There are many new modeling features and other enhancements in v5. Details are found on the website at www.tgs.com/amapi and right here but for now, we'll mention just these few:

• improved bevels with the new Chamfer tool.

You can now create filets on corners and easily select or deselect
individual edges, even for variable-radius fileting. In many instances,
Amapi recognizes "typical" places where bevels may be expected, 
perhaps right after doing a boolean 'Punch', and proposes a default 
solution:

     Click the image for a short animated illustration

Bevels can also be used simply to introduce additional polygons, perhaps in order to create wrinkles in the elbow pit area of a shirt for a more natural look, like in this example below. After applying the chamfert tool and creating additional geometry with it, the Smoothing tool is used to give it a richer, organic look. A nice set of wrinkles appears where the beveled geometry has been repositioned up or down for a zig-zag profile to appear. 

Click the image for a short animated illustration 

• dynamic reconstruction with history of construction curves - Cool!

Amapi remembers what basic shapes your models were built with. When you edit such shapes the model gets rebuilt automatically and in realtime. For instance, edit and move a vertex on a curve which is part of a Gordon surface or sweep, and the resulting surface is dynamically recreated.
 

Take for instance a vase, made of a section (circle) and profile curve, and the Extrusion tool to lathe the section along the profile. When you use the Stretch tool thereafter in order to edit the vertices of the resulting mesh, you get to see a choice of various levels at which you can grab vertices to change the geometry. The bottom icon is the default editing level, in this case it offers to edit the controls points of the Nurbs curve(s).

If construction curves were involved in making the suurface, you'll generally see an option for editing the vertices of the curve(s), then an option for editing the vertices of the mesh (coarse surface). If additional smoothing was already applied to the coarse mesh, one more level choice is offered for editing the vertices of the smoothed, high-polygon count mesh.

Here's another example. The underlying coarse mesh is no longer associated with construction curves, but some amount of smoothing has been applied to the coarse mesh of a shirt. By editing a few vertices of  the coarse mesh, a new shape is quickly applied. Amapi does the smoothing on-the-fly as you move a vertex on the coarse  mesh.

Doing some character modeling? How about fixing this model's nose? No problem with Amapi 5.
 

 
 
• Better Booleans

 
In complex cases you will get better results of booleans, and fewer resulting odd polygons

Here is an example in which 5 cubes are lined up to shape a bone, and then combined into a single outer hull by successive boolean operations with the punch tool. Finally, the Catmull smoothing method from the smooth tool is applied, giving it a nice organic look.
 

     Click the image for a short animated illustration
Click here for a nice final rendering: 
 

• 5 Smoothing Methods






In addition to the Bezier method, four new smoothing algorithms have been added, such as Doo-Sabin, C-loop and Katmul. These greatly enhance the ways in which you can create organic looking smooth transitions between coarse models.
 
 

• Global Deformators

 

 

The Meta-Nurbs tool (first at top of modeling toolkit) has 3 new tools, for global deformation.



Easily bend, twist and squeeze your models. 

    Click the image for a short animated illustration

• Improved 3D text tool

 

 

Better preview options for interactive selection of the resulting 3D text. If you still use Amapi v2.11 or Amapi Studio 3 you'll appreciate this as a new tool alltogether. You can still of course use the text tool to let Amapi create the resulting extruded text string altogether, as a Nurbs or polygonal set of character blocks. Or you can use the paths of the TrueType fonts as duplication paths, sweep paths, sections for extrusions, etc...  If you're a webmaster looking for easy ways to add 3D text, this is going to be fun!





 
• Shape Extraction

 

 

Ever received a 3D model of multiple parts which were all in a single entity? Now you can easily identify and extract various polygons from such model and assign them to a new part. For example, identify the facets belonging to and eye, an ear, the nose etc... from a 3D scanner's output.
 
 

• Improved Raytracing and Cartoon Rendering

 

We've added controls of shadow softness on spotlights as well as 2, 4 or more levels of shades in cartoon rendering.

Click the Mech to see other cartoon renderings done in Amapi 5 from models created last year by 12 year-old Amapikid Barrett Phillips.     You'll notice that these cartoon styles result in fairly compressed images, with good run-length encoding for animated GIFs, and can also be used for quality 3D content within Flash. Click the spinning head to read more details about how to use Amapi for Flash content.

Here are some more animations and rendering with Amapi's cartoon style options:

 
• new exports and a 3DS MAX plugin

 
Since Amapi Studio 3 was released 3 years ago, we've added such exports as  RayDream Studio5, ZAP, NeMo, Cinema 4D and a plugin to 3D Studio Max 2.5 and 3. Check www.tgs.com/amapi (Import/Exports) for a complete list of file formats. 

If you download the Trial Edition to evaluate Amapi 5.15, be aware that the 3DS Max plugin installer is not included in the basic download, but you can get it from that Import/Export page.
 

• great documentation and models & materials collection

 
MacWorld magazine calls it 'excellent documentation' in its recent review (9/2000). Check other reviews of Amapi right on our website. And as always, we've included many royalty-free models and materials you can immediately use to complement your own illustrations created with Amapi.
 

There are many other new features, be sure to read about them in www.tgs.com/amapi  (look for What's New?)

Visit www.tgs.com/amapi and click "Mac Demo" or "PC Demo" to register for the trial password which you'll receive via Email. Then select a download site from TGS or from TUCOWS at www.tucows.com. 

Simply enter 'Amapi' in the Search box, and off you go. With hundreds of mirrors holding their local copy, you're sure to get the Trial Edition of Amapi on your system in no time if downloading it from a nearby server! Oh, and while you're loading, check the review of Amapi at TUCOWS, the Head-of-the-Herd column (Amapi rated top 5 stars .....er, make that 5 cows!) and what else is 'Moo'.
 

Gary Phillips at www.Animhouse.com has released his second edition of the interactive training CD on Amapi. This 2-CD set is a great tool to help you learn Amapi quickly.

Visit Animhouse.com  for more about the Amapi training CD