Computer Graphics World articles from May 2001

Computer Graphics World archives from May 2001

Disruptive Technologies.(Technology Information)
May 1, 2001... The kindest comment one could make about technological developments in the CAD industry over the past couple of years is that they have been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. But that is about to change. Indeed, recent announcements from...

LETTERS.(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2001... Equal Time I enjoyed reading the article "G4 versus PIII" on pg. 62 of the March 2001 issue. Now that Macs have started to ship with the OS X operating system, and the most current top-of-the-line G4 workstations can stand toe to toe with...

CORRECTIONS.(Brief Article)(Correction Notice)
May 1, 2001... On pg. 66 of the March 2001 issue, the RenderDrive RD3000 should have been attributed to its manufacturer, Advanced Rendering Technology, The correct URL for ART and the RenderDrive is www.art-render.com. The URL for Boxx Technologies,...

Fingertip Feedback with CyberForce.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2001... Looking eerily like some man/machine merger of the future, Virtual Technologies' new whole-hand force-feedback device offers a high degree of interactivity for immersive environments. The CyberForce, which is aimed primarily at product...

Optimized Product Creation from Engineous.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2001... Engineous Software's iSight program is what its developers like to call an "exploration engine." Using a suite of design study algorithms in conjunction with parameters and goals supplied by the user, iSight sifts through multiple design...

Adobe After Effects Goes 3D.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2001... For the first time in its history, After Effects, the popular motion graphics and desktop compositing program for film, video, multimedia, and the Web, will offer a 3D compositing environment. Version 5.0 of Adobe Systems' After Effects will...

Top 10 ProCDRS Price/Performers.(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2001... This month, we list the 10 workstation and graphics card combinations that most recently achieved the best price/performance scores per system for the Pro/Designer ProCDRS-03 subset of the SPECviewperf 6.1.2 benchmark. The ProCDRS benchmark is...

In Brief.(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2001... Collaborative design software maker Alventive (Santa Clara, CA) announced that it will spin off its IronCAD division (Atlanta, GA), which is responsible for developing and marketing the IronCAD solid modeler.... SDRC (Cincinnati, OH) has...

PTC Intros Pro/E 2001, Granite One.(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2001... PTC is ushering its "return" to the mechanical CAD market with the release of Pro/Engineer 2001. This looks to be by far the most user-approachable version of Pro/E to date. The interface has been cleaned up and simplified--PTC claims that 40...

Macromedia Updates Freehand.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2001... Freehand 10, the latest version of Macromedia's design software for graphics professionals, features improvements to illustration tools; a new interface that includes tighter integration with Macromedia Flash 5, the company's popular Web...

Rendering at Warp Speed.(Technology Information)
May 1, 2001... A new rendering architecture casts an image-based technique in silicon Image-based rendering is becoming an increasingly popular method for generating virtual interactive representations of natural scenes quickly and efficiently. Rather...

Space-age Scanner.(Technology Information)
May 1, 2001... A new laser scanning technology helps NASA find trouble When it comes to space travel, the heat is on. During each of their Earth-orbiting missions, NASA's four space shuttles are subjected to temperatures ranging from minus 250 degrees...

A Re-industrial Revolution.(Technology Information)
May 1, 2001... Digital technology will enable a return to the one-of-a-kind manufacturing processes of previous centuries A lot of manufacturers are excited about customization these days. Everybody wants to get on the "mass customization" bandwagon. But...

ONE FOR THE AGES.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2001... Though beautifully textured 3D images and 360-degree panning, the newest Myst game immerses players in a world that makes the surreal appear to be real THE OTHERWORLDLY IMAGES in Myst III: Exile, the long-awaited continuation of the...

Immortal Effects.(Company Business and Marketing)
May 1, 2001... FOR THE MUMMY RETURNS, ILM REGENERATED THE MUMMIFIED IMHOTEP AND CONJURED UP THOUSANDS OF HORRIFIC NEW CG CREATURES When a movie rakes in $40 million plus during its opening weekend, what's a studio to do? Ask for a sequel. And that's...

degrees of freedom.(Technology Information)
May 1, 2001... NEW DISPLAY TECHNOLOGIES OFFER UNENCUMBERED VIEWING AND MANIPULATION OF STEREO 3D IMAGES A heightened sense of 3D has been available for some time to wearers of shutter glasses and head-mounted displays, but manufacturers are only starting...

Big Pictures, Little Packages.(Technology Information)
May 1, 2001... NEW 3D COMPRESSION TECHNOLOGIES STRIVE TO ENABLE NETWORK-BASED DELIVERY OF COMPLEX MODELS The challenge of compressing large or complex 3D digital models into a package small enough to be delivered quickly, efficiently, and unscathed...

DUNE BUGS.(Company Business and Marketing)
May 1, 2001... ANIMATORS OF THE SCI-FI SERIES DUNE FIX THE FLAWS IN A LIVE-ACTION SHOOT Nobody likes to work under the constraints of a tight deadline and a small budget. But in television, such limitations are common. "So, when directors and producers...

Exquisite Art.(Technology Information)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2001... The adage "two's company, three's a crowd" does not apply to the digital artists involved in the Digital Exquisite Corpse Project. Since 1997, the trio--Burnell Yow, Larry Parkes, and David Walters--who have never met, have collaborated over...

TOYS 4 U.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
May 1, 2001... A CAD designer uses rapid-prototyping technologies to build customized toys Toys R Us may have the market covered for mass-produced toys. But say you're looking for something different--a doll that looks like your daughter, for instance,...

MAKING THE BAND.(Company Business and Marketing)
May 1, 2001... Aerosmith avatars rock the band's Internet site There's isn't much that the members of the legendary rock band Aerosmith haven't accomplished in the music world. For decades the Boston-based group has been playing to sold-out venues, even...

thinkdesign 6.(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2001... think3 gives its MCAD/CAID tool a facelift Although think3's roots go back more than 20 years, the company entered the US market little more than two years ago, when its flagship product, thinkdesign, was officially born. Coming late to the...

3ds max 4.(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2001... Rendering, special effects highlight Discreet's upgrade The first full update under the Discreet banner of the software that used to be known as Kinetix's 3D Studio Max is 3ds max 4 (now lower-cased like the rest of Discreet's product...

Synergy III and Gloria III.(from ELSA and Nvidia)(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2001... Elsa's Nvidia-based cards Elsa has been in the workstation graphics market for a number of years now. Historically, the company has provided excellent cards at affordable prices. Elsa's latest line represents its association with Nvidia,...

SOFTWARE.(News Briefs)(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2001... DESIGN ENGINEERING MODEL REPAIR WIN/UNIX CADfix for Ansys (Versions 5.6.2 and 5.7) intelligently repairs CAD model geometry for better importation to an engineering simulation process. It works with native CAD or geometry file formats...

HARDWARE.(Industry Trend or Event)(News Briefs)
May 1, 2001... INPUT/OUTPUT GRAPHICS SCANNER WIN/MAC The Expression 1680 graphics scanner is designed for graphic arts, photography, and pre-press production. It has a resolution of 1600 by 3200 dpi, 48-bit color depth, 3.6 Dmax, and a FireWire...

INSIGHT.(Sulzer Carbomedics)(Company Business and Marketing)
May 1, 2001... At the heart of this cardiac visualization is a technique that simulates the interaction between the solid structure of the heart and the blood circulating through it. To visually depict the simulated solid/fluid interaction, Richard Charles, a...