PolyForm v1.0, by Vivid Technologies, is the first Windows version of a longtime staple on the Amiga platform: PixelPro. That original object conversion and logo creation tool has matured over the years into this third-generation product, chock full of useful new features.

On top of loading and saving over 20 different object formats, PolyForm can convert bitmaps and PostScript files directly into 3D objects. Other features include point editing, polygon reduction, extrusion, beveling, and a host of tools to alter surface attributes. Virtually every surface parameter can be edited directly though a number of dialog boxes. PolyForm can also load scene files, with full support for object hierarchies. (I had trouble loading LightWave 4.0 scene files, but the developers claimed it had been fixed in subsequent releases.) Objects can also be loaded individually, arranged, and then grouped using several interactive pop-up windows.

The program interface is one large viewport that looks a lot like LightWave's Layout window, with a series of tool buttons along the top. The object can be viewed along any axis, or in a perspective view. The interface is in many ways similar to LightWave, so LightWave users should have little trouble navigating around the object. A nice feature is the ability to render the object with solid, shaded polygons. For the sake of speed, it's possible to switch between wireframe, flat shaded, Gourad shaded, or Phong shaded at the click of a button. The solid preview makes it easy to fly around the object(s) and see any modeling problems that don't show up in the standard wireframe view. PolyForm even renders the polygons with their base surface color, though bitmaps and procedural attributes are not rendered. The interactive solid preview is a really nice feature, and opens up a number of possibilities to be discussed later.

Chief among the new features is the `Logo' window which lets you create a 3D logo object with just a few keystrokes. While there are still separate dialogs for extrusion and beveling, the `Logo Wizard' puts all the steps into one window (at the expense of control, since the `wizard' automatically calculates bevel and extrusion sizes based on the logo's size.)

The greatest time saving feature is PolyForm's ability to quickly convert bitmaps and PostScript files into 3D objects for use in LightWave format (or any of 19 other 3D object formats.) Anyone familiar with the EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) import capabilities of PixelPro will welcome the addition of Polyform to their repertoire - for any animator who has to create 3D versions of corporate logos, this feature alone makes the program worth the cost.

Since many companies already have their logo available in electronic format, a lot of time and trouble can be saved by converting their EPS file directly into a 3D object. Since PolyForm converts the color information too, all worry of matching `company colors' is taken care of. (Though, chances are, the client is _still_ going to say it looks wrong! :^)

Even if the client can only dig up a grungy letterhead, PolyForm and a scanned image can go a long way towards creating a servicable logo object. Given a hi-resolution BMP image in black & white, or color, PolyForm will attempt to create a 3D object that closely resembles the orginal scanned image, complete with color information.

The bitmap auto-tracing abilities have been greatly improved with this release. A new interactive smoothing requester lets you see the finished object as you change smoothing attributes. By tweaking a set of three variables, it's easy to optimize the number of points in the finished logo, reducing the amount of manual touch-up required. For hard to trace curves, there is an optional spline fitting algorithm, too.

An example is this rather complex freehand logo I scanned from a book of 20's clip art. It only took about half an hour to go from the original 3.5" B&W artwork (scanned at 300DPI) to a rendered object. One nice improvement with PolyForm is that it allows you to select the background color to ignore when it converts the object - there's even a button to bring up a preview of the image being traced.

The interactive smoothing on this very complex object took four or five minutes per iteration on my 133MHz Pentium, but was still tolerably fast. (Another, simpler, logo redrew within seconds) The results of the new smoothing algorithms are definitely worth the short time spent tweaking variables, though even the default settings porduce adequate results. I was unable to find any of the jaggy edges that have long been characteristic of bitmap to object conversion programs.

One feature that shows great promise in PolyForm is the real-time 3D polygon `paint' panel.

Unfortunately, it currently only allows you to paint polygons with surface names - it's not a full-blown texture map painting program (like the 3D Studio plug-in that costs several hundred dollars!). To really be useful, this feature needs to be fleshed out to allow real-time painting of texture maps in the view window. An example of the paint feature (and dialog window) is this accopanying photo, where I've given lady Liberty's lips a new surface name by merely stroking the mouse across those parts of the image. (It's kinda cool, but being able to really paint on the object would make this a truly amazing product!)

The port to the Windows PC platform was a graceful one. Longtime users of PixelPro will recognize the layout and structure of the older Amiga program, while new Windows users will find an interface that conforms to the accepted Windows user interface. My tests were run under Win95, and it seemed to work just fine. In many ways, the program benefits from conforming to Windows standards - in particular, the object and surface lists are handled much better, using the normal shift-click & ctrl-click selection options.

In all, PolyForm 1.0 is a very well-developed product, offering an impressive array of features for it's price. By the time this article is printed, Vivid Technologies hopes to be able to directly save out to the new VRML format (the new internet standard for virtual reality environments) - allowing 3D artists to put their own worlds onto the world wide web.  

byline: Erik Flom is the president of ELFWORKS 3D Construction Co., a full-service 3D animation facility in the San Francisco/Bay Area.  

Picture captions:

SSFinal.TIF: This logo took about half an hour to scan in, auto-trace, and render. Note the inset detail in the lower right corner.

ScanLWO.GIF: Here is the logo as it appeared after auto-tracing. Note the `Logo Wizard' dialog box in the lower right corner.

Liberty.JPG: An example of PolyForm's real-time 3D polygon painting feature. The `Edit Surfaces' control panel is open in the upper corner of the window.