The following is a review of Presenter Professional 3.0's Render and Modeling features.
Rendering/Animation Features and Benefits
TrueMotion™ Animation - provides an intuitive “3-D, Virtual Scene” environment for use in computer generated animations and multimedia presentations by film, video, art, video game, advertising, and audio directors and specialists to create pre-visualization of scenes to be recorded and actual effects to be inserted into broadcast film or video recordings, multimedia presenters in the fields of education, training, medicine, science, forensics, aerospace, engineering, architecture to create real-life simulations, and anyone interested in creating dynamic visual presentations. The TrueMotion concept provides an intuitive way for simulating the real world properties of objects. By applying the TrueMotion plug-in animation effects to an object, you automatically set properties that obey the laws of physics. With Presenter Professional 3.0’s TrueMotion™ 3-D animators, effects like gravity, collision, tracking, and even human motion can be applied to objects, cameras, microphones, and lights. Any number of animation effects can be applied to any object to take into affect at any time. All effects exist in a single palette and can be selected and dragged to a specific object. Currently VIDI’s TrueMotion animators include Gravity, Collision, Human Motion, Car Motion, Pursue, Track, and Steering. Additional effects will be generated by VIDI and a kit for developing customized animation effects will be provided to third party developers and users interested in creating their own effects.
“TrueSound™” 3-D, Virtual Sound - provides an intuitive “3-D, Virtual Sound” environment for use in computer generated animations and multimedia presentations by film, video, art, video game, advertising, and audio directors and specialists to create pre-visualization of scenes with sound to be recorded and actual effects to be inserted into film, video or sound recordings, multimedia presenters in the fields of education, training, medicine, science, forensics, aerospace, engineering, architecture to create real-life simulations, and anyone interested in creating dynamic audiovisual presentations. Presenter Professional 3.0’s TrueSound provides a 3-D Sound environment where an unlimited number of 3-D speakers and 3-D microphones can be positioned throughout a 3-D scene to provide sound effects like stereo, “wraparound sound” and the “Doppler effect” associated with the sound changes a train makes with its whistle blowing as it comes from a distance and passes you by. The microphones are able to receive directional and omni-directional sound according to real-world physics and demonstrate the effect of volume change depending on distance, and the rate, volume, and frequency shifts due to the Doppler effect. Presenter Professional’s 3-D sound travels at the normal rate of sound through air at sea level with options for interactive adjustments for speed through other materials.
Enhanced User Interface - new rendering/animation interface features a tool bar with selectors, scale, rotation, lights, cameras, microphones, and splines. Objects are now graphically controlled and attributes applied through drag and drop icons
Time Line Animation - provides an intuitive, event-based ,time line interface that allows for any number of asynchronous key frames with ease-in and ease-out for all attributes. Animators already using a time-based window to choreograph 2-D animations will be immediately familiar and productive with Presenter Professional 3.0’s Script window, where events can be easily moved in time, copied, pasted, and edited and variable in-between frames can be set for each object, camera, microphone, and light. Presenter Professional 3.0 features smooth path animation control and velocity graphs for specifying speed of each object, camera, microphone, and light and for setting transition effects between all object parameters including colors, shaders, cameras, and animation effects.
Virtual Camera Window - a fully controllable virtual camera window allows animators to maneuver a camera through a 3-D animation using click and drag techniques. Real-time graphic feedback and optional stereoscopic viewing and red/blue shift stereo display gives the window realistic 3-D depth
Unlimited Cameras - as many cameras as desired can be used with intuitive placement and control, plus graphic feedback on lens angle. and camera position. Editing can be performed on screen to “splice’’ segments from each camera into a final ‘film’. which can be previewed using Presenter Professional 3.0’s Quick Render facility.
Unlimited Lights - as many lights as desired can be used with intuitive placement and control, variable intensity and color control, plus graphic mask providing feedback on spotlight position relative to object being illuminated. Object shading can be previewed using Presenter Professional 3.0’s Quick Render facility.
TrueMotion™ 3-D animators - with the extensible drag and drop technology of TrueMotion animators, effects like gravity, collision, tracking, and even human motion can be applied to objects, cameras, microphones, and lights. Currently VIDI TrueMotion animators include Gravity, Collision, Human Motion, Car Motion, Pursue, Track, and Steering. Any number of animation effects can be applied to any object to take into affect at any time. All effects exist in a palette and can be selected and dragged to a specific object. Additional effects will be generated by VIDI and a kit for developing customized animation effects will be provided to third party developers and users interested in creating their own effects.
TrueSound™ 3-D Microphones - with the extensible drag and place technology of TrueSound microphones, effects like stereo or wraparound sound, the Doppler effect, and the changes to frequency, volume, distance, and direction can be produced.
Digital Clay Motion - not only can objects be re-sized in any axis over time, but VIDI’s famous Digital Clay vertex manipulation can be applied over time for awesome spline tweening.
Fully Animated Shaders - any Ray Trace, Phong, or RenderMan shader parameter can be changed over time, including displacement. Velocity curves control the rate of change.
Rendering Types - Rendering is based on a Modular approach allowing third party vendors to write or link renderers into Presenter Professional 3.0. Rendering methods currently supported are Presenter’s QuickRender, Ray Trace, Phong, Stereoscopic, and Red/Blue stereo shaders and Pixar’s MacRenderMan™ and NetRenderMan.
Mapping - Texture mapping, bump mapping and Movie mapping on moving objects and backgrounds are fully supported.
Comprehensive RenderMan Interface - with its exhaustive, yet unintimidating interface to support RenderMan, Pixar’s widely recognized industry standard rendering language and imaging software, Presenter Professional is a favorite of the motion picture and broadcast video production communities. Our users now find RenderMan simple to use, and still have easy access to it’s deepest levels of control, which allows them to be competitive in an especially fierce marketplace where they can save money and be more flexible by using desktop computers instead of costly dedicated workstations.
Extended RenderMan Support - RenderMan shader support with motion blur, fog, and depth cue provides features desired by many broadcast film and video users.
High Speed Rendering - image processing time is a critical issue for any 3D graphics application, and our RISC based acceleration coupled with RenderMan network processing to Silicon Graphics and other UNIX platforms is a world class solution for broadcast video, motion picture production, and all forms of high resolution still image graphics applications. Workstation speeds can be achieved for a fraction of the cost using a VIDIexpress accelerator, and network rendering allows users to maximize the investment of an existing base of UNIX machines by offloading modeling and scene description tasks to relatively inexpensive Macintoshes while retaining the rendering muscle of the graphics workstation.
Modeling Features and Benefits
“Digital Clay™ - freeform surface sculpting of 3D forms makes it easy for artists and graphic designers to create flowing organic shapes using an intuitive interface many are already familiar with through 2D illustration applications. Digital Clay is also useful to industrial designers who make products for consumer markets where smooth flowing forms are in demand. Some examples of this type of product include automobiles, small appliances, packaging, and computers.
Boolean Cut, Join, and Intersect Operations - with the addition of the Drill and Boolean tools, the same high level of surface sculpting is combined with the ability to punch holes and Union, Difference, and Intersect solid forms including spline forms.
Automated Grouping - objects are automatically placed into a group structure with optional user override and with a tree structure display capability showing all the elements within the hierarchy.
Enhanced User Interface - new interface features a double width tool bar which includes all 3D operations and fewer pop-out tools, plus an increase in usable drawing space.
Spline Construction - spline construction following industry standards set by FreeHand and Illustrator making freeform design easy and intuitive to learn and use.
Surface Construction - all 3D elements remain as spline meshes making editing easier and requiring less storage with the ability to quickly and easily display objects as smooth shaded surfaces within the modeler.
3D Window - used for 3D viewing, selection of points and intuitive, mouse controlled rotation.
Smooth Shading (Quick Render) - the 3D window now renders with fast smooth shading for accurate visualizations and a user definable light source.
Global Reshape on multiple objects - Digital Clay reshaping is always available for any number of objects.
Extensive Snapping Options - a tremendous gain in interactive accuracy: snapping options include grids, guides, vertices, endpoints, on path, tangent, midpoint, center, and intersection.
Graphic Sweep Surface Tool - an equally powerful but easy to use graphic interface makes spring, corkscrews and nautilus shapes easy for non-mathematicians.
Postscript font and line art - the ability to import various kinds of Postscript information allows illustrators and graphic artists to work seamlessly with the data and artwork they have already created in 2D illustration programs. Also, a great number of font and clip art libraries are available in Postscript format which provides a tremendous time savings to broadcast video producers, who are typically on extremely tight deadlines, yet require the highest possible quality.
Accurate, with volume and area calculation - for all of its ease of use and freeform creativity, Presenter Professional is accurate to ten decimal places and can give interactive feedback on an object’s volume and surface area, which means industrial designers, packaging designers, and mechanical engineers can use it to quickly and realistically produce designs for the real world. It’s accurate data makes it ideal for interacting with other precision CAD oriented software.
