Computer Graphics World articles from July 2001

Computer Graphics World archives from July 2001

The Survey Said ...(Industry Trend or Event)(Editorial)
July 1, 2001... a few months ago, the editors of Computer Graphics World decided to get away from it all and spend some quality time together charting a new course for the magazine. At great personal sacrifice, we took off to a resort inn in the lakes region...

LETTERS.(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2001... Apples to Oranges? The Mac G4 vs Pentium III graphics benchmarks as reported on pg. 62 of your March 2001 issue are flawed beyond belief, and should be completely ignored. Two separate issues are at stake here. The first: What are the...

Corrections.(Correction Notice)
July 1, 2001... The price for the Viper si2 solid imaging system that appeared on pg. 71 of the May 2001 issue should have read $179,000. The $799,000 price that appeared is for the company's high-end SLA 7000 system. On pg. 10 of the April 2001 issue, the...

Adobe Goes 3D.(readies Adobe Atmosphere)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... Adobe Systems has entered the realm of real-time Web 3D with Adobe Atmosphere, the publishing company's first Web authoring and viewing tool for interactive 3D worlds. "The fact that Adobe has come out with Atmosphere shows great promise for 3D...

SiteBuilder 3D Converts GIS Data.(MultiGen Paradigm)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... SiteBuilder 3D, a new program from MultiGen-Paradigm, allows users to visualize 2D GIS data in 3D. The software works in conjunction with ESRI's ArcView GIS desktop mapping program. Using data sources such as digital elevation models and...

Alias Emphasizes Usability in Maya 4.(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... For perhaps the first time in the history of the product, ease of use is' the principal new feature touted for Maya 4, the latest version of Alias|Wavefront's flagship modeling and animation tool. Though Maya, the tool of choice for numerous...

Wildcat II 5110 Scorches in AWadvs Tests.(Buyers Guide)
July 1, 2001... This month, we list the 10 workstation and graphics card combinations that recently received the highest scores in the AWadvs-04 (Alias|Wavefront Advanced Visualizer) subset of the SPECviewperf 6.1.2 OpenGL benchmark. The AWadvs-04 benchmark...

EDS.(agrees to acquire SDRC)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... EDS, the majority shareholder of UGS (Maryland Heights, MO), has agreed to acquire SDRC (Cincinnati, OH). UGS is the manufacturer of UGS solid modeling software. SDRC is the vendor for I-deas.

Arius3D.(announces deployment of first color scanning systems)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... Arius3D (Toronto), maker of the scanning technology Foundation, which captures both the color and geometry of objects, has announced the deployment of the company's first color scanning systems in bureaus based in both Utah and Toronto.

Pulse Entertainment.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... Interactive 3D Web developer Pulse Entertainment (San Francisco) has announced the acquistion of Sonicopia (San Francisco), a developer of sound applications and services for interactive media. Pulse has also announced a partnership with...

AMD.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... Chip maker AMD (Sunnyvale, CA) has announced the incorporation of its HyperTransport data bus technology into the new nForce processing architecture from graphics chip and board maker Nvidia. HyperTransport technology enables computer chips...

Updated Rendering for Cinema 4D XL.(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... The latest update to Cinema 4D XL, Maxon Computer's modeling, rendering, and animation package, focuses on radiosity, caustics, and render quality. A completely redesigned render engine in Release 7 uses adaptive oversampling to remove...

New "P3" Designation for Catia.(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... Dassault Systemes has launched Release 7 of Carla Version 5, which includes products from the company's new P3 platform, a designation for high-end, industry-specific tools. The P3 products feature a new interface that allows commands to work...

Raising Textures to New Heights.(Technology Information)
July 1, 2001... An innovative technique adds depth to conventional texture maps Long the de facto standard for adding 2D detail to computer-generated images at minimal computational expense, traditional texture mapping falls flat, literally, when it comes...

Walk This Way.(new physics-based animation)(Technology Information)
July 1, 2001... Physics-based controllers put spring in the step of animated characters While CG researchers and practitioners have had much success in creating characters that appear "real" on first sight, they have been less successful in attempts to...

Sifting Through Volumes.(research on direct volume rendering at the Vienna University of Technology)(Technology Information)
July 1, 2001... A new tool mines volume data for the good stuff The benefits of direct volume rendering in scientific and medical visualization are well known. Because the technique involves mapping all of the volume elements in a given dataset directly...

The Slow Rise of 3D on the Web.(Technology Information)
July 1, 2001... Technology and market drivers are removing barriers and accelerating adoption of 3D on the Web For a number of years now, 3D on the Web has been a presumed "coming thing" for the graphics industry, and many companies placed their bets...

HULL RAISING.(lifting the Kursk from the bottom of the Barents Sea)(Technology Information)
July 1, 2001... ENGINEERS SIMULATE THE RECOVERY OF THE DISABLED RUSSIAN SUBMARINE KURSK For nearly a week last August, the world held its collective breath as international organizations and governments tried to save 118 sailors trapped aboard the...

MAKING HISTORY.(use of computer graphics in films)(Technology Information)
July 1, 2001... TWO FILMS, ONE ANIMATED, THE OTHER LIVE ACTION, SHOWCASE COMPUTER GRAPHICS ART AND ARTISTRY IN NEW WAYS In the early 1990s, two, box office hits opened Hollywood's doors to computer graphics as never before: In 1991, Disney's animated...

STAYING tooned.(creation of Disney's Atlantis; The Lost Empire)(Company Business and Marketing)
July 1, 2001... DISNEY BLENDS 3D GRAPHICS INTO A FLAT-SHADED, COMIC-BOOK STYLE ADVENTURE FILM At first glance, the animated feature Atlantis; The Lost Empire looks like a traditional cel animation from Disney. As those who have seen the movie can attest,...

inside moves.(A.I. Artificial Intelligence)(Technology Information)
July 1, 2001... At ILM, technical directors used custom software to position 120 lights for this Rouge City entrance. Everything in the scene was created with computer graphics. When the magic tricks that visual effects wizards perform are successful, the...

virtual course / real sweat.(Technology Information)
July 1, 2001... VR APPLICATIONS TAKE THE TEDIUM OUT OF INDOOR EXERCISE IMAGINE that it's February 26, and winter has already gone on too long. The temperature at 7:00 am is hovering around 25 degrees F, but your legs are feeling spongy and you need a...

Ars Electronica 2001.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 1, 2001... Two animations created by students at SUPINFOCOM, a school in Valenciennes, France, join Pixar Animation Studio's "For the Birds" as finalists for the coveted Golden Nica award for Computer Animation/Visual Effects in Prix Ars Electronica's...

A NEW BREED.(Nick Wirth's RoboDog)(Technology Information)
July 1, 2001... Engineers create a digitally designed watchdog Establishing a new breed of a dog, especially one that can perform specific functions, can be a decades-long challenge. For instance, German pound keeper Louis Dobermann carefully bred his...

REALITY ART.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 1, 2001... Cel characters in a museum installation yearn for a better life in a 3D world Fueled by viewers who have become jaded by the predictable story lines characteristic of most television fare these days, reality shows such as Survivor, Boot...

FUR REAL.(TV commercial featuring computer generated panda bear)(Technology Information)
July 1, 2001... Digital groomers style a new coat for a panda model The commercial is anything but subtle. Footage of various endangered species flashes across the TV screen as Bob Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm" plays in the background. While the...

IntelliStation M Pro.(IBM workstation)(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... IntelliStation M Pro PRICE AS REVIEWED: $3874 SYSTEM CONFIGURATION AS REVIEWED: 1.7GHz P4 processor; 18.2GB hard disk; 512MB of RAMBUS memory; Diamond Fire GL2 card with 64MB of memory; 48x CD-ROM drive; flat-panel monitor IBM ...

Revit 3.0.(Revit Technology CAD package)(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... Revit 3.0 PRICE: $199 per month MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Windows 98/NT/2000; Pentium II; 128MB of RAM, 100MB of free disk space Revit Technology Corp. www.revit.com infoNOW 76 Savvy software buyers steer clear of "1.0"...

IMAGE PROCESSING SYSTEM.(Eyeon Digital Fusion 3.1)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN/MAC/LINUX Digital Fusion version 3.1 compositing and special effects software has a flexible flow system that includes definable groups in which tools can be expanded and collapsed and cut, copied, or pasted as an entire group within that...

DESIGN DATA CAPTURE.(Vistagy EnCapta)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN/IRIX/UNIX EnCapta provides CAD users with tools for capturing and communicating specialized non-geometric design data for product definition. Customizable templates allow users to capture separately stored information such as design...

E-MANUFACTURING.(Tecnomatrix Technologies eBOP for eMPOwer)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN A new tool for eMPower software, eBOP, defines the relationship among parts, manufacturing resources, and manufacturing operations for Web-based manufacturing operations. Files are stored on a server to be accessed by different users in the...

CAD SYSTEM.(Nemetschek VectorWorks 9)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN/MAC VectorWorks 9 supports a 64-bit floating point coordinate system for a more stable core CAD engine. It can read and write native AutoCAD 2000 files and is backward compatible with AutoCAD 2.5. It includes a spelling checker; a callout...

MECHANICAL COMPONENTS.(VariCAD 8.0)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN/LINUX VariCAD 8.0 has a redesigned GUI. It includes libraries of mechanical parts, unbending surface development, and tools for working with non-graphical information. It offers calculations of standard mechanical components. The software...

GIF ANIMATION.(Ulead Systems GIF Animator 5.0)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... WIN GIF Animator 5 is a standalone GIF animation tool that automatically updates animations with changes to frames in an external image editor such as PhotoImpact, Photoshop, or Paint Shop Pro. An object-based model allows quick creation of...

3D CONTENT AUTHORING.(Kaydara Filmbox 3.0)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN/MAC/IRIX/LINUX Filmbox 3.0 real-time, 3D content authoring and delivery software has new workflow enhancements designed to reduce the setup time for producing animated characters. The character engine has been improved to cover a complex...

FEA TOOL.(FemLab 2.1 finite-element analysis package for chemical engineering)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN/MAC/IRIX/LINUX/UNIX. A new chemical engineering module for computation of problems in which components of the solution vary on different time scales is included in FemLab 2.1, a finite element package for simulations of physical phenomena...

IMAGE PROCESSING TOOLBOX.(Image Processing Toolbox 3 for MatLab)(Product Announcement)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... WIN/LINUX/UNIX Image Processing Toolbox 3 for MatLab includes new tools for performing mathematical morphology operations on binary and grayscale images, with functions such as dilation, erosion, opening and closing, watershed transform,...

TV PRODUCTION SYSTEM.(CyberSet 4.0)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... CyberSet 4.0 television production tools include a GUI for animation authoring and real-time control. The company's previous Main Control Module and Animation Module have been combined into one software program, providing a single tool for...

NOTEBOOK VIDEO EDITING.(Avid Technology Xpress DV 2.0)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN Xpress DV version 2.0 software allows video editing on notebook computers. It includes new editing management features such as separate audio and video marks, copy source locators, and a find bin command. New audio features include solo...

EFFECTS PLUG-INS.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN/MAC Grain Surgery is a suite of plug-ins for Adobe After Effects 4.1 and 5.0. It includes a filter to remove grain for noise reduction that relies on statistical estimation and signal processing techniques rather than on blurring or...

NEW TOASTER.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN The Video Toaster 2 desktop video effects, editing, and live switching system is PC-compatible and allows real-time nonlinear editing of compressed and uncompressed media, as well as Internet streaming of edited productions or live events....

WEB-BASED ANIMATION.(MindAvenue's Axel)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN/MAC Axel is an authoring tool and viewer that allows artists to model, animate, texture, light, add interactivity, and publish to the Web. Its modeling capabilities for 3D characterization include high-level relations and constraints and...

VRML VIEWER.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN Contact version 5.0 is a browser plug-in that allows the visualization of 3D objects and navigation in the company's Virtual Worlds. It allows drag and drop to move objects around in the virtual world and import objects from outside the...

CHARACTER CREATION.(Tulip Interactive System)(Technology Information)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... WIN The Tulip Interactive System includes a high-speed animation authoring system and a streaming 3D player for creating and viewing interactive digital characters on the Internet. Character development is modeled through normal computer...

WEB GRAPHICS.(WireFusion 2.1)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WireFusion 2.1 is a drag-and-drop visual programming tool for creating interactive presentations and animations in the form of Java applets without knowledge of Java. It allows the user to handle image-processing filters of 2D graphics and 3D...

CONTROL GLOVE.(Essential Reality P5)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN/MAC The P5 glove-like peripheral controller is an ergonomically designed hand device that controls software in 3D space through hand gestures. It uses sensor an,d tracking technology to provide 6-degrees-of-freedom tracking for video game...

FACIAL CAPTURE.(Vicon Motion Systems Vicon 6 virtual reality device)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... The Vicon 6 facial capture system includes six-million-pixel Mcam cameras, a datastation, and a software suite that includes Producer Pro and Face RT. The software works directly with Max, Maya, LightWave, and Soft-image to let animators apply...

OBJECT EXTRACTOR.(3DV Systems ZCam)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... ZCam is a color studio camera add-on that can extract objects from the scene and separate foreground and background without a bluescreen. It allows video enhancements and special effects that could only be created in post production to be used...

3D IMAGING.(3Dmetrics 3D Flash imaging system)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN The 3D Flash precision digital imaging system records 3D images of live subjects with a single shot. An electronic flash strobes a coded, white-light pattern onto the subject, and an algorithm decodes the data to provide the necessary...

FULL-BODY CAPTURE.(Meta Motion's Gypsy 3 motion capture system)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN The Gypsy 3 motion capture system uses Filmbox software for real-time display of an actor's body, face, and hand motions for a rendered 3D character. It also allows filtering, blending, and editing of the motion capture data. The device has...

DIGITAL FILM WORKSTATION.(3DBoxx R1 workstations from Boxx Technologies)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... WIN/LINUX The 3DBoxx R1 workstations for the entertainment and digital film industries are based on the 1.4GHz AMD Athlon processor. The workstations are dual-processor capable with the AMD 762 chipset. They have up to 4GB of 266MHz DDR with...

VIDEO EDITING WITH DVD.(MacroSystem Digital Video AG's Casablanca Kron)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... The Casablanca Kron is a standalone nonlinear digital video editor with DVD-authoring capability and an optical DVD writer. It has an internal 40GB hard drive that provides up to 170 minutes of native DV storage, more than six hours of DV...

INSIGHT.(University of California/San Diego's Center for Astrophysics and Space Science conducting plasma and magnetic fields research)(Technology Information)
July 1, 2001... gone with the wind. That's what happens to the vast structures of plasma and magnetic fields called coronal mass ejections (CME) that are expelled from the sun into the heliosphere. Propelled by the solar wind, the structures spiral through the...