AT A FRACTION of the cost of competing programs, the $399 PixelPutty Solo packs a 3-D modeler, a renderer, and an animation system into one program. And PixelPutty is the only program that currently offers a built-in inverse-kinematics system that lets you easily create realistic animations.
Different Perspective
Like most other 3-D programs, PixelPutty lets you view your object in four windows: a camera view and front, side, and top views. But PixelPutty's interface is unconventional by Mac standards. The view windows don't have titles or scroll bars. And in place of iconic tool bars, PixelPutty has a vertical row of labeled buttons. The top six buttons each represent a group of commands -- View, Control, Reshape, Shape, Keyframe, and Utilities. When you click on a button, the program displays the corresponding group of commands. For example, clicking on the Shape button brings up commands for creating 3-D objects. A counter showing the current frame of your animation separates the top buttons from the command group.
The new interface conventions are easy to get used to, but the program's problems aren't. For instance, window updating doesn't always work. Changing the position of an object in one window doesn't necessarily update the object's position in the other views. And sometimes, after you've been using the program for a while, it no longer lets you zoom or pan in a window; you have to quit and restart to be able to zoom and pan again.
PixelPutty gives you extraordinary power for creating and manipulating curved shapes. In addition to giving you standard 3-D shapes such as cylinders and cubes, it also gives you everything you need to bring your objects into the third dimension, including lathing, lofting, and extrusion in one dimension and along a path.
Once you've created your object, you can use PixelPutty's Reshape tools to stretch, squish, and distort it. Although PixelPutty isn't the only 3-D program with point-by-point control, its tools are easier to use by far than its competitors'. The basic Push/Pull tool, for one, lets you select a point or group of points in the 3-D mesh and drag in any direction. Other nice features are the Collide tool, which lets you add the surface of one object to or subtract it from another. PixelPutty can also create holes in objects when you render with Pixar's RenderMan. The Disrupt tool randomly distorts the mesh surface, and the 3D Emboss tool uses a grayscale PICT image as a displacement map on your mesh. For added control, the Flex dialog box lets you define how many points adjacent to the edited points will be affected by the changes.
On a more sophisticated level, you can create a jointed frame, called an Inverse Kinematics (I-K) Chain, within your object. For instance, if you build the frame for an arm with wrist and elbow joints, bending the wrist up and pushing it in will bend the elbow and can even flex the upper part of the arm to imitate a bulging biceps.
PixelPutty's animation system doesn't provide any sort of timeline or sequencer interface, so you have to keep track of what you're doing on paper. You move between keyframes by pressing the Shift and Control keys and clicking and dragging either to the right, to advance, or to the left, to go back. You can create complex motion by using the Path command to force an object to move along a particular path. Sadly, without a sequencer, using some of PixelPutty's more advanced features -- such as the Look At command, which lets you specify that two objects always face each other -- becomes very complicated. Position, Scale, Rotation, Spline, Twist & Taper, and Mesh distortions can all be animated, but it's difficult with the PixelPutty interface.
PixelPutty's built-in renderer leaves much to be desired. It doesn't provide texture-mapping and produces artifacts when rendering some shapes, so the renderings are of average quality, at best. The program has excellent support for Pixar's RenderMan, which we recommend using instead.
PixelPutty's impressive feature set is compromised by bugs, quirks, and inconsistencies. For example, sometimes keyframe information relating to the camera gets transferred from one animation to another and you have to quit and restart the program to remove this information. And there are no 2-D primitive shapes and no quick flat-shaded view for basic previews of your objects.
The Bottom Line
Serious as well as new users will be pleasantly surprised by how many high-end features PixelPutty Solo provides. But be forewarned: The program's rough edges demand a lot of patience. Still, you won't find as many powerful modeling and animation features in any other single package -- and certainly not at PixelPutty's price.
Cons: Buggy. No animation timeline. Lackluster rendering engine.
Company: The Valis Group, Tiburon, CA; 800-825-4704 or 415-435-5404.
Reader Service: Circle #408.
With its impressive inverse-kinematics feature, PixelPutty Solo lets you easily model, render, and animate jointed models that boast incredibly realistic motion.
