#3D from a master
Well Gary, someone finally did it! A really awesome 3D program for the PC
for under $500! I just bought Will VInton's PLAYMATION (CLAYMATION fame!)
3D program which is specifically designed for 3D character animation. He
uses the same technique as his claymation characters, that is, flexible
spines. It is tivial to make a teapot jump and twist its spout. Rendering
is ray-traced and sucks compared to 3DS, but what a nice addition to the
graphic artists library. I paid $349 and am really impressed. Something you
guys might consider is their modeller technique. real-time flexible splines
like Alias stuff. They are using a really fast spline algorithm (like the
one my friend at UCI invented, remember, Dan wasn't interested!). You can
take an object and twist it sorta real-time. Oh yea, it is a Windows app
and runs completely compatibly across MAC, IBM and Amiga platforms. So
folks in all three arenas can swap goodies without loss. Pretty neat stuff.
As far as I can tell so far, it only utputs 320×200 though. Their output
support is pretty weak (rendering, video modes, 24bit, etc.) They do have
24 bit output but the video I saw was horrible rendering, probably due to
the slow ray-tracing they are doing. Anyway, just though you might want to
look into it!
-Doug