IK. I was thoroughly castigated for my mention last month of some animations I wanted to offer to you. The flamed response said my price was too high. So here's a new deal. Every month, to accompany the articles I am posting here, I will offer an animation that represents an item being reported on. The animation may reference a LightWave filter effect, a LightWave topic, or a utility or program that can somehow be connected to LightWave. For $24.95, I will send you (to your e-mail address) the animation. You get six animations in either/or QuickTime or AVI for the $24.95 investment. That's about $4.00 per animation. Commonly, these will be 30 frames long, and will display the item spoken of in the article clearly. You must send a check to me by snail mail (no credit cards will be accepted). When the check clears, you get the animations, 1 to 6, as they are ready with each months article. This is issue #2 of this column, so this means the second of the six animations is referenced here. The first animation represented an effects plug-in from Metro-Grafx. This months animation was rendered in Fractal Design Poser, an item covered this time around. If you're interested, send a check to:

R. Shamms Mortier
15 Rockydale
Bristol, VT 05443

I mentioned last month that every NewTek LightWave fan who runs on the Amiga has absolutely got to check out the newest release of Aladdin-4D soon to be released by Nova Design (the ImageFX folks). A4D is a separate 3D-4D art and animation program not associated with LightWave. Why do LightWave animators need it then? Simple. A4D is highly extensible, and its extensibility includes being connected to LightWave in major ways. For instance, here are the LightWave/Toaster compatibility highlights (for Amiga users):

1. LightWave object import
2. Zbuffer (LightWave compatible)
3. Toaster rendering
4. FrameStore load/save

What Object Import means is that Aladdin 4D will be able to immediately load and use any LightWave object with a high degree of compatibility. Areas that have significant differences, such as procedural textures, are converted where possible - and if not possible to directly convert, a texture entry (which the user completes by hand) is made to allow their use regardless!

Aladdin 4D will also be unique in that it will be the ONLY non NewTek 3D animation package that supports rendering directly to the Toaster! Other Toaster support will include complete support for loading and saving images in the Toaster's FrameStore format.

The final key in Aladdin 4D's LightWave interaction will be compatibility to the LightWave/World Construction Set Zbuffer. Support of this means that you'll be able to composite LightWave, or WCS, rendered scenes into Aladdin 4D scene three dimensionally. Aladdin gases and particles will be look as if they were rendered with the original scene!

Aladdin 4D's volumetric gases and particle systems will bring these SGI level rendering tools to everyone. And with the unprecedented compatibility with LightWave - users of that high-end rendering package on the Amiga will gain new tools as well!

Contact: Nova Design, Inc.
Kermit@novadesign.com
http://www.novadesign.com

As I told you in the first article, I will spend time in this column describing non-NewTek specific items if I feel they are relevant to your work as an artist, animator, and audiophile. Whenever possible, what I talk about will relate to your Toaster and/or LightWave work, but some of what I mention will be open to incorporation in a post production context.

Fractal Design's Poser 2.0 is available for the PowerMac and for Windows 95/NT (about $129.00 as ridiculously cheap as a bargain can get!!!).. Poser 2 allows you to pose and animate realistic (and fantasy) 3D humanoid and other living-being figures, in a way that is so comfortable and intuitive, you will be getting even less sleep than before (a lot less!). It is one of the most brilliant and awe inspiring art and animation products ever to find its way to the market. That alone is worth talking about, but it also has more direct relevance to LightWave work.

Poser 2 outputs DXF and animation files (QuickTime and AVI), and also single frame sequences. Though the DXF files that are output are static figures, you can use LightWave "Bones" attributes to animate them. Even more useful however is the fact that because it writes out single frame sequences, you can map single framed animations to a flat plane in a LightWave scene, or even use a Poser 2 sequence as an animated backdrop to a LightWave rendered animation. In the coming months, Fractal will also release a LightWave object format conversion, so Poser 2 figures can be written directly to LightWave objects.

Version 1 of this application was a miracle in itself. Poser was originally created as a utility to Fractal's Painter software, giving painterly artists a way to used posed figures that could be painted over to achieve a degree of realism and believability, with various media looks. No sooner had it hit the market however, than every user involved began to clamor for more features, especially extended animation capabilities. Poser, it seems, had surpassed even Fractal's original creative purpose in a matter of weeks of its release. Instead of using posed figures as mere underpainting elements in Painter, users (including myself) were asking about finer rendering modes, animation, and other additions and options.

Though Poser 1 owners have been a somewhat impatient and boisterous lot, Fractal Design has put the year of development time for Poser 2 to excellent use. Realizing from the sales of Poser 1 that they had hit paydirt with this application, Fractal wanted Poser 2 to break into new markets, as well as satisfying the voracious appetites of the clamorous Poser 1 crowd. In addition to the repeated list of items everyone was requesting, Fractal added features to Poser 2 that Poser 1 owners didn't know we wanted until we saw them. And let me tell you up front, some of these features would be excellent for NewTek to add to LightWave as well!

This has to be first on the list, and it was a huge challenge for Fractal. After all, Poser 1 required about ten minutes to learn to use, and an hour to thoroughly master. Any animation capabilities added in version 2 had to be just as intuitive to learn. Brother, did they ever succeed! Any user with even a modicum of animation experience can master the animation routines in Poser 2 in about an hour, while inexperienced users may require four or five hours to become professionally working-comfortable. The animation process in Poser 2 is a familiar Timeline based model, benefiting from Fractal Design's exploration and perfecting of the Timeline in its acquisition of RayDream Studio from the now defunct RayDream Corporation. Two options for moving a figure's body parts are involved: the standard movements developed in Poser 1, and a new Inverse Kinematic method that allows you to move a hierarchy of elements by moving the last "daughter" element (moving a hand, for instance, moves all of the trailing arm parts). Each method has its benefits.

Added to Poser 2 are several new Figure Types for both males and females: Nude, Nude Detailed (ahem... very detailed), Business, Business Detailed, Casual, Casual Detailed, Skeleton, Stick Figure, and a Poser 1 model translator. A gender-neutral mannequin is also included. Child body types include Child Nude, Nude Detailed, Casual, Casual Detailed, and Stick Figure. I was most impressed by the Skeleton body type. It has been redesigned from scratch, and can be used to create extremely convincing animations (remember the fighting skeletons in the movie Sinbad?). The business suit and casual types are great for populating more conservative city and industrial scenes.

Props are 3D items that can be glued instantly to a Poser 2 body part, like a sword to a hand. Props in Poser 2 include Ball, Box, Cane, Cone, Cylinder, Square, Stairs, and Torus. More than that, Fractal has just released a CD-ROM (about $60.00) of 100 more props for Poser figures. You can also import any LightWave object saved out as a DXF into a Poser 2 animation! Props in a scene can be animated along with the Poser 2 figures.

This represents a big area of improvement from Poser 1. There are now twenty hand types that can be attached to a Poser 2 figure. The hands are far more detailed than those in Poser 1. Usually, zooming in pretty close on a hand won't destroy the apparent realism of a scene.

You can transpose any body part of a Poser 2 figure with an imported or native prop (right now, DXF is best, but plans are afoot to include native LightWave objects as well). This means that minotaurs, centaurs, and alien beings are just a step away from realization, as are animals. All transposed body parts take on the same inverse kinematics allowed by any Poser 2 figure, so the options are truly limitless.

You can import a graphic, a QuickTime movie, or a Poser 1/ Poser 2 file as a background. Various 3D object files can also be imported, including: 3DS, 3DMF, DXF, NFF, and WaveFront. Added to this list are Fractal Detailer texture files for mapping purposes. You can exportPICT/BMP, 3DS, DXF, 3DMF, and WaveFront objects, in addition to Detailer textures.

New Hi-res rendering is also supported, making Fractal Design's Poser 2 one of the best utilities any computer artist or animator could possibly desire and learn to use.

Next month, I'm going to cover the Eye Candy Photoshop plug-ins from AlienSkin Software. These are some of the most awesome PShop plug-ins ever produced, and since LightWavers can access PShop Plugins (Mac and PC versions), they will have direct relevance for your graphics and animations. We will also look at the new Fractal Scene generator plug-in for LightWave from International Software Engineering: RELIEF. See Jah in ROMulan Space. Till next time,.. ENJOY!