CompuServe Thread

The biggest difference between the big 3D packages and programs like LightWave are: 1. The Price 2. Volume of features 3. They run on real computers 4. Did I mention the price…….? Seriously though, the biggest difference is that high end packages have levels of performance that are orders of magnitude greater than your average desktop app. Because they all run on SGI workstations, they have the horsepower to do truely incredible things on a nearly real-time basis. It's not uncommon to be able to rotate a 3D shaded model in Wavefront or Alias for example in real time while making modeling or lighting adjustments to it. The most specific advantage would be the speed at which you can accomplish your work. This is important in a production environment, as time is money. Film resolution images can be manipulated effortlessly on these machines, and because SGI's offer so much CPU horsepower, you will discover many little esoteric features in the software packages that run on them; features that would bring a desktop system to it's knees. Major F/X houses also do much of the development for these packages, ILM being the biggest. Fortunately, desktop apps have found their way into major F/X houses, with LightWave being to most prolific. This is good news for the average user, as what defines a desktop workstation primarly is affordability, and that's what the Toaster is all about. There will soon be time when LightWave users will be able to do some of the real high-end type stuff found in SGI type software, but before that happens the cost of SGI like horsepower will have to come down, as it's current platform is hoplessly underpowered.

Well, where do I begin? SoftImage comes in several flavors, some starting around six thousand dollars all the way up to sixty thousand dollars. Each module is an upgrade, or you can buy each all at once. Several of my friends have used SI(softimage) longer and more often than I have….I.E., I don't think I could get a job where I'd have to use it tomorrow… but here's what I know… SI's strong feature is its "CHARACTER MODULE." This is where all the really neat stuf happens. For example, LW's bones look the same as SI's "CHAINS." SI allows the user, after selecting chains, to click a start and ending position for each link. The ending position of the first link is the beginning of the second, and so on. Now, Chains have the ability to be controlled via keyframes, thru Dynamics (wind, gravity, etc), and by Inverse Kinematics. I.K. is a key to the Character module. For example, as you know, flexing a leg now in LW involves placing the pivot point at the top of each segmet, where a natural joint would exist. By turning on I.K., instead of having to keyframe the top segment, and then the lower segment, you would pull on the end of the chain in the lower segment, and the upper follows, rotating around its pivot or chain's pivot. Now the cool part…RESTRAINTS. These allow the user a unique way to contol movement. Let's use our leg example above. We will add a foot into the workarea. The foot is made a constraint. Now, even though the foot isn't connected to the leg segment, the leg is forced to point (via the bottom of the last chain) toward the foot. Now, as the character walks, the foot always ( until it is rotated on its own) always stays in its orginal rotation position… but the leg follows. So, for this guy to walk up some stairs…. well, now in LW, you'd build up a Hiarc'y and move the figure to its first position on the stairs. Then, after repositioning each segment (or bone) to keep the torso upright, you have the second position, and so on… ..well, in SI, the legs are constrained to the feet. You pull the first foot up onto the first step, the leg follows. You keyframe. You pull the second foot up to the next position, adjust the fine position of the first leg and keyframe, etc….SO EASY! What gets really sharp is when you constrain seperate parts of the body to other parts of the body. Then, as you move the legs, it is possible to make the rest of the body "balance out" as a real body would do in the real world. A dancer can kick forward, and its upper body bends forward to keep from falling over! (Well, it wouldn't really fall over… wait… maybe you could set up a scene to do that…. hmmmmmmm) You can also, if you place two chains in a tube made from mesh, set up the program to flex the tube at the bending point. It looks like muscle is under the skin! Hey, I'm typing this live. Here's a question, how many would want to see an article in LWPRO, or VTU on SoftImage vs. Lightwave. Sortof a "this is what we'd like," rather than "bad LW for not being SI." Let me know. SI is a 24-365 program. You'd have to use it 24 hours a day 365 days a year to really get into it…. then there'd be a new upgrade when you're done! The real difference in the two is the platform they run on. The Amiga just needs to come with two RISC (r4400's ???) processors, and then we'd all see a change! ALL FOR NOW!

Jerry, I'm a Mac user who is interested in the Amiga but has never tried Lightwave. I have also never used the SGI programs…. So what can I contribute to this conversation? Hmmmm… Well last summer a dealer here in NY hosted a series of in depth demos by Alias, SoftImage, and Waverfront (at the time I was considering switching to SGI). I went to them all and was blown away by their realtime capabilities. For instance in the Alias PowerAnimator demo they had a smooth rendered sphere on the screen, and could draw a spline on it's surface and then cut out a section all in realtime. They could also apply a texture and once again move it around in realtime until it was positioned correctly. PowerAnimator has some nice atmospheric effects also. You can shine rays of light through fog without having to cheat using cones etc. You can simulate gravity, magnetism, "blow" things around with wind etc. One nice modelling feature was the ability to take an object (a sphere for instance) and push & pull parts of it (like clay) into whatever weird shape you want…all in realtime. They created a detailed face very quickly this way. They also created a killer whale the same way; defined an undulating path (sine wave shaped) for it with a spline; then animated it along the path…the cool thing was that when it came to peaks & dips in the path, it would actually flex the way a real killer whale would…in realtime (wireframe)! There are also nice inverse kinematics features, animatible procedural textures, and a nice randomize feature in the timeline that would be great for doing things like flocks of birds, bubbles etc. This was all just in PowerAnimator. Wavefront had realtime particle effects, SoftImage had great animation features like being able to modulate objects movement from a microphone hooked up to the computer etc etc etc. Alas I will stick with my Mac for the time being. Even though these packages are getting more reasonable, the hardwear is still up there (a fully loaded Indy packs a lot of bang for the buck, but it's still very costly and SGI also makes you pay a high yearly fee for technical support). Long winded enough?????? Charles Brush P.S. What is a Raptor????!!! Is this a code word for the Screamer, perhaps a baby Screamer?? I'm confused!

Neil, Sounds like a great account you landed with the bank; I wish I had the artistic ability to do 2D animations! And you're right: your present job sounds like a LOT more fun than your previous… <g> What kind of equipment are you using now ?? Jerry