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Laserists
Can Work With Popular
Non-laser Graphics Program to Create Shows
By
David Lytle
Laserists from around
the world got their first glimpse of Pangolin’s revolutionary
Lasershow Converter Max program (LCMax) at last year’s ILDA
Conference in Stuttgart. Attendees could look, but couldn’t
buy, as Pangolin had yet to complete a full-featured commercial
version.
The commercial version,
now available for sale, promises to put the powerful animation
features taken for granted by computer graphics artists at the
fingertips of the laser industry. The software works as a plug-in
for 3D Studio Max, a popular computer graphics program, and allows
artists to create sophisticated animations—including complex
camera movements, character animations, and inverse kinematics—that
are rarely found in laser shows. The plug-in also means that
laserists can access the vast library of digital models available
for use by computer graphics artists and accurately translate
those models into laser light.
Pangolin says the commercial
version of LCMax boasts a host of new features not seen at the
Stuttgart trade show. The result is far better looking and more
complex laser graphics than attendees saw when watching Dave
Oxenreider’s first demonstration using the program—a
demo that was programmed the night before the trade show doors
opened.
For those who missed
the Stuttgart demonstration, LCMax takes scenes from 3D Studio
Max and renders them as vector graphics (complete with laser
points) at a rate of about one frame per second. The rendered
frames are sent directly to a Pangolin QM2000 computer board
where they can instantly be played back. The frames can be saved
in either the LD2000 or ILDA data format.
In some ways, the program
is similar to PrestiDigitize by Lightspeed (not available for
public sale) and Laservision’s Dot.Monkey, two programs
that take computer graphic files and convert them to laser data
while also optimizing the data for projection on laser scanners.
But unlike those programs, LCMax allows laserists to work entirely
within the 3D Studio Max environment. It can render complete
laser shows based on the computer-graphic scenes in 3D Studio
Max and then playback the “video” version and laser
versions simultaneously. Users can also switch from the plug-in
to Pangolin’s Showtime and instantly put the frames to work
there
.
“This is a fully integrated plug-in,” emphasizes Pangolin’s
William Benner, Jr., who led the development of the program.
“We taught the program where to put laser lines when going
from mesh (in 3D Studio Max) to laser. It thinks like a laser
artist would think.” Laser artists, for example, need to
be talented when it comes to deciding which lines in an image
will create the best-looking laser version of an object. Once
the look of an image is determined, laserists must often spend
up to twenty minutes per frame fine tuning individual points
within the image to make sure it looks good when projected by
laser scanners.
Pangolin’s new
plug-in not only performs the task of creating the original image
in laser light, but also does much of the fine-tuning when it
comes to individual point placement. The plug-in’s functionality
is not limited to an individual object or frame, as it can translate
a complex, multi-object animation sequence directly into laser
light.
Since the October trade
show, Pangolin has improved the plug-in’s line placement
functions to reduce image artifacts and overlapping lines. Benner
says the result is a cleaner, better looking laser image than
what trade show attendees saw in Stuttgart.
Several new tools have also been added to give laserists more
control over the images displayed by the plug-in. “I think
the coolest thing is that you can now change laser parameters
on an object by object basis,” said Benner. For a scene
containing a football and a goal post within a single frame,
for example, the artist can color the football brown and the
goal post white, and can assign a higher point density to the
football than the goal post.
In determining the type of line to be drawn, the plug-in allows
the user to select from several different levels of complexity.
At the simplest level, the plug-in draws a silhouette outline
around the boundary of the object. Additional lines that can
be added include contours, folds, creases, intersections of the
surfaces of two objects and changes in surface materials.
These and other functions are accessed through the plug-in’s
new utility control screen that can be brought up from within
3D Studio Max. The utility’s preview window also allows
users to see animations as they would appear in laser light.
Christ Stuart of Laser Force has been testing an initial version
of the software and says it should relieve laserists of a huge
amount of work. “It’s about time we had something like
this,” said Stuart, who looks forward to the day when he
has mastered 3D Studio Max and can create complete laser shows
within the program.
“The look of it right now is very good,” he said, referring
to the quality of the laser images produced by the plug-in. “Bill
Benner has already implemented some improvements I suggested,”
he said, expressing hope that Pangolin will continue its tradition
of continuously improving its products.
He said the plug-in does about 85 percent of the work needed
to be done by a hand-digitizer, which means he can now afford
to create a show with one or two thousand frames compared to
the 200-400 frames he usually puts into a hand-digitized show.
Lasershow Converter Max sells for $3,495 and requires users to
have 3D Studio Max (about $3,500) and Pangolin’s QM2000
board with the LD2000 Basic or Pro system, starting at $3,495.
Pangolin Laser Systems: (+1) 407-299-2088; www.pangolin.com
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Teapot is created
in 3D Studio Max (left) and then rendered in laser light with
Lasershow Converter Max (lright). Lines rendered in laser include
silhouette, folds and surface intersections with object. |
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In one frame,
a sphere and soccer ball are created in differnt colors using
3D Studio Max (top). Lower image shows the plugin rendering both
objects , but assigning different parameters to each: silhouette
and countour lines for the sphere; maximim polygonal lines for
the soccer ball. |
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