Turbo Squid Flexes Its 3D Muscles

By David Em

February 2, 2004

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In my last column I reviewed 3ds max 6, Discreet's flagship Windows-only 3D visualization and animation system. max 6 is crammed with features (a recent upgrade added no less than a thousand new ones), but enterprising third parties have made a good business of creating plug-ins that significantly extend max's core functionality.

One missing capability that's of enormous value to illustrators, engineers, animators, and architects is a way to easily create natural environments within max. Another is the ability to create nonphotorealistic sketch-style renderings from 3D databases. I set out on a quest to find these two specific tools, and discovered that both are marketed by Turbo Squid as DreamScape 2 and finalToon.

You can buy either plug-in separately or as part of a $1695 bundle called Turbo Toolkit that contains another five powerful plug-ins. AfterBurn 3 is a particle generator that creates smoke, fire, and explosions. Human IK is a character animation rigging system. Absolute Character is a muscle creation system. Kaldera bakes complex texures and lights into game engines, and Final Render is an advanced image and animation rendering system. All of these are well worth any serious 3D animator's attention.

DreamScape 2

I've always considered the lack of an environment generator to be a serious omission in max, given that programs that cost only a few hundred bucks, like Corel's Bryce 5 and Eovia's Carrara 3have this functionality built in. DreamScape 2 rectifies this situation with a landscape and atmosphere creation system that integrates seamlessly into max.

DreamScape 2 has modules for building terrain, clouds, and water. The software is fairly deep, with many dials, checkboxes, and rollouts, but it's logically laid out, and there's a built-in right-click help system that's nicely implemented. A small preview window gives a good idea of what your final scene will look like without having to resort to a time-consuming full image render.

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