Here comes a detailed specification of all new functions and expansions to the new version of CyberMotion 3D-Designer 12.0 program. Use the help manual, chapter "What's new in version 12.0", 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.

New features in version 12.0:

Rendering

  • Support of Multi-Core and Multi-Processor systems - The new version of CyberMotion supports multi-core CPUs and multi-processor systems. This will considerably speed up the rendering process. On an ordinary Dual Core system you could expect up to 70% to 95% increase of rendering speed, depending on the rendering effects you apply.
  • Ambient Occlusion Renderer - Increase the photo-realistic impression of your renderings with the newly implemented Ambient Occlusion Renderer. The Ambient Occlusion shader simulates mutual shadow casting of adjacent objects and corners caused by diffuse ambient light. In contrast to global illumination algorithms which try to reproduce the correct physical interpretation of light distribution (see Photon Mapping) the Ambient Occlusion rendering solution is much simpler. The maximum amount of diffuse light incidence is given by the color of the ambient light (you can now also specify a color range for the ambient light). Now, for the basic diffuse lighting, the light intensity will be calculated from the light incidence that is irradiated from an imaginary half sphere (sky dome). This will lighten up surfaces exposed directly to the sky and darken surfaces directed to the floor. Even without additional shadow calculations this gives a much smoother impression of ambient light then the ordinary constant term used in previous versions of CyberMotion. It is similar to the diffuse light incidence on a cloudy day. If you switch on shadow calculations for the actual occlusion part of the Ambient Occlusion shader then a bunch of shadow rays is cast towards the imaginary half sphere. These shadow rays are limited by a maximum search radius, so they scan only the immediate surrounding area (on a cloudy day you wouldn't expect a tree far away from you to cast a shadow on you). If a shadow ray hits an occluding object, the ambient value is simply reduced by a fraction of its original intensity. In the result you achieve a wonderful smooth diffuse lighting together with very soft shadows emphasizing corners and all occluded areas. This effect is suited for outdoor scenes (sky dome effect - shadow rays pointed to surrounding half sphere) as well as indoor scenes because of the limited search radii for the shadow rays (in indoor scenes you would choose a surrounding sphere for the shadow tests, this way illuminating also ceilings and surfaces facing towards the floor.) In CyberMotion Ambient Occlusion is implemented as an extension of the Ambient Light parameters. You can use it as a single illumination solution or together with all additional light settings, even in combination with Photon Mapping.
  • Additional Preview Mode - For a faster preview rendering soft shadows were not available so far in the preview windows of the main dialogs. Now two additional preview modes will display the soft shadow effect, mostly to be able to adjust the Ambient Occlusion effect in the light dialog.
  • Progressive Rendering - In addition to the line-by-line rendering of a picture you can now choose also a progressive picture construction. Several rendering passes are applied, first approximating the picture with a low resolution of bulky pixel blocks, then constantly refining the picture until the final resolution has been achieved. After that, in a last rendering step all the super sampling for the antialiasing is processed. Progressive Rendering can considerably facilitate the work on complex scenes, because you can get a pretty good impression of the outcome of the picture after only a few seconds even if the final rendering will still last for hours. This way you could decide in good time wether you want to continue the rendering or stop it to adjust the settings. In addition to the progressive scan, also line-by-line rendering is still available. Line-by-line rendering is advantageous when rendering animations. When the last frame of the animation is overwritten line-by-line with the new picture it is much more easy to follow the movements in the film.
  • Saving of Alpha- and Depth Channels - In the render options dialog you can now choose to include the rendering of additional alpha channel or depth channel data together with your picture calculation. Then - after picture calculation - you have several additional options for the saving of an image. Via the "File" menu of the render window you can choose to save 24 bit RGB-pictures like before, or 32 bit RGBA-pictures with alpha- or depth-channel included or you can save the alpha- and depth channels in separate images.
  • Saving of Alpha- and Depth Channel Videos - Most video processing software can handle animated alpha- or even depth channel videos. If you select the corresponding option in the render options dialog CyberMotion will render additional animated alpha channel or depth channel data in separate data buffers. After the rendering you can choose again via the "File" menu of the render window which kind of data you want to export. You can either save the picture data, the alpha channel or the depth channel to an AVI-video or as a picture sequence.
  • Support of Video Codecs - Before saving an AVI file a small dialog appears where you can select one of the video codecs currently installed on your computer system. Video codecs can compress AVI-Videos to a fraction of its original size, but be cautious. The reduction in size almost always goes along with a loss of quality that can't be restored. Generally you have to experiment excessively with different codecs and settings to achieve the best compromise between quality and size. Therefore I recommend to save final complex animations always uncompressed as 24 bit RGB videos and to experiment afterwards in video processing software with the individual codecs.
  • Maximum Picture Resolution - has been increased to 12000 X 12000 Pixel.

Modelling
  • Subdivision Surfaces - Subdivision Surfaces (SDS) is a real time process which transforms a low resolution object to a higher resolution model with organic curved shape. Every polygon based object can be changed to a SDS model at any time in the modeling process (in CyberMotion all objects except NURBS and analytical defined objects can serve as SDS object). To change an object to an SDS you just need to activate the corresponding property in the object properties dialog together with the required resolution (separate resolutions for viewport and final rendering are available). Working with SDS is very easy. The SDS surface is calculated after each work step in realtime from the low resolution object hull. You can't work on the SDS directly, you simply edit the shape of the low polygon shape as you did before while the SDS is constantly updated. With SDS it becomes very easy to model smooth organic shaped figures but it also eases the animation of characters. With a basic low resolution model you can much faster allocate weighted skin points to a skeleton. You can test movements even without switching on the SDS-feature. Then activate the SDS-property to change the coarse model into a smooth and organic shape for the final rendering of the animation.
  • Smooth Surface - The algorithm to smooth an objects shape has been replaced by the same algorithm which is applied now for the calculation of the Subdivision Surfaces. (The difference between the Smooth Surface function and SDS is that Smooth Surface is a modelling tool that causes a permanent change of the models shape, whereas the SDS-transformation is an object property that is only applied to a copy of the model data which is used for the rendering - SDS does not touch the model data itself). The Smooth Surface function can now be applied to a whole object as well as to separate facet selections.
  • Copy Current Object State to a New Model - In CyberMotion you have several possibilities to animate a deformation of a model (deformation tool, skin and bones, Subdivision Surface). As mentioned before all these deformations are applied to a copy of the original model data immediately before rendering the scene. This way the original model is always kept untouched. But what to do if you want to use one of the deformation functions as a modeling tool to permanently change the appearance of a model? For this purpose the "Copy" menu entry of the main popup list has been extended with the "Copy Current State to Model Data" option. If you select this menu entry then an exact copy of an object as it presently appears in its deformed state on the screen is copied to the model data of a newly created object.
  • Repair Mesh Structure - For some modeling purposes it is necessary to have a homogenous net structure (Each edge of a triangular facet has only one (or none) neighbouring facet connected to the same edge vertices). After some modeling operations, for instance Boolean Operations, it often happens, that a facet is broken into several smaller facets while its immediate neighbouring facets stay untouched. In this case several new vertices become to lie on the edges of the unbroken facets but this vertices are no longer connected to their neighbouring facets. Now, if you apply smooth operations or change the object into a Subdivision Surface the surface is likely to tear open at this locations. You can try to repair such a mesh with help of the Repair Mesh Structure function.
  • Detach Face Selection - A selection of facets is detached from the main mesh by inserting new points around the boundary of the selection. (It is the same function as "Detach as new object" - the only difference is that the detached surface is not copied to a new object.)
  • Delete Duplicate Elements - You can optimize a model by deleting duplicate points or facets. To decide wether a point is superfluous or not you can define a tolerance value. If two or more points lie within this tolerance distance they are replaced by a single common point.
  • Melt Points - A Selection of points is melted into one single point. Facets which degenerate to lines by this operation are automatically deleted.
  • Set Line Visibility - In CyberMotion each triangular facet holds a line flag with the information wether an edge should be drawn or not. Often it is not necessary to draw all three lines to get an exact image of the object. With a quadrilateral surface, for example, which is comprised of two triangles, you need not draw the middle line. The same applies to all facets forming a certain outline on an even plane (e.g. the circular cap of a cylinder). With the Set Line Visibility you can reset all line flags in dependence of the angle of a facet to a neighbouring facet. Only when the angle is greater than the specified angle a connecting line will be drawn between two adjacent facets. This function is especially helpful when importing foreign object formats or after some modeling operations which split facets into smaller pieces.
  • Billboard Primitive - This new primitive object consists only of a flat rectangular plane which serves as a projection plane for masked bitmap textures. There are many application areas where you will find billboards most useful, for instance, for adding masked shapes of people or trees to architectural scenes or you can project animated sequences of explosions or smoke onto billboards to insert them into your animation. By replacing complex 3D objects with billboards you can save a tremendous amount of space and render time. Billboard primitives are created with all necessary default settings making it especially easy to use them as projection planes. They come with a basic transparent material, uv-texture coordinates and a default tree bitmap material - you only need to adjust the size of the billboard and exchange the material's picture with your own bitmap. Furthermore billboards have the auto-aligning property set so that they will always face towards the camera.
  • Individual Background Colors for Model- and Animation Mode - In the "Options - Work Colors" menu you can now define two separate background colors for the viewports to emphasize wether you are working in Model Mode or in Animation Mode, respectively.

Import/Export of Foreign File Formats

  • Wavefront "obj"-Format - In addition to presently supported file formats CyberMotion can now also import and export the Wavefront "obj"-file format. Since this format supports uv-textures and has no restrictions regarding to the number of points or facets in a file, it is preferable to the 3DS format for exchanging files with other software.

Object Selection

  • Deleting or Copying Individual Objects - In previous versions the functions of the main popup list (Delete, Copy, Hide, etc.) were applied always to the whole selection of presently marked objects. For instance, if you wanted to delete a certain object within a marked hierarchy branch you had to switch of first the objects beneath the destination object to prevent them from being deleted too. Now you have two possibilities to specify your selection:
    1. If you click with the right mouse in the object selection window outside the area of the listed names then the functions of the popup list will be applied as before to the whole selection of marked objects.
    2. If you click with the right mouse button directly onto the name of an object then only this object will be affected by the following function. In the popup selection you will recognize this by the name of the object which is attached to the function's name, e.g. "Copy Object1" instead of "Copy Selection".
  • Selecting Points and Facets in the Camera Viewport - In point- and face selection work modes you can now also select these elements with a mouse click directly in the camera viewport. By turning the camera around a selection it will be much easier to approach and select particular points or facets which you can't reach that easy from the orthogonal views. (To move, rotate or scale a point- or facet selection you still need to do this in the orthogonal viewports - in the camera viewport every mouse movement will always move the camera.)

Landscapes

  • Expansion of the Basic Terrain Function - You can choose now between two basic functions for the terrain generation. While the present function is more suited for the generation of rounded and hilly terrains, the new function will create rampant rock formations with sharp-edged ridges.
  • Smooth Peak and Valley - The height dependant smoothness can now adjusted separately for low ground valley areas and for the higher regions of a mountain side.

Light

  • Copy and Delete - You can now delete and copy lights directly in the lights dialog in addition to the corresponding functions of the main object selection window.
  • Shadow Color - In computer generated pictures shadows often appear to dark. Increasing the constant ambient light term is not always helpful since it reduces the contrast and the picture appears very flat. With the new shadow color parameter you can define now a minimum intensity for each light which reaches even the occluded areas of an object. This way you can lighten up the areas lying in the shadow without influencing the areas which are exposed to the light.
  • Volumetric Spotlights - You can now decide for each individual spotlight separately, if it casts time consuming volumetric shadows or ordinary shadows or no shadows at all. Furthermore you can globally switch on or off the volumetric shadow casting for all spot objects in the render options dialog.
  • Light Contrast - The light intensity in a certain point is calculated from the angle defined by the surface normal and the incidence light vector. With help of the new contrast parameter you can bias the curve progression to increase or reduce the light contrast.
  • Ambient Occlusion Renderer - see Rendering
  • Animated Fire Colors - The color range of a fire object can now be animated. This way you can animate nice explosions with an automatic transition from the fire colors to a slowly expanding and fading greyish smoke cloud.

Background

  • Turbulent Atmospheric Color Range - With the turbulence parameter you can add fractal structures to the color range of the sky. This can result in fiery coronas around a sun or you can simulate the impression of an additional cloud layer covering the horizon.

Water

  • Waves - The wave function for water effects has been completely rewritten and appears much more realistic now. You can choose between two basic functions forming the main waves and several additional harmonic waves overlaying the basic function.

Camera

  • Move Camera - If you click with the right mouse button into the camera viewport and move the mouse then the camera moves to the fore or to the back, independent of the movement axes you selected in the camera menu. (Hold both buttons pressed to circle with the camera around the present selection.) Holding the left mouse button pressed while moving the mouse will still move the camera along the selected movement axes defined in the camera menu.
  • Align Camera - This camera menu function has also been added to the main popup list (shortcut "C").

Object Properties

  • Invisible for Camera - Visible for Reflections - If this option is activated then an object is hidden for the camera but it can still be seen in mirroring surfaces. Furthermore the object is still included in the light distribution calculations of the global illumination routines (Photon Mapping and Ambient Occlusion). This property is especially useful if you want to render an indoor scene from outside the room. If you switch on the "Invisible for Camera" property for a wall of a room you can place the camera in front of it and take a look through the hidden wall at the inside of the room, while all reflections and lighting settings keep the same as if the wall was still there. This way it is much easier to find a good camera viewpoint and to avoid the use of a distorting wide angle focal distance.
  • Hide in Viewports - Objects are hidden in the viewport windows but are still visible in the final renderings. This option helps to clear the viewport windows from already constructed objects when creating and working on new models.
  • Hide in Rendering - Objects are visible in viewports but not in the final rendering. This way you can use additional objects to aid construction work, for instance blue prints projected on planes as a construction template, and hide them automatically for the rendering.
  • Compositing Material - Often 3d-models are rendered in front of a single background color for later masking operations in an image editor. There the background color is used as a masking color - the object's shape can easily be separated from the background and you can copy it into another picture or, for instance, into the background of a web page. But how do you include shadows? If you place your object onto a single colored plane which receives the shadows, it is not so easy to illuminate the scene such that the plane keeps a single color. For this purpose you would activate the <Compositing Material> object property for the plane. Then the plane will only be drawn with its pure material color and the incidence of light will be completely ignored except of the shadow calculations. Since there is no light incidence for the plane, shadows are calculated subtractive from the material color. The <Composition Material> property is also very useful in situations, where you want objects to be painted with a constant shading independent of the light incidence, for example, for billboard projections of animated explosions or smoke clouds.
  • Align Object with a Destination Object - You can apply this object property to constantly align an object with a target object. For instance, a camera or a spot light can be aligned with other objects to keep them always in focus when they move around. Or you define the camera as a target so that an object always faces towards the camera, for instance for the deployment of flat billboards with masked picture projections of people or trees. For this purpose you can limit the alignment to the horizontal plane (the object is only rotated about the y-world axes). Otherwise the object will always be rotated around all 3 body axes so that the object's z-axis will point to the target object. Another good application area for this function are animated billboard projections of explosions or expanding smoke clouds which always face the camera. This is possible even for particle systems - all particles will adopt the alignment property from their reference object. The rotations performed to align objects do not change the model data or influence the animation data of the object (no animation tracks or keys are created or changed), it is rather a deformation operation (like SDS or other animated deformation functions) which is performed on a copy of the original model data immediately before rendering the scene.

Material

  • Alpha Maps - In previous versions you always had to supply two separate images for the color information of a bitmap material and its corresponding alpha information. Now you can use also 32 bit RGBA bitmaps with integrated alpha channel, for instance 32 bit TGA, TIF or PNG pictures. When selecting 32 bit images as bitmaps then automatically the alpha channel of the image will be used for the masking operations (The file name is adopted for the bitmap as well as for the alpha map button). But you can still select any other separate picture to serve as alpha map.
  • Reload Bitmaps - If you are editing and changing a material bitmap in an external image editor while working with CyberMotion at the same time then you can press the "Reload Bitmaps" button of the material editor to update the list of bitmaps loaded into the program.
  • Box Bitmap Projection - Another projection mode for bitmaps has been added. In box projection mode a bitmap is mapped from 6 different angles onto an object. In dependence of the direction of the surface normal a top-, bottom-, front-, back-, left- or right projection is applied.
  • Bitmap Sequence Start Frame - A bitmap sequence can now be started at a certain point in time and it will stop after the first run unless the loop option is set.
  • Extended Info for missing Bitmaps - If CyberMotion can not find bitmaps assigned to materials a list of these bitmaps will displayed together with the folders in which CyberMotion has searched for these bitmaps corresponding to the settings in the customize dialog.

Particle Systems

  • 2D-Pixel Particles - There is a new option to create streams of simple two-dimensional pixel particles instead of generating copies of real 3D objects. Using a depth buffer of the previously rendered scene, these two-dimensional pixel particles are painted in post processing mode into the picture. Two-dimensional particle streams are ideal where large quantities of small particles have to be employed, e.g., thin trails of smoke consisting of thousands and thousands of semitransparent pixels or the foam of a waterfall. Managing 2D pixels instead of complex 3D objects saves of course a lot of memory and rendering them in post processing mode with help of a depth buffer instead of tracing real objects speeds up the rendering time tremendously. All particle actions can be changed temporarily to two-dimensional particle systems by a press of a button. This is helpful for rendering fast preview animations to control and adjust the settings for the particle movements.
  • Switch On or Off a Particle Action - Particle actions can now be switched on or off separately in the particle system dialog.
  • Maximum Number of Living Particles - You can now specify an upper limit of facets or 2D-pixels consumed by the different particle actions. If this limit is exceeded the generation of new particles will stop until new memory is available by the process of "dying" particles.
  • Particle - Fade Out - Particles will slowly fade out at the end of their lifetime. This effect is extremely useful when generating smoke.
  • Particle Growth - 3D-Particles are constantly growing until they reach their specified size.

and...

  • Tabulator Key - The tabulator key can now be used to validate a parameter input and to jump to the next or - in combination with the shift key - to the previous edit field.
  • Shortcuts - There are several new shortcuts for changing between different work modes. You can find a table of all shortcuts in the program help.