SGI: Computer Graphics

I'm thinking of purchasing (for work) the lastest Maya for IRIX. What should I consider? Ultimately, we want a tool for preping images for a simulation running OpenGL Performer. I have NO experience in this field, and am wondering if we can use Maya (or another package) to dress up our Pro/Engineer models for display in the simulation.

I'm not sure OpenGL Performer can even read Maya data, or that Maya can import CAD models (can Maya generate CAD models? -- is that what Studio is for? -- is Studio availible for IRIX any more? -- Is Maya even the right ool for this knid of work?)

H E L P !

Well, if you go for Maya, complete should do you better than unlimited, unless you need fur, water, and cloth effects.

As for the models, Maya will export to a format, which Irix has convertors for, so you could export them to a usable format. As for whether or not Maya is the right tool for the job, that depends on how much money you feel like spending for the job. It's a great modeller, but it may be overkill for some things.

i dont't quite understand what you are planning to do. if you need something to slap on UV's and textures onto existing (CAD-)models you'll need a paint program first and it seems that there's not much available. studio paint 3d from alias is very nice but very expensive as well. then there's amazon paint which is considerable cheaper.

maya would come in handy in the process for uv-mapping your geometry files, but maybe the free alternative blender would handle that job equally well?

or maybe i just didn't understand what kind of prepping up you plan to do, assuming you plan to use the models for realtime simulation?

Not entirely sure myself, but unfortunately I have to put the purchasing in this week or next. I'll be starting with CAD models (Pro/Engineer or SolidEdge). Untimately, we will have a real-time simulation running using OpenGL performer. The path I was planning on using would go from Pro/E model, through a translator made by Okino called Polytrans to either a Maya importable format or into MultiGen's Creator (OpenFlight format) since that's very compatible with OpenGL Performer. In Creator we would manipulate the models by reducing complexity some, texture mapping (what are UVs?), etc. What I'm wondering is from a purely visual stand point, what else might be done to improve the look of the animated product (CAD models tend to look very flat and cartoonish)? I would like to keep everything under IRIX if possible...is Studio Paint 3D still availbile for IRIX? Alias' web site was vague. I'll also take a look a Amazon Paint.
I know that many of the visual arts folks are Nekochan regular's and I was hoping to tap some of that expertise to develope a roadmap for our project. I sincerely appreciate any and all help.

ok, what you will want to do is bring the CAD model into your 3d app of choice (from what you wrote i assume maya really would be the best choice), prepare the texture coordinates (also referred to as UV(W)'s ) and give those CAD models a little paintjob.

maya lets you create complex shaders, stage your model and then bake the materials including lighting and shadows onto plain texture maps.
check this to see what i'm speaking of: http://www.highend3d.com/maya/tutorials/bakeshadows/

if you are dealing mainly with non-organic models, you might find that 3d paint isn't even neccessary for the task. maya comes with a builtin but rather limited one as well.

with something along the lines of studiopaint (according to alias germany it's still available on request although no longer developed further) you'll be able to paint your models in 3D and realtime, as long as you use a half-decent octane (MX*, V8, V12, maybe fast O2) and upwards system.
maya and studiopaint work together really well and are production proven - at quite a price.

Wow -- great info. I think I'm beginning to see how this stuff all hangs together. I'll look into Studio $$, but I'm thinking right now Maya may be sufficient by itself.

Thanks.

Any idea how much Studiopaint retails for these days? And what file formats does it accept (I am thinking of supplementing my Soft 3D installation)?

Went I get a quote from Alias, I'll let you know.

assyrix, i have been told that the price differs quite somewhat depending on who's asking - and how many seats you are planning to order...
but just to give an estimation: the base price is probably around 4- 5 times of what soft 3d costs currently - unless they changed it meanwhile. studiopaint is tightly integrated with maya and accepts other formats as well but in your case i'd check out amazon paint first. for one - it seems to be a fine competitor to photoshop (studiopaint is NOT) - and the 3d paint is considered to be pretty good, too. also it's a lot cheaper as far as i recall, and lastly: it comes with a softimage-plugin as well.

Very useful information, thanks a million!

I was contemplating replacing my ageing Illusion setups with Piranha anyway, so Amazon would complement that nicely.

your welcome

btw. i just checked studiopaints geometry import formats and it supports:
- alias wire, obj, dxf, iges, maya scenes and studiopaint inventor

just to answer this.

Hi All!

I was wondering, given the amount of gfx professionals we have here on nekochan.net, if someone knows a good r2v convertor that will deal superbly with high-complexity full 24bit color raster sources and output into EPS or comparable vector graphics.

At the time on the Amiga we had a program called xtrace, which still exists, but it's not up for the job with color.

I've tried demos of PhotoVector from AlgoLabs, WiseImage from Consistent Software and some other program which I don't remember... but all of them (except for WiseImage, I couldn't test that in the demo) need to reduce colors significantly before vectorising and always fail to grasp the complexity of the source images, when finalising the image.

Anyone has experience with WiseImage? I have seen a demo video, which was very impressive, but I'm not gonna spend thousands of bucks on a piece of software which is not up to the task I described.

To get an idea of what level of raster complexity I'm talking about visit greatwinter.org. That kind of image for example needs to be vectorised professionally...

well, yes, I could do it by hand, but that would take ages, and what are vectorisers for after all?

Any info appreciated.

Thanks

Personal I would go some Adobe route (well on Mac OS that is )

Adobe StreamLine (OS 9 could be helpful)
Or the combination of Adobe PhotoShop && Illustrator.
In photoshop you can Image->Adjustments->Posterize...
And make a less collored version of your image, then select a color with the magic wand (make sure "contiguous" is off)
then "Make workpath from selection" (button in Path's tab)
File->Export->Paths to Illustrator...
Open the exported file in Illustrator and enjoy

Sweet. I'll try that. Thanks.