CompuServe Messages

Alek, do you know the people at Animatek? If so, could you ask them to take part in this forum. I have lots of issues to discuss with them regarding World Builder, because I'm not sure if my comments will reach them. I'm trying to use World Builder in a television commercial and we are using multiple software packages (Renderman, Alias, 3d Studio, and World Builder). Maybe you could give them this message, relating to version 0.9. immediate needs/problems: 1) shadow mapping seems to be broken. We get dark parellel lines across the landscape. 2) need source code for all plants to be able to modify the l-systems, l-objects. (Yost Group allows this with Silicon Garden). We need to customize each plant. 3) export of trees to 3ds is not clean. Face normals on leaves are alternately one way, then the next face is the opposite. Mapping is correct on some leave (maybe one third), very wrong on the others. Mapping is not good on trunks of trees and needs to be re-applied. This makes importing a big job – much more than it should be. 4) lack of alpha channel is big problem for 2d compositing with images from other software which lack z-buffer. Z-buffer is nice but need alpha channel too. There is a workaround but it's not ideal – render on single coloured sky with no anti-aliasing, and do a soft-edge chroma-keyed composite with your other images. 5) the super-sampling anti-aliasing method seems like a horribly inefficient and slow method. Can they figure out how to just anti-alias the objects (analytical anti-aliasing)? 6) some of the supplied texture/bump maps don't tile correctly in WB or 3ds. long term wishlist: 1) wind in the trees 2) animatible weather (time of day, clouds etc) 3) blending between shaders on different areas of landscape. For example going from a sand to a rock shader. that's all for now thanks.