Mac 3D News From SIGGRAPH 2006 Boston

During the SIGGRAPH 2006 show in Boston we spent some time trying to learn what other 3D applications might be out there coming to the Mac platform. Generally speaking, this year's SIGGRAPH was more Mac-friendly than last year (as reported here in a report we did for MacNN). But by-and-large the 3D world is still quite Windows-centric and has far to go before you would place it in the same category as Graphics or Video for the Mac. In those categories the Mac is an equal citizen (if not preferred citizen) without a doubt. Not so yet in professional 3D, but it is moving closer each year. We hope next SIGGRAPH Apple returns in full force.

New Mac 3D - The World Gets Bigger

There are already dozens and dozens of superb Mac 3D programs and almost all the majors support the Mac platform on equal footing with Windows. The big exception is Autodesk's 3D Studio Max. We hear of no plans for that program insofar as the Mac is concerned. However, Pixar keeps adding more Mac 3d software to the shelf. And there is more from other companies.

Reallusion's iClone Studio Pro

We watched a demo of iClone by Reallusion, a real-time pre-viz application that works in conjunction with Max and Maya in final production work. The product is geared towards games development but has multiple uses. iClone is a neat application that has a very simple and appealing interface. It allows the user to take a photo of someone's face and map it to a character model's 3D face. A companion product, CrazyTalk then enables you to do facial animation simply and provides a full-featured timeline interface for sophisticated facial animation.

Reallusion told Architosh that they are working on a Mac version and encouraged Mac users to contact them. As a tool to support pre-viz for Mac Maya users, iClone is an excellent choice. We look forward to hearing about this Mac release in 2007 and hope the company follows through.

VTour for Mac

REALVIZ of France was at SIGGRAPH too. We spoke briefly to them there about their software. Architosh has reviewed their ImageModeler application before, and the company makes several photography and motion capture products, some for the Mac and some not.

One very nice product they make not for Windows only at the moment is VTour -- used to create photo-realistic virtual tours of existing environments from a single photo or a panarama. The product is based on the same toolset as ImageModeler. However, it can output as rendered 3D animation (video) or an interactive 3D movie (QTVR) or to Google Earth. There is an excellent sample VTour interactive movie here.(click on the photos).

REALVIZ told Architosh that VTour is coming to the Mac platform sometime later this year. Upcoming features include export to Autodesk Maya. To learn more visit: http://imagemodeler.realviz.com/

More Tools

Of course there are more tools coming as well. We already mentioned that Turtle, a Maya Mac and Windows rendering plugin is most likely going to emerge as a standalone renderer. That's great news and gives yet another option beyond this year's excellent new addition, Maxwell Render. An ideal renderer for the automobile design industry Turtle opens up possibilities for the Mac-based industrial designer. If you have any doubts, just look at what Volvo is doing with Turtle.

Immersion Corporation's 3D digitizer technologies offer the world a way to make the "digital world touchable." They are forging ahead in multiple areas, and in the Gaming area they are partners with Apple Computer.

With their MicroScribe G2 desktop 3d digitizer, Mac industrial designers and 3D artists can use the G2 to trace over physical 3D objects and transfrorm that information into 3d model data in real-time. The MicroScribe G2 works through the USB port on a Mac and can work with multiple software packages including:

• Amapi 7 Pro
• Mayka (by PicaSoft)
• solidThinking
• formZ
• Maya
• PiXELS 3D

We hope that the new Mac version of UGS's Unigraphics/NX will also work as it does with the PC version. That would add another solid tool to the list above. Ashlar's Cobalt product would be another ideal matchup with the MicroScribe G2 as well.

Closing Comments

So we have several new items coming or emerging in the Mac 3d market and we will be monitoring for further news like this in the future. Each year the Mac 3D market gets more and more software. The options are truly amazing.

With Apple's new historic switch to true "workstation" class Intel microprocessors, offering a serious competitive threat with the Quad Xeon 64-bit workstation, Mac Pro, we think there is no better moment in time for developers to start their Mac OX initiatives. Why? Because with Mac Pro and the coming Leopard OS 3d users are going to want to be on the cutting edge of computing.

Related Architosh SIGGRAPH Articles

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