| The highlights of the new release of PowerAnimator are:
New UI - We introduced a new icon-based user interface designed to speed up an
animator's workflow by reducing the number of mouse clicks for the most
frequent operations, giving you single click access in almost all cases. Among
many other helpful features, the new UI lets you store the most commonly used
tools on a customizable tool shelf which can be configured for the job at hand.
Alias users who have had a chance to play with the new UI at trade shows have
found that they were able to use the new UI without training or documentation
and were able to work much faster than before.
New Online Context Sensitive Help - We have enhanced online documentation so
that you can quickly get the help you need, including a "movie" of how the
particular tool is used, which we feel will help both new and experienced users
work much faster.
Cut, Copy and Paste - Provides non-graphical editing of animations of
hierarchical objects without the need to open the Action Editor.
Booleans - Our modeler now supports Boolean operations on objects, such as
subtract, intersect and union.
Polygonal Booleans - Version 7 lets you trim polygonal surfaces against each
other to produce new polygonal surfaces.
Automatic Polygon Reduction - Now you can adjust the coarseness of a polygonal
model while preserving the shape, profile and curvature. You can also specify
whether small details, like landing gear, should be preserved.
Enhanced Quantizer - The color quantizer has a new user interface that lets you
display, manipulate and adjust the original and quantized images as well as
modify the color map using standard color controls.
ShapeShifter<tm> - ShapeShifter lets you blend the shapes of two or more 3D
models by moving simple sliders for precise control over how much each one
influences the final model.
Improved Dynamics - In V7, dynamics has been enhanced to calculate the
rotational velocity, due to torque, in both collisions and freefall.
Collisions have been enhanced with a new algorithm that supports multiple
objects simultaneously colliding, rather than simply two at a time. The solver
also now handles certain situations more robustly; eg, objects that roll or
slide on collision, or collisions that are instantaneous.
Improved Particle Systems - Particles can now emit in fully shaded mode in the
interactive package, with full color/transparency/size, and very respectable
screen refresh rates -- you can interactively tumble around the scene and
immediately see how adjustments to various parameters affect the particles.
Curve Networks Enhancements - Curve Networks has been enhanced to include
support for triangular regions, T-junctions, and the addition of "influence
curves" for sculpting capability.
OpenAlias<tm> Plug-in Architecture - OpenAlias is a new plug-in interface in
V7. An extension to the Alias executable and the OpenModel API, it allows
programmers to add custom code to Alias which is then accessible by the user
through the Alias menu system. It provides full C and C++ access to all of the
information created in the interactive package, including 3D models,
animations, cameras, lights, and textures.
Keystone support - PowerAnimator now supports the Silicon Graphics Inventor 3D
data format for input and output, in addition to existing support for the Avid
Open Media Framework (OMF) data format for 2D imagery.
In addition to all the new features and the improved workflow, we've also done
a lot of performance enhancements. For example, things like the time slider
and cluster evaluation/drawing/deleting have been sped up a bunch.
In a related announcement, we also introduced StudioPaint 3D for adding precise
textures and detail to 3D models. StudioPaint 3D and PowerAnimator V7 work
together for sharing of models, textures, etc.
Everyone has to judge for themselves, but the reactions from customers who have
had a close look at what's in V7 have been overwhelmingly positive.
I hope this makes what's new in PowerAnimator V7 a little clearer.
John Tank
Alias
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