Creating Special Effects: Asymetrix 3D F/X News & Views Software Review

by Donn DeBoard Technical Writer Vertex, Inc. (Berwyn, Pennsylvania) Asymetrix 110-110th Avenue, Suite 700, Bellevue, WA 98004-5840 http://www.asymetrix.com Customer Service: (800) 448-6543 Technical Support: (206) 637-1600. Originally published in News & Views September, 1996 issue. Copyright 1996 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

Leave your crayons in the box at home. Don't worry about keeping your colors inside the lines on the paper. For that matter, forget the paper, too. Creating and animating graphics--3D graphics, in fact--is now as simple as drop and drag. Asymetrix 3D F/X is a 3D art creation program that enables you to create snapshots and animations very quickly and easily. These snapshots can be used alone or incorporated into other programs. Getting started 3D F/X provides a Startup Assistant that shows you how to create snapshots and animations quickly and easily. The Startup Assistant is a 17-screen tutorial that provides procedural information on using 3D F/X. You can display the Startup Assistant as you work through creating your first snapshot or animation or whenever you need help. A snapshot is the bitmap that is generated from the scene you create. An animation is a series of frames in which changing bitmaps show motion over time. Animations are saved in audio/video interleaved (.AVI) format. Building a scene 3D F/X helps you build a scene using the convenience of drag and drop objects. Each scene consists of the following elements: Model. The physical objects in a snapshot or animation. Surface. The texture of the exterior of the model. Animation path. The movement or sequence of movements of the model. Scene templates. The templates on which to base your scene. Backdrop. The background of the scene. The Scene Preview window allows you to see your scene develop. You can view your scenes as boxes, wireforms, or solid models. The Scene Contents window shows you the structure of your scene and allows you to change the sequence of the objects in the scene. For example, if you wanted to change the sequence of movement of the animation in your scene, you only need to drag the objects for each path to a new position in the Scene Content hierarchy. The Scene Specialist prompts you to create scenes in a matter of minutes. You select a scene, add a graphic, and generate the snapshot or animation. Adding sound You can add sound to your animations. 3D F/X also enables you to edit your .WAV files, if necessary. The sound file is displayed as an attribute on the Scene Contents. Creating models To create your model, choose from Asymetrix' supplied models, import graphics from other programs, or create your own simple models out of geometric shapes. You can also create a model from text--and warp individual letters or entire words by bending, stretching, or twisting them into different shapes. Linking and embedding scenes You can use snapshots or animations created in 3D F/X in other object linking and embedding (OLE) applications. The application using the snapshot or animation is called the container application. Asymetrix's Compel, Multimedia ToolBook, and Digital Video Producer can incorporate a 3D F/X snapshot or animation quite readily. Documentation The paper documentation is well organized and easy-to-reference. The support provided in 3D F/X--paper documentation, on-line help, and the Startup Assistant tutorial--provides sufficient information to become productive very quickly with a minimum learning curve. Notes on hardware I'd encourage you to get as much hardware muscle as you can afford. Generating snapshots or animations is incredible to view on your monitor, but it is slow. I ran 3D F/X on a 100MHZ Pentium with 16MB RAM and the movements of the more complex animations still seemed a little jagged.

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Last updated: November 6, 1996 (wq)