#Games & 3DS vs. LW3D
30 messages in this thread
Bruce,
Wavefront, at least, is an SGI package that is very expensive. However,
what you can do with far exceeds LW capability in certain areas. For
example, there are optional "data capture" features tied to the invers
kinematics system, so that you can simulate a physical system in a 3D
model environment, change some load and spring constants, for example, the
view an animation of the result while generating data from various watch
points on a structure. (At least the president of WaveFront told me this
was possible).
Another demo I saw, the had a segment of race footage – an S turn in an
indy car track. They were able to acutaully build a "ray gun blast" that
caused one of the cars in the filmed footage to, in effect, disappear
right out of the footage in near realtime by some very easy to use moving
matte/compsositing techniques. Then, in near realtime rendering speed
they composited a cartoon car into the same footage.
If you need accurate physical action, or very high end FX on short notice,
LW cannot stand up to these packages. This is not a cut to LW. LW is
adequate for 95% of the everyday andimation you'll ever need, and that
percentage grows with each release. But, LW is also a 1-2 man effort
whereas these other programs have whole departments that work on one
feature set or sub-package (like the renderer, the animator, the modeller,
the material editor, the kinematic simulator, etc).
So, near-realtime rendering, especially in "draft modes", high end
physical simulations, easy WYSIWYG compositing, gases, particle fields,
etc. are what you pay for. And like everything in life, if you have the
time and talent, a little extra work and Lightwave can save you money and
still give you 95% of what the 'big guy' have (except the speed).
wmc – via Autopilot!
Wayne, Thanks, point taken, there will probably always be a spectrum of
animation platforms and softwares from the low to high end. I got a chance to
talk to someone in a contract design firm that does work for the auto industry.
They are trying to bring some (or all) of the prototype work into the computer
and are using the Wavefronts, Alias, etc… This would allow them to examine
the car visually for design flaws before building the prototype. With a
significant leap you could see these firms interfacing the animation software
with the structural design software and animate a realistic crash test on a
virtual car. Maybe, that gets pretty messy, might be cheaper to slam a
prototype into a wall.
Anyway there will probably alway be things like this pushing the envelope
with the result that there will always be top tier animation progs with exotic
expensive features.
Bruce
Bruce,
Actually, your concept is what is done in lots of destructive test cases.
The anim/model is done first and many runs done to minimize the number of
physical items that have to be destroyed to prove the design.
Another area it is used is to build up a model from all the scale parts
input from the CAD folks, animated it for demo and sales, and create the
pictures for training, user and maintenence manuals, and create videos of
the product "working in situ" before you even build unit 1. Take your
orders from sales generated this way, send parts drawing to the CAM folks
and build away.
John Deere recently did this with a new modle tractor. All the manuals
were complete before the production run started, and the design to ship
time was nearly halved by using animation simulation and the graphics from
it in the docs and sales literature and demos. There is even a buzz word
for this typ of stuff – "creative visualization and virutla modelling". I
suspect this will rapidly become the norm in almost all heavy
manufacturing situations by 2000. Lots of work for animators with
engineering backgrounds, I think.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Virutla, huh? <g>
Paul
Whadeyesay??
Virtual Prototyping and Creative Visualization is what I SHOULD have said
the buzz words were.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Alias was created especially for the high-end industrial design market.
This is precisely why it is a great modeler and lousy animator.
Grant Boucher – Amblin Imaging
"It's hard to believe grown-ups do this for a living."
Hi Grant!
Actually, Alias has a good animator module. It's problems arise from one
having too many options and too much power for creating a scene.
GT
Actaully, it takes five steps to keyframe a single motion and has a
convoluted means of path alignment/editing for motion. The Modeler is
PRIMO, however, but even Wavefront was easier to get things moving.
Grant Boucher – Amblin Imaging
"It's hard to believe grown-ups do this for a living."
The reason it takes five steps, if it's really that many, is because it
has too many options. Thats really it's only shortcomming. Trust me
though, if I had a choice between the two, I would pick 3D Studio! <g>
GT
"On the white meat side of the building."
I'm sure glad the both of (Grant & Greg) carry on this silly argument even
when you are not at work. It's enough that I have to sit and listen to you
two at work, but it's such a huge pleasure when I log on and see that it
is still going on here.
Thanks for making my day.
<g>
JG
Yeah well you know, this debate is still not over yet. Care to join?
GT
I do love the chromatic aberation and volumetric lighting style effects of
Alias. They are totally awesome and there are many more of them…ain't
no IPAS modules…
Grant Boucher – Amblin Imaging
"It's hard to believe grown-ups do this for a living."
But for the price of just the Wavefront s/w with the features you list, a
person could get 4 Raptors and LW software. You'd have nearly the
eqivelent h/w of an SGI Indigo. With this kind of h/w available I'd say
there will be some pretty cool RT abilities added to LW.
Remmember when Toasters 3.0 s/w started to ship? They called LW 3.0
"Wavefront Killer" :^)
….John
John,
There are things LW can't do especially in the area of kinematics and data
gathering from watchpoints and mechanical simulation modelling. Basically
only an engineering house would really need this most of the time, and for
that purpose no amount of Raptor/LW sets will help. But that is the niche
in the niche. For general purpose animation and modelling, LW is still the
bang-for-buck leader, IMHO. But if you have to take formulas and boundary
conditions as simulation inputs and put out data for the engineers, CAD
and CAM folks, LW won't do at this point. Wavefront has much better
layering and compositing control from what I could see, too. So if you
spend a majority of your effort in mixed media (not mulit media)
production, (animation elements added to real-time footage) Wavefront
might be worth the investment from an ease and speed perspective. It will
be interesting to see what the Flyer/LW combination can do in this
respect, however.
Basically, if you can afford the Cadillac SLS, more power to ya. But the
Geo will get ya there just the same…
wmc – via Autopilot!
Wayne,
While kinimatics and mechanical simulation aren't currently in LightWave,
there's a program called Newtons Law in the works that will add these
features and many others to LW. They expect to ship beta copies about July
1 with the final release version expected a couple of weeks later. If this
software works as well as their tech support people tell me it sounds very
impressive. Of course we won't know how well it works till it ships.
For the independant artist/game programmer on a budget LightWave provides
a lot of bang for the buck. Using suggested list prices, $1300 would buy
you LightWave 3.2, Newtons Law (or DMM), Sparks, Forge and Essence 1&2.
This leaves you plenty of cash to spend on objects, more memory, video
cards, ect. before you get to 3DS's list price.
With LightWaves ARexx support I suspect we'll be seeing add-on products to
add advanced features to LW.
Jeff H…
Jeff,
I talked to Anti-Gravity when I saw the Newton's Law thing. (Having a
degree in Physics and being in the anim biz at the moment, those types of
names catch your eye…). If, as you say, it is as talked up, Real3D
bites the dust as a LW competitor (excepr possibley in the materials
editor arena) along with some PC animation packages.
Basically, from what I've seen, you go from LW to stuff on the RISC
workstations. Messing with stuff in between (like 3DS) seems to me to be
a lot of money for maybe a few different features in a whole lot more
complex UI with not much more advantage. So it seems to me that if you
get to a point where LW feels like it is holding you back, you have to go
to Wavefront, or something in that category, rather than some of the
MAC/Pentium/PC entries.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Wayne,
Real 3D is a LW competitor? That's news to me and I've had Real 3D2 for
quite a while. ;^) Although Real has some really neat features I find them
so confusing that I seldom use them. While I can create nice stills with
Real 3D2, when it comes to animation I usually just weasel some time on a
friends Toaster and use LW. (6 days to 3.2 :^) )
I know what you mean about going from LW to workstation software. A friend
of mine has a Toaster and an SGI. I like LightWave a lot but it's sure not
as much fun as Vertigo. Of course it's not $9000 either. ;^)
By the way, if you want more info on Newton's Law call Cybernetica at
1-800-697-8667. They can mail or fax you a press release that lists all
the major features.
Jeff H…
I think Real3D is a competitor only in the sense that it seems pretty
popular in Norther Europe and to some extent in Canada. And I only
mentioned it because some of its adherants think it is superior because of
the inverse kinematics and full ray-trace capability.
I have it too. Its in the closet. I haven't even loaded it since I got
ADos 2.1 on my machines. The only part I found interesting at all was the
materials editor. The version I had was so buggy, most of the other stuff
didn't work. (I found out afterware that they had been selling an early
beta version at NAB 93. At least that was what their tech support
charaterized the version I got there once I finally called then after 4
weeks of trying to work tutorials, and using up half a legal pad
documenting all the document errors and bugs. Sorta killed my enthusiasm
for it).
wmc – via Autopilot!
Wayne,
I suppose I can understand why Real 3D has a large following. It outputs
some very nice pictures if you can handle the learning curve. (I can't)
I started doing animation tutorials on LightWave shortly after I got Real
3D and kind of got used to that program. I still use Real 3D once in a
while, but I usually have to stumble around the menus a bit till I figure
out where everything is again.
I guess I was lucky when I got it. I got the upgrade before I found any of
the bugs in the first copy I had.
Even with all the cool features that Real has I've got a feeling that
LightWave 3.2 is going to be bad for their sales. ;^)
Jeff H…
Jeff,
LW is MUCH easier to learn and get good results from, that is for sure. I
got Real 3D because, at the time, there wasn't even talk of dynamics or
reverse kinematics for LW, and I thought it would be good for those
occasional mechanical system animations I do. But, now that there is DMM,
Newton's Law and a third dynamics package that a fellow at NAB told me
would be read for LW in August, there is no really compelling reason for
me to even do the 2.6 (or whatever it is) upgrade.
wmc – via Autopilot!
4 Raptors have EIGHT R4400 processors, meaning you have a LOT more
rendering horepower than a ONE R4400 processor INDY or INDIGO for the same
money.
Grant Boucher – Amblin Imaging
"It's hard to believe grown-ups do this for a living."
<<<ut for the price of just the Wavefront s/w with the features you list, a
person could get 4 Raptors and LW software. You'd have nearly the
eqivelent h/w of an SGI Indigo. With this kind of h/w available I'd say
there will be some pretty cool RT abilities added to LW>>>
Oh, com'on! "Nearly the equivalent????" 4 Raptors probably equals more like 6
Indigo's. Maybe someone out there with more money than sense has enough
Indigo's to do a render-off. Create the same scene file, same effects, and
let's see how many Raptors it takes to beat one Indigo. Then again, we may
have to wait until there's a common application, like LW.
Don
>Wavefront, at least, is an SGI package that is very expensive. However,
>what you can do with far exceeds LW capability in certain areas.
We have demoed Wavefront and were not impressed…the current
TDI/Wavefront hybrid is not useful in the high end film and broadcast
animation market (except maybe for logos). We like SoftImage as an
animator and Alias as a Modeler, though…
> For example, there are optional "data capture" features tied to the
>invers kinematics system, so that you can simulate a physical system in a
>3D model environment, change some load and spring constants, for example,
>the view an animation of the result while generating data from various
>watch points on a structure. (At least the president of WaveFront told me
>this was possible).
Not in the versions we have seen…but it will be possible in the future.
Also, these features (and more) are available for LightWave, but you'll
have to pay Nutopia for the rights to their in-house proprietary software
(if they are selling :}).
>Another demo I saw, the had a segment of race footage – an S turn in an
>indy car track. They were able to acutaully build a "ray gun blast" that
>caused one of the cars in the filmed footage to, in effect, disappear
>right out of the footage in near realtime by some very easy to use moving
>matte/compsositing techniques. Then, in near realtime rendering speed
>they composited a cartoon car into the same footage.
>That's horsepower for you! Everyday the price goes down and the
>performance gets faster..don't you love it.
>If you need accurate physical action, or very high end FX on short
>notice, LW cannot stand up to these packages. This is not a cut to LW.
Yes it is.
>LW is adequate for 95% of the everyday andimation you'll ever need, and
>that percentage grows with each release.
Yeah, I guess Steven Spielberg only demands everyday animation jobs from
us. And Robocop, Babylon V, Star Trek, Viper, Hercules, etc. etc.
> But, LW is also a 1-2 man effort whereas these other programs have whole
>departments that work on one feature set or sub-package (like the
>renderer, the animator, the modeller, the material editor, the kinematic
>simulator, etc).
Amazing how a 1-2 man effort is still able to be not only catching up with
but surpassing those whole departments. Maybe Allen and Stuart need
another raise.
>So, near-realtime rendering, especially in "draft modes", high end
>physical simulations, easy WYSIWYG compositing, gases, particle fields,
>etc. are what you pay for.
Most of these features are not necessary for 99.9% of all high end effects
shots, as production prefers shortcuts to accuracy. But they would be
nice.
> And like everything in life, if you have the time and talent, a little
>extra work and Lightwave can save you money and still give you 95% of
>what the 'big guy' have (except the speed).
Raptors give us the speed we need. And like everything else in life, it's
not the hardware it's the people using it.
Remember that Alias and SGI did not have the render quality or options to
do SeaQuest (even the latest version still cannot duplicate even our
simplest effects, simply because its fog algorithm is useless).
I would love to see LightWave running on an Indy, but I would rather save
a few tens of thousands of dollars and see it running on a realistically
priced MIPS machine like the Raptor or a multi-060 processor based Amiga
(running faster and cheaper).
If you hadn't guessed I am trying to start a spirited debate not a flame
:}
There are 2 Replies.
Grant Boucher – Amblin Imaging
"It's hard to believe grown-ups do this for a living."
I'd rather see it running on the Indy myself….
GT
in "The Mythical Man-Month" it is made clear why an an inspired 1-3 man
team can out perform an entire department when it comes to software
development. Allen and Stuart don't even have to deal with NewTek much,
since they don't live in Topeka.
Grant,
My thrust was mainly not for broadcast as for physical systems work (you
know, the 'virtual prototyping and creative visualization' engineering
types).
As for the Raptor, again, in and engineering environement you would be
hard-pressed to find a manager who would sign up to by a $14K renderer
when he could, for the same money get, say, some variety of
Indigo/Sparc/Apollo that would give the ability to run other general
purpose programs besides just the animation package. Unlike your
situation, many of us have furious periods of animation interspersed with
periods of report and proposal preperation, accounting, job tracking,
print media add prep… So Raptor gets interesting when DOn starts talkng
bout other apps running on it. I even like the idea of 2 CPU doing LW
renders while the other two are running another appliaction.
wmc – via Autopilot!
<<<So Raptor gets interesting when DOn starts talkng
bout other apps running on it. I even like the idea of 2 CPU doing LW
renders while the other two are running another appliaction.>>>
Phil Kurz is here specifically to run down other applications to run native on
future incarnations of the Raptor. As for one system that can render and run
apps, that sounds like a good plan. I suppose if I were interested in such a
system I'd be making plans to go to Siggraph to see what I could find.
Don
Don,
So, ya haven't recoverd from NAB yet, eh? Gotta send poor ole Phil to
wuther in the summer heat. :^}
Elastic Reality might be a candidate. I know they have both SGI and Mac
versions. Seems like an NT version would not be an inordinately difficult
port.
wmc – via Autopilot!
I think if you ask Don, he'll let you know that Deskstation can prepare
complete workstation solutions for you…which will run any Windows N/T
application and more cool stuff on the way…
Don…start selling…:}
Grant Boucher – Amblin Imaging
"It's hard to believe grown-ups do this for a living."