Mac 3D News

The Mac 3D News offers information important to the Macintosh 3D community. If you have news of interest to the Mac 3D Team, email them to Join3DTeam@aol.com. In the current Mac 3D News, you will find information on: VersaCAD on the Mac Supporting Education Donate 3DJoy to Schools MAYA for the Mac 3D Plug-in SDK 3DJoy CD MetaCreations Mac Support Sites

EDUCATION SUPPORT GROUP FORMED The Mac 3D Team message that 3DJoy and the Macintosh can help fill the technology gap that exists in the use of 3D within the education community is starting to take hold. The note enclosed below is an indication of this. It is with educators and students that the greatest need and growth potential exists for the Mac 3D Team's efforts to upgrade the use of 3D on the Macintosh. The news that a Maya version for the Macintosh will soon be available is great news and hopefully a RenderMan version is not far off. This will provide a professionally accepted 3D solution that has been missing on the Mac. This will enhance the reputation of and interest in 3D on the Macintosh, but is too expensive and difficult for most schools. For schools, students and those who can't afford the $7,000 price with yearly support fees, 3DJoy from the Mac 3D Team will provide a quality 3D modeling and rendering solution for just a donation to join the Team (see http://www.vidi.com/cd.html). To support the effort to provide more effective and very inexpensive 3D solutions to the educational community, we are forming an "Educational Advisory Board" consisting of a core group of educational institutions that would serve in an advisory capacity. This board will provide suggestions and support to enable us to reach and serve those schools who interested in adding or upgrading their 3D offering and getting support for the development of instructional materials. These materials will be shared with all schools that elect to be part of the Mac 3D Team effort to upgrade the use of 3D on the Macintosh. I see the efforts of this group helping to improve the services provided by the Mac 3D Team and helping to get the word out to other schools. To those schools selected to participate in the Educational Advisory Board, we will provide the following grants: 3DJoy Software Grants To those schools selected to participate in the Educational Advisory Board, we will provide each instructor interested in using 3DJoy in a class or lab with a free copy of the full version of 3DJoy and the school will receive a free lab license. If you are a student or instructor at a school interested who is interested in having your school be a member of the Board, send me a note at nick@vidi.com outlining your interest and a background on the current and future uses of 3D instruction at your school. If you know someone in a school who is interested in having their school participate on the Board, have them send me a note outlining their interest and a background on the current and future uses of 3D instruction.

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?VERSACAD BACK ON THE MAC WITH A 3DJOY BUNDLE VersaCAD, the powerful and popular CAD and architectural drafting product that was a design and drafting mainstay in the heyday of CAD and 3D on the Mac, is now available again. Tom Lazear, president of Archway Systems, Inc. and former president of VersaCAD, Inc. has regained the rights to the powerful VersaCAD architectural and engineering drafting program and is bringing it back to the Mac. To learn about the company and its new efforts, visit their website at http://www.versacad.com . To make VersaCAD even more advantageous to own, the company has agreed to be a corporate sponsor of the Mac 3D Team and to bundle the 3DJoy software. 3DJoy will be provided free with the professional version of VersaCAD under the Premium Services option and with all academic versions of VersaCAD. This bundle gives engineering and architectural CAD designers, educators, and students the opportunity to do professional drafting and 3D rendering and walkthrough previews. To learn about the VersaCAD product for the Macintosh, go to http://www.versacad.com/versacad/prodvcadmac.html . --------------------------------------- VERSACAD FOR THE MACINTOSH - ITS ORIGINS AND HISTORY Tom and Mike Lazear formed a company called T&W Systems in 1979 that would later become Versacad Corporation in 1983. Work was started on a CAD software for personal computers in 1979 with first sale in 1980 to University of Arizona, Tucson for a course on Introduction to Computer Aided Design which was first offered in September of 1980. The first software product was called T-Square and ran on an early PC called the Terak based on DEC LSI-11 computer. Development of T-Square continued and the software was ported to Apple II under the brand name CADapple in 1981; HP 9836 under various names such as Carrier E2000, Staedtler Mars MarsCAD, and AT&T Omnidraft in 1982; and IBM PC under the name VersaCAD in 1983. The software was completely rewritten for the Macintosh computer and began shipping in 1986. Since then, VersaCAD Macintosh Edition has been named Mac CAD product of the year five times. To add even more value to the Macintosh customer, VersaCAD forged a marketing and development alliance with VIDI, a leading developer of 3D modeling, rendering, and animation software on the Macintosh. Versacad Corporation was acquired by Prime Computer in 1987 and then later merged with Computervision after that company was also acquired by Prime in 1988. VersaCAD was developed, sold and supported by Computervision until 1998 when Computervision was acquired by Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC). In 1999, the Lazear's current company, Archway Systems, Inc., re-acquired all rights to VersaCAD from PTC and immediately prepared to bring the software back to its PC and Macintosh personal computer roots. VersaCAD and VersaCAD Mac 2000 was shipped in late year 2000. Since then there have been two additional releases. The current version is VersaCAD Mac 2001. VersaCAD's strength is as a 2D production design drafting software that is powerful yet deceptively easy to use. It requires fewer keystrokes per drawing than any other CAD software. Professional users of VersaCAD include parts of AT&T, AAI, ABB, Appalachian Log Homes and more. Over 20,000 seats are used to teach CAD in over 700 schools of all levels. Tom Lazear renewed contact with Nick Pavlovic, former president of VIDI and currently founder of the Mac 3D Team, and together they worked out a strategy where Macintosh users, especially academic institutions, could benefit from the combined used of VersaCAD powerful drafting and the 3DJoy which is an upgraded version of VIDI's former Presenter 3D professional 3D modeling, rendering, and animation software. 3DJoy is primarily distributed by the Mac 3D Team to its members.

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YOU CAN DONATE 3D SOFTWARE TO SCHOOLS The Mac 3D Team would like to give you an opportunity to provide schools with professional 3D capabilities and possibly mentor the school in using 3D. If you join the Mac 3D Team by September 30, we will provide a free membership and 3DJoy CD in your name to the school and educator selected by you. In addition, we hope you will help the school in learning and using the software as your contribution to upgrading the use of 3D on the Mac.

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MAYA FOR THE MAC On May 15 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2000/05/wwdc), Steve Jobs announced that Alias will port Maya to Mac OS X, to ship in early 2001. He called it "a dream come true for us." Pricing and availability details will be announced prior to shipping. This is a full port, identical to and compatible with the Windows NT and IRIX versions of Maya. Apple coming around to support 3D on the Macintosh and SGI recognizing the potential of the Macintosh is a "dream come true" for many professional Mac 3D users. The only damper is the fact that it will be a straight port with no differences between Mac, NT, and IRIX versions. Hopefully they will have better success than Autodesk had with its straight port of AutoCAD. With Apple's endorsement of Maya for the Mac, hopefully they will also pay some attention to the Mac 3D Team's efforts to upgrade 3D on the Mac for the rest of us.

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METACREATIONS' RESTRUCTURING MAY AFFECT ITS 3D PRODUCTS In the MacWorld article titled MetaCreations' Puzzling Move, it was announced that MetaCreations will focus its efforts solely on developing "e-commerce visualization solutions", and that it will "divest its graphics software assets that do not complement this strategy." For now, MetaCreations won't say exactly which products it will divest, to whom it might sell them, or even when it intends to reveal further details. But it is sure to be a major sell-off: as part of the restructuring, MetaCreations said that 100 of its 250 employees will receive pink slips. In a prepared statement, MetaCreations said that its board of directors saw much growth potential in e-commerce visualization, but only limited prospects in graphics software. Nevertheless, the move represents an about-face from the company's recent pronouncements about its future. At the Seybold San Francisco show in September, MetaCreations representatives described a roadmap that called for upgrades to most of the company's products through much of next year. The company was set to roll out Carrara, a new 3-D graphics program that appears to combine the best features of Ray Dream Designer and Specular Infini-D. (MetaCreations announced Carrara in September, but the product has yet to ship.)

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3DJOY CD IS READY The 3DJoy developers and beta testers have worked hard to get 3DJoy ready for distribution to Mac 3D Team members. The CD with reference documentation, tutorials, models and examples of works is now ready. If you are interested in joining the Team to help support the effort to upgrade the use and availability of 3D on the Macintosh and get the 3DJoy CD, go to the 3DJoy CD information area on this site. We hope you will help in getting the word out to schools and students and in getting other schools to support this.

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MACINTOSH SUPPORT SITES Listed here are sites that provide tools and services complementary to the Mac 3D Team's site 3D tools and support services. If you know of other sites that could be listed here, drop a note to us at join3dteam@aol.com. --------------------------- FOR ARCHITECTS If you are interested in architecture on the Macintosh, check Anthony Frausto-Robledo's Architosh site at http://www.architosh.com. This site provides information, news and resources of interest to architects and interior designers who love the Mac. The site is organized into four major topics: News, CADD, Applications, and Pro Mac advocacy. A second tier of valuable resources include information on the PowerPC microprocessor by the AIM alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola), Mac OS X, and a listing of architects using the Mac. Also provided are a series of opinion articles written by Anthony Frausto-Robledo, Mac LAN managers, CADD experts and guest contributors. --------------------------- FOR PROGRAMMERS AND WEB DESIGNERS Robert Strachan is setting up a new website that should be of great interest to the Mac 3D Team. Check his Mac Tools page for: • Information on Mac programming and alternative programming languages. • Free stuff for your web pages, like page counters, graphics, Javascript for beginners, Listbots, and a free e-store. • Links for hard to find places and anything a Mac tinkerer will find useful. --------------------------- FOR 3D CONTENT DEVELOPMENT ON THE WEB There is a new website whose mission is complementary to that of the Mac 3D Team. Their mission is: • To push users of the Macintosh OS to the cutting edge of Web3D; • To provide support for both software and content development; • And to provide a forum for those who have waited so long to be heard. Similar to our Mac 3D Team effort to expand the use of and the credibility of 3D on the Macintosh, Steve Guynup (guynups@gra.com) says, "What has been painfully difficult is informing the Mac community and the Mac press that Mac users can build web based 3D worlds that are as good as any PC world. Everyone prefers to whine about the lack of support rather than getting the facts, building a world or two and actually proving that the Mac community is worth supporting." If you are interested in VRML on the Mac, try http://www.MacWeb3D.org.

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EXPANDING 3DJOY'S ANIMATION CAPABILITIES One area in which 3D products on Windows and SGI machines outshine those on the Macintosh is that of third-party plug-ins that add special animation effects. In addition to the built-in power and ease of use, the 3Djoy software also offers an SDK that features "Open Source" plug-in options. Included are tools for expanding 3D animation and render capabilities through development of motion and special effects and for attaching third party render engines. This third pary effort will enable the software capabilities to grow much more rapidly then could be accomplished by us alone and would make the acquisition of 3Djoy even more important and useful to you. As an example, it was the plug-in development effort of third parties that turned Autodesk's 3D Studio into a powerful, well-accepted product. The 3D Plug-in Development Kit lets programmers, schools with programming classes, and animators with programming skills develop special motion effects that can automatically be added to 3Djoy. The kit includes instructions and source code examples of various plug-ins in CodeWarrior. To get the kit send an email to join3dteam@aol.com. and include information about your 3D background, programming skills, and what kinds of plug-in effects you are interested in developing.

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