Synth MooVier is not a professional applications, it has been tested on a limited number of machines and on a limited variety of system software.
Synth MooVier is quite rough in its interface (lot of modal dialogs).
Synth MooVier is my first Mac application, and it shows (minimal use of GWorlds, partial compliance with Apple guidelines, no on-line help,...); be patient with it.
Synth MooVier is a bit difficult to learn (in part because the subject is not easy, and in part for the scarce documentation).
The best rendering is "flat shading" (sorry, but this may change in the future...).
English is not my language; I hope this document being understandable :-)
Apart from the former, Synth MooVier has two qualities: it generally works, and it's free. So, a quick look should be worthwhile.
for ITALIANS only: nota per gli ITALIANI:
Un corso completo sull'uso di Synth MooVier sarà pubblicato sulla rivista 3 1/2 MacDisk magazine, a partire dal numero 25/26 (sett/ott 94) fino al numero 30 (febb 94); se volete saperne di più, provate a darci un'occhiata.
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1. What is Synth MooVier
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Synth MooVier is a little application that let you create QuickTime™ movies. You model the actors in a 3D scene, then you specify the parts of every actor, you select some movie parameters (like quality and frame dimensions) and Synth MooVier generates the desired result.
A Synth MooVier document is a textual description of the initial scene (actors and their attributes), and of its transformations (the actors' parts); you could view (and edit) it even with a simple text editor (like TeachText or SimpleText).
An actor is built by assembling solid primitives (spheres, cubes, etc.) in a cartesian space. You can set geometry, color and type of rendering separately for every solid of every actor in the scene. You can set your own coordinate systems to manage very complex interactions between the various solid of an actor, and between the various actors.
A part is a linear transformation of one or more attributes of an actor, in a specified temporal interval (you can smoothly change positions, dimensions and color of your objects). For example, you can transform a red sphere with diameter 5 in. in a green sphere with diameter 8 in., starting at 2.3 seconds and ending at 3.8 seconds from the beginning of your movie. Every part has an attribute section (the new geometry of the object, or its new color,...) and a time section (which comprises the start instant and the duration in seconds).
A coordinate system is a cartesian coordinate system: every solid primitive must belong to a coord. system; in this way, you can group related objects (e.g., four wheels and an engine), and you'll be able to move them synchronously by moving the coord. system only, or by rotating one of the system axis.
In order to add a solid to your scene, you must select a coord. system in the tree view (explained below).
The virtual camera plays a fundamental role: you can set its focal length, move it, and rotate it by modifying the pan and tilt values (see fig. below). The default position (pan = 0, tilt = 0) correspond to the camera looking towards the positive direction of the Z axis.
Once you have created a movie, you can play it with your favorite player (Synth MooVier doesn't include playing capability).
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2. Hard & Soft requirements
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Synth MooVier requires System 6.0.7 or better and the QuickTime™ extension installed on your Mac.
It requires also a Motorola 68020 or higher, and a 4/8 bit video card (256 colors, or at least 16 shades of gray).
Synth MooVier comes configured for 768 Kb of RAM, though it has been extensively tested with 512 Kb and no problems (in this case it's better not to make frame dimensions over 240x180 pixels); remember to expand the memory partition, if you plan to make huge frame dimensions (640x480 !?).
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3. Quick start
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The latter is the current menu bar:
Apart from the standard Apple, File and Edit menu, that don't deserve any surprise, we'll take a brief look at the others (a more complete description is in the Reference Manual document in this folder).
The Movie menu contains three items:
Setup... lets you change movie quality and frame dimensions;
Make... produces the movie;
make Preview... produces the movie in draft format (rendering wireframe).
The Window menu contains two items:
Goto opens a preview window, in which you can see the scene in a chosen istant;
Tree opens the structure window, which shows the relationship between the various solids of the scene; it's basically a tree structure, with the coord. systems as nodes and the solids as leaves.
The Actor menu let's you create and modify actors and their behaviour (8 items):
New creates a new actor (remember, you must previously select in the Tree window the coord. system to which it'll belong);
Modify lets you modify the attributes of a pre-existent actor;
Clear deletes the selected actor;
Show parts opens a window in which all the parts of the selected actor are shown;
Add part lets you add a new part for the selected actor;
Edit part lets you edit the attribute section of a selected part;
Edit time lets you edit the time section of a selected part;
Remove part deletes the selected part.
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4. Creating movies from scratch
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1) Select New from the File menu;
2) Select the reference system rooT from the tree window;
3) Add every actor by selecting Actor - New; modify its attributes as you like;
4) Add the parts for the actors: select the desired actor, choose Actor - Show Parts, then choose Actor - Add Part (you can change geometry, color, or rendering type) and fill in the dialog. The part is added in the parts window;
5) If you want to modify a part, select it in the parts window, then choose Actor - Edit Part. If you want to modify a part duration, choose Actor - Edit Time;
6) Adjust camera position: first select camera in the tree window, then edit its parameters with Actor - Modify (the default values let camera pointing towards the positive versus of the Z axis: for more explanations about the camera model, see section1);
7) Select Setup... from the Movie menu and choose movie quality and frame dimensions in pixels;
8) Open the preview window: you can inspect the scene in every instant by moving the slider and clicking on the Go button. If necessary, repeat step 6) to correct the camera pointing direction;
9) All OK? Select Movie - Make (or make Preview) and wait...
10) Play the movie with your favourite player application.
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5. Bugs & limitations
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Bugs
Lots of them fixed in the last months: some of them probably undiscovered. Let me know about the new ones...
Limitations
Here are the more annoying...
- The Goto window is redrawn from scratch for every update event (and on my LC it takes a long time!).
- The CPU control is never released during the making of a movie.
- There is no way of making "cut and paste" of actors, nor to move them between different coordinate systems.
- The definition of actors' attributes is not very friendly (numerical inputs in modal dialogs).
- The camera angles are quite difficult to dominate (usually, they require a long brainstorm, before being set correctly: on the first shoot, there are about 60% probabilities that none of your objects lie in the field of view; for the first times, look at the examples in this folder and borrow values from them).
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6. Future enhancements
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The more urgent are those fixing the Limitations above, which are:
- use of an offscreen pixmap to refresh the Goto window;
- event loop more friendly towards other applications;
- support for cut and paste of actors;
- interactive, graphical definition of actors (optionally, numerical input where maximum precision is required);
- camera model with point-to-point concept (that is, you say "look at this point", and pan and tilt angles are calculated accordingly).
Some other ideas:
- implementation of more advanced shading techniques;
- anti-aliasing option;
- non-linear parts (for example, to simulate acceleration of actors);
And, obviously, all reasonable suggestions from users are welcome and will be taken in account.
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7. Contacting the author
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If you use Synth MooVier, you can send your appreciations, suggestions, bugs reporting (or anything you consider appropriate) to:
Marco Bonasoro
v. Pace 6
San Donato Milanese (MI)
20097 ITALY
or you can send me an E-mail at
marco@risc10.cise.it
(this address will probably be no longer valid after December, 1995)
