CompuServe Messages

Good to hear that the games are treating you so well. There is this game company upstairs from us called Naughty Dog, and they are using Alias Power Animator running on Indigo 2 Extremes to build 700 face polygon models! A little overkill IMHO, but hey, if money's no object….. I just picked up a freelance job from Toshiba. It's a kind of 'Intel inside' type spot where we fly through the inside of their new VHS deck. Right now I'm building the deck, so I have this dismantled VCR sitting on my dining room table. As far as Voyager goes, we have our CGI mesh in the first, third, and final shots of the opener each week, in addition to episodes. The first one is where the Voyager flies through a solar flare, with the flare created by Santa Barbera Studios, as well as the ship flying through the clouds, with the clouds done on Wavefront by SB Studios as well, and the final jump to warp shot at the end is also our mesh model. All other elements of the opener were done by SB Studios. All other Voyager shots in the opener are the real model done with motion control. As a general rule, any shot of the Voyager rolling or jumping to warp is ours. Another tell tale givaway is if you see illuminated windows on the butt of the ship. The real model dosen't have them because they couldn't fit lights back in that part of the model! I do think that they go to film for international distribution, but all shots are rendered at D1 rez, which I think is 752×480. The Voyager itself was built using a new tool we have called Metaform. It's a kind of intelligent sub-divide routine that will take a blocky primitive mesh and smooth it out to give you a clean organic shape. Once you have the primitive built, you just keep sud-dividing it until it has the refinement you're looking for. I'll never use splines again!!! (besides, LightWave's splines have never been my favorites….) Anyhow…. take care, and if you hear of a PAR somone wants to sell, let me know. Greg