Light ROM 3/Light ROM 3 - Disc 2.iso/tess/tess516.txt

Text File | 1995-06-13 | 22KB | 445 lines

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 T H E   T E S S E L L A T I O N   T I M E S   #516
      Issue #16 of 1995, for Monday, June 12th
====================================================

*The Tessellation Times* (TESS) is Columbine, Inc.'s weekly electronic
publication normally posted Monday evenings as a supplement to 3D ARTIST
magazine.

See Contacts at the end of this file for companies whose products are
mentioned here.
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Published by and (c)Copyright 1995, all rights reserved:
  Columbine, Inc.
  P.O. Box 4787, Santa Fe, NM 87502 USA
  505/982-3532 voice - 505/820-6929 fax
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_____
Staff
Alex Kiriako, Editor, TESS & Sysop, 3dartist.com <[e-mail]>
Bill Allen, Publisher & Pres., Columbine, Inc. <[e-mail]>
Sally Beach, Vice Pres., Columbine, Inc. <[e-mail]>
Carol Williamson, Admin. Asst. <[e-mail]>
________
CONTENTS
516.00 - Heads Up
  516.00.01 - The Fortnight in 3D
  516.00.02 - Special Offers
  516.00.03 - Upgrades
  516.00.04 - Galleries & Exhibits
  516.00.05 - Shows & Exhibitions
  516.00.06 - Artists Call
516.01 - AnimaTek World Builder
516.02 - Trispectives - by Rob Glidden
516.03 - 3D Online
516.04 - News on High End
516.05 - News Wrap
516.06 - What's Up in Santa Fe
  516.06.01 - TESS
  516.06.02 - 3D ARTIST
516.07 - Continuing Listings
  516.07.01 - Special Offers
  516.07.02 - Galleries & Exhibits
  516.07.03 - Shows & Exhibitions Soon
  516.07.04 - Artists Call
516.08 - Follow-Ups
516.09 - Contacts

---------

516.00 - Heads Up

This issue of TESS is the first to have a pictorial section available to
those of you on the Web. See 516.06.01 below.
  Now, here's the stuff you need to know the soonest...

516.00.01 - The Fortnight in 3D

June 19, Seattle, Wash.: Northwest CyberArtists Open Studio will meet at
7:30pm at Symbionics, 619 Western Ave. Equipment is available to show your
VHS or DAT tapes as well as use of synthesizers, mixers, and an Internet
feed. Contact Pierre DeVris, 822-9185.

516.00.02 - Special Offers

Until 9/30/95 Autodesk makes upgrading to AutoCAD release 13 sweeter with
lowered pricing and free training. Upgrade pricing is $398 from r12 and $448
from r11 or earlier. Free training comes in the form of a free admission to
their On the Road class. This deal also features 30 days of telephone support.

516.00.03 - Upgrades

Ray Dream, Inc., has just lowered the price for AddDepth for Windows in
their new version 1.1. AddDepth creates 3D-like 2D objects from Beziers and
Postscript files. Version 1.1 on CD-ROM is now available for $99 and adds 60
new graphics templates.

Vibrant Graphics' Soft Engine 3.5 software-based graphics accelerator ($295)
is now shipping in a Windows version for AutoCAD r13 Windows. Speed
improvements of two to ten are cited. New features include the birdseye
window and Vibrant's Detail Window. DOS version users who purchased after
11/94 can get a free update.

Sculptor Walter S. Arnold just reported that Design CAD 3D r5.0 for Windows
is shipping.

The latest word is that Animation Master v3 from Hash, Inc. is now slated
for 7/1/95 release.

516.00.04 - Galleries & Exhibits

Gallery opening June 16 at the Heartsong artist-run gallery in Santa Fe,
N.M. Paintings and computer works by Robert Schrei. Heartsong, 934 Lopez;
505/982-7244 or 505/983-7213.

516.00.05 - Shows & Exhibitions

August 2-4, San Francisco, Calif.: Virtual Reality and Persons with
Disabilities. Sponsored by the Center On Disabilities, Cal. State U.
Northridge. Keynote speaker will be Jaron Lanier, coiner of the term
"Virtual Reality." CSUN/Center On Disabilities, 18111 Nordhoff St.,
Northridge, CA 91330-8349; 818/885-2578 V/TDD/message, -4929 fax, E-mail
[e-mail].
  Video tapes of the 1994 conference are available from CyberEdge;
415/331-3343, -3643 fax.

August 23-25, Arlington, Va.: Interactive Multimedia '95. Sponsored by the
Society for Applied Learning Technology. Focus will be on distance learning,
and training for health care sciences, management, etc. SALT, 50 Culpepper
St., Warrenton, VA 22186; 800/457-6812; 703/347-0055.

516.00.06 - Artists Call

June 30 for Graphis New Media Annual 96 for professional design work done
since 7/94 in the areas of CD-ROM, online, interactive games, kiosks, and
interactive presentations. Subject categories include self-promotion,
business, education, entertainment, and IS design. $100 fee  per entry.
Graphis Press, 141 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10016; 212/532-9387,
213-3229 fax.

516.01 - AnimaTek World Builder

We mentioned in TESS#508.03 a new Russian terrain generation animation
package whose output Digimation showed at NAB in April. Last week we
received a stack of images from that program, called AnimaTek World Builder.
They were generated by the developers, and by David Avgikos at Digimation.
  Since Dave has had to learn the program without documentation, and work
with the developers across language and distance, it would seem to speak
well for ease-of-use in a program that sets out to do nothing less than
model landscapes in full detail.
  These images, including _underwater_ terrains and plants, are stunning, as
they should be, coming from software that at $995 will list for five or six
times the price of Vistapro and Bryce. To see for yourself, if you have Web
access, jump to http://www.3dartist.com/tess/95/txt/tpic516.htm--our
inaugural *Tessellation Times* Pictorial Section.
  AnimaTek World Builder (AWB), according to a detailed report we received
with the images, generates plants and incrementally builds terrains. It has
tools for procedurally distributing soil, snow, rocks, and plants across
terrains. You can work at all levels of detail, from tree to forest.
Vegetation is created using both L-systems and particle systems, and lets
you render down to individual blades of grass.
  You drag-and-drop landscape components from a library of hundreds. The
user interface is said to work as though creating a 2D image. There is
"automatic animation of water and grass." An "area editor" works with
individual definable surface areas such as a field or the side of a hill,
and aids in quickly applying complex details.
  It is explained that "The model is consistent with camera motion... [When]
the camera approaches a patch of grass, its appearance changes continuously
and new details are added gradually while old details refine. If the camera
moves away from the patch, the color of the grass tends toward some average
color to prevent aliasing.
  Other features include clouds, online help, distributed rendering, real
and fake shadows, fog and depth cueing, and especially tight import/export
support for 3D Studio files (so you can build scenes using both programs and
render a project in whichever of the two serves best).
  Reportedly, only a 486 with 8Mb is needed to do high quality renderings
with "hundreds of thousands of objects and tens of millions of faces."
Russian programmers are known for being among the last to succumb to code
bloat (since they themselves often don't have access to better equipment).
  To quote in detail: "A new model for landscape surfaces was developed at
AnimaTek. It uses parabolic partial differential equations to describe
surface evolution. Erosion and nonuniformity of a landscape are specified by
equation coefficients... The result...is a projectable mesh [with] all the
properties of landscape surfaces and reflecting the interaction between
different surface elements. Local characteristics of the surface, like
roughness and steepness of slopes, are completely under the designer's
control. It is possible to add small details to the surface using
fractalization procedures as the last step of surface design."
  The program has its own object-oriented language that allows users to
create L-system objects including, reportedly, multiple inheritance, which
means you can cross-breed objects! L-objects, which can be very complex,
present only necessary complexity to the camera.
  Architects and landscape designers will be interested in the developers'
claim that "It is possible using AWB to build not only random landscapes,
but also any given landscape." Indeed, it looks like a new generation of
terrain software is about to hit.
  AnimaTek, by the way, also developed Digimation's Bones Pro 3DS IPAS
program [3DA#19].
  The plan is to have World Builder ready to demonstrate and hopefully to
ship at Siggraph in early August.--B.A.

516.02 - TriSpectives
  By Rob Glidden <[e-mail]>

3D modeling should be a mainstream, horizontal software product category.
That's the premise of the one-size-fits-all TriSpectives, a Windows 95
(only) program just announced by 3D/Eye. Priced at $299.95 list ($499.95 for
a professional version), the program is scheduled to ship immediately after
the anticipated August release of Windows 95. A recent investment in 3D/Eye
by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has put a spotlight on the product.
  By targeting both the graphics design (art and animation) and product
design (CAD) markets, TriSpectives is intended to become the "word
processor" of 3D design. The TriSpective pitch: once you had to choose
between an expensive typesetter or a limited typewriter. Then word
processors united and transformed these two markets. TriSpectives aims to do
the same for 3D design, claiming it will compete with both high-end CAD and
animation packages such as Pro/Engineer and Softimage, and low-cost 3D
packages such as Caligari trueSpace and RayDream Designer.
  To pull off this 3D niche-merging transformation, TriSpectives will have
to crack the classically elusive formula for combining ease-of-use with many
features.
  TriSpectives is an ACIS-based modeler including NURBS support, with
drag-and-drop catalogs of custom and stock shapes, and keyframe animation.
It handles 3D documents as project workbooks. IntelliShapes "allows users to
slide 3D shapes around each other to create complex new 3D models."
SmartRender does interactive rendering. Two other features, SmartSnap and
SmartDimensions, respectively aid quick placement of models and CAD-accurate
positioning. TriSpectives works with OLE 2.0 and reportedly will come with
over 1,000 3D models and 250 finishes.
  The program imports and exports 3DS, DXF, DWG, IGES, OBJ, Step, STL, and
VRML file formats, and exports EPS.
_________
Rob Glidden is a content developer and a regular contributor to *3D Artist*
and *Tess*. Note above that he has a new E-mail address.

516.03 - 3D Online

Caligari Corp. is embracing VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) with a
new planned product made expressly for 3D on the World Wide Web called
Caligari 3D World Builder. Using some of the technology developed in
trueSpace 2 such as Booleans, deformations, and surface sculpting, it will
write VRML output and link 3D objects to HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) pages.

Vream, Inc. has announced for later this year WIRL (Web Interactive Reality
Layer), a 3D Web browser for Windows 3.1/95/NT that extends VRML to offer
both regular desktop and (using VR hardware) fully immersive interactivity.
  Also for the three Windows operating systems is Vream's new VRCreator
scheduled for 4th quarter 1995. It spins together worlds using supplied
objects and files input from 3D Studio and other programs. Output is to VRML
and VreamScript. VRCreator will be shipping beta copies on a limited basis
for a $1,000 one-time fee to join the testing program.

516.04 - News on High End

In a news release received 6/9/95 from SGI, the company announced that it
had agreed to the entry of a Federal Trade Commission order issued that
morning to allow completion of Silicon Graphics mergers with Alias Research
and Wavefront Technologies.
  The order's stipulations explicitly require Silicon Graphics to port Alias
Animator and Power Animator to another major Unix workstation by 3/31/96. It
also requires Silicon Graphics to continue to maintain support programs
geared to independent software developers and an open computing
architecture. The consent order, subject to a 60-day public review period
before final FTC approval, will end an FTC inquiry into the mergers.

516.05 - News Wrap

A new plug-in freebie called Smart Remove Points from BeInfinite, Inc.
removes redundant geometry points in Illustrator and Freehand files.
BeInfinite's attitude is refreshing: "We could have charged for it, but we
thought that giving away something so useful, and so cool, was a pretty Zen
thing to do" ($5 S&H).
  BeInfinite does charge, however, for Infinite FX, its new series of Adobe
Illustrator plug-ins featuring over 55 special effects.

Adobe has updated its *Classroom In a Book for Adobe Premiere* (ISBN
1-56830-172-3) to version 4.0 for Windows, received here. This $50 workbook
is an excellent way to quickly learn Adobe Premiere and the basics of video
editing. It features the same tutorials found in its Mac product, but geared
to Windows.

Also received is the *Illustrator Wow Book* for the Mac by Sharon Steuer,
from Peachpit Press for $39.95 (ISBN 1-56609-177-2). Packed from cover to
cover with gorgeous color illustrations in a wide variety of artistic
styles, this book showcases the range of new capabilities in Adobe
Illustrator 5.5. Though this book starts gently with Illustrator 5.5 basics,
it focuses on professional level work. Its numerous short tutorials, for
example, are aimed at professional Illustrator 3.2 users who haven't had the
time to learn 5.5.

In news received 6/9/95, Robert McNeel & Assocs. is now shipping a Spanish
version of AccuRender 2.1 for $445. This version supports AutoCAD r12 and 13
in DOS and Windows 3.1/NT. It includes all of the features in the English
version and complete translations of the user interface, manual, and online
help systems.
  Robert McNeel & Assocs. is also shipping R12Lib ($3,500), a royalty-free C
library for reading AutoCAD drawings in DGW format. Features include the
ability to read drawing info without loading the entire drawing into memory,
fast 3D tessellation, a DOS DWG-to-DXF translator, and lots of code examples.

Motion X ($1,795) from TVOne is a PAR-like board for compressed output to a
normal VHS recorder. It doesn't require a special dedicated hard drive and
outputs single frames via its Windows Timeline software to a Motion JPEG
compressed file. The Motion X card then decompresses and plays back the file
at 30fps in NTSC (720x480) or 25fps in PAL (720x576).
  Supported file formats include TGA, TIFF, GIF, BMP, PCX, and JPEG.
Specific drivers are included for 3D Studio, Elastic Reality, and trueSpace.

In news received today 6/12/95, Summagraphics Corp. announced the Summa
Expert series of slim line graphics tablets for desktop use in 3D, CAD,
graphic design, and animation. The Expert series supports 256 pressure
levels and customizable menu buttons. Two models are available, a 12"x12"
for $499 and 12"x18" for $899.

Academic Press, Inc., has published a new book *Multimedia Systems and
Applications* for $44.95 (ISBN: 0-12-227740-6). A new release reports that
it's comprised of international contributions on the multimedia field and
attempts to offer comprehensive coverage of both technology and uses.

516.06 - What's Up in Santa Fe

516.06.01 - TESS

Deadline for TESS#517 will be 1pm MDT (3pm Eastern) Mon., 6/19/95.

This week TESS goes graphic! To see *The Tessellation Times* Pictorial
Section on the World Wide Web, jump to
  http://www.3dartist.com/tess/95/txt/tpic516.htm
But this document is _not_ for the slow of modem. Be ready for a 168Kb file
transfer.
  It's a challenge to be creative with this new medium yet hold down on file
count and size. As always, we welcome your feedback.--B.A.

516.06.02 - 3D ARTIST

Deadlines for 3DA#21 are 6/30 for editorial materials and ad space
reservation, and 7/18/95 for ad materials. Note that new ad rates have been
mailed to advertisers.
  The centerspread will be a gallery of 3D medical illustrations. To receive
submission guidelines, send a blank E-mail message to <[e-mail]>
with the subject "3D Medical Gallery." (Images cannot be ftp'd and please do
_not_ send images via E-mail without special instructions.)--B.A.

516.07 - Continuing Listings

516.07.01 - Special Offers

Through 6/30/95: Syndesis Corp. $150 three-pack CD ROM bundle of 2,000+
models contained in 3D-ROM volumes I and II, and the Avalon CD.

516.07.02 - Galleries & Exhibits

Through 6/16/95, Santa Fe, N.M.: Binary Visions '95, a juried show hosted by
The Printmaker, Ltd., 1807 - 2nd St. #40, 505/425-9456.

516.07.03 - Shows & Exhibitions Soon

June 22-24, San Francisco, Calif.: ArtTeco II multimedia developers
conference, Fort Mason Center. Held by *Morph's Outpost*, 510/601-8284,
-9074 fax, [e-mail].

516.07.04 - Artists Call

June 16 for CD-ROM Showcase. Contact Oregon Data Products, 1730 S.W. Skyline
Blvd. #208, Portland, OR 97221; 503/292-5119, -5146 fax.

June 30 for the 15th Symposium of Small Computers in the Arts at the
Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia, Penn. Contact Misako
Scott 610/664-3417, [e-mail].

July 3 for the San Francisco ACM Siggraph Animation Contest. See
TESS#512.00.04 or contact S.F. ACM Siggraph, 310 Richland Ave., San
Francisco, CA 94110; 415/642-9605, CIS 73052.624.

516.08 - Follow-Ups

TESS#515.00.03: Valis Group's Pixel Putty Solo upgrade pricing from 1.0 to
1.5 is $49.

516.09 - Contacts

Mention TESS when contacting companies about products reported here!

> 3D/Eye; 1050 Craft Road, Ithica, NY 14850; 800/946-9533; 607/257-1381,
-7335 fax
> Academic Press, Inc.; 525 'B' St. #1900, San Diego, CA 92101;
619/699-6594; [e-mail]
> Adobe Systems, Inc.; P.O. Box 7900, Mountain View, CA 94039; 800/833-6687;
415/961-4400, -3769 fax
> Autodesk, Inc.; 111 McInnis Pkwy., San Rafael, CA 94903; 800/879-4233;
415/507-5000, 491-8311 fax; autodesk.com
> BeInfinite, Inc.; 2840 - 60th Ave., Oakland, CA 94605; 800/554-6624;
404/552-6624; [e-mail]
> Caligari Corp; 1955 Landings Dr., Mountain View, CA 94043; 800/351-7620;
415/390-9600, -9755 fax
> Digimation; 1000 Riverbend Blvd. #L, St. Rose, LA 70087; 800/854-4496;
504/468-7898, -5494 fax
> Peachpit Press; 2414 - 6th St., Berkeley, CA 94710; 800/283-9444;
510/548-4393, -5991 fax; [e-mail]
> Ray Dream, Inc.; 1804 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA 94043;
800/846-0111; 415/960-0768, -1198 fax; Alink: Ray.Dream
> Robert McNeel & Assocs.; 3670 Woodland Park Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98103;
206/545-7000, -7321 fax; ftp.mcneel.com; http://www.mcneel.com
> Summagraphics Corp.; 8500 Cameron Rd., Austin, TX 78754; 800/337-8662;
512/881-5400
> Syndesis Corp.; 235 S. Main St., Jefferson, WI 53549; 414/674-5200, -6363
fax; [e-mail]
> TVOne; 1445 Jamike Dr. #8, Erlanger, KY 41018; 606/282-7303, -8225 fax
> Valis Group; P.O. Box 831, Tiburon, CA 94920; 415/435-5404, -9862 fax;
[e-mail]
> Vream, Inc.; 2568 N. Clark St. #250, Chicago, IL 60614; 312/477-0425
> Vibrant Graphics; 12741 Research Blvd. #102, Austin, TX 78759;
800/937-1711; 512/918-2270, -3411 BBS
__________________
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