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| This was poosted too the imagine mailing list. Soorry aboout all these Y doouble oo's. my keybooard has been having a twoo foor oone special Y all this week oon the letter oo. Y | | >From the "Impulse Graphics World" newsletter, Summer 1993, pages 3-5, | spelling and grammar unchanged: | | NEW FEATURES OF IMAGINE 3.0 | | BONES: This amazing function will allow you to build a skeleton that | you will associate to the object that you want to manipulate in a | smooth method, unlike the process that is now used in the cycle | editor. | | BRUSH TACKING: Presently when you wrap a brush to any object you can | not morph that object and retain the position of the brush on that | object. The brush stays at the same position in the real world while | the object moves. Very confusing and not real handy. Now with Brush | Tacking, brushes or pictures will be mapped directly to each face of | the object, so that when that face moves, the part of the brush that | was tacked to the face will move with the face. Doing things like | snake skin and then animating the snake with the Bones function will | make the snake look real. No more sliding textures. | | KINEMATIC MOVEMENTS: There are several high end software products | that have this feature. Now Imagine 3.0 has the feature as well. Y Kinematics in its truest form is the study of motion, and how things Y move. Within the cycle editor we have had a form of Kinematics Y without the more intelligent association of the hierachical relation | of the objects that are in the cycle group. Now with the new | Kinematic information you can contstrain movements so that when you | move some portion of the group the other objects will be less or more | effected by one single movement. Making more realistic cycles will | now be possible. | | FONT AND IMAGE EDITOR: Over the years it has become apparent that | many of you make your living creating what we have all come to know as | flying logos. The only real problem with this has been that the | conversion of images to objects has lacked the kind detail needed to | make the fonts and incoming images as crisp as they need to be for | professional use. Hence we have added an entire new editor. The Font | and Image editor will allow you to read Postscript fonts as well as | one bit plane images. The difference is the fact that these objects | will use splines to create the borders of the objects that you create. | This gives you much more detail and control over the object. Once you | have the object the way that you want it, you simply save it and load | it into the Detail editor to add its final touches, such as color and | texture. | | MOTION GRAPHICS: It has been near impossible to create animation Y where action occur at different rates. In the Action editor you could Y assign a starting and ending speed to objects that travel along a Y path. But you could apply only one set of numbers. Now with Motion | Graphics you can deal with each segment of the path as a different | motion speed. Not only can you apply more information to the path, | you can also see what your doing by way of a graphic motion sine wave | display. No more tricky math calculations to consider, just call up | the actor and plot your graphs with the mouse. | | HIERACHY CONTROL AND POP UP ACTION BARS IN THE STAGE: To say the | least going from one editor to the next can be a real pain. Now from | the Stage you can move any object no matter if it is part of a group | or individual and stand alone. Also from the Stage you can call up | the Action bar directly so that you don't have to go to the Action | editor to make any changes. This gives you total control over object | movement. If you don't like the way an object is moving, you don't | have to go back to the Cycle editor to make these changes, do it right | in the Stage. | | SOUND: Not just sound added to digital animations, but the ability to | load your sound track of music or voice right into the Action Editor. | Instead of making a guess at when things happen and trying blindly to | time your animation to a preset sound, now you can actually see when | its happening and make the changes in movement that correlated | directly to the sound. The incoming digital sound must be in certain Y formats, once in that format they are loaded into the Action header Y bar for your viewing. You cannot edit here the sound is for reference Y only. | | AMIGA AA CHIP SET SUPPORT: For those of you with the new Amiga | computers, Imagine will now render in those formats that extend your | computers visual power. | | IMPROVED ANTI-ALIASING: Jaggies just aren't any fun, and they don't | look good either. One of the most suggested improvements for Imagine | has been to make the anti-aliasing better. There is not much to say | when it comes to the improvements we have made here, its another one | of those "You must see it to believe it" new features. Surffice it to | say that you will appreciate this improvement. | | REAL TIME GRAPHICS: Other software vendors have offered a form of | real time or symbolic real time movement of objects or real time | movement of the camera. We have implemented these features into | Imagine 3.0. In the perspective window you can choose your movements | based upon several viewing options. You can then move things around | in real time and see the results more immediately. Caution. Real Y time is always misleading. In order to do this real time the objects Y are given a more symbolic representation like bounding boxes. This Y feature used in the Stage can create paths in real time, which can | then be followed by other objects as well as lights and the camera. | Also this new feature allows you to create your Key Cells on a much | quicker basis with a single key stroke. | | DEFORMATIONS: It has always been fairly easy to deform objects, but | to do them in a perfect manner has eluded many users. Now with the | new deformation tools you will be able to. Twist, Taper, Bend, Shear | and Pinch objects to create even more unique and interesting objects | as well as use them in some very amazing animation effects. These | deformations combined with Brush Tacking will make animations that | will move you to the next level of reality. | | MATERIALS: We have long thought that there were two sets of | properties which aside from the shape of the object should be applied | by you the user. Color, specularity, reflectivity, refraction are all | attributes, where as brush, and textures and shaders are all | properties that could better be called Materials. Now instead of just | a massive attribute editor we have broke it down and enhanced the two | separate editors. Materials stands alone so that you can gain even | finer control over your brushed brass pots and pans or polished | chessmen. [Sounds like trouble for Essence? --EK] | | FORMS EDITOR ENHANCED: Now in the Forms editor you will be able to | manipulate the slices of the object with the new magnetism system. | Each point on the slice is a control point which you can move to | create objects that have just the right look and feel. | | FIELD RENDERING: Digital animations are generally done by showing a | frame at a time or recording those frames directly to a single frame | VCR. In most cases these animations, depending on the amount of | frames and the distance of movement of the objects, can look very | smooth. The truth is that due to the fact that the human eye and | brain function under a process called Persistence of Vision, it fools | you into seeing motion. This process however is discrete enough to | see a jerking or quickness to movement. With Field rendering, your | animations can be almost perfect completing the illusion of motion. Y When you see field rendering you may never use frame animations again. Y Y CAMERA AND LIGHT MARKERS: This feature makes it easier to visualize | the effect lights will have on your scene as well as what the camera | is looking at and just how much of the scene the camera is seeing. | This feature is accomplished by extending markers from the center of a | light as well as the camera. These markers form a triangle that shows | the area of effect. Now as you move lights and the camera you will | have a very definite idea of what you are lighting and what you are | looking at. | | APPLY: We took this feature out of Imagine when it had existed in | Silver. This command causes the information about the first object | you pick in a multi pick selection, to pass the attributes and | materials of that object to the other objects that have been picked. | So now if you want to make all of the objects in a scene have the same | properties and attributes of one object you simply use the Apply | command. | | MACROS: With Imagine 3.0 you can take even more control of the | software. Many of you have said that you find yourself performing | many redundant tasks that lend themselves to the concept of Macro | recording and playback. So if you find yourself doing the same thing | over and over again, simply make it a macro and just push a button to | make those redundant tasks happen like magic. | | PARTICLES: Among the newest features found in 3D software is the | particle system. Like most new features everyone has a different | opinion of what a particle system is. Simply put, Imagine particles | are varied and are simple to use, they can be morphed, brushed, | textured, and animated. Even more to the point they are very simple | to use and don't slow the rendering process down at all. | | ALPHA CHANNEL SUPPORT: For video users and makers of great video | fare, you have asked for Alpha Channel Support so your life would be | easier and less complicated. To wit we have added for your using | pleasure Alpha support. Even if you don't make videos for a living | you may find this new feature very handy. | | DEPTH OF FIELD: If you own a camera you already know what this new | feature is going to do for you. If you don't own a camera you may | still know. If you don't know, well here is a shot at an explanation. | When you open the apeture of a camera you increase the light that can | hit the film plane, but you do so at the expense of the lens to focus | much beyond the object that you are focused on. This can be a great Y thing for making that object stand out from its environment. When you Y close the lens down you increase the focus of the camera from point of Y focus to infinity. This means that the entire scene is in focus. To | date Imagine has had an infinite focused lens due entirely to its | digital nature. Now with Depth of Field you will be able to make your | images even more realistic. | | LIGHT SOURCE CONTROLS: More creative control for you must also | include more dramatic control over lighting. In this area there are | numerous new features. Many of you have asked for a way to control | not only the color of the light but also its power. Now you can | control how much of an area a particular light has control over. The | process is simple to use and the effects make an even better | photo-realistic image than previously possible. Other new lighting | features include: Light sources that have shape or dimension to them | like Light flowing through a venetian blind. Sure you can do these | things now but you have to go to all the trouble of setting up the | blinds and placing the light, just so. No more, now you can just | click and render. Of course we have also implemented the ever popular | Soft edge light source and for you real Scanline die hards (faster | rendering of course) we have included shadow mapping. This feature | makes it possible to have shadows in Scanline as well as Full Trace. | | INFINITY: Well not really but for all intense and purposes we have | added the ability for you to have as many textures or image maps on | any one object as you want or your computer can handle. In doing this | we have taken the Brush and Texture options out of the Attributes | requester and have given these options their very own requester. | | Imagine 3.0 has over 200 new features, a factoid for those of you | keeping track of that sort of thing. With all this quantity of new | features we have not cut any corners, making sure that Imagine meets | and exceeds your needs now and into the future. | | Well here is the deal, if these new features have wetted your appetite | and you want to make sure that your order is placed for the 3.0 | upgrade, well then go for it. If on the other hand you want to sit | back and wait to see what other new features there are, OK so do that | as well. There will be another newsletter at the time of release that | will give you a final description of the features of Imagine 3.0. | Imagine 3.0 is more than even this newsletter can begin to expose you | to in a few pages. If you have any questions of course you can call | and we will be glad to answer all your queries. | | ---(endquote)--------------------------------- | Y