CompuServe Messages

I just got back from Orlando after two days of being blown away by all the new toys that will keep me broke for another year. <BG> Here is a quick summary of what really excited and surprised me. (no special order) The biggest shock of all was the display of 3DSr4. My first exposure to this was when I walked up to the Autodesk booth and saw Gary Yost proudly demonstrating some of the newest features in r4. Well, so much for Autodesk's policy about keeping this stuff a big secret until its released!. I asked Gary why and he explained that with all the competition 3DS must move along at a faster pace. My candid opinion of this is two fold. First I'm very excited at having some of the new features demonstrated that Gary has fully listed in his announcement here on the forum and will welcome these additions. They will make keyframing a breeze for both machinery and character animation. From my brief exposure to r4 I would say that not much change to the basic look and feel of the shell is in r4; it really has to do with an expansion of the IPAS interface, now to be called "plug-ins" On this basis I would form my second opinion of r4 that r4 is really not a radical release change that r2 was over r1 and r3 was over r2 but more like a collection of very advanced "plug-ins" to r3. So, the naming of this version as a release 4 seems to be more of a marketing hook than a major shift in the look and feel of the 3DS shell. I spoke with several forum friends at the show and many had agreed this was the case. For me, I don't care what Autodesk wants to call it, even if they wanted to call it release 5.0 to be like the competition similar to what MS did, I just welcome the modularity of the 3DS package. The open architecture design of 3DS is maturing very nicely, with some very high end 3rd party effects. Third party development is where Yost can expand his product while keeping the complexity of the software manageable with his small development group. Wish list items not realized in this r4 version most likely have been reserved for plug-in development. IMHO, r4 is the beginning of the demise of major 18 month waits for new features. Now, the plugin concept will allow us to custom build our animation workstation around our needs. DPS-PAR The newest software release was demonstrated to be available in a couple of weeks. I was very excited that everyone of my wish list items was put into this release. There will be wild card support for file selection, non-destructive join, GPI moved to the front panel with a variable trigger rate. More features in the scripting of join and a nice time lapse video feature fully implemented. There is also support for two IDE drives now and they don't have to be identical. You can even use a slower drive for files not requiring motion. Second there will be a sound/video sync software which will allow the animation to be linked with a wav file in windows. Looks like I'll have to install windows and a sound card on my PAR machine now!. The wave file is addressed from your regular drive so that it can be played back without interfereing with the performance of the video file. I asked about the quality improvement for the near future and I was told that this still depends on the development of faster IDE's. As they are released we can all expect to just increase the BLF from the current limits with the Mic 2200 series. The PAR hardware is currently capable of the lower compression ratios of the MAX and targa 2000 but we PAR owners are currently at the mercy of the drive limitation. Speaking of the MAX: Matrox finally has it working and it really looked good. If fact, I thought it looked as good as the PAR on animation. They didn't demonstrate real life live video capture but instead were showing an animation video captured and played back. As those of us who own the PAR have observed, the grabbing of real live video generates more artifacts in textures such as flesh tones and real life images than seems to show up in animation whether or not it is computer live of video tape grabbed. I was disappointed that they didn't show this in their demo. I didn't question whether the MAX is released (shipping) yet nor whether the priceing has changed. At any rate, The MAX did look quite good and I'm sure Matrox will sell a few to those that feel they need to spend more to do compressed DDR recording. I spoke with Martin Foster and Alan Iglesias and they felt that the MAX looked just a tad better than the PAR. While it may have to them, I require a much more radical difference in quality to justify the greater complexity of the MAX system. One thing was certain, neither the MAX, nor the PAR, came close to the quality I saw on the Abekas DDR. Note: This is a demo wish list to DPS and Matrox: In your demos, please refrain from using any animation renderings that are not field rendered. These animations such as those from the toaster appear jerky and almost strobe like which people will judge to be a quality of the hardware you're trying to sell when it is indeed a function of the rendering process. A new contender in the compressed DDR race is FAST's new Digital Player Recorder. While this system is really intended for NLE editing it will also do what the DDR's, including the Abekas, will do. It will expand the Fast Video Machine to NLE editing with a user definable compression from NO COMPRESSION to as high as 100:1 using the 4:2:2 digital vidio processing on two video channels. The cost of the system (DPR) will run around $13,000 with 9G. of storage, fully loaded for broadcast betacam SP quality. The DPR concept uses a self contained SCSI port and splits the fields of the video frame between two HD's to achieve the high through put for zero compression DDR. The product is expected to ship in Europe in Sept. The demo was quite impressive. It would seem to me that if one is considering an Abekas or Accom technology and also needs to do conventional video editing the FAST system is a good bet. It is the only editing system that can mix seamlessly conventional machine control, time line linear, EDL, off line, On line and soon NLE and DDR technology in one package. There are other devices in the works to further expand the FAST into the high end broadcast arena but are receiving low priority right now due to an all out push to get the DPR shipping by Sept. I additionaly enjoyed my tour of all the high tech stuff and was entertained by the VR demos and 3D televisions and a holographic work table using a VR glove and set of glasses (no, not a helmet). Using a tool like a 3D wacom tablet one could draw fully real time rendered objects in 3D and move around the object's holographic image suspended above the work table. Well, there was much more but the above is what excited me the most and I'm sure you will get many more reports what's happening in the SIGGRAPH world. The Adesk party was great because I got the opportunity to meet many of my forum friends and was only disappointing in that some of you couldn't make it or that I just missed you last night. We all missed you and try harder next year to BE THERE!