Here comes a short summary followed by a more detailed specification of all new functions and expansions to the new version of CyberMotion 3D-Designer 10.0 program. Use the help manual, chapter "What's new in version 10.0", for a quick and easy guide to all changed and new topics. The elimination of minor errors and repairs are not mentioned here. For demo pictures and animations demonstrating the new capabilities visit the gallery.

Please Note: CyberMotion 3D-Designer v. 10.0 will read all files of older versions, but, because of the many changes in the animation system, it is not possible to convert old animations to match the new system 100%. All positional and rotational changes will be converted correctly, but if scaling is involved the imported animation has to be revised. V.10.0 files on the other hand will not load into older versions due to the general changes in the animation system and the expanded world dimensions.

New features in version 10.0:

Animation
  • Work on a project is now divided into Modeling Mode and Animation Mode
  • Hierarchy-Independent Animation
  • Character Animation using the Skin and Bones technique

Animation Editor

  • Separate timelines (tracks) for all objects and features that can be animated
  • Cut, Copy, Paste - Animation sequences can be cut, copied and pasted to and from the clipboard
  • Relative Copy of movements from object to object
  • Multi Paste for animation loops
  • Editable Duration of Animation
  • A selected frame range in a timeline can now be moved freely with the mouse
  • Acceleration between keyframes can now be controlled for all individual tracks
  • A separate Undo/Redo-function undos all operations in the animation editor
  • Field Rendering for interlaced video

Navigation Button-Strip

  • The navigation button-strip is now accessible only in Animation Mode
  • The button to call up the animation editor has been integrated into the navigation button-strip
  • A new slider is provided with which you can scroll through the animation
  • New record button for manual creation of keys
  • New buttons are provided to force key generation for additional tracks and/or objects in a hierarchy

Work Modes

  • World dimensions are expanded to 2^24 = 16,772,216 units
  • Work on a project is now divided in Modeling Mode and Animation Mode
  • Objects can be moved (scaled or rotated) with or without their movement paths
  • Group Objects are used to group together a number of objects
  • New snap functions will facilitate the positioning of the objects in the scene
  • Use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out of viewport- and camera windows
  • The window-detail can be moved now in any work mode with the mouse (press left and right mouse buttons simultaneously)
  • You can grab crosshairs now at the center arrows to move them around
  • The undo and redo functions have been optimized
  • Many more new and revised functions (see following detailed description)

Viewport Render Engine

  • The CyberMotion viewport render engine has been revised and optimized, transparencies are now also shown in the viewport windows

Raytracing Render Engine

  • Up to 250% faster rendering of complex scenes containing high resolution models

Background

  • Rainbows
  • Clouds - Condensation Trails
  • Weather machine - A post processing particle effect simulates rain (stripes) or snowflakes or, e.g., floating particles in the water.
  • The starfield generator has now been integrated into the atmospheric background model - star intensities can be animated

Material

  • The Texture Blur function blurs procedural texture patterns with increasing distance to reduce noise in the distance
  • Mip-Mapping generates additional bitmaps resized and filtered to lower resolutions to reduce texture noise from bitmaps in the distance
  • Bitmaps can now be tiled with a given number of repetitions

and

  • New visual project library for the project management
  • You can change now the root folder for libraries
  • Drag and drop of CyberMotion project files directly from the Windows Explorer
  • Lensflares with rainbow effect
  • New shortcuts for all important dialogs are provided
  • Customize Dialog - a new dialog for general program settings
  • Object Selection Dialog - Double clicking on a plus folder icon will expand the whole selected hierarchy branch
  • More precise and logical object selection in viewport windows
  • Still pictures in Animation Mode are rendered now with all effects incl. particles and motion blur


Detailed description of the new features in version 10.0:

Modeling Mode vs. Animation Mode

  • Work on a project is now divided into Modeling Mode and Animation Mode. In principle there is no great change in the working process. You have the same working menus as before, except that some of the functions in Animation Mode are no longer accessible in Modeling Mode and vice versa. There are two prominent buttons at the top left corner of the CyberMotion window to switch between the two modes. In Modeling Mode all changes made to an object - e.g. the deforming of an object by working on individual points - are permanent changes of the object's shape while in Animation Mode every action is merely a transformation of the model data and can be undone at anytime by reversing the working steps or deleting the keys that were created automatically when manipulating an object in animation mode. Another Example: Scaling an object and its children in Modeling Mode will result in a permanent change of size of the model throughout the entire animation. If the children are deformed by this scaling this deformation will be a permanent change of the shape of the objects. If you scale an object and its children in Animation mode it will be only a temporary change of size. Moreover, the children will not be scaled at all - it is just their coordinate systems that are temporarily deformed by the scaling of their parents without influencing the children's object data. (Hierarchy Independent Animation, see below). At first glance there is no apparent difference, because the children are scaled with their parents anyway, but if you want to fully understand the underlying animation principles of Hierarchy Independent Animation, this is a very important factor.

Animation

  • Totally new programming underlying animation system
  • Hierarchy-Independent Animation - All objects perform their movements in their own coordinate systems, irrespective of whether they are parents or children. Thus, the animation data can be copied as relative movement data to other objects or hierarchies. Alternatively, simply animate an object and link it afterwards to another object. It will still perform its own movements but it will also follow all movements of the new parent.
  • Relative Movements, Scaling and Rotation. For instance, you can copy an animated walking character with its animation data, then move it in Relative Mode to a new position, rotate it in Relative Mode to let it face in another direction and then just let it go with the copied animation data in this new direction.
  • Character animation with skeletal deformation (skins and bones). In the new Bones-working mode you can easily build chains of bones to create a skeleton. Linking a skeleton under a polygon- or NURBS-object will automatically convert this object to a deformable skin. Align the bones within their new skin and allocate the skin's points to the corresponding bones. If you then change to Animation Mode and move or rotate the bones of your skeleton, the skin will automatically be deformed by its bones. You can use bones to animate character movements, facial expressions, or, e.g., to animate the deformation of cloth.
  • Deformable Textures - Textures are aligned and scaled in Modeling Mode only. When scaling or deforming objects or skins in an animation all textures will be deformed properly with the object.
  • Material Animation - materials, including landscape textures, have their own animation track and almost all their parameters can be animated.
  • Field Rendering for interlaced video - In regular TV interlaced video is used. An interlaced video picture contains two fields of picture information shot at different times. In the first shot the picture information is saved in all odd numbered scanlines (1,3,5...) and in the second shot all even numbered scanlines (2,4,6...) are saved in the same video frame. When playing this video on TV, both fields are played in succession to produce the interlaced TV-picture. So, when watching television you always see only one half the strips of a picture - it's the playing frequency and the luminous characteristics of a television screen that gives the impression of full frame pictures. If you plan to play your CyberMotion animations on TV you can now switch on Field Rendering for AVI-output, too. Since twice as many pictures (each of half resolution) are rendered, Field Rendering gives smoother motion and can even reduce or eliminate the need to render motion blur - which can save rendering time.

Animation Editor

  • Separate timelines (tracks) for all objects and features that can be animated. Keys will be created automatically (as in older versions when manipulating an object) but only for the corresponding object and the particular tracks involved. Rotating an object in a hierarchy for example, will only generate a rotation key on a rotation track for that particular object.
  • Following tracks can be added: Position, Scale, Rotate, Parameter, On/Off, Deformation and Material.
  • Cut, Copy, Paste - Animation sequences can be cut or copied to the clipboard and - after marking the destination selection - can be copied to another timeline position of the same object or any other object. Even the entire animation data of a character hierarchy can be copied this way, provided that the structures of the hierarchy trees of source and destination selection are similar.
  • Absolute or Relative Copy of position and rotation tracks:
  • - Absolute Copy - The destination object will move to exactly the same position as the source object and it will also rotate through exactly the same angles of its body axes.
  • - Relative Copy - The movement vectors and angles as seen from the source object's local coordinate system will be applied to the destination object's local coordinate system. If, for example, a character is moving "forward" along its local z-body axis and this movement is copied in Relative Mode to the destination object, then the destination object will perform this movement along its own z-body-axis. It is much the same for rotations - the copied rotation data of the source object will be used to rotate the destination body about the axes of its own local coordinate system.
  • Multi Paste - To loop an animation sequence just copy it with an editable number of repetitions to the destination position in the timeline – again either in Absolute or Relative Copy Mode.
  • Duration of Animation - You can now change the duration of an animation by editing the number of frames or the time of the animation.
  • A selected key or frame range in a timeline can now be moved freely with the mouse between its neighboring keys.
  • Acceleration between keyframes can now be controlled for individual tracks, e.g., rotations - speeding up slowly, and decelerating again when approaching the destination angle. This also applies to other animation parameter, e.g., the fading of background colors or light intensities.
  • Undo/Redo - All operations in the animation dialog can be undone immediately by a separate Undo/Redo function in the animation dialog. Of course, after leaving the dialog, all changes can be undone as a whole via the general Undo/Redo functions in the main button bar.
  • Animation paths can now be drawn for all objects of a hierarchy.

Navigation Bar

  • The navigation bar is now located at the bottom of the main window and is accessible only in Animation Mode. The button to call up the animation editor has now been integrated into the navigation bar.
  • In addition to the navigation buttons, an additional slider is provided with which you can scroll through the animation. (Click on the slider to activate it and use the mousewheel to scroll)
  • Usually keys are created automatically when manipulating objects. An additional record button is provided in the navigation bar, so you can create keys on timeline positions where no object manipulation is intended (for instance, to isolate a specific object at the starting point for a planned movement from this timeline position).
  • New buttons are provided to force key generation for additional tracks and/or objects in a hierarchy - for children only or for the whole hierarchy. This way, by manipulating an object or by pressing the record button, additional keys for all selected tracks and/or hierarchy objects are created. For example, if you animate characters, it is recommended that you activate key creation for the whole hierarchy tree, or at least for position and rotation tracks, so the exact alignment of object axes and position is saved in every timeline position.
  • Example: You animate a walking sequence for a character. After creating the walking sequence you decide that you want the character to look up in the sky and, accordingly, you move forward in the timeline and rotate the character's head to look up. Now, if you play the animation, the character starts to look up into the sky from the beginning of the walking sequence instead of from the end of the walking sequence, since the head wasn't involved in the creation of the walking sequence and therefore no keys have been created for it.

Work Modes

  • World Dimensions - The world space is no longer limited to ±16.000 units. The work space now extends to a dimension of 2^24 = 16,772,216 units.
  • Move - Modeling Mode
    • In Modeling Mode objects in hierarchies can be moved without their children.
    • Object axes can now be moved in this working mode, too.
    • You can now move objects along their object axes.
  • Move - Animation Mode
    • Objects can be moved with or without their movement paths.
  • Scale - Modeling Mode
    • Scaling in Modeling Mode changes the size of the object for the whole animation!
    • In Modeling Mode objects in hierarchies can be scaled without their children.
    • Reference Point of Scaling - If you scale along world axes, you can choose only one reference point of scaling (crosshairs or object center of the reference object) or you can decide to scale all objects/hierarchies from their own axes center or the topmost marked hierarchy object, respectively. If you scale along body axes the axes center of the topmost selected parent is always used as a reference point.
    • Additional Mouse Lock button (world axes) to scale symmetrically in a viewport plane.
    • Additional Mouse Lock buttons (body axes) to easily switch between scaling along individual axes or to scale in the corresponding planes standing perpendicular on those axes.
    • There will no longer be alerts if you try to scale and deform an analytical defined object. If the scaling operation can't be performed without deforming the analytical object, it will just be displaced by the scaling.
  • Scale - Animation Mode
    • Reference Point of Scaling - Only scaling along body axes is available. The reference point of scaling is always the object axes center of the topmost selected parent.
    • Objects can be scaled relatively, so that the size of the object in all following keys is scaled with the same value as in the current timeline position.
  • Rotate - Modeling Mode
    • In Modeling Mode, objects in hierarchies can be rotated without their children.
    • Reference Point of Rotation - You can choose to rotate all selected objects and hierarchies about one reference point (crosshairs in world axes mode or object center of the reference object in object axes mode) or you can decide to rotate all objects/hierarchies about their own axes centers or the axes center of the topmost marked hierarchy object, respectively.
  • Rotate - Animation Mode
    • Reference Point of Rotation - In an animation every rotation of an object is performed about its own axes system or the axes system of a parent object, therefore no other crosshair position can be chosen as reference point for rotation. Objects and hierarchies are rotated always about the topmost marked hierarchy object.
    • Objects/Hierarchies can be rotated relatively together with their movement paths at any timeline point in the animation. Only the following key positions will be rotated, so you can bend the movement path at the current timeline position.
    • If you rotate an object then the shortest angle is always calculated to animate the rotation from the last key position to the current key position. Now an additional angle edit field is provided in which you can enter any angle you like. If, for example, you want a wheel to rotate several times then just rotate it with the mouse about the corresponding axes. The shortest angle to the latest key position will appear in the edit field. Now, just enter the desired number of rotations multiplied by 360° for a full rotation.
    • As mentioned above, the shortest angle is always chosen to rotate from one key position to the next, e.g. you turn an object clockwise through 270 degrees, in the animation it will turn 90 degrees anticlockwise instead. Now you could simply enter in the angle edit field the desired angle or just press the "Reverse Rotation" button instead - it will automatically calculate the reverse angle.

Work Modes - Miscellaneous

  • Group Objects - Group Objects are simply used to group together a number of objects by linking them under the Group Object in a hierarchy. Group Objects are only visible in the viewport windows and always hidden in the final rendering. You can also use Group Objects as reference points for rotating or scaling object groups in animations. If, e.g., you want to rotate a group of objects around a common midpoint you would link this group under a Group Object and just rotate the Group Object with its child objects. It's the same for camera rotations. If you want to circle the camera in an animation around another object or group of objects then just place a Group Object at the visual focus within that group and link the camera under this Group Object. Use the "Focus" camera function to center the Group Object in the camera view, then rotate the Group Object and the camera will rotate with it in a perfect circle and with the focus always centered to the object group.
  • Crosshairs - If you want to move the center of the crosshairs, e.g., when scaling or rotating about the world axes, then simply grab the crosshairs at the center arrows and move them freely around. You don't need to change into a different work mode, e.g., in the "Rotate" work mode, you no longer need to change between "Rotate Object" and "Move Axes".
  • Snap Functions - When moving objects, points or axes you can now apply different snap functions that will facilitate the positioning of the objects in the scene. If, e.g., you switch on the snap function for grid lines, then an object will be "caught" automatically by grid lines when near to them. The size of the grid can be edited of course. There are several additional snap options - you can choose to snap a selection to grid lines, grid points, object points and lines, object midpoints and object axes. Snapping can be done only in the 2D-working plane or in 3D mode with additional depth testing enabled.
  • Viewport- and Camera Zoom - Use your mouse wheel to zoom directly into or out of activated viewport- or camera windows.
  • Move Window-Detail - In addition to the separate work mode for positioning the viewport windows (with depiction of the window coordinates) you can now move the window-detail in any work mode just by pressing the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously and moving the mouse around.
  • Undo and Redo - The undo and redo functions have been optimized so that they are a slightly faster and more compact. The maximum number of undos and the maximum size of memory reserved for the undo functions can be edited in the new customize dialog (menu entry "Files - Customize").

Additional Background Effects

  • Rainbows - With primary and secondary bows and caustics effect within the bows.
  • Clouds - Condensation Trails - A stripe mask can be defined to simulate condensation trails in the sky.
  • Weather machine - A post processing particle effect simulates rain (stripes) or snowflakes or, e.g., floating particles in the water.
  • Stars - The starfield generator has now been integrated into the atmospheric background model. You can also animate the star intensities, so you can produce a proper day to night transition where the stars become more intense as night falls.

Viewport Render Engine

  • The CyberMotion viewport render engine has been revised and optimized, transparencies are now also shown in the viewport windows

Raytracing Render Engine

  • Up to 250% faster rendering of complex scenes containing high resolution models

New menu entries under the "View" menu

  • Grid - Backface Culling - For closed shapes, only the lines of facets that face the viewer/camera are drawn. If the material property "Render all Facets" is activated then of course all lines of the object are drawn (as with normal "Grid" view mode). Grid depiction with backface culling is slightly faster and provides a clearer overview of the scene but when working on an object to add new points and facets it is preferable to see all lines and points in normal "Grid" view mode.
  • Gouraud Shading - Like flat shading but with activated surface interpolation so that faceted objects appear smooth and rounded. You should use simple flat shading especially when rendering complex scenes or terrains, because it is simpler and therefore faster than gouraud shading.
  • Bones - Transparent Skin - In the bones work mode skin objects are always displayed transparently, so can see where to place the bones within the skin. If you choose the menu entry "Bones - Transparent Skin" skins are then also represented transparently in all other work modes.
  • Bones - Hide Skin - once a skeleton has been created and all skin points allocated to it you can speed up the creation of an animation by switching off the drawing of skins in the viewport windows.
  • Bones - Hide Bones - No bones will be drawn in the viewport windows, e.g., for rendering preview animations. This setting is independent of the setting in the render options dialog. Usually, final renderings are done without bones but in the render options dialog you can choose to include bones in the final rendering, too.

Material

  • Texture-Blur and Mip-Mapping - when rendering objects lying deeper in the background, a single pixel of the screen obviously cannot display all the texture details represented by this screen pixel. Using only a single hit point from the object's surface would be like picking a color at random from the object, resulting in a noisy and flickering appearance. This will be even more disturbing when animating the scene. You could of course reduce this effect by applying a higher oversampling rate (antialiasing), but that is very expensive in rendering time and at great distances, e.g., at the horizon of planes, up to thousands of subpixels have to be computed. Instead, two new techniques will help you to reduce the noise at almost no extra cost in rendering time:
    • Texture Blur - For procedural textures you can now use the Texture Blur function, which blurs the procedural texture pattern with increasing distance.
    • Mip-Mapping - For bitmap textures you can now apply Mip-Mapping, a technique that generates additional bitmaps resized and filtered to lower resolutions. The original highly-detailed bitmap is used for surfaces in the foreground. For more-distant points one of the pre-filtered lower resolution bitmaps is applied. It's in fact a little bit like the opposite of the "Bilinear Filter" function, which reduces pixel steps in the bitmap when zooming into a bitmap texture. Combining both functions you get the best results and always smooth bitmap textures.
  • Bitmaps can now be tiled with a given number of repetitions in x- or y-direction.

Miscellaneous

  • Visual Project Library - There is an additional menu entry under "File - Load Projects" that opens a window with a visual project library. Similar to other visual libraries you can manage your projects and load, save or merge files with a simple double click on one of the thumbnail pictures. When saving a project, a thumbnail copy of the last rendered picture will always be saved with it for later use in the visual library.
  • Additional functions for all visual libraries - You can change the root path of any visual library by using a new folder button located under each thumbnail window. The additional arrow button next to the folder icon opens a popup selection with the last visited folder paths, so you can change in an instance between all additional libraries you may have set up. This function sets only the root path of a library - secondary folders subordinated directly to the root folder are still accessible via the selection box under the thumbnail window.
  • Drag and Drop - now you can drag and drop CyberMotion project files directly from the Windows Explorer on the CyberMotion program window to load a project into the program.
  • Light - Lensflares - Instead of a single light and halo color interpolation, a rainbow effect can be chosen for all effects.
  • Shortcuts - New shortcuts for all important dialogs and for the render scene animation and render final animation functions are provided.
  • Customize Dialog - Select "File - Customize" in the menu to call up a dialog in which you can define some general program settings, such as:
    • maximum number of undos and redos and the maximum memory for the undo files.
    • the maximum number of last saved project files displayed under the "File" menu.
    • usually CyberMotion uses a temporary folder stipulated by the Windows system for saving temporary files that are created and deleted again in the background while working with CyberMotion. Now, you can specify a particular folder to save these files.
    • the dialog for editing bitmap paths and the jpg compression have been integrated in the customize dialog
  • Object Selection Dialog - Double clicking on a plus folder icon will expand the whole selected hierarchy branch. The shift.bmp-shift key with mouse click will mark the range from the last selected object to the currently clicked object.
  • Object Selection in Viewports - More precise object selection by scanning the shape of objects instead of testing only their bounding volumes. This will result in smaller selection lists when several objects lie behind each other. Selection lists are now depth sorted, from the nearest object down to the most distant object.
  • Animation Mode and Final Rendering - In former versions of CyberMotion particle systems and the motion blur effect were visible only in animations. To also have these effects in a still photo you had to set the starting frame of an animation equal to the destination frame, so that a one-picture animation was rendered. In version 10.0 all effects will be included automatically, even if you render only a still picture via the "Render Final" option. The still picture will be exactly the same as the picture that will be rendered in an animation at that timeline position.