Viz 4: autodesk's architectural design program balances myriad features. (reviews).(Evaluation)

ARCHITECTURAL design demands a lot from graphics software. Construction drawings that communicate architects' intentions to building contractors form the basis of the contracts and municipal approvals needed to build a building. Whether these drawings are created directly in 2D digital form, or derived from a 3D computer model or virtual building, architectural CAD programs capable of accurately producing them are complex and specialized. Architects also need realistic pre-construction simulations of building appearance, whether for internal design analyses, sharing with clients or others on the design team, or presenting to audiences of potential investors or donors, future occupants and tenants, or the general public. However, the working methods and output media of CAD and of visualization programs capable of realistic rendering and animation are so different that these functions rarely coexist in the same software package.

Autodesk, with a 60 percent market share in design software for architects, has long recognized and catered to architects' diverse requirements. Alongside its flagship AutoCAD, originally introduced in 1982, Autodesk established a multimedia division in 1990 and launched a rendering and animation program called 3D Studio. By 1996, the multimedia division had become Kinetix, which split the 3D Studio product line into a cinematic effects program called Max, and a less expensive version called Viz, targeted at the specific needs of architects. At a price savings of more than 40 percent, Viz traded off the advanced character animation and sub-object animation of Max for increased CAD compatibility (through CAD-like features such as object snaps).

From its beginning, Viz has been a fully capable, customizable, integrated 3D modeling, rendering, and animation package able to handle architecture-specific content and NURBS modeling with equal aplomb. By Version 2, Viz had supplanted Autodesk's Autovision as the preferred visualization package linked to then-current AutoCAD r14 (most of Autovision's rendering functions were absorbed into AutoCAD itself at that time). Viz 2's enhancements for architecture also included the SmoothMove 360-degree panoramic viewing technology licensed from Infinite Pictures, since replaced by QuickTime-compatible panoramas from RealViz. After Autodesk's 1998 acquisition of Discreet Logic, makers of cinema effects flame, flint, fire, frost, and so on, Kinetix and Discreet were merged as the Discreet division of Autodesk. Viz 3 came out as a Discreet division product, with the previously used RadioRay rendering plug-in (licensed from UK-based Lightworks) replaced by Lightscape, a product Discreet picked up in its late-1997 acquisition of Lightscape Technologies (the latter firm itself among the fruits of rendering research at the seminal Cornell Program in Computer Graphics). Viz 3 also introduced the Asset Browser, an innovative interface for searching and downloading architecture-specific object content from the Internet. The ability to click and drag such content into Viz, originally called Vizable, was soon renamed i-Drop and is now becoming pervasive across all Autodesk products. A directory of Viz content, originally on the Web at Vizonline, is now integrated with Autodesk's Point A portal, itself part of the default startup screen for Autodesk's entire family of ...