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| Architosh Staff ([email protected]) |
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Macintosh AEC at Siggraph '99 - Part 2/2 - page 1
The Siggraph '99 Conference and Exhibition which took place in Los Angeles, California, earlier this month offered a number of positive announcements for Macintosh users. As promised, what follows is a listing of exciting technologies available to both the Mac OS and other platforms, and in particular Windows NT. Now if you see something you like available only for NT, don't get too upset, as it may be likely that a Macintosh version is coming your way sooner than you think. And if it is not, then go out and buy a NT box to supplement your Macs.
More AEC wares at Siggraph '99 - Mac, NT, Linux and UNIX's Three Products that can Scan the World The following products are various real world 3D scanning and digital surveying technologies useful for producing interactive, editable digital worlds or objects from the real world and real objects. All of these products are useful for architecture, surveying, historic preservation, archeology, and virtual reality and multimedia. CyberWare CyberWare is a maker of 3D scanners for producing digital three-dimensional representations of both small and large objects. Currently the technology is being used to record the sculptures of Michaelangelo. The product rides on a rail system and scans entire objects in minutes. From the scanned input 3D polygonal and wire mesh forms are produced which can then be manipulated digitally with other 3D software modelers and renderers. Cyra The Cyrax System is a portable PC-based auto-scanning laser system that measures, visualizes and models large structures and sites with complete accuracy. The tripod mounted laser device is simply pointed at the scene you wish to measure and scan. The complete surface geometry is generated in a new deliverable that consists of "3D point clouds" that represent an instantaneous 3D virtual model. Once this data is complete you can then rotate and fly around the existing structure or site to view it at any angle. The product has definite use in land surveying, architecture, engineering and construction, as well as archeology and anthropology. However, you will NOT find it available at this time for the Macintosh. The company compares the product as superior to tedious photogrammetry methods and traditional survey methods. The produced scans can be stitched together to produce entire 3D models and representations of complex structures. For more information click here. Geometrix 3Scan is a product consisting of a computer controlled turntable, digital video camera, lights and tripod, and application software. The device works similar to the CyberWare product in that you rotate an object on a turntable against a matte background screen (usually blue or green) while filming the entire object with a video camera (essentially this is what is done to make a QuickTime VR object movie as well). The video is then translated and stitched into a virtual reality model. SoftScene is similar technology by the same company that allows you to create fully-textured 3D model of real world scenes directly from video sequences or scanned film.
New Products for Sun SPARC and Alias/Wavefront use at Apple Alias/Wavefront Alias/Wavefront, which is a subsidiary of Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) (NYSE: SGI), has brought their award-winning Alias/Wavefront Studio products suite to Sun's SPARC UNIX workstations. The products ported over to Sun SPARC include the consumer suite of design products starting with Alias Studio 9, Surface Studio 9, Eval Viewer 9, Studio 9, Design Studio 9, Power Render, and Direct Connect. This is good news for the Mac OS, believe it or not, because it means that a port to Mac OS X, which is UNIX-based as well, should be made a little easier to do with Sun's UNIX port already completed. Meanwhile, Apple already has a relationship to Alias/Wavefront, or at least the industrial design group does. Check out this page to learn about how Apple uses the world's leading CAID (computer-aided industrial design) software to design their award-winning famous computer designs. To learn more about Apple's Industrial Design group click on the book listed below.
New Cross-Platform Rendering Appliance RenderDrive RenderDrive by ART, Advanced Rendering Technology, is a groundbreaking independent hardware box that harnesses the power of the company's ray tracing processors to deliver unprecedented levels of processing power, not common to general purpose processing platforms. RenderDrive is a rendering appliance and a substitute for a rendering farm which would entail far more cost and setup time. The RenderDrive uses specialized ray tracing processors that offer the power of a multi-node render farm in a single appliance. RenderDrive cost about $20,000 but offers the power of 25 Pentium II's. at 333MHz. RenderDrive is a platform independent device. It is designed to work with any hardware platform that can connect via an Ethernet link and has the capacity to support most major 3D software packages. The first supported packages are 3D Studio Max and 3D Studio Viz. This works by a plug-in for these rendering packages, called RenderPipe. Other packages due are SoftImage, Alias/WaveFront and Houdini. None of these are Macintosh software however, so write in to your favorite Macintosh rendering software maker and ask them if they can support RenderDrive hardware in their future products.
More Resources for your Mac Siggraph pleasure For more information go to Macintosh News Network's Siggraph Report.
> Go to Page 2/2 of this AEC Siggraph Report - Part 2/2 Other Architosh News RenderDrive Hardware Appliance, Macintosh Support Notes [aug 26] AppleCool: What's Cool at Apple.com Now! [26] Multimedia Training for MiniCAD VectorWorks [26]
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