Here comes a detailed specification of all new functions and expansions to the new version of CyberMotion 3D-Designer 13.0 program. Use the help manual, chapter "What's new in version 13.0", 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 13.0:

Modeling

  • Unit of Measurement - In previous versions of the software, all dimensions were measured in world units, leaving it to the intention of the constructor, whether a world unit corresponds to a cm, a meter or whatever else. From now on, 1 unit in the world space is defined as 1 cm, which results now to a maximum scene dimension of about ±84 kilometer in each direction. If you want to construct scenes of even greater dimensions, just ignore the internal unit of measurement and define your own units again. But keeping to the softwares basic unit of measurement will grant the exchangeability between different projects, because size relationship will always fit together. The depiction and the input of coordinates can be in any of the predefined units "mm", "cm", "m", "km", "in", "yd" or "mile". You can choose the unit of your liking via a list box located in the button bar above the viewport windows. Coordinates will be automatically converted to the current unit of measurement, for instance, if inch is selected as unit of measurement and you type in "1 m" then the number will automatically converted to "39,37 in"
  • Material Displacement - A new material property can be applied to deform and change the shape of a model. The displacement property is only an addition to a material's definition, so you can define, animate and apply those materials - to a whole object or only to a facet selection - like any other material. The material information will be used to relocate individual points along the direction of the normal vector standing perpendicular to the surface. This way you can create a wide variety of surface structures. Even the inbuilt landscape editor makes use of this functionality. When you create a landscape object in CyberMotion, only a flat grid will be created and simultaneously, the height information of the terrain will be saved to a height map. Finally, this height map is allocated automatically as a displacement material to the simple grid object, resulting in a realtime deformation with the desired landscape topography. One drawback of Material Displacement is, that it only deforms already existing points on the object's surface, it doesn't create new elements. But to be able to create fine structures on the surface, the object has to be of a high point resolution. That's where the Subdivision Surface property comes into play. It creates a subdivided object of higher point resolution and you can use different levels of resolution for the viewport depiction and for the final rendering. Like all other deformation routines, material displacement is calculated on the fly immediately before rendering, so using a lower level of subdivision for the viewport depiction can deeply enhance the work flow. Furthermore, because of the very high point resolution needed for material displacement, this kind of "modeling" should be restricted to very few objects standing in the focus of the scene. CyberMotion offers two types of Displacement:
    • Procedural Displacement - creates a random based, fractal structure on the surface. You can use this effect to create the impression of erosion on stone walls or, with a very high point resolution, you can use this effect to create thousands of little growing spikes resembling to a fur.
    • Bitmap Displacement - uses the information of a height map (greyscale image) to control the amount of relocation of the surface points. This way you can very easily create ornamental structures, terrains, carvings, face details and so on.
  • Subdivision Surface - No Curvature - This option deactivates the smoothing algorithm, which calculates the organic curvature for subdivision surfaces. This way, an object can be transferred into an object of higher point and facet resolution without changing the shape of the model. The higher resolution model can now serve as the basis for other deformation functions, for instance the material displacement or free form deformation tools. But always keep in mind that with every additional step of surface subdivision the amount of memory required for this operation multiplies by four!
  • Subdivision Surface - Level of Detail 0 - Separate levels of SDS-resolution can be adjusted for the viewport depiction and the final rendering. To accelerate the work flow even more, now a level of zero can be set for the viewport depiction. This will render only the low poly object hull to the viewport, without the subdivided surface belonging to it.
  • SDS-Landscape with Material Displacement - As mentioned before, landscape objects are produced now as flat low polygon grids with corresponding height maps applied as displacement materials. Additionally the Subdivision Surface property will be activated, changing the low poly landscape into a terrain of variable resolution and detail. The advantages of this approach are convincing:
    1. The high resolution height map (1024x1024) can provide the height information for the low polygon viewport depiction as well as for higher levels of detail in the final rendering.
    2. Levels of detail can be changed separately for the viewport depiction and the final rendering via the corresponding SDS-resolution parameters at any time in the work process.
    3. The height map will be saved as a 16-bit-greyscale PNG-image. You can manipulate the height map just by loading it into any other image processing software that supports this format. There, you can use the drawing tools of the software to add new details. You can, for instance, insert your name as a light gray text, which will result in a range of hills forming your name after reloading the picture into CyberMotion.
  • Bevel Segments - You can define now a specific number of bevel segments used to calculate the curvature for edges within the Extrude- and 3D-Text editor. Curvature can be concave or convex.
  • Primitive Objects with Rounded Edges - The primitive objects cube and cylinder can be defined now with rounded edges.
  • New Primitive Objects - The object types capsule, net (a flat grid) and 3D-face (triangle and quadrangle) were added to the list of primitives.
  • Quadrangles - In previous versions the triangle was the basic element for all modeling work (except analytical defined objects). In the current version the quadrangle will take over this role wherever possible. With quadrangles it will be a lot of easier to construct angular shaped models or to select rectangular surfaces for the facet extrusion function. Furthermore, the Subdivision Surface interpolation responsible for the calculation of organic curvatures works much better on objects build from quads then from triangles. In the definition of a quadrangle it is not necessary that all four points lye in the same plane, but if not, the quadrangle will be divided automatically into two triangles for the rendering (This is an internal deformation calculated immediately before rendering, it will not change the quadrangle definition of the model data).
    • Automatic Import Conversion - When importing older files of previous versions the software will automatically convert the triangle based object to an optimized quadrangular object definition. (You can easily restore the triangular net definition with help of the <Triangulate> function, if you want to.)
  • Extrude- and Rotate Editor - Bezier Splines with Tangents - The shape of spline curves in the extrude and rotate editor can now be manipulated by grabbing and moving tangent points belonging to the control point of the curve. This is the same function as for manipulating the curvature of a movement path.
  • Cut Faces - With this new function you can draw a line along which a facet or a selection of facets will be divided.
  • Switch of Deformation - The previous deformation "Off" button located in the button bar above the viewport window will be replaced by a list box button (Also accessible via the menu entries "Edit -> Show Deformation ->...". With help of this list box you can activate or deactivate now each type of deformation separately. You can temporarily switch on or off the deformation types Free Form Deformation, Material Displacement, SDS-Interpolation, Skin and Bones Deformation and the Align Object function.
  • Selecting Surfaces - In addition to the possibility of selecting individual facets you can now choose the Select Surface option. When selecting a facet in "Select Surface" selection mode this will automatically mark all neighbouring facets lying in the same plane with the selected facet.

Rendering

  • Render Grid Lines - The grid lines of the wireframe hull of an object can be rendered now also into the final rendering. You can choose a single grid color, adopt the colors used for the viewport windows or even use the color of the surface material in a different intensity level. You can choose to add the lines to the rendering or just to render the framework of grid lines alone.
  • Watermark - The trial version of the 3D-Designer software adds a watermark to every rendered picture. Many users asked for a similar option to insert their own logo into the final rendering. You can do this now via the watermark function provided in the render options dialog. There you can enter the path to your bitmap logo and select the corners you want your logo to be inserted to.
  • Object Labels - is a new entry in the "Display" menu of each viewport. If activated, then each object is painted with an additional label showing its name. You can remove the label of a particular object if you activate the corresponding object property "Hide Name of Object" in the Object Properties dialog.

Background

  • Atmosphere - Volumetric Clouds - The former cloud algorithm will be replaced by a full volumetric approach for the rendering of realistic 3D clouds. The new algorithm will take into account the thickness of cloud layers as well as the illumination of the sun. A new quality parameter will define the sample rate that is used to scan the way of a ray through the cloud layer. With the new algorithm even thin layers of cloud will look more realistic than cloud formations rendered with previous versions and the rendering time will be comparable. But if you want to render thick cloud formations towering up high in the sky then of course rendering time will increase rapidly.
    • Note: The volumetric cloud model is still a part of the atmospheric background model, always located at infinite distance behind the scene. This means, you can not arrange a fly through this volumetric clouds, as you can do with volumetric fog.
  • Atmosphere - Automatic Sky Colors - Animating a sunrise or sunset was a hard task in previous versions of CyberMotion because you had to define different colors and color ranges on different key positions for the sky and for the sun. In the new version you can simply choose the <Auto-Sky>-function for the background colors together with the corresponding <Automatic Sun Color> function for parallel sun light objects. If you activate both options, the sun color and a fitting background color range will be automatically calculated dependent on the incidence angle of the sun light. This function is a deformation tool, which means that all colors are calculated on the fly immediately before rendering without influencing the original color- and animation settings of the background or light object. As soon as you deactivate the automatic color algorithm the original color settings will show up again.
  • Sun Glare - replaces <Color Distortion near Sun> and can be applied to all background color modes (<Auto-Sky>, <Color Range - From Zenith to Horizon>, <Color Range - Sun-Centered>). The Sun Glare function calculates a blending of the sky colors towards the sun color near the sun. You can use this function to light up the area around the sun. It's not as spectacular as the lens flare effect, but it is very easy to apply just by switching on the effect and controlling the spread angle and intensity.
  • Atmosphere - Volumetric Fog - Instead of defining a ground height under which the density of the fog is infinite now a starting height can be defined. This way a fog bank is not bound to the ground anymore. It can be located anywhere above the ground, for instance, to surround the peaks of a mountain range. Furthermore, you can freely fly through a volumetric fog bank.

Light

  • Automatic Sun Color - see "Atmosphere - Automatic Sky Colors"

Camera Movement

  • Auto-Rotate/Move - If you switch on this option in the camera menu, then all rotations and movements initiated with the mouse within the camera viewport will be continued automatically until the mouse button is released again. With a little push of the mouse the camera starts to rotate or move along the chosen movement axes. Further movement of the mouse will accelerate or decelerate the movement. This way the moving speed of the camera can be tuned very fine, starting from only a few micrometers per second up to hundreds of meters per second when the mouse movement is carried on.
  • Mouse Camera Alignment - There are several options to move the camera with help of the mouse within the camera viewport. In addition you can now use the shortcut <ALT> together with the left or right mouse button to adjust the camera alignment. Holding down the left mouse button and moving the mouse to the right or the left will change the cameras direction. Moving the mouse up and down will change the inclination of the camera. Holding down the right mouse button together with <ALT> will roll the camera around its longitudinal axis.

and...

  • Bitmap Search in Subfolders - In addition to the project path and the root paths defined in the program settings now all sub folders of the specified paths will be searched for bitmap textures.
  • Viewport Zoom - can be adjusted now down to only 0.01%, making it possible to overview larger areas of terrain.
  • Preview Rendering and SDS-Resolution - To accelerate the rendering of previews in main dialog windows, the level of detail for the subdivision surface algorithm will be set to the same level as adjusted for the viewport depiction.