Alias Research Inc, Toronto reckons it has a radical new approach to creating moving images in version five of PowerAnimator, which is not due to ship until the end of the year. The main enhancements come in a new module called Alias Cinematics, designed to simplify the process of building three-dimensional animations. So, for example, directors can slap motion sensors on live actors and read their movements into the package. Once in there, the package can simulate physical phenomena such as gravity, friction and wind (presumably meterological). In its quest for simplicity the company says that it has done away with the need for custom programming or low-level parameter specifications to produce special effects. Instead the old standards such as fog, smoke or rain are presented as standard options, customisable through sliders and menu options. All these facilities are present in one of the three modules that make up Cinematics itself. The first, Alias Digital OptiF/X handles the kind of foggy-mood and lighting effects just described. It also, says the company, provides a number of tools for creating a range of highly-realistic explosions. Alias is particularly proud of the degree to which the various modules are integrated. So, having watched an object explode courtesy of the effects package, the user can pass the parameters on to Alias Dynamics, which will ensure that the bits fly off and collide with suitable realism. Dynamic’s full repertoire includes the aforementioned gravity, friction and wind effects. The final module, Alias MotionSampler is the one that enables directors to strap motion detectors to their real-life actors: once again Alias claims a greater degree of integration than its competitors can manage.
Ray tracing
Outside of the Cinematics area, the rest of PowerAnimator has been given a general facelift. Potentially very powerful is a new blending function that, it is claimed, automatically builds a skin to smooth over objects built from smaller building blocks. Thus, it will connect two articulated cylinders into a knee, if so requested. As for performance, the company says that ray tracing rendering runs at least twice as fast as with the previous version and in addition it has introduced a parallel raycaster rendering system called Alias PowerCaster for Silicon Graphics Inc’s 24-processor Onyx Graphics Supercomputer and 36-processor Challenge multiprocessor server systems. Distributed rendering across a network is also possible. Finally, in an industry sector beset by conflicting standards, the company has made the welcome move of adding facilities for exporting data to third party packages. Output of polygonal data sets means that data can be sent to personal computer packages that use the DXF data format such as AutoCAD. Alias models can now also be converted to Silicon Graphics .SGO data types for use in virtual reality applications based on the Performer VR toolkit. Alias Cinematics is available as part of the Advanced Animation module, which is priced at $15,000, with free-of-charge maintenance upgrades to existing PowerAnimator customers. PowerAnimator V5.0 is planned to ship to customers by year-end. Alias becomes the nth company this month to say that its products played a part in the making of some film or other called Jurassic Park.
