The WAVE Report on Digital Media
3D --- Media Creation --- Shared Space
Published by 4th WAVE, Inc.
Issue #603 7/19/96
CONTENTS
Communications Industry Transaction Report
Veronis, Suhler & Associates has released "The Communications Industry Transaction Report." It contains information on 2,500 communications industry transactions from 1990 to 11/95. Coverage includes: television & radio broadcasting, filmed entertainment, book publishing, advertising agencies and interactive digital media. The 662 page report costs $1,395 and complements the widely regarded "The Communications Industry Forecast" and "The Communications Industry Report." Contact (212)935- 4990,
Diamond: $10 Million Loss on Edge 3D Boards
Diamond's quarterly report released 7/18 (Q1 sales $120.2 million, up 26% from last year), states: "The company recorded a charge for the quarter of $10 million reflecting increased inventory reserves and customer price protection related to the Edge 3D product. As a result, Diamond reported a loss from operations of $7.3 million". The Edge 3D board is powered by NVidia's 3D chip.
Contact http://www.diamondmm.com.
Ray Dream 4.1 Ships with D3D, QD3D, VRML
Fractal Design has begun shipping Ray Dream 4.1 for Windows with support for Microsoft's Direct3D, Apple's QuickDraw3D (Rave), and VRML export.
Fractal Design claims that it is the first 3D application to support Direct3D. This is noteworthy because to date Microsoft has promoted Direct3D as a 3D game engine, and only secondarily as a general purpose 3D interface. Other 3D tool makers in the under $500 category have indicated to WAVE their intention to use Direct3D as a method to access mass market 3D accelerators, rather than rely solely on special purpose OpenGL boards for hw acceleration.
Also, Fractal's use of Apple's Rave and 3DMF file format indicates that Apple may indeed be able to make inroads for its 3D technologies on the PC platform.
Contact http://www.fractal.com.
Pixar has announced that it has shut down its television-commercial unit, prompting a generally negative article in the SF Chron on 7/14 (Pixar, On the Right Path?). With Pixar's previous discontinuance of PC and Mac support for its Renderman products, Pixar continues to put all its eggs in the film and CD-ROM production business.
Final Draft of VRML 2.0 Spec Released
Perhaps it is not too surprising that VRML news tends to arrive chez WAVE via the Net. For those who are not mail-list-aholics, here is the VRML latest:
The third and final draft of the VRML 2.0 specification, according to Rikk Carey, at http://vrml.sgi.com/moving-worlds or http://vag.vrml.org/VRML2.0/DRAFT3/.
Toni Parisi, founder of Intervista and co-author on the VRML 1.0 spec, logged onto the VRML mailing list to praise 2.0:
"Having worked with Moving Worlds in some form or another for eight (!) months now, I have found a tremendous amount of power and elegance in it. It's unbelievable what can be done, for example, just with PROTOs and ROUTEs (no scripting or JavaC). On technical merits, MW is beyond "good enough" -- it's *damn* good."
Caligari president Roman Ormandy defended the company's VRML efforts (Fountain and Pioneer) on the trueSpace mailing list, where some users complain that VRML has drawn attention away from trueSpace (Ormandy asserts that trueSpace development is continuing apace):
"First time in the evolution of technology we can store knowledge of the outside world in the same way human perception does. Instead of describing fleeting image based appearance of the reality, we can describe underlying structure of it. This structure is viewer independent and more fundamental."
ActiveMovie to be included in Internet Explorer
Microsoft announced that the ActiveMovie API for digital video and audio technology will be included as part of Microsoft Internet Explorer version 3.0. Says MS: "with ActiveMovie runtime components built into Microsoft Internet Explorer, consumers will have an easy and quick way to download and play video and audio in all major formats on the Internet."
This from Max-enthusiast Alicia Buckley at book publisher New Riders:
"Inside 3D Studio MAX by Steven Elliott and Phillip Miller is coming this fall!
"Have your work published in Inside 3D Studio MAX! We're looking for high-quality, professional textures, images, and animations to be showcased throughout the book and on the CD. If your work is chosen, you'll receive a credit in the book and a free copy of Inside 3D Studio MAX. One outstanding image will be chosen for the front cover. This piece must be eye-catching, have cutting-edge appeal, and illustrate the power of MAX. To enter send a color hard copy and an electronic copy of any work illustrating the power of MAX. To enter send a color hard copy and an electronic copy of any work you want to be considered by July 31, 1996 to:
Alicia Buckley New Riders Macmillan Publishing USA 201 W. 103rd St. Indianapolis, IN 46290-1097"
And if you can't wait, New Riders has already released "3D Studio MAX Fundamentals" by Michael Todd Peterson ($45, ISBN 1-56205-625-5).
Contact http://www.mcp.com/newriders.
Softimage is opening an LA studio in Santa Monica which will house sales and special projects staff as well as a motion capture studio. Contact: http://www.softimage.com, 800 576-3846
603.2 MultiGen Unveils NT Strategy by Rob Glidden
MultiGen, the leading SGI real-time 3D tool company, this week took the wraps off its plan to move to the NT platform. The unveiling took place in a showy partner-studded extravaganza in SF introduced by a hooded piano-player who turned out to be CEO Joe Fantuzzi (Encore! Encore!).
The news: GameGen II will be available on NT in September (an X-Motif UI). Price: $7500, with $2500 each for ModelMaker and BSPMaker add-ons. MultiGen has indicated that future pricing is undecided, but likely to move lower. Sales will be through authorized MultiGen distributors and VARs.
Featured partners included Mike Ryder of game developer SingleTrac and Intel Sr VP Ron Whittier. Also attending, to show support, were 3Dfx, Viewpoint, Evans & Sutherland, Lightscape, and Kinetix. Kinetix, at least for now, sees MultiGen as a realtime authoring tool that is more complementary than competitive to Max. Noticeably absent was Microsoft, whose Direct3D could benefit from realtime authoring tools.
MultiGen's move to NT, though expected as a follow-on to last year's move to NT by Softimage and other high-end 3D modelers, is nonetheless significant as a potential bellwether shift of the traditional high-end vis sim market away from SGI and towards NT.
However, MultiGen's success on SGI is linked to SGI's Performer, and on the PC platform the company lacks a freely available playback tool like Performer in which to load its OpenFlight database. MultiGen competitor Coryphaeus's Bruce Sinclair asserted to WAVE that "you need an integrated system".
603.3 Kinetix Ships Character Studio by Rob Glidden
One of the most talked-about products of SIGGRAPH 95 is finally shipping. Kinetix has announced that Character Studio is now shipping, price $995. Character Studio includes the Biped and Physique plugins that created the wonderful walking characters for the Max launch at last year's SIGGRAPH.
Character Studio was developed for Kinetix by Unreal Pictures, Inc of Palo Alto, CA, led by Michael Girard, Susan Amkraut and John Chadwick. Girard and Amkraut headed development of the BiPED software component, Chadwick directed the development of Physique.
BiPED features:
Footstep-Driven Keyframe Animation. Patented. Once footsteps are in place, keyframes are generated automatically to produce an initial sketch of the 3D character's motion. Throughout edits and revisions, the original nuances of the character are preserved.
Motion mapping of one character to another. Apply a duck walk to a child, and the child will walk like a duck (but no, it won't talk like a duck).
Foot-to-Ground Collision Response. Automates the reactions that occur when a character's foot makes contact with the ground - particularly powerful since foot-to-ground contact causes a reaction throughout the character's entire body.
Motion splicing. Allows animators to splice together character motions by simply splicing the footprints associated with those motions.
Advanced Inverse Kinematics. Blends forward kinematics (such as a swinging motion) with inverse kinematics (such as directed motions, like a punch).
Physique features:
Kinetix claims "Physique provides animators with control over extreme levels of detail, to the point where characters' veins bulge and roll across their muscles".
Detailed Muscle Deformations.
Precise Skin Behavior.
Realistic Tendon Behavior
Vertex Level Control
Multipedal Character Development. "For animators wanting to define the skin and muscle behaviors for a character with more than two legs, Physique works with the bones system built into 3D Studio MAX to create animated crabs, starfish, squid or any other multipedal character."
603.4 Computer, Film Groups Oppose HDTV Plan by Rob Glidden
If you hail from the computer world, you may think of High Definition TV as a "TV thing" that has little to do with computers and even less to do with artistic creation.
Think again. Computer, film and cable groups have launched an impassioned 11th hour lobbying campaign to stall the FCC's upcoming final vote on the Grand Alliance's HDTV plan. HDTV opponents hope to stop a government- mandated digital TV standard altogether or win on the key technical issues of progressive scan, variable aspect ratios and frame rate.
In particular, Microsoft (with the support of Intel, Apple, Compaq and others) and the Director's Guild of America (think Steven Spielberg and a herd of Hollywood names) have raised the stakes by becoming vocal critics of the Grand Alliance, promising high-visibility lobbying campaigns aimed squarely at election-year politics.
Opponents claim the HDTV plan is an already-obsolete technology that will set back TV/computer interoperability by decades. Proponents claim it is a "done deal" that reflects the best possible compromise between the needs of different industries. Both sides are courting a broader range of allies in consumer and ideological groups to add political weight to their technical arguments and industry interests.
Some background:
Technical Issues
The technical battle lines have been drawn for years: progressive scan, variable aspect ratios, and frame rate.
"Progressive scan" means eliminate the 4 interlaced formats from the 18 video formats in the Grand Alliance plan. Filmmakers claim progressive scan offers much higher image quality. Computer monitors and data-types are progressive scan. Opponents see continuing interlace as anywhere from a bureaucratic disaster to a nefarious plan to milk interlace patents.
Aspect ratio. The Grand Alliance plan requires 4 x 3 and 16 x 9 image ratio and point out that monitors have a fixed size and shape. But no films are actually made in the 16 x 9 format (also known as 1.78) and filmmakers favor a wider aspect ratio. For computer folk, a government- mandated aspect ratio makes as much sense as a law banning 800x600 resolution images because they take up too much memory.
Frame rate. Setting the frame rate to 72 Hz would bring film and video into synchronized frame rate ratios (24 is one third of 72), ending the messy conversion between film and video. Having synced frame rates is even more important for progressive scan.
Players
The long-time voice in the wilderness against the Grand Alliance has been the American Society of Cinematographers, the small, elite group (250) of top camera people. In 1993, the ASC turned against the Grand Alliance but made little headway. The ASC remains very anti-Grand Alliance, believing that progressive scan cameras are entirely feasible (Grand Alliance proponents concede this, given that MIT/Polaroid camera received best-of- show honors at the spring NAB), that progressive scan will produce vastly superior image quality, and that chopping/cropping of movies will be unnecessary in the digital age.
The Hollywood tide turned in May of this year, however, when the Directors Guild of America (5000 members) joined the opposition to the Grand Alliance. Steven Spielberg and many other famous directors have started a letter-writing campaign and Al Gore was pitched by members of the entertainment community last month.
MPAA. The clout of Hollywood's creative community is reduced by the strong pro-Grand Alliance position of the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the major studios.
Microsoft, which brought out senior VP Craig Mundie to testify on the hill, has Intel's support and joins Apple's longtime involvement in the issue. Computer Industry Coalition on Advanced Television Service ("CICATS") is the lobbying group.
National Cable Television Association adamantly opposes any government- mandated digital TV standard. NCTA president Decker Anstrom said, "It would be an irreversible mistake for the government to adopt a federal technology standard for digital television. . . The digital TV marketplace is already developing quickly, without government standards. More than two million homes now receive DBS-delivered digital television, and cable and MMDS companies will be introducing digital TV services this year."
Scenarios
So who will win? At this point, few are predicting success for the Grand Alliance opponents, who appear for now in the underdog role.
Passions seem to run surprisingly high around this issue, with WAVE's fax lines and ears still cooling off from a flurry of charges, counter charges and contradictions. HDTV sales abroad are 4,000 a year or 300,000 a year, the poor will be disenfranchised by HDTV or by having to buy both a TV and a computer, PC TVs will cost $50,000 each or will save consumers billions. I kid you not. You get the picture.
However, three possible scenarios were painted to WAVE by various participants and observers:
1) HDTV opposition loses. It is too late for the opposition, and the Grand Alliance already won. At least 3 of the 4 FCC commissioners (Chair Reed Hundt the exception) are already irrevocably in the Grand Alliance camp. The broadcasting industry is a Washington insider, and lobbying outsiders like Microsoft stand little chance. The fight will wake up and rally the broadcasting industry to be even more pro Grand Alliance.
2) HDTV opposition achieves delay. The FCC won't dare approve such a significant plan surrounded by such inter-industry rivalry, particularly in an election year. Who needs a bevy of Hollywood directors directing commercials denouncing the "bandwidth giveaway of the century" and the "Clinton/Gore sell-out of hi-tech's future to greedy foreign manufacturers"? No one will win in November on the "anti-computer" vote.
3) HDTV wins a Pyrrhic victory. The final scenario is that even if the Grand Alliance wins, the computer and cable industry will simply ignore the standard and do what they want anyway. The marketplace will rule, and broadcast TV has already lost its leadership role to cable, satellite, the Internet, and computers.
603.6 More on 3D Benchmarks by John Latta
In response to the question posed in WAVE#602, Steve Wright, OpenGL Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation provided the following: WAVE readers should look to the August GPC issue on http://www.specbench.org/ for details on the OpenGL performance of Windows NT 4.0. Microsoft also supports the notion that users be able to run their own benchmarks. Currently the source code from viewperf is available and it is expected that the glperf code will also become available.
Copyright 1996 4th WAVE, Inc.
May be redistributed in full for individual readership and posted to newsgroups, Web, and FTP sites. May not be reprinted or redistributed for profit. Short quotes are permitted but must be attributed to the WAVE Report on Digital Media.