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3D
in Director
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02/15/99
When you think about it, if you look at Macromedia
Director 7 and Director (the original release), the
two applications are surprisingly similar. Sure
there's been a lot of changes over the years;
Lingo's been expanded and reworked, there's more
channels and more casts, and hundreds of other
incremental advances. But functionally Director 7
is essentially the same. As I look back at the
evolution of Director, the major landmarks for me
were:
- VideoWorks
(first version)
- HyperCard
player
- Director
(added lingo, made interactive functions
possible)
- Director
4 (cross platform)
- ShockWave
Each
advance made Director a more interesting -- or
necessary -- tool for interactive development, but
it's been kind of quiet lately...
The
Next Big Thing?
So a few nights ago I went to a local Director
Users Group meeting where a presenter from
Virtus was showing OpenSpace 3D.
OpenSpace is an application and an Xtra that work
with Director and enable you to add (and control)
3D content from within Director.
There
were some very impressive demos. Impressive both in
the quality of the 3D rendering, playback and
interactivity, as well as the interaction possible
between Director and the 3D models. Buttons added
in Director can alter the 3D world using Lingo.
This was really exciting and I think OpenSpace
could add a whole new world of possibilities to my
Director programs. The following comments are based
on the demo I saw; I haven't used the product yet.
OpenSpace is currently in beta, but is expected to
ship by the end of February.
The
OpenSpace application is used to assemble the 3D
worlds that are played back within the Xtra. You'll
need another application to create the models as
there's no modeling functions within OpenSpace. The
application imports 3DS, DXF and DWG
files.
Authoring
within OpenSpace seems fairly simple; there's a
single scene view as well as a hierarchical list of
objects within a scene. Behaviors (such as rotating
an object about a point) and objects (such as
lights) are dragged from a library window.
OpenSpace uses a component architecture that,
according to the demonstrator, will allow them to
add tools and features without having to update the
program. At the moment only Virtus will be able to
write such components.
Once
you've created your scene you switch to Director
where you use the Xtra to import an OpenSpace scene
into the cast and display it on the score. The Xtra
provides a dialog window that lets you configure
the scene while authoring in Director. The dialog
provides a list of the objects within the scene as
well as a list of Lingo commands that can be used
to control those objects. Using that information
you can add lingo scripts to buttons within the
Director interface. These can then control the
scene; moving the camera or starting an object
moving along a path for example.
While
the presenter did a good job, he wasn't a Director
expert (he'd been using Director for only a month
or two he said and had a few problems along the
way; "I hope I've shown that you can do this
without any skills.") Unfortunately, this meant
that some questions went unanswered; such as "What
does the Publish button do?"
OpenSpace
will work with Shockwave, but the user must
download the OpenSpace Xtra -- about 3 MB -- to see
OpenSpace content within Shockwave. Also it's
unclear how the component architecture is handled
when distributing OpenSpace movies. Just as when
using an Xtra with Director they sometimes have to
be distributed with the movie, does the plug-in
component architecture of OpenSpace mean that we
might have to distribute OpenSpace components in
addition to the OpenSpace Xtra?
The
OpenSpace Xtra not withstanding, size of the scenes
depends upon the complexity of the models and the
number of textures used. Virtus plans to add a
compressed texture format as well as a streaming
capability to a later version.
System
requirements are: 64MB for authoring, 32MB for
playback. A 3D acceleration card is preferred, but
not required. As the presenter said, this software
is made possible by the speed of the machines now
available; it should work fine with machines that
are one or two years old, but older machines may
not perform well.
Unfortunately,
this is a Windows only tool at the moment. This is
interesting given that Virtus started as a
Macintosh software company. It seems that they are
thinking about a Mac version, but it could be eight
months away. According to Virtus there's been
little interest from Apple either in providing
equipment or technical support. The presenter asked
how many in the audience were Mac versus Windows
users. About half of the twenty were using both Mac
and Windows, and of those about four or five either
preferred Mac or only used Mac (the questions and
answers in this informal poll weren't very
precise!) One thing the presenter said was that
when they began development they asked Macromedia
and Macromedia told them "Windows, Windows,
Windows."
What
I saw looked very cool. The tool is supposed to be
available at the end of February for $995. There's
no royalties for products created using the tool.
They are offering the tool prior to official launch
for $495. You won't get charged until it ships, and
you have 30 days to decide if you want to keep it.
They also are looking for developers to take part
in a co-marketing program. Information about that
is available at the Virtus website.
OpenSpace
looks good, but before you jump in you should also
check out two other alternative tools for adding 3D
to Director. 3D Dreams from Shells is
already available and costs $500. 3D Groove,
from 3D Groove isn't available yet, and seems to be
oriented towards game development. It will cost
$2,500. I know even less about these tools than I
know about OpenSpace but you can find more
information at the companies websites: by the way,
the 3D Groove website is confusing to navigate,
hard to read and it can be difficult to find
information there.
<www.virtus.com>
OpenSpace 3D
<www.shells-ifa.com>
3D Dreams
<www.3dgroove.com>
3D Groove
Michael
D. Murie has been a multimedia consultant and
developer since he first saw HyperCard in 1987. He
has written for New Media magazine and worked on
the CD-ROM The Jack Kerouac ROMnibus. He wrote the
books "Macintosh Multimedia Workshop" and
"Macintosh Multimedia Starter Kit" and was
co-author of "The QuickTime HandBook." He can be
reached at mmurie@m2w.net.
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