SOFTIMAGE 3D ...Imagination Above the Clouds

OnOn powerfulpowerful wings...wings...

SOFTIMAGE 3D ...imagination Above the clouds,

where ideas become

real with the world’s

most powerful Achieve your vision Animation software, soars® With Softimage 3D, you can make your ideas fly, flinch, cry, pinch—and be as real as you want them to be. Softimage 3D. For the last decade, Softimage 3D tools have helped animators and producers deliver on the greatest ideas in animation history. They’ve even made dinosaurs fly.

Whatever you’d like to see fly (or jump or bounce or stretch), in Softimage 3D you’ll find the tools you need to make it happen. Any animation software can make objects move…but with Softimage, you can move audiences. With characters full of personality and emotion that just couldn’t get off the ground with any other package.

Perfect shadows, transparency, and depth-of-field effects were achieved with the programmable mental ray renderer* (left). Shaders were selectively applied to each scene element to individually control textures, materials, lights, lenses, geometry, and environments.

©1996 Softimage. Image courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic The artist selected from a broad range of modeling tools— splines, patch, polygons, and NURBS—to create the exact look and feel of the character (right). Productivity tools like Relational modeling and instancing simplified creation of this complex model.

* Currently available for SGI; check with your Softimage reseller for availability on Windows NT. Facial expressions were achieved by defining and saving key shapes in a library of shape animations (below), then reusing them throughout the sequence. Transi- tions were further refined by applying additive and average cluster animations.

Using the built-in Softimage 3D renderer (left), the artist chose from a variety of configurable options—such as raytracing reflection depth, levels of antialiasing, and degree of motion blur—to achieve the desired results. Inverse kinematics (IK) with adjustable joint sensitivity and dampening was used to create Joe & Basket (Mostly Sports)—©1995 Spans & Partner GmbH believable movements (left). Constraints and artist-defined expressions provided exacting control for fine-detailed skin deformation and range of motion.

No more brick walls

… unless that’s the effect you want.

The Softimage 3D toolset offers unparalleled depth and detail. For every concept, there are so many ways to achieve the lifelike motion and the absolute quality output you want. powerSoftimage 3D puts every tool imaginable at your The schematic view is interactive—objects can be fingertips, to push, pull, squash, twist any object in any selected and rearranged to way you can think of—and probably a few that never better manage the parent-child relationships. crossed your mind. The large, open design makes it The best in 3D computer animation—ground-breaking easy to see what you’re working p on. Key functions are just a mouse films, blockbuster games, hot new interactive titles—are click or two away, and frequently winners because they’re alive and they grab the audience. used tools remain visible on the main screen. With the ability to combine Softimage 3D tools in unique ways, every animator has the opportunity to create

signature effects that make the audience believe. Viewports are completely user- configurable. You can choose from You have the power to call all the shots. You can make full-, half-, or quarter-screen your characters move the way you want them to and display, and orthographic, perspective, wireframe, shaded, color render as you envision. So the quality of the end result preview, schematic, rotoscoping, matches your original expectations. depthcue, or ghosting views.

©1996 Softimage Working with some of Japan’s best Designed By Animators martial artists, the production team used motion capture to For Animators create the dynamic actions of the characters, in record time. Choose ©1994-1995 Sega Time and again, animators use the same phrase to from magnetic, optical, facial, mouse, MIDI, and microphone describe the experience of working in Softimage 3D: input or output motion-capture “It works the way you think.” Softimage 3D feels like a devices. Polygon reduction automatically prepared the natural extension of the imagination—everything you characters for optimal play-back need is right where you would expect it to be. on leading game systems.

In Softimage 3D, the tools you use most are always visible, and key functions are only a mouse click or two away. The workspace is large and uncluttered, delivering immediate feedback to maintain the flow of your work. That means you can make decisions more quickly, work Don’t Let Anyone faster and with fewer hitches. And you’ll be more satisfied with the quality of the end results. Clip Your Wings The difference? Night and day— slamming against a With Softimage 3D available now on Windows NTTM and deadline wall, or coming in ahead of schedule. When Silicon Graphics® IRIX (SGI) operating systems, you have software works the way you think, the technology choices you never had before. Softimage 3D delivers becomes transparent, and you can focus on the chal- workstation performance on Windows NT on a range lenge of making your ideas really take flight. of affordable systems (Intel®, Digital Alpha, or MIPS® processors). So, more animators can have their own work- Coca-Cola, Summer Fun— Courtesy of (Colossal Pictures) stations. And Softimage 3D offers identical operations and complete compatibility across IRIX and Windows NT, so your existing investments in IRIX animators, hardware, and imagery are still every bit as valuable.

With Softimage 3D for Windows NT, you can choose from a variety of competitive hardware, service, and sup-

To make the umbrella open and move naturally, the artist used unique lattice and spline deformations, port options, and integrate seamlessly with your existing applying pressure, stress, and strain at the right moments to achieve realism. Using the full complement of IRIX-based workplace. You get the best of both worlds. Softimage animation tools, 3D art elements were combined with 2D cel facial expressions created in rSoftimage Toonz, then composited with Softimage Eddie™.

Call today for information about

Select from more than 150 Softimage 3D on Windows NT and SGI. productivityfunction curves (fcurves) for In North America, call 800 576-3846. mathematically precise control of animation and other attributes. Anywhere else in the world, call 818 365-1359. Or visit us at http://www.softimage.com

With Softimage modeling, custom effects, rotate facility, and animation tools, this project was completed in record time. The productivity features and speed of the renderer brought the project in ahead of schedule, without sacrificing high-quality output.

COI, Flying Start—Courtesy of The ever-present playback FrameStore and Blink Productions timeline provides constant, instantaneous feedback and control. See the beginning and ending frames, frame rate, and total number of frames. Three Wishes— ®1995 Rysher Entertainment, produced at Tippett Studio

Rock Solid Reputation

Softimage 3D has been production- WipeOut game— Courtesy of the WipeOut team ©1995 Psygnosis Ltd. proven by nearly every major film, video, and game producer around the world. They relied on Softimage 3D to produce incredible animation Bed Time— Big Bang Technologies, Montreal for Jurassic Park, The Mask, Casper, Jumanji, Reboot, Liquid Television, Sega Virtua Fighter, and countless com- mercials, videos, and interactive titles. They stake their reputation on Softimage 3D because it’s come through for them over and over again.

R/GA Digital Studios Inc./Ogilvy & Mather, Houston

More Power. More Performance. More Possibilities. SOFTIMAGE 3D. FEATURE SUMMARY

SOFTIMAGE 3D* SOFTIMAGE 3D † Minimum Recommended • Timeline Access Playback and • Animation Editors Functions Matter EXTREME System Requirements timeline access for lighting, material, curve, DopeSheet. • Shading Types Blinn, constant, Softimage 3D, plus: Windows NT texture 2D, texture 3D, layer fog, • Constraints Position, orientation, Lambert, Phong, shadow object. camera settings, ambience, and depth direction, bounding plane, tangency ® • Illumination Ambient, diffuse, Model/Motion/Tools– • Workstation with Intel Pentium Pro, fading editors. Digital Alpha, or MIPS R4400 to animation path, camera/object up specular. Upgrades • Animation Tools Playback from any vector, normal to polygon surface, processor • Color Systems RGB, HLD, HSV. • Meta-Clay® Modeling Density- frame, flip-flop, and loop. object to cluster, cluster to object, • Windows NT 3.51 with Service Pack • Material Attributes Refraction, based modeling for organic, sculp- • Display Stereo Images Stereo three-point planar, two-point linear. 2 or higher reflectivity, transparency, static blur. tured objects. image capability. • Object Attributes Color • Modeling Effects Mosaic, Nebula, • 64 MB RAM transparency, self-illumination, • Mapping 2D/3D textures, bump, Wakeup, Zzot, ResetTransf, • 1 GB hard disk Model shininess. cylindrical, raytraced/non-raytraced, reflection, reflectivity, spherical, Boolean2D, ChangeInfo, Eater. • 200 MB swap file • Geometrical Objects Face, • Functions Deform, rotate, scale, transparency, UV, XY/XZ/YZ. 3D • Motion Effects Cometa, Shock, • CD-ROM drive Polygonal mesh, Polygon, patch, stretch, translate. Bezier/Linear/Cardinal/Free Form / Solid Textures Cloud, marble, wood. Shock3D. SGI • Deformations Cluster, control B-spline/NURBS spline. • 3D Solid Textures Cloud, marble, • Tools CubicMap, Deinterlace, point, effector, lattice, patch, spline, • Silicon Graphics workstation wood. FourthD, Label, Puzzle, Timewarp, • 2D/3D Primitives Arc, circle, cone, vertex. • IRIX 5.2 or higher cylinder, cube, dodecahedron, grid, • Masks Alpha channel, RGB intensity. Watch. • Q-Stretch Automatic “squash and icosahedron, null, octahedron, square, • 64 MB RAM stretch” deformation based on speed • Rendering Options Field, frame, Particles • 1 GB hard disk sphere, spiral, torus, tetrahedron. wireframe, solo-region, tags, and acceleration. • Particles Generation Pixel-based • Operations Animation-based z channel. • 200 MB swap file • Expressions Define relationships particle generator using real-world duplication, alignment, bevel, convert, between objects using expressions • Effects Ambience, depth cue, depth dynamics to create effects such as • CD-ROM drive clean-up, fractalize, guided extrude, and math functions. Modify existing fading, layer fog, motion blur. snow, sparks, fireworks, explosions, breakup, local lattice, shrinkwrap, User Interface function curves or channel input/ • 2D Image Retoucher Integrated smoke, fog, and natural phenomena. polyskin, edit point/coordinate, output. 2D paint program accessed form • Views Perspective, x, y, and z parallel freeze, inverse, merge mesh, merge • Capabilities Local and global force texture editor. projection, schematic. surface, order, plane clipping, rotate, • Animation Effects Flock, wave, fields animated explicitly, keyframe • Manipulation & Transformation round, scale, subdivision, symmetry, explode, glue, flake, jitter, limit, • UV Texturing Edit and save UV and jitter on all parameters, Modes Referential/relative-to-view tag, translate zip patches, extrude, lockdown, magnet, polyshrink. texture coordinates on mesh objects. dynamics-based particle animation, rotation, referential translation, skin, revolution, four-sided patches, UV coordinates lock to vertices. 3D geometry as emitters, inter- Motion Capture/Control constant volume scaling. proportional modelling. particle collision detection, particle • Data Input Devices magnetic, Tools disintegration and mutation, point/ • Lighting Types Infinite, point, • Boolean Intersection, difference, visual or mechanical motion capture axis/surface/volume particle gener- selective, spot, sun. union. • Autotrace, composite, flopbook, file device. management, hidden line, import/ ation modes, 3D geometry as • Lighting Variables Color, cone/ • Polygonal Operations Polygon as • Channels Drivers mouse, micro- export images, input/output frames obstacles. spread angle, falloff, hue, luminance, object, three-point planar constraint, phone, dial box++, SpaceBall++, on film++/video recorder, output to position, saturation, selectable object assignable centroid reference, mental ray Rendering Polhemus 3Space FASTRAK, PostScript™, print in line-rendered illumination, shadow types (ray- multiple polygon select, rounding, Ascension Flock of Birds, SuperFluo format, shell, scan images++, database • Materials Index of refraction, traced, depth map, soft), sun position extrusion, revolution. Motion Analysis, Acclaim, Acclaim resource editor** shininess, dissolve, ambient, diffuse, (geographical location, date) target, • Animated Modeling Operations Skeleton, Kiss, Monkey. • Import/Export Image Formats reflection, shadow, specular, trans- umbra/penumbra color. Animated bevel, bridge, bumpmap, parency, transmitted component. • Output Channels Export Artisan, Alias, Aurora, Everest, RGB, • Camera Up vector constraint, frame duplicator, guided extrude push, animation for events triggering, RGBA, SGI, Targa, TIFF, PIC, Verigo, • Mapping Bump, displacement, selection/all, rectangular/cursor shrinkwrap, duplicator, branch. external robotics, sound or motion Wavefront, YUV, AVI**, DIB** reflection, texture, cubic, projection. Zoom, zoom, orbit, track, dolly, roll, • Instantiation Reference one set of camera rig control. • Import Image Formats JPEG, GIF, • Depth of Field Aperture, aspect show/select camera, select interest, geometry or hierarchy many times. hide camera, settings (field of view, IFL, DMP, FLC, FLI, CEL. ratio, focal length. • Relational Modeling Relate an Actor depth of field, focal length, aperture, • Import/Export Object Formats • Effects/Options Anti-aliasing, edge object with its operator: extrusion, distance to object), picture format • Kinematics 3D ball joints with DXF, IGES (including NURBS merging, field rendering, line revolution, skin, four-sided, zip (custom, cine, slide, video), turntable angle limits, inverse/direct kinematics. entities) rendering, motion blurring, special patches. view (rotation of camera around one • Dynamics Collision, density, • 3D Studio Import 3D Studio points/curves. OZ Shader Library. axis in parallel projection view). • Polygon Reduction Rule-based elasticity, fan, friction, force, gravity, objects, animation and textures to Over 45 programmable shaders polygon reduction with decimation • Camera Memory Camera position/ kinetic/static roughness, mass, nail, Softimage 3D. included for lens effects including optimization by percent of reduction wind. fisheye, visible light beams, interest, zoom factor. • Color Reduction Color quantize or specific polygon count. atmospheric, volumetric, star, and • Skin Automatic/local/global/ single image or sequence using a • Hot Key Remapping Create flare effects, using surface, weighted/rigid envelopes. color palette or specified number of keyboard equivalents and save them Motion environment, solid material and • Weighted Envelopes Automated colors. to a preference file. • Animation Constraints, dynamics, texture shaders, or create your own. weighting of vertices. Skeletal • Keyboard Accelerators Quick explicit path, function curves, memory is maintained when a new Programming Tools • File Formats Softimage, Alias, access to menu items without using keyframing, inverse kinematics, skin is applied. • Developer’s Kit for information Wavefront, Quantel/Abekas, the mouse. lattices, shape, skin distortion, spline/ PostScript (line rendering only). patch deformation, motion capture. • Rigid Envelopes Transformation exchange (object/images), custom based envelopes. effect and motion capture • Parallel and Distributed programming. Rendering Distribute rendering across workstation processors or * = Feature set available for Windows NT and SGI operating systems Other Items network of workstations. † = Currently available for SGI; check with your Softimage reseller for availability on Windows NT • Database tools. • Orthagonal View Rendering ** = Windows NT only Render distortion-free texture maps. ++= SGI only Customer Support Sales Offices Western US, Western Canada (800) 387-2559 in North America; (514) 845-1636 worldwide Asia Tel: 65 336 6455 Tel: (510) 803-2300 Fax: 65 336 3335 Fax: (510) 803-2301 Product and Training Information France Tel: 33 1 46 04 33 00 Eastern US, Eastern Canada (800) 576-3846 in North America; (818) 365-1359 worldwide Fax: 33 1 46 04 39 61 Tel: (203) 830-6355 Germany Tel: 49 261 912 610 Fax: (203) 830-6359 Fax: 49 261 912 6133 Italy Tel: 39 39 6057 720 Corporate Sales and Fax: 39 39 6057 727 Marketing Headquarters Japan Tel: 81 3 5454 8068 Microsoft Corporation Fax: 81 3 5454 8164 One Microsoft Way Latin America Redmond, WA 98052-6399 Tel: (305) 489-4847 Fax: (305) 491-8849 UK Tel: 44 171 287 0708 Fax: 44 171 287 0701 ©1996 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Microsoft and Windows NT are either registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Softimage, Eddie, and Meta-Clay are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Softimage, a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, in the United States, Canada, and/or other countries. M PostScript is a trademark of Adobe Systems Inc. Intel and Pentium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. MIPS is a registered trademark of MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. Silicon Graphics is a registered trademark of Silicon Graphics Inc. All other brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. 0196 Part No. 098-63614