Real 3D Feature List

Modelling Animation Rendering Materials

My comments in red italic text

Modelling specific features

• Easy to use and user friendly. Well, so they say
• User configurable and expandable editor allows user to build up job specific modelling environments for different types of modelling tasks. Its highly configurable interface is something one just has to play with, because the interfaces supplied are not that good - especially on the Amiga version. This is a feature that really goes way over some of the other packages around.
• Tools window provides the user with an icon based interface to the program. This is very true, however, as soon as you begin to learn the keyboard shortcuts, you will take off some of the icons to give more screen space to modelling. A couple of alterations to the startup-file, and you will be able to have each window ready witha shortcut. Too much icons - I say.
• Fully integrated editor and rendering engine allows ray tracing to be used as a primary rendering method simultaneously for all windows. Obviously, you should need a very fast machine or a simple scene to be able to use this feature. Some people might find it handy.
• Zero wait state design takes full advantage of multitasking. Time consuming tasks like rendering are handled asyncronously allowing the user to execute modelling activities without waiting for the program. The wait state design is not something you will notice, but if you ever use a package without it, you'll know you are missing something.
• RPL, a fully featured programming language providing the user with total and interactive control over all functions. Except the rendering engine. However, I am very pleased with this language. It provides the user with the ability to create custom tools with its own interface.
• Open architecture allows end users and third parties to expand and customize the program using RPL. There is a lot of very nice free RPL goodies out there, for various tasks. A couple of very nice commercial software written in RPL as well.
• Saveable macros based on RPL which can be bound to keys and user defined icons. This is a very nice feature indeed. Do your stuff with macro recording activated, and use the resulting code as an example for a custom RPL project.
• Two file formats available: binary format based on IFF and ASCII format based on RPL. Another GREAT feature. Imagine having to rename all materials in a really big project manually. Instead, open your favourite texteditor, and just do some search and replace, run the new file and everything is done in a minutes
• Undo with unlimited depth. Yes, but could have been better. The undo buffer seems to have a complete version of the previous project in memory. This means that with very big scenes, the undo procedure is rather time consuming.
• User configurable keyboard shortcuts. Yes, but the default shortcuts takes up practically all the keys.
• Parallel and perspective projections available for all view windows.
• Clip-box feature can be used for clipping out unnecessary parts of the model using cubes.
• Measuring system allows the user to define coordinates directly or through mathematical formulas using the keyboard. Meters, centimetres, millimetres, inches, and feet are supported. Normal and polar coordinates can be used with eight different measuring modes. Also, relative and absolute coordinates is supported. This is one of the best measuring systems I've seen around.
• Unlimited number of saveable grids with user defined colours, line patterns, sizes, position, name, etc
• Existing objects can be used as 'snap to' points. Vector stack allows vector operations like addition, subtraction, averages, etc.. Results can be used as an input for creating and modifying objects. The vector stack is very powerful indeed, but its interface (or the lack of it) could have been a lot better. It takes a while to get used to this way of working with snaps.
• Hierarcical object construction. This is probably one of the major features of Real 3D. The hierarcical concept is just tremendous. It takes a bit of time to understand how powerful this really is, but understanding it makes you a far better modeller and animator making it work to your advantage. A lot of tricks would not have been possible without this kind of hierarcical way of construction.
• Solid (CSG) modelling including more than 30 built-in primitives. Which means that CSG solids have a true volume based on a mathematical formula rather than a set of polygons. Because of this, the smooth egdes will never have any polygonal artifacts. The RPL language even gives you the ability to check if an object is inside another.
• Boolean operations. The boolean operations are extremely powerful, and it is computed at render time. This gives you the ability to animate the effect with extreme ease and flexibility.
• Quadric surfaces.
• Polygonal surfaces. They are there, but they lack some essencial tools to be a comfortable parter of modelling. Then again, Real was never designed to be a polygonal modeller.
• B-splines. A much better alternative to polygons. Although not a full NURBS inplementation, there are some extremely well designs out there.
• Freeform curves can be used as trim curves to cut objects. A very nice feature, but with a couple of limitations that can be overcome. I.e. that a trimcurve will cut infinetaly deep.
• Large collection of creation tools based on quadrics such as lathe which creates smoothly curved objects by joining cylinders, cones, ellipsoids, and hyperbolics. This is something one could use for building fast outlines of an object, or very render effective objects.
• Numerical, accurate editing of geometric attributes of primitives. Although the interface for this editong is pretty bad, one can do things that are not done in the creation stage of the object. I.e. one can separately change the angle of the top and bottom side of a cutted cone. There are so many parameters for the quadric objects, that it takes a bit of trial and error to get it right, even with the schematics by your side.
• Comprehensive set of freeform construction tools including co-planar and orthogonal sweeps (extrusion along a curve), swing, rotation, cross-sectional building, curve to surface skinning and parallel curve / surface tool. And if these are not enough for the advanced user, one can obtain free tools from the ftp-site. Remember, because of Real 3Ds high level of flexibility, one can easily create freeform objects with some help of the large selection of animation tools.
• Object construction tools producing 3D object from 2D bitmaps. This is a bad implementation, as it takes too much memory with large bitmaps. However, it can be very useful for rough outlines, from which you can create a simpler version. Some people might find this a very useful tool.
• Landscape and tree fractal generators. Fun stuff to play with. Nice trees produced, but rather hard to texture, although possible. The landscape generator is fairly standard. These constructions can also be animated through the use of build-in RPL words to generate these objects.
• Freeform extrusion tool: automatic bevelling with four bevel profile options, adjustable bevelling radius and extrusion depth, both inwards and outwards bevelling supported. It is fully automatic, generating holes, adjusting bevelling radius etc. The tool uses B-splines for the best quality. Nice for producing animated logos with unavailable fonts.
• A built-in 3D font loader tool.
• Advanced tool for creating complex skeletonal particle systems.
• Volume filling particle tool.
• All necessary linear transformations including: move, size, stretch, rotate, mirror, shear, etc.
• Nearly one hundred non-linear free-form deformations including bend, twist and deformation through user defined control curves. There are so many ways of doing non-linear deformations on a freeform object that you might have a hard task figuring out what to use for a specific task. Some testing is nessecary go get the most out of this.
• Comprehensive set of direct curve and surface manipulation tools through control and knot points includes remapping, automatic surface closing/opening, manipulation through sub-groups, conversion between different surface types, etc.
• Shrink wrapping functions: parallel, cylindrical, spherical and surface normal direction shrink wrapping can be used e.g. for generating a mesh surface from geometric primitives.
• Skeletonal control allows user to manipulate objects through skeletons. The skeletonal control could have been more intuitive. However, once you have done one advanced skeleton, the next one is not too hard.
• Tags can be used for expanding object and material data structures.
• DXF, 3D Studio, ProDraw, and Sculpt import.
• DXF export.
• Procedural object creation.
• Intelligent thinking objects can be used as tools for creating new objects.
• Textures are represented using primitives providing the user with accurate and control over size, position, orientation, etc. and allowing the user to manipulate textures like any other object. Each layer of an objects texture can be animated separately, making texture animation extremely flexible.
• Fast background image drawing function for rotoscoping, perspective matching etc.
• Reflect feature makes it possible to place a highlight from a light source to a location pointed by a mouse click. A pretty strange feature, but it works great.
• A feature for mouse coordinate projection to existing objects enables e.g. drawing a curve directly on the surface of another object. Laying a road onto a mountain is very easy. Go to the top view, select the mountain and start drawing the road. The curve immidiately conforms to the curvature of the mountain. Yes, it is that easy.

  Animation specific feature

• Particle Animation System based on Newton´s Laws of Motion which includes all necessary force fields allowing realistic simulation of wind, gravity, magnetism, friction, etc. Very powerful stuff for a program in this price range. However, the default values of size and mass is not always very usable, so always manually change these attributes of the objects.
• Behavioural animation where objects can have their own 'intelligence' and react to their living environment making decisions and communicating with other objects. Just put an aircraft into flight, and it can change its direction by itself, because it can 'see' the mountain ahead of it.
• All objects can be used as particles for particle animation. Even a particle animation system can be a particle in a larger particle animation.
• New and revolutionary time based animation system based on the object oriented theory.
• Tens of different techniques for creating animations. A lot of choices, pluss a great deal of custom written free animation methods for very specific animation.
• All animation data is a natural part of the object itself allowing the user to save, load, duplicate, etc, animated objects as easily as the simplest primitive.
• Lines, circles, ellipses, b-splines, etc can be used for defining motions, rotations and other transformations for objects. Mathematical formulas and RPL procedures can also be used.
• User defined control curves can be used for non-linear time accurate control over acceleration/deceleration.
• Material properties, textures, cameras, and light sources can all be animated like any other object.
• Inverce kinematics allows the user to re-define end points for skeletons. For example: pulling on the finger of a robot hand will cause the whole arm to follow with proper bending at the joints.
• Skeletonal control supports hierarchical skeletons needed for modelling character animations. It also supports angle constraints, joint friction and skin effects. This sounds easier than it actually is. Many will struggle getting to grips with the hierarchical skeletons, especially when it controls a multipart mesh object. It works though.
• Collision detection with user defined enviroment controls. You can set the accuracy on the collision detection, how much the 'rebound effect' is on each separate particle.
• Key framing can be used for object animation of light sources, textures, cameras, and materials. Keep in mind that keyframing is just one of about twenty other animation methods.
• Envelope control supports linear, smooth B-spline and discrete interpolation. Linear and B-spline interpolation is self-explanatory. Discreate interpolation means that the animation method in question repeats itelf at the end if it is not defined al the way to the end of its time.
• Animated shrink wrapping. Make footprints in the snow, simply by letting a character walk on it.
• The surface method makes rotating, walking etc. objects automatically travel along surfaces. A character can automatically climb a staircase, simply because it is in his path. No more aligning the sole of the foot for each step, reducing the need to create a lot of keyframes.
• Hierarcial animation construction: a fish swims along a path, the path is deformed by gravity caused by the globe which follows a circular route around the sun, etc. See how simple it can be done? Try to do this with a keyframer.
• A time line interface for animation editing.
• RPL interface to all animation techniques provides the user with easy and fast way to customise the procedures.
• All linear and non-linear transformations and deformations such as size, stretch, bend, etc.. can be animated. Hmm...
• Animated background images.
• Frame commands for controlling single frame controllers.
• Boolean operations can be animated: drill a hole through an object with a drill, pull it back and the hole disappears. This would be a very timeconsuming animation to set up in a keyframe based program. In Real 3D, just animate the 'cutting tool', and off you go.
• Procedural animations. RPL allows the user to create unique animations.

  Rendering specific features

• Soft shadows Some of the best soft shadows I have seen. They are so very nice, but too hungry for time to be used in serious animation. However, tricks are always available for soft shadows in an animation.
• Atmospheric effects and fogs of all kinds. These effects (not a plugin) gives very nice results, yet they take their time to generate. You decide how well (and for how long) by changing the 'accuracy settings'
• Depth of field with fully adjustable strength and scale. Unlike most other programs, Real 3D can produce depth of field effect without any additional time. It can also be produced without having anti aliasing set on.
• Motion blur applied to the entire scene or individual objects. Two comments on the motion blur feature. It takes too long to render, and absolute speed is used to determine the strenght of the blur. Which means that even if the camera follows a speeding car, the car is blurred, but not the background. New motion blur is on the way, and a couple of fakes can be done to achieve the effect more effectively.
• Open port processing interface for various special effects like lens flares, global fogs or glow effects. 3rd party developers can produce 'add-on' effects using this interface and the modules introduced at any time. Not many post processing modules available at this point, however, the ones there are pretty good. new ones might arrive soon.
• Fade object attribute allows easy fade-in/out of objects. Use this instead of true optical transparency, for fading an object into the distance. The shadows and reflections, as well as the object is faded.
• Unlimited number of light sources with any color and brightness.
• Point, line, wall, conical spot and cylindrical spot light source types available. Distance intensity fading control, spot-axis intensity fading control and spot angle/radius control included.
• Auto-exposure or manual brightness control.
• Shadow control of individual object for special effects and increasing rendering speed, including cast shadows and receive shadows attributes.
• 9 level anti-aliasing using adaptive sampling, which can be combined with non-adaptive, super sampled rendering for best anti-aliasing quality.
• Perspective and Orthogonal rendering available for all rendering modes.
• Transparency and physically correct refractions.
• Blurred reflections and refractions. Hmm...
• Supports window rendering, IFF-24 file, Targa 24/32 file, Windows BMP 24 file, or direct to frame buffer at any resolution.
• Alpha channel support.
• Background color, solid or gradient.
• Enviroment colour, solid or gradient.
• Animated background images.
• Ambient light settings with any color or brightness.
• Adjustable 16 level 'recursion depth' for ray-tracing. Defines how many layers of glass you can see before the background color (enviroment color or enviroment map).
• 6 different dithering methods with adjustable strength.
• Object specific dithering. This will dither an object even in 24-bit renders.
• 8 different rendering modes: wire frame, draft, enviroment mapped, lampless, shadowless, outline Phong shaded, and complete ray-trace.
• Field rendering with separate or interlaced fields.
• Optional background anti-aliasing for combining rendered images with genlocks.
• Adjustable B-Spline rendering quality.
• Automatic B-Spline conversion to Phong shaded surface for quick rendering.
• Matte objects for combining ray-traced scenes with backgrounds.
• Infinite number of rendering boxes allows user to render quickly only those parts of the screen containing critical or interesting objects. A very nice feature.
• Real time camera view mode updating while editing camera objects.

  Material system features

• Supports IFF (including 24 bit), BMP, Targa, PPM and JPEG format texture maps. Targa is also supported with 32 bit. The alpha information can be used as a fademap (version v.53 only). Progressive jpeg is not supported. Not a big problem with textures though.
• Volumetric texture mapping.
• B-spline texture mapping: texture automatically conforms to the surface of the b-spline meshes, if the mesh is altered, the texture alters with the mesh and maintains its conformity.
• Bump mapping with total control over bump height and shape. Mathematical and user defined procedural bumps through formulas and RPL procedures.
• Enviroment mapping supports global and object specific maps. Hmm... I haven't seen the object specific enviroment map yet.
• Opacity mapping, Shadow mapping, Reflection mapping, Clip mapping, Transparency mapping, Brilliancy mapping. Opacity mapping only supported with version 3.53 through the use of 32-bit targa images containing an alpha channel.
• Materials with no shadows.
• All mapping types can be mixed. Indeed, making the material system increadibly flexible and powerful.
• Material and texture properties can be cumulated hierarchically. Scope feature allows smooth blending and gradients of materials. real 3Ds scope control is just amazing. You have to see it to believe it.
• Textures can be tiled infinitely or a defined number in the x and y directions.
• Textures can be flipped either in x or y or both directions in order to create continuous texture appearances.
• Color interpolation for textures can be used in x and y or both directions. Reducing the pixelation effect when zooming to close on a surface.
• User definable transparency colour.
• Texture anti-aliasing. This one is okay for normal use, but don't use this feature on a map with a very high repetition count.
• Unlimited number of procedural and mathematical textures through user defined formulas and rpl procedures This can naturally be animated as well, by adding a time parameter to the formula/RPL procedure. Very nice 3D textures can be done with this method.
• Non-homogeneous materials whose density can be controlled by build in procedures or user defined formulas and rpl procedures. Imagine a cloud whose transparency is changed in space and time, making a wonderful evolving cloud. The bottom part of the cloud could be made of wood as well :-)
• Texture mapping methods include: default, parallel, cylinder, sphere, disk, and mapping through user defined formula /rpl procedures. A pretty large collection of procedures have already been written, and there are more to come.
• Material attributes like specularity, specularity brightness, brilliancy, transparency, refraction index, turbidity, turbidity saturation, roughness, and effectiveness, can all be freely defined.
• Fractal Noise based mathematical textures, such as marble and granite. You can make your own mathematical textures, but I would have wanted to see some more as a built-in handler - ready to use. Mathematical textures are very powerful, but some knowlegde of RPL programming is required to get the most of it. I have even made a Mandelbrot texture based on this technique, in which you can zoom in, just like with some dedicated fractal software. Not at the same speed though.
• Glow material property for creating effects such as neon lights, fire, laser beams and rocket exhausts.
• A material preview system which allows easy experimenting with materials. Updating the provided preview object will make this a lot more usable.