tools, for instance, are blue and links tools green.
You can now use distant lights as well as spot and point lights. Distant lights give you a diffuse lighting effect that simulates natural light sources. You can add gels and masks to any light source. The gels let you project an image onto the surface of an object and the scene around it. To create a shadowy effect such as light coming through a window frame, you can use masks to block part of the light. However, you cannot animate the gels or masks, so you can't, for instance, create the effect of light coming through an opening curtain.
In the new floating light-control palette, you can define light-effect parameters, such as drop-off distance, by clicking and dragging control points around graphic representations of your light. This way of creating lighting effects is much more intuitive than before. In the previous version, you had to type numerical values into the Light Info dialog box; however, if you prefer, you can still do so.
Time, Space, and Action
The event-based animation sequencer of Infini-D is essentially unchanged, although Infini-D 3.0 is packed with new animation features. You can now animate ribs and rails within lofted, lathed, and extruded objects. This lets you create, say, a lizard that breathes in and out realistically as it curves itself around a corner -- in other 3-D-modeling programs, you may have to change the cross sections in your object for the same effect and can end up with some unrealistic distortion. However, Infini-D doesn't have inverse kinematics, the ability to define movement parameters for joints in an object. As a result, its abilities are limited for the kinds of advanced character animations you can create with a 3-D-animation program that does support inverse kinematics, such as The Valis Group's PixelPutty.
New velocity charts let you control the speed of objects between time events -- for instance, you can gradually slow down a rotating sphere by reducing its velocity between subsequent sets of time events in the animation. The velocity charts are virtually goof-proof: The velocity curve will turn red and drop to the bottom of the graph if you define a velocity between time events that's too extreme for the object's position and distance.
Infini-D 3.0 doesn't have advanced animation features such as Strata Studio Pro's Boolean operations, which let you subtract an object from or add an object to another. True, Infini-D costs hundreds of dollars less than Strata Studio Pro, but the state of 3-D art is likely to make these advanced features standard in most animation packages.
Infini-D 3.0 has some strange bugs. For instance, some objects and parts of objects randomly grew to ludicrous proportions and one object disappeared from the modeler but was still identified in the Sequencer and Object Floater windows. Just as this article went to press, Specular found the cause of these problems and released a bug fix.
The Bottom Line
Infini-D 3.0 isn't the most comprehensive 3-D package you can buy, but it is a robust introduction to 3-D art and animation. Furthermore, Specular is already working on version 3.1, which takes advantage of Apple's new QuickDraw 3D technology. This will add the ability to drag and drop textures from the Finder and should bring about an appreciable speed increase.
Infini-D 3.0
Rating: Very Good (4 of 5 mice)
Price: $899 (list).
Pros: Easy to use. Extensive feature set for its price. Spline-based editing. Superb texture control. Interactive light controls. Animatable ribs and rails. Velocity control.
Cons: No inverse kinematics or Boolean operations. Minor bugs.
Spline-based modeling tools; the SplineForm object library, with objects such as spirals and twisted shapes; and a new floating light-control palette with interactive light-effect parameters are just a few of the new features in Infini-D 3.0.
