Lexicor Phase IV/graphics/commercial
From: Doug Wokoun (aa384@cleveland.Freenet.Edu)
Date: 04/18/92-07:24:41 PM Z
From: aa384@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Doug Wokoun)
Subject: Lexicor Phase IV/graphics/commercial
Date: Sat Apr 18 19:24:41 1992
Taken from: ST Report Online Magazine (#8.12) - March 20, 1992:
> LEXICOR PHASE IV STR Review Chronos 3D Key Frame Animator
===========================
Lexicor Phase IV
Chronos 3D Key Frame Animator
and
Prism Paint
by Clifton Willard
Well it arrived and I opened it with mixed hopes and fears. To some
extent, the Phase IV series from Lexicor will make or break the ST/TT
graphics performance in the near future anyway. There has been a lot of
speculation over the last year about the future of the ST and about the
graphics programs promised by Lexicor. There have been no new graphics
programs for the ST or in the Atari platform for some time and the old
stuff was getting very old very fast. Other platforms were emerging with
new and powerful graphics programs that were becoming more and more
attractive to Atari owners who wanted to upgrade, myself included. The
Cyber series just doesn't cut it any more. The competition was crawling
all over Atari until now that is. I received Prism Paint and Chronos 3D
together and with great excitement. I loaded first one and then the other
and browsed around. Since Chronos 3D is the more significant program, I
will review it first.
FIRST CLASS MANUAL
It is not my intention to rewrite the manual but to review the
program. The manual is first class and provides all the information one
needs to adequately operate the program after a short period of time. The
beginner has not been left out of the picture as is often true in less
considerate manuals. The first four chapters are devoted to the beginner
and include everything from pointing and clicking the mouse to how to use
dialogue boxes to loading objects and running animations. I have never
seen such a thorough job of explanation before in any manual. This is
definitely a big plus for the person who wants to get into 3D animation
but doesn't think s/he can. In Chronos 3D you can, I promise. The length
of time it actually takes you to create your first 3D space saga will
depend on your experience. Once the beginner is brought up to par with
the more experienced users, the manual enables everyone to comfortably and
easily learn the basics of key frame animation. The manual is very well
organized and is easy to get around. The binder is one of those D type
that I personally find difficult. I changed to a regular binder and put
the index in the front of the manual. It is easier to get to if it is in
the front of the book and I need to get to it a often.
The explanations are clear. There are a few mistakes in the tutorials
but they are in the objects provided, not in the manual. I understand
that they will soon or have already been fixed. In one tutorial when you
load the plane into the program, it is not in the position the manual says
it is. In another, the walking man does not have his arms attached to his
body. You can use your head though and make the minor adjustments. I
mention them only so that if you get the program and come across them you
will know what the problem is. These are very minor and I found no other
problems in the tutorials.
KEY FRAME?
The program is "Key Frame" animation. Key frame animation is the
animation production style of the professionals like those at Disney. The
master animator creates the first and last frame of a motion and the
assistant animators create the "inbetween" frames. This is where the term
tweening comes from. In the case of Chronos 3D, you are the master
animator and the program acts as your perfect assistant and does all of
your tweening. You create the key frames that contain the beginning and
ending of your object's changing movement. You then decide how many
frames you want to be inbetween and Chronos 3D provides them by generating
the splines between the two positions. This is key frame animation.
One of the main advantages of this type of animation is that the
animator does not need to know any programming at all. In the past on the
Atari, you had to know a basic like programming language to program Cyber
Control and create 3D animations from within CAD 3D Studio. Chronos 3D
replaces both programs and enables you to do more because you do not need
to know programing to accomplish the movement.
NO PROGRAMMING NEEDED
Chronos is an intuitive program and in a way is the opposite end of
the spectrum from Cyber Control or ST Control. In both those programs you
used numbers, mathematical expressions, and numerical positions in space
to create your object movement. In Chronos 3D, you use a mouse and point
and click. It is important to realize that this is a different style of
thinking. I found that I had to learn to think differently about
animation in Chronos. You can't easily use numbers to create the perfect
circular or perfect spiraling movement. At first I found this very
frustrating. With practice I became more comfortable with this free hand
style and now I find it liberating. For alignment purposes, Chronos 3D
provides a grid that is adjustable. You can set this grid and position
your objects using the grid as a guide. An artist that is gifted in
visualizing spacial relationships correctly will have no trouble with this
concept. Though I am good at it now, I miss the access to the numbers.
One problem with the lack of numbers is that you do not know where your
object has been moved. Every time you call up the "explicit" dialogue
box, used to enter exact numbers, it shows zero (0). If you have rotated
an object several times or even once, there is no way to know how far you
have rotated that object up to that point. If you make a mistake in one
of your key frames, you must click on each one and visually determine
which one has the error and then judge the correction needed. This is
frustrating and at times difficult to deal with. I do find this a
drawback to the program. I understand however that there is some interest
in doing something about providing a history for either each key frame or
object. This might be in the form of an Desk Accessory.
There is one feature however that is great help in the number problem
and that is a feature called trace. If you click on an object and then
click on trace, the program will generate a thread like line showing the
movement of that object from the beginning of your motion to the end.
This is wonderful and with a little practice you find that you can do
quite will without the numbers.
OPEN TYPE PROGRAM
It is appropriate at this point to explain that this program and
series for that matter may be considered a shell type program. Independent
programers can and are encouraged to develop modules or utilities that
provide additional power to the programs. This is a real plus for the
series. Interested programers should contact Lee Seiler at Lexicor.
The desktop of the program provides easy access to all of the
features, dialogues and sub menus of the program. There are also key
board equivalents to most of the features, menus and dialogues. I can't
stress enough how powerful this program is and the variety of things it
can do. Though I can't cover all of the assets of this program I will try
to cover most of the main features that give it it's power.
First let me state that there are no limits to the number of objects
of the number of points in each object as in the Cyber series. The only
restriction is your computer memory. There is also no restriction as the
length of your animation. This is also dictated by your hardware and
memory. Also chronos 3D will load any 3D object form the Cyber series
including Cyber Texture objects.
TIMELINES AND RAILROAD TRACKS
Chronos 3D uses what are called timelines to record the motion of an
object. You can think of a time line as a railroad track and the object
as a single railroad engine with no cars following. The idea is that you
draw the tracks any way you want and the train engine will follow them
just like a real train. If you can lay out model train tracks on your
living room floor then you can animate with Chronos 3D. You lay the tracks
in chronos 3D by moving the object with the mouse. You decide how long the
track will be by adding sections to the track. In Chronos 3D, these
sectioned are called frames. If you want your object or engine to take a
long time to go from point A to point B, you add a lot of sections to the
track or in Chronos 3D, you add frames. This metaphor will hopefully help
you understand the concept of time lines.
One of the unique features of Chronos 3D is that you can copy these
time lines and apply them to other objects. You can make a copy of the
tracks and put another engine on them. You can also copy any part of the
track and put any engine on it you want. The limits are your imagination.
To take this metaphor a little further, Chronos 3D will let you do
different things to your engine as it travels along it's track. The
engine or object can get bigger, smaller, wider, narrower, taller,
shorter, longer, turn in any direction or combination of directions with
just a click or two with the mouse. Also Chronos 3D has no limit on the
number of tracks or engines, time lines or objects. In addition to moving
engines, you can move the camera and any or all of spot lights or point
source lights. The tracks, time lines hold everything together. You can
cut and paste tracks/time lines the same way you cut and paste clip
buffers in drawing programs. It is no more difficult then that.
NO NEED FOR HIERARCHY, JUST CYCLE
Another feature that really sets Chronos apart from other 3D animation
programs is a feature called cycling. Cycling is sort of like changing
engines several times as it travels down the track. The tutorial in the
manual is as good example as any I could think of for demonstrating this
concept. There are 15 different variations of the same object that you
load in as one object. In this case the object is a walking man. Each
variation is a different position in the total walking motion. You load
each into the cycling feature in a specific order. The cycling feature
then plays them in the order in which you entered them. The feature
cycles through the objects and the result is motion or in this case a man
walking. It is very impressive and very simple. As a comparison, in CAD
3D and Cyber Control you had to develop a hierarchy of objects and then
move this hierarchy and it's parts individually. It was complicated and
difficult for those of us who are not experienced programmers. In Chronos
3D, this same effect is accomplished easily and simply with no
programming. All you really do is to load the objects in the sequence
you want them to be played. This is really nice. You create the different
variation of the objects in Cyber Sculpt or Dynacadd if you are really
serious and load them into Chronos 3D. This is a powerful feature and
enables anyone to easily create movement that before has been restricted
to the pros.
There is an undocumented variation of this feature call object
instancing. Essentially you create several different variations of a
single object cycle. Chronos 3D does not use the actual loaded object as
the object manipulated in the program. chronos 3D makes copies of the
loaded objects and uses them for the movement. Using different first
objects in the cycling feature, you can have as many copies of the cycle
as you want. I created an army of walking men using this technique. I
used a through away object, (box1, box2, box3, ...) as my through away
objects. I then varied the starting object. In the first man I used box1
and man01, man02,... In the next I used box2, man04, man05,... You must
complete the cycle so that in the second man, the last man loaded into the
cycling feature was man03. You hide the through away object box1,
box2,... and record your animation. It is very powerful. Do the
tutorial in the manual and then try this instancing.
TURN A MAN INTO A BIRD AND FLY AWAY
Another feature that is part of the cycling feature is morphing.
Morphing comes from metamorphing meaning changing completely from one form
to another. This powerful technique is also very simple. You create an
object in CyberSculpt and save it. You then change that same object into
another from using the editor and the listed tools. You then save that
object and quit. In Chronos 3D, you load each object, and in the cycle
feature you load the first object into the morph box and then click the
number of frames you want the change to take place over and load in the
second object. Go to preview and check it out! Using this feature, you
could turn a man into a bird and have him fly away right in front of your
eyes and dazzle every one even yourself. These two features, cycling and
morphing are worth the price of the program alone.
THE CAMERA TRACKS AUTOMATICALLY
The camera in Chronos 3D is no less powerful then the other features.
Keep in mind that many of the greatest films in history were shot with one
camera and many still are. You can move the camera in any position you
want and save that position for future use. These saved positions are
called tripods and you can save up to 8 of them in any one film. There is
one exciting feature in Chronos 3D that really makes complicated things
easy and the amateur look professional and that is tracking. You can
easily with just a few clicks of the mouse have the camera track a moving
object. This is very nice. This tracking feature can be used with
anything. You can have objects track each other and start the tracking at
any point in the track/timeline you want. You could have a ball come into
the camera view and then have the camera follow/track the ball until it
hits the window pane and breaks it into a thousand pieces. You can also
track an object with the spot light. It is a nice feature.
Not only can you move and manipulate objects in Chronos 3D but you can
also determine how the object looks and the degree of its visibility. In
the appearance menu you can choose from three styles of shading; Flat,
Gouraud and Phong. In Flat shading, each triangle is shaded individually.
Gouraud on the other hand calculates how light affects each point or
corner of a triangle and then dithers and blends the color of these points
toward the center of the triangle. Phong shades each pixel in each face.
You can also choose the dithering style you want. None means that
only solid colors are used in the rendering. Fixed means that the dither
patterns are the same from frame to frame. Random means that the dither
patterns vary randomly from one frame to the next. This latter mode
creates a nice glittering effect and adds to the sense of movement in
space of an object.
You can even decide if you want the faces to be blended together
giving a smoother object. This can really make a round object look really
round without those face edges that are so telltale of low rez and 16
colors.
Each object in your animation can be treated independently of other
objects in these appearance modes. One object might be flat shaded but
another may be Phong shaded in the same animation. This feature can among
other things help distinguish objects from one another and create effects
not otherwise possible.
FADE IN, FADE OUT
Another powerful feature is called visibility. This feature has to do
with the how visible an object is in any given frames. 100 percent
visibility means that the object is fully rendered. 50 percent means
that 50 percent of the object is transparent and 0 visibility means that
the object is invisible in the animation. This visibility can be tweened
over any number of frames creating a fading in or out effect. Using around
50 percent visibility can give an object a transparent look like glass or
fog or water. Objects can come and go within an animation or the whole
animation can fade in or out. Again as in so many of the features of
Chronos 3D, the only limits are your imagination and your hardware.
CHRONOS 3D IS FIRST CLASS
It must be apparent by now that I think Chronos 3D is a first class,
simple to use, 3D object animator. It must be kept in mind however, no
matter how good a 3D animation program is, there is no substitute for
pre-planning your animations. Should you purchase Chronos 3D and I
strongly recommend that you do, read the manual and methodically do the
tutorials. Then decide to create a simple animation of your own and do it
in chronos 3D. It is the best way to learn the program. This is a
powerful program and one needs to approach it purpose and forethought
(pre-planning). Chronos 3D does not create objects nor does it tell you
where to move them. If you really want to create good animations and
learn to be comfortable with chronos 3D, you must pre-plan. Get a piece
of paper and make some sketched ideas of what you want to happen to those
objects of yours. Think it through first. Have some idea of where you
are going and then use Chronos 3D to get you there and always reserve the
right to change your mind. That is your part. There is help though.
Unlike any other company that I have known about in the Atari platform,
Lexicor is providing classes on Compuserve to teach you how to use their
series to create your prize winning animation <no grin>. These classes if
you will include everything you ever wanted to know about and be able to
do in 3D animation. Lee Seiler is an accomplished artist and is in a
position to really help anyone from the novice to the expert with these
classes. Though I have been doing 3D animation for a few years now, I plan
on attending every class and do every homework assignment. That's right
homework assignment. These classes provide an opportunity to learn how
to do this stuff. I know of no better way. It seems to me the ultimate
educational opportunity for "Chronies" <grin> both new and old. The
syllabus is now on Compuserve and I suggest that you look it over. If
you do not have a modem or are not a member of Compuserve then get it
from someone who is.
Nothing is perfect and Phase-4 is no exception. Keep in mind that
chronos 3D is only one of several parts to a complete graphics animation
package for the Atari ST and TT. As I said in the beginning of this
review I received both Chronos 3D and Prism Paint, the first two parts of
the Phase-4 series. Chronos 3D no doubt is a first rate program but Prism
Paint falls short of the power that you would expect from the developers
of Chronos 3D.
PRISM PAINT DISAPPOINTING
I believe that part of my disappointment in Prism Paint was my
expectation that it would be an update/upgrade to CyberPaint. It is not
and does not even come close. With a few differences, Prism Paint is on
a par with Degas Elite. Prism Paint is a first rate basic drawing
program that was created as a tool to touch up Chronos 3D animations. In
addition to standard brushes, boxes, circles, rectangles, lines, rays,
k-lines spray, draw, you can have unlimited frames and splined curves and
it runs in all ST and TT resolutions. It will also run is the 24 bit
color board rez of 512 X 512 with some 262 thousand colors on the screen
at once out of a pallet of 16 million. For single pictures this is a
great program. Slides and other graphic stills can be created easily and
comfortably. But that's all. There is no tweening, no pixel effects, no
font importation, no ADO, no bluing, and so forth. Because of this there
is no way to create a traveling background or any background for that
matter for your Chronos 3D animations in full TT resolutions. You can
load Chronos 3D DTL files into CyberPaint but that limits you to
CyberPaints resolutions. I may be the exception but I used Cyber
Control/CAD 3D2 in conjunction with CyberPaint to create complete
animations. My expectation was that PrismPaint would enable me to
continue this combination of 2D backgrounds, mats and tweened touch-ups
and 3D object animations. Not so at this time anyway. I would not
however let this prevent me from using Chronos 3D. I have a feeling that
this situation will not last too long. The need and demand are there,
either Lexicor or some other developer will fill the gap. There are
several programs that could be updated to surpass CyberPaint including
Prism Paint. I think that the idea is that users expect that new programs
will be upgrades of existing programs. This is not the case with Prism
Paint.
OPINION
As should be apparent from the review I could not recommend Chronos 3D
more. It is a first rate program with few flaws. I would like to see a
history system for object movement to help hone the movements. I
understand that there is an anti-alias feature and a spot shadow feature
in the currant release update but I have not received the update yet so I
cannot comment. Chronos 3D comes with a key that you must plug into the
printer or serial port of the computer for the program to work. There are
many who might complain about this security device but I am not one of
them. would rather have a security device and the program then no
program. Giving a program to your buddy or pirating programs can kill
the company that brought you that program. These developers are not
multi-billion or even multi-million dollar concerns. They are people like
you and me and they work hard and invest a great deal so that we can have
programs of Chronos 3D's quality. It would be foolish not to protect the
investment. Enough said about the security device.
I also recommend prism paint. Though it is a basic program, it is the
only one that will take full advantage of the resolutions of the TT and
the new resolutions of the new 24 bit color boards. You do need it for
touching up Chronos 3d animations even if you have to do the touch up one
frame at a time. Both programs are well worth the expense and Lexicor
seems to be putting the Atari ahead of the other guys. The support that
Lee Seilor is giving on Comp-u-serve is unprecedented and should be taken
advantage of by anyone the least bit interested in computer graphics.
The ability to easily put graphics on video with the new 24 bit color
boards lets desktop video "chronies" almost compete with the big boys with
an ST. Keep in mind that the phase-4 series works on the ST as well as
the TT. The cost of the series is small in comparison to the increase in
quality. I look forward to seeing the other programs in the series and
also in getting my 24 bit color board.
--
Doug Wokoun
(aa384@cleveland.Freenet.Edu)
- - -
Atari SIG
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