Digital Element Animatek World Builder 3

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This package, can be considered the best landscape generator judging by the flashy resulting images. In addition to this, from the realism point of view, World Builder far exceeds WCS. The clips show an amazing development of details. Its trump card is flora generation without geometrical objects. Trees and other plants are drawn on the prepared landscape image with respect to its surface, depth (Z-Buffer), and illumination.

The developers of Animatek World Builder (AWB) offer their own way of interacting with 3ds max. Although this package contains the option to export scenes in 3DS format and to compose with the Z-Buffer in the Video Post module, its main feature lies in the availability of the so-called "communicator" between 3ds max and AWB. The principle is easy: 3ds max renders its objects, while AWB renders its own in parallel. An ideal combination is achieved because of the use of shared sources of light and camera. Movement and position of 3ds max objects in the AWB scene are determined by using simplified images of these objects. You can move the objects either in AWB or in 3ds max; all changes will followed automatically in both packages. The rendering also can be performed in AWB or in 3ds max using the Video Post module. An example image obtained via joint rendering in AWB and 3ds max is shown in Fig. 20.6.

Figure 20.6: Example of using Animatek World Builder in conjunction with 3ds max

You can find more detailed information on AWB and download the demo-version from http://www.digi-element.com/. This version contains the commutators for 3ds max version 3 to version 5.

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