Product Reviews

form*Z 3.0 (patched to 3.0.2) is the biggest shake-up in the 3D modelling package's history.

The most apparent difference is the interface. form*Z now presents the almost-obligatory sculpted, grey interface, which is very pleasing to look at. There are also options to revert to the old-style black-and-white icons or new, full-colour icons.

This proliferation of options has long been one of form*Z's trademarks, and version 3.0 is no exception. Whereas in previous versions a tool's parameters had to be set via a dialog box, the version 3.0 interface has an Options palette which sits on the right with the Layers, Objects and Lights palettes. The fields in the dialog boxes of any tool or modifier appear in this palette when any tool is chosen, so setting the various parameters, options and choices is now very easy - it may even make you experiment more. The new toolbars are larger and more complex, containing a host of new tools and groups of tools. However, if you don't like the new arrangement you can create your own, since the layouts are fully customisable.

Auto*des*sys has made major changes to the way form*Z navigates views. First, you can use the Hand tool to pan around when in a Perspective view. Second, two view tools have been added: Walkthrough and Navigate View. The former allows you to navigate a scene in as near realtime as your system will allow. Just click on one of the direction arrows on the screen widget and the camera starts moving. You then control its direction using the mouse. Navigate View is a great timesaver, since it puts a 'super Widget' on screen, from which every view tool - Pan, Zoom, Dolly, Tilt and Tumble - can be accessed. This new tool can be dismissed by double-clicking in the window - rather than by deselecting it from its toolbar - but when we did this the view would jump from where we had positioned it. Also the Navigate View tool wouldn't work at all in Orthogonal views.

The other big addition is animation. This is limited to animating cameras, so only supports walkthroughs and fly-bys. Keyframes in this case are individual saved views and once these are set, form*Z will interpolate between the keyframes to produce a smooth path. As you'd expect, you get a battery of options to determine ease in and ease out of keyframe, plus direct control over paths via motion graphs. Output can be saved either as a QuickTime movie, or in the internal .fan format (form*Z animation).

Modelling is what form*Z's always been about, and version 3.0 sees the introduction of some major tools, especially those which produce organic forms. Certain modelling tools which were introduced in version 2.9 have also been greatly improved. The Skinning tool, which is used to create organic mesh surfaces by assembling cages of curves which define the broad outline, is now much more general and forgiving. You no longer need to specify whether the number of points on the rail curves is equal - form*Z can work that out for itself and adjust accordingly, and you don't need to set a tolerance for the points where rail splines meet source splines. However, MetaformZ (form*Z's version of metaballs) remains unchanged. This is a shame in the light of the 'live' evaluation metaballs found in other programs which speed up workflow considerably.

The biggest overall change in modelling is the introduction of Parametrics - objects which keep their internal controls and whose parameters can be edited at any time. A Parametric sphere, for example, can have its radius, angle of revolution and latitudinal spread altered whenever you feel like it. The number of ways

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in which you can alter a Parametric torus is mind-boggling. Also, Parametric primitives render perfectly smoothly. Some of form*Z's 'ready- mades', such as screws and bolts and staircases have been made into Parametrics. The Staircase tool is considerably improved with the option to generate balusters and handrails on straight and spiral stairs.

The Pick palette has two new tools to cope with these primitives: Edit Controls and Edit Surface. The former allows parameters such as width, radius, and so on, to be altered, but Edit Surface acts directly on the object's skin, distorting it like putty. The degree of control depends upon the number of control 'Wires' that make up your object's surface.

These new controls can also be used on the new nurbZ and Patch object types. The nurbZ are made from a series of profiles, which can be either closed or open, while Patches are derived from either boundary lines or from Polyhedra. These can be either Bezier or Coons patches (they differ in the type of controls they offer). A patched cube, for example, resembles a squared-off ball. Polyhedra can then be shaped using Point, Face and Segment editing into a rough shape, which will be transformed into a smooth model by the Patch tool, although Patch generation can be quite slow, and lacks the immediacy of LightWave's MetaNURBs. The original generating polyhedron becomes ghosted once the patch is generated and can't be used to further refine the model. To do this, you'd have to undo the Patch operation and re-edit the polyhedron.

Edit Controls gives you the chance to transform the surface controls directly, or to edit the bounding box formed by the original sources (in the case of nurbZ). However, you can't use the standard tools for this, instead you have to option-click to bring up a pop-up menu of transforms, and of the reference for the transform - either Current Normal, Average Normal or Reference plane.

We found some shortcomings here: selecting a control source on a nurbZ object always added an extra control point on the source which led to unpredictable results when transforming. Also, any other operations, such as adjusting the view or even switching to another program in the Finder bumps you out of Edit Control mode, so you have to continually reselect your object to continue editing it. Even undoing the last transform will exit Edit Control mode - and the change won't be undone either.

When editing complex organic shapes, it makes sense to use a four view, and form*Z's new Window Frames feature allows you to split off as many views as you want. But it's here that some of the biggest problems lie. If you drag out a primitive in an Orthographic view, you can't switch to an Axonometric or Perspective view to extrude the height - it goes all over the place. Redraw is another problem area; windows don't update properly, especially if you're using the new OpenGL display. The Navigate View tool won't work in orthographic views and objects sometimes have a habit of disappearing. Another frustration is that if you go into Window Frames mode from a Perspective view, the Top, Right and Front views will be perspective, which defeats the object a bit. The three orthographic views won't Pan and Zoom together either, so you have to update each one individually, which can be a chore.

Another big disappointment is the manuals. Only a version 3.0 addendum is included - the extensive set of volumes that ships with form*Z 3.0 actually refers to version 2.8, and so many changes have been made to the program that a newcomer would be utterly lost. The addendum, of course, assumes prior knowledge of the program. Even though it's nearly two years since the last version, the lack of up-to-date manuals points to a rush job, and Auto*des*sys says it would prefer to see the application patched a few more times before it's happy with it.

All the features that made version 2.9 a five-mouse product and one of the best modellers around for technical, architecture and product visualisation are present in 3.0 and many of them work much more smoothly, but this version promised so many things - notably on the organic modelling front - and it hasn't quite delivered.