I would love to think this news will give VRML a big boost - and hopefuly a linux port - although it does feel a little bit late and after the fact. An often overlooked factor in the downfall of vrml is precisely *who* creates the stuff (the content) that actually makes people dl the plugin in turn creating demand for more and better VRML spaces.
The type of person who is able to make high quality, visually stimulating VRML content space would be a technically competent (programmer or near programmer - to understand the weird routing and syntax *and* be able to write javascript/java to implement anything more complex than the most soul sappingly dull interactions) with a good theoretical understanding of 3d preferably with experience in a "professional" package (ie. practical experience) - eg. Maya, Explore, Symbolics, SoftImage, Nichimen, Houdini, um, 3dStudio (...and playing with a crack you borrowed off your dodgy mate doesn't count!) who also has a firm grasp of the internet and ideally be comitted to open source (even pre-platinum announcement there was a profound scarcity of people willing to pay ppl high wages to create stunning work subsequently to be "given away" on a website - if you can view a VRML scene it's trivial to cut'n'paste objects others may have spent days even weeks honing down into a lightweight, good looking piece - companies think of this as "piracy" - rightly or wrongly) - oh yeah, so some lo-poly/games experience would also be good. Unfortunately those exact type of people are in such demand right now that they are currently being offered stupendous money to work in any of the big animation houses around the globe - *how many* people does it take to animate a tie-fighter, George? Disillusioned games animators would also provide a good source of suitable producers - unfortunately making games is too damn fun and VRML is too damn DULL - it would appear. Ditto film, ditto commercials...
Most professional animators fall **way** below the technical ceiling required to create bearable VRML. Animators are, by and large, "package" users - not the gourard-shading-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of programmer/animator of five to ten years ago - programmer and artist brains rarely seem to arrive in the same head - most people who work in 3d animation tend to be either programmers or artists. VRML demands are far greater synergy between programming and artistry (not that programming isn't artistic, far from it - it's just less accessible) The majority of VRML developers instead had great programming vision and practically no colour vision! (...or understanding of how to add detail without weight - or knowledge of the plethora of routine tricks, hacks, bodges and smudges that 3d animators use daily). Instead the VRML community was besieged with worthy projects of great technical interest and little visual merit (critically) and military stuff (those craaaazy army guys love anything VR!) and in between these a few genuinely worthwhile examples sneaked by (which encouraged me to keep following the www-vrml list).
Cosmo/SGI then shot themselves in the foot with such force it took VRMLs kneecaps by dropping development of CosmoWorlds on the SGI (anyone know whether SGI CW is OSS? I see *no* mention of it - AFAIK it still costs US$2300 a seat) ignoring the fact that 75% of professional animators use SGIs at work and find WindowsNT (the NT stands for NeanderThal) unpleasant and confusing. It's *far* easier to convince your boss to fork out a couple of grand on some software that lets your clients review your designs in 3d in *their* office, not yours - they *love* that kind of thing - than it is to either fork out a grand for some software stuck on your PC at home or run a moral/conscience probing crack which you can't use for production either. Oh, and CW sucks big time on the PC - I *can't* believe they left out the beautiful per-vertex colour editor !! fools !!
Meanwhile I'm off down the shops to pick up a big steaming Visual PC, dl my free copy of CW and start making some more of those free models for ppl to rip;)
It is of course more true to say that I contribute a fractionally small element towards some or more commercials, broadcast graphics, simulator rides, movie films etc etc
Ad execs (if that's who you wish to believe 'make' commercials) can prolly think of thousands of exciting new and original creative things to do - the problem being that no-one will pay you money to be original, creative and independant. Adverts aren't conjured out of thin air, they are bought and paid for by all the people who buy the products they advertise.
On a recent visit to the states I was shocked to hear American commercials directors rubbishing the more "creative" adverts as a waste of airtime because advertising is a "science" and the "personal" vision of creative directors is irrelevant to the majority of viewers / consumers / lemmings.
Timeslicing has been about for a year or two now, afaik there's one guy who invented it (Dayton Taylor / Timetracks) and a couple of poor imitators. Most all of the effective uses [of this technique] I have seen were done by him / his company. No-one else seems to get the sync quite right.
The first time I saw timeslicing (in the UK) was an advert for Capitol Radio a long while ago - it doesn't appear to have been the overnight gimmick that morphing was. One minute PDI morphed michael jackson's video the next day practically everyone was morphing everything - morphing is still a valuable production tool it's just been relegated to the "invisible" effects dept.:)
The problem with the flickering (light) is easy enough to correct..umm.. hit the 'deflicker' button in flame or inferno, the fluttering (slight zooming in and out) is harder to fix but a lot of stabilisation will usually cure all but the most wildly misaligned cameras. What's practically impossible to fix however is badly synchronised shutters especially on faster moving subjects. Usually ropey frames can be morphed over but high complexity stuff like big splashes of water are too painful to try.
Hitachi have released a plugin for Composer that allows you to "Tour Into Picture" (called Tipit) (http://www.aw.sgi.com/??? nofeature yet!? ) (http://www.iijnet.or.jp/JAM/AD/TIP/TIP_HomeE.html ) that maps existing still pictures onto roughly defined perspective shapes allowing you to "move" into the picture - it can get very close to the timeslicing effect as long as you don't have busy, complex scenes with lots of layers of parallax.
Slashdot Mirror
> Why for the sake of GOD, does sgi not distribute
> a compiler for free with its OS? This is a very big issue...
Bzzt! 6.5 comes with gcc *and* necessary libs - you don't need to buy the IDO to get them any more.
I would love to think this news will give VRML a big boost - and hopefuly a linux port - although it does feel a little bit late and after the fact.
;)
An often overlooked factor in the downfall of vrml is precisely *who* creates the stuff (the content) that actually makes people dl the plugin in turn creating demand for more and better VRML spaces.
The type of person who is able to make high quality, visually stimulating VRML content space would be a technically competent (programmer or near programmer - to understand the weird routing and syntax *and* be able to write javascript/java to implement anything more complex than the most soul sappingly dull interactions) with a good theoretical understanding of 3d preferably with experience in a "professional" package (ie. practical experience) - eg. Maya, Explore, Symbolics, SoftImage, Nichimen, Houdini, um, 3dStudio (...and playing with a crack you borrowed off your dodgy mate doesn't count!) who also has a firm grasp of the internet and ideally be comitted to open source (even pre-platinum announcement there was a profound scarcity of people willing to pay ppl high wages to create stunning work subsequently to be "given away" on a website - if you can view a VRML scene it's trivial to cut'n'paste objects others may have spent days even weeks honing down into a lightweight, good looking piece - companies think of this as "piracy" - rightly or wrongly) - oh yeah, so some lo-poly/games experience would also be good. Unfortunately those exact type of people are in such demand right now that they are currently being offered stupendous money to work in any of the big animation houses around the globe - *how many* people does it take to animate a tie-fighter, George? Disillusioned games animators would also provide a good source of suitable producers - unfortunately making games is too damn fun and VRML is too damn DULL - it would appear. Ditto film, ditto commercials...
Most professional animators fall **way** below the technical ceiling required to create bearable VRML. Animators are, by and large, "package" users - not the gourard-shading-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of programmer/animator of five to ten years ago - programmer and artist brains rarely seem to arrive in the same head - most people who work in 3d animation tend to be either programmers or artists. VRML demands are far greater synergy between programming and artistry (not that programming isn't artistic, far from it - it's just less accessible)
The majority of VRML developers instead had great programming vision and practically no colour vision! (...or understanding of how to add detail without weight - or knowledge of the plethora of routine tricks, hacks, bodges and smudges that 3d animators use daily). Instead the VRML community was besieged with worthy projects of great technical interest and little visual merit (critically) and military stuff (those craaaazy army guys love anything VR!) and in between these a few genuinely worthwhile examples sneaked by (which encouraged me to keep following the www-vrml list).
Cosmo/SGI then shot themselves in the foot with such force it took VRMLs kneecaps by dropping development of CosmoWorlds on the SGI (anyone know whether SGI CW is OSS? I see *no* mention of it - AFAIK it still costs US$2300 a seat) ignoring the fact that 75% of professional animators use SGIs at work and find WindowsNT (the NT stands for NeanderThal) unpleasant and confusing. It's *far* easier to convince your boss to fork out a couple of grand on some software that lets your clients review your designs in 3d in *their* office, not yours - they *love* that kind of thing - than it is to either fork out a grand for some software stuck on your PC at home or run a moral/conscience probing crack which you can't use for production either. Oh, and CW sucks big time on the PC - I *can't* believe they left out the beautiful per-vertex colour editor !! fools !!
Meanwhile I'm off down the shops to pick up a big steaming Visual PC, dl my free copy of CW and start making some more of those free models for ppl to rip
I "make" commercials for a living and I'm proud.
:)
..umm.. hit the 'deflicker' button in flame or inferno, the fluttering (slight zooming in and out) is harder to fix but a lot of stabilisation will usually cure all but the most wildly misaligned cameras. What's practically impossible to fix however is badly synchronised shutters especially on faster moving subjects. Usually ropey frames can be morphed over but high complexity stuff like big splashes of water are too painful to try.
l ) that maps existing still pictures onto roughly defined perspective shapes allowing you to "move" into the picture - it can get very close to the timeslicing effect as long as you don't have busy, complex scenes with lots of layers of parallax.
It is of course more true to say that I contribute a fractionally small element towards some or more commercials, broadcast graphics, simulator rides, movie films etc etc
Ad execs (if that's who you wish to believe 'make' commercials) can prolly think of thousands of exciting new and original creative things to do - the problem being that no-one will pay you money to be original, creative and independant. Adverts aren't conjured out of thin air, they are bought and paid for by all the people who buy the products they advertise.
On a recent visit to the states I was shocked to hear American commercials directors rubbishing the more "creative" adverts as a waste of airtime because advertising is a "science" and the "personal" vision of creative directors is irrelevant to the majority of viewers / consumers / lemmings.
Timeslicing has been about for a year or two now, afaik there's one guy who invented it (Dayton Taylor / Timetracks) and a couple of poor imitators. Most all of the effective uses [of this technique] I have seen were done by him / his company. No-one else seems to get the sync quite right.
The first time I saw timeslicing (in the UK) was an advert for Capitol Radio a long while ago - it doesn't appear to have been the overnight gimmick that morphing was. One minute PDI morphed michael jackson's video the next day practically everyone was morphing everything - morphing is still a valuable production tool it's just been relegated to the "invisible" effects dept.
The problem with the flickering (light) is easy enough to correct
Hitachi have released a plugin for Composer that allows you to "Tour Into Picture" (called Tipit) (http://www.aw.sgi.com/??? nofeature yet!? ) (http://www.iijnet.or.jp/JAM/AD/TIP/TIP_HomeE.htm
PhatController