If we are to believe the ads in Macintosh magazines, 3D art—especially 3D text—is the coming thing in design and desktop publishing. We’ll have to wait and see whether this pans out; as of this writing, I haven’t seen much evidence of it in the field of general publications.
So far, most of the 3D programs for the Mac (and for other computers, too) have been bit-mapped (or raster) programs. This means that the final image is made up of many tiny pixels of color—a map of the bits that make up the image. Often these programs create very realistic images of scenes that never existed. Shading, highlights, cast shadows, and reflections convince us of the solidity of the objects pictured. A notable example is the mouthwash ad on television which shows a bottle of Listerine in the boxing ring or swinging through the trees.
The down side of these programs are manifold: a high learning curve, the demand for very high end hardware, and time—lots of time. A 3D image from a program such as Alias Sketch! (see review this issue) or Stratavision might take hours or even days for the computer to generate, or “render” the scene after the user has entered all of the parameters (lighting, surface qualities, viewing angle, etc.) This is obviously not a very practical approach for a designer on a deadline.
Adobe Dimensions is different—on several counts. This new program creates and edits simple 3D objects and effects by working in a vector graphics environment. To the best of our knowledge, Dimensions is the only commercially available 3D program that produces fully editable PostScript Bezier curves. Designers and illustrators familiar with Adobe Illustrator and Aldus FreeHand will have little trouble adapting to Dimensions. Dimensions is intended to be used along with one of these PostScript illustration programs. As a stand-alone tool, it is quite limited, since it cannot create shapes (beyond a few primitives), and it cannot print anything out; its total dependence on outside illustration programs is both a strength and a weakness. After finishing a session with Dimensions, the artwork must be exported back into your drawing program for touching up, editing, or printing.
Getting Started
A typical session would begin in a PostScript drawing program by creating basic elements such as 2D forms or text blocks. (We’ll use FreeHand in our examples, but Adobe Illustrator and Deneba Canvas also work.) Text must be converted to paths before it can be modified in Dimensions. After saving documents in FreeHand, we’ll switch to Dimensions, where we can either Open them directly or Import them into existing documents.
When the 2D form shows up in Dimensions, it is placed in a 3D environment indicated by X, Y, and Z axes. (See illustration.) The next step involves translating the 2D shapes into 3D forms. There are two methods available to do this: extrusion and rotation. For instance, if you want a 3D chess piece, you would begin by drawing one half of its profile in FreeHand. After importing it into Dimensions, it can be rotated 360° into a wireframe model of a 3D form.
If your intent is to create a banner or 3D text, you would import the flat artwork into Dimensions and then extrude it. When extruding a form, different bevels can be applied. (See illustration.)
Lighting and Rendering
Once you’ve made a 3D form, you’ll want to make it solid so you can see it better. The next steps involve determining color, line, surface qualities, and lighting. Although the colors of an object are usually defined in the drawing program, Dimensions can assign or modify colors later. All of these procedures are handled in a surprisingly intuitive manner through the use of several floating palettes. Lights can be added and dragged around to different angles. Their intensity, but unfortunately not their color, can be changed.
Objects can be made shiny or matte in order to control the relationships between highlights and shadows. Ambient light can also be controlled. The controls for this process are not as clear as they might be; after reading this section of the manual several times, I’m still not absolutely sure why there are separate controls for matte and shiny.
Rendering is the last step in the process (although you can render at intermediate stages in order to check your progress). There are three levels of rendering: wireframe, draft, and shaded. Even with complex shapes at the highest resolution, rendering proceeded at an agreeable rate; none of my tests and experiments took over a couple of minutes on my IIfx, and many were completed in just a few seconds. Nevertheless, you’ll be rendering a lot before you get things just right, since even slight changes demand a complete re-render to check the results. The wireframe and draft modes come in handy at these times, since they are speedier.
Mapping
A very important consideration is Dimension’s ability to map artwork onto a form, and this procedure is handled nicely by the program. Lets say you wanted to create the image a three-dimensional candy box for which you’ve already designed the two-dimensional label. You’d begin by creating a cylinder from Dimension’s stock of primitives (cylinder, cube, sphere, and cone). The Map command brings up a dialog that lets you import your label, and then size or rotate it to fit. An automatic size-to-fit command can be helpful here. The dialog box for the mapping function even shows which surfaces are visible in the current view; the back surfaces are shaded out.
Getting Scenic
After your object has been created and fine-tuned, you can rotate it and change the view or the perspective. There are four perspective choices: none, normal, wide angle, and telephoto.
When you are satisfied with all aspects of your image, you can export it back to the format of your original drawing program. Once there, you’ll find that all of the shapes are fully editable.
Dimensions performs very well within its limits. It’s actually fun to work with, since the response times are snappy. You might get somewhat frustrated at Dimension’s inability to print or create text, so you’ll want to be switching back and forth between it and your drawing program. Although Dimensions will run in 2MB of RAM, it’s much more responsive at 4MB. Running Dimensions concurrently with FreeHand will demand at least an 8MB Mac.
Forms which interpenetrate each other tend to confuse Dimensions; objects which overlap the same coordinates do not render accurately.
If 3D text is going to become an important part of tomorrow’s design scene, then Dimensions is certainly a quick and easy way to achieve it. Since Dimensions does not create ray tracing (including cast shadows), it is not going to tempt the super-realists away from heavyweights such as Stratavision or Alias Sketch. Package designers may realize the most immediate benefit in being able to visualize and present three dimensional projects.
For a limited time, Dimensions can be had for a mere $99. After March 1, 1993, the price will go up to $199. Call 1-800-833-6687 for details.
Requirements: any Macintosh II 68020 or greater computer with System 6.0.7 or later (including System 7), a hard disk, and at least 2 MB of RAM (4MB for System 7). For best performance, a math coprocessor, 4 or more megabytes of RAM and a color monitor is recommended.
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