Feature Summary

Workflow

Viewing

Modeling

Animation

Rendering

Interactive Tools

Particles

SDK

Workflow

• Manipulation & Transformation Modes Referential/relative-to-view rotation, referential translation, constant volume scaling.
• Camera Memory Camera position/interest, zoom factor.
• Hot Key Remapping Create keyboard equivalents and save them to a preference file.
• Keyboard Accelerators Quick access to menu items without using the mouse.
• Spreadsheet Perform complex queries on elements in a scene. Use 500 different variables to search, including models, materials, textures, lights, etc.
• Animation Tools Playback from any frame, flip-flop, and loop.
• Extensible Database Tools

Viewing

• Views Perspective x, y, and z parallel projection, schematic
• Viewing Modes Wireframe, Shaded, Shaded Wireframe, Rotoscope (wire, shade), Depthcue, Ghost, Matte, Vertex color shaded view
• Camera Up-vector constraint, frame selection/all, rectangular/cursor Zoom, zoom, orbit, track, dolly, roll, show/select camera, select interest, hide camera, settings (field of view, depth of field, focal length, aperture, distance to object), picture format (custom, cine, slide, video), turntable view (rotation of camera around one axis in parallel projection view).
• Softimage Live** A stand-alone runtime viewer allowing playback animations and test game interactions.

Modeling

• Geometrical Objects Face, Polygonal mesh, Polygon, patch, Bezier/Linear/Cardinal/Free Form/B-spline/NURBS spline.
• 2D/3D Primitives Arc, circle, cone, cylinder, cube, dodecahedron, grid, icosahedron, null, octahedron, square, sphere, spiral, torus, tetrahedron.
• Advanced NURBS Full Quadratic/Cubic modeling support, including Trim/Project/Blend NURBS surfaces, Curve extrusion
• Text Full Truetype support (with 20 font library included)
• General Operations include Animation-based duplication, alignment, bevel, convert, clean-up, fractalize, guided extrude, breakup, local lattice, shrink-wrap, polyskin, edit point/coordinate, freeze, inverse, merge mesh, merge surface, order, plane clipping, rotate, round, scale, subdivision, symmetry, tag, translate zip patches, extrude, skin, revolution, four-sided patches, proportional modeling and offset (border and pipe effects)
• Boolean 2D and 3D Boolean support, including intersection, difference, union.
• Polygonal Operations Polygon as object, three-point planar constraint, assignable centroid reference, multiple polygon select, rounding, extrusion, revolution.
• Meta-Clay * Density-based modeling for organic, sculptured objects.
• Instantiation Reference one set of geometry or hierarchy many times.
• Cluster Center allow powerful facial animation
• Relational Modeling Establish a permanent relationship between an object and its source operator
• Polygon Reduction Rule-based polygon reduction with decimation optimization by percent of reduction or specific polygon count.
• Shrink Wrap low-density NURBS surface over arbitrary meshes with full texture preservation

Animation

General Animation

• Basic Controls Explicit path, function curves, keyframing, lattices, shape, motion capture.
• Animation Editors Function curve, DopeSheet, Spreadsheet.
• Animation Effects Flock, wave, explode, glue, flake, jitter, limit, lockdown, magnet, polyshrink.
• Constraints Position, orientation, direction, bounding plane, tangency to animation path, camera/object up vector, normal to polygon surface, object to cluster, cluster to object, three-point planar, two-point linear.
• Functions Deform, rotate, scale, stretch, translate.
• Expressions Define relationships between objects. Modify existing function curves or channel input/output.
• Deformations Premier deformation tools allow you to easily change an object's shape over time, including clusters, control point, curve, surface, lattice
• Dynamics Collision, density, elasticity, fan, friction, force, gravity, kinetic/static roughness, mass, nail, wind.
• Q-Stretch Automatic "squash and stretch" deformation based on speed and acceleration.

Character Tools

• 2D and 3D Inverse and Forward Kinematics including angle limits.
• Skeleton Generalization Use models as skeleton hierarchies.
• Flexible Envelopes Includes automated weighting of vertices.
• Skin Automatic/local/global/weighted.
• Weighted Envelopes Automated weighting of vertices.
• Rigid Envelopes Transformation based envelopes.

Channels Motion Capture/Control

• Data Input Devices Prototype behavior and animation using input devices. MIDI, magnetic, visual, mechanical mocap devices.
• Channel drivers many supported including enhanced MIDI (access to all sliders).
• Dance, fights, sports, generic, tutorials.
• Output Channels Export animation for events triggering, external robotics, MIDI, sound or motion camera rig control.

Rendering

Texture/Material Control

• Texture Pre-lighting Intensity map generation plug-in.
• Vertex Color generation plug-in.
• Shading types Blinn, constant, Lambert, Phong, shadow.
• Illumination ambient, diffuse, specular.
• Material attributes Index of refraction, shininess, dissolve, ambient, diffuse, reflection, shadow, specular, static blur, transparency, transmitted component.
• Texture Mapping 2D and 3D textures, including bump, cylindrical, raytraced/non-raytraced, spherical, displacement, reflection, UV, XY/XZ/YZ, texture, cubic.
• Color Systems RGB, HLD, HSV.
• 3D Solid Textures Cloud, marble, wood.
• Masks Alpha channel, RGB intensity.
• Effects Ambience, depth cue, depth fading, layer fog, motion blur.
• UV Texturing Edit and save UV texture coordinates on mesh objects. Convert texture projection to UV mapping.
• Effects/Options Anti-aliasing, edge merging, field rendering, line rendering, motion blurring, special points/curves.
• Presets Over 400 textures included on a Picture CD

Camera and Lighting Parameters

• Depth of Field Aperture, aspect ratio, focal length.
• Field of View Field, frame, wireframe, solo-region, tags, z channel.
• Lighting Types Infinite, point, selective, spot, sun.
• Lighting Variables Color, cone/spread angel, falloff, hue, luminance, position, saturation, selectable object illumination, shadow types (ray-traced, depth map, soft), sun position (geographical location, date) target, umbra/penumbra color.

mental ray Distributed Renderer*

• Photorealistic The highest-quality ray-tracer on the market.
• Presets Over 70 separate shaders and presets. Fisheye, volume lights, atmospheric, volumetric, star and lens flare effects, hair, fur, smoke, etc.
• Parallel and Distributed Rendering Distribute rendering across workstation processors or network of workstations (Windows NT and SGI platforms)
• Orthogonal view rendering for distortion-free texture maps.
• Vertex Color Rendering.
• High quality field rendering and motion blur (both linear and exact).

Interactive Tools

Color Reduction

• View original image and "color-reduced" image side by side.
• Palette generation control (with alpha support).
• Easily swap, invert, copy, paste, undo/redo; color locking, multiselection, gradations

2D/3D Paint

• Provides a comprehensive set of paint tools including 42 "Painterly Effects" (ripple, charcoal, burlap, etc.).
• New, updated user interface, including interactive 3D Paint.
• Enhanced UV Manipulation.
• New image creation and re-sizing.
• Independent channel painting.
• Interactive vertex color painting.
• Interactive polygon UV texture coordinates editing (move, copy/paste).
• Supports true-color and color-indexed image manipulation modes.
• Image clipboard for intuitive cut/copy/paste operations between textures and color palettes.
• Alpha channel support for transparency controls
• Texture selection by Raycast.

Import/Export Tools

• Full support for SEGA Saturn, Sony PlayStation, DirectX.
• On-Target Viewing ** View models, materials, textures, and animation, including interactive timeline control, on target game platforms (SEGA Saturn, Sony PlayStation).
• New Sony PlayStation development tools including support for animation, camera, lights, color at vertices, per polygon PlayStation attributes.
• New SEGA Saturn development tools including support for color at vertices, hierarchy filtering, and per polygon Saturn attributes.
• New DirectX development tools including animation, hierarchy filtering, fcurve filtering, import and viewer support.
• New Saturn and PlayStation polygon attribute editors.
• VRML v1.0 Export, including full texture propagation support.

Particles*

• Particles Generation Pixel-based particle generator using real-world dynamics to create effects such as snow, sparks, fireworks, explosions, smoke, fog, and natural phenomena.
• Capabilities Local and global force fields animated explicitly, keyframe and jitter on all parameters, dynamics-based particle animation, 3D geometry as emitters, inter-particle collision detection, particle disintegration and mutation, point/axis/surface/volume particle generation modes, 3D geometry as obstacles.
• Presets including fire, rocket smoke, soda bubbles, tree leaves, and more...

Tools

Supported Formats

• Artisan, Alias/Wavefront, Aurora, Everest, RGB, RGBA, SGI, Targa, Targa 16-bit, TIFF, PIC, Vertigo, YUV, AVI (Windows NT only), DIP (Windows NT only), JPEG, GIF, IFL, DMP, FLC, FLI, CEL, KODAK Cineon (FIDO) Format.
• Render File Formats Softimage, SGI, Quantel/Abekas***, PostScript (line rendering only), RGB 8-bit***, Alias 8-bit***, Zpic (both Softimage and Mental Images).

Geometry Formats

• IGES, DXF, OBJ (including UV support), 3D Studio objects, animation and textures

Other Tools

• Autotrace, composite, flipbook, file and database management, hidden line, import/export images, input/output frames on film++/video recorder, output to PostScript, print in line-rendered format, IRIX shell, scan images++, database resource editor**.

SOFTIMAGE^® SDK⁺

• Evaluate scene data at any point in time, including access to animation data.
• Design plug-ins for scene data import and export between Softimage and any file format.
• Scene Viewer - accessible through the SOFTIMAGE SDK allows easy on-target viewer creation.
• Attach user data to elements of a Softimage scene and use it to control plug-in behavior.
• Connect channel drivers, joystick, game pad, mouse, etc.