Object-centric animation


Among a number of new unique features, form·Z 6.0 offers a seamlessly integrated animation environment, where objects, lights, cameras, and surface styles (colors) can be animated and transformed over time. The new animation features are object-centric and are applied as modeling operations, which, in addition to supporting the production of animated visualizations, they also support dynamic modeling and the creation of forms that go significantly beyond the repertoire of conventional modeling tools. This offers a powerful new avenue for design explorations.

• Animations can be generated either relative to paths, using the Animate along Path tool, or by keyframing, using either the Keyframe tool or the Animate Entities tool. The keyframes can be generated either automatically or manually and a variety of other options make the use of these tools highly flexible and effective.

• A number of palettes, namely the Animation Time Line, Animation Score, and Animation Editor palettes offer interactive graphic and numeric methods for setting, previewing, and refining animations. The Animation Score palette in particular offers one more method for setting animations. You can drag the name of an object, light, view, or color from the Objects, Lights, Views, or Surface Styles palette into the Animation Score palette, which automatically creates default tracks and controllers for the animated entity.

• The parameters of an entity can be animated at the same time its motion and/or size may be animated. Animatable parameters are optionally marked with an animation button in the dialogs that control their values, and they can be set from these buttons. When the entity to which a parameter belongs is animated, a corresponding track is automatically created.

• Once animations have been set and refined, they can be played back in preview mode from within form·Z, then rendered, saved, and played in their final form. Animation settings can be developed in form·Z or imported from other programs.


Capturing 3D forms from animations


The new animation tools have also added to the modeling repertoire of form·Z by allowing animated states of objects to be captured as fully defined new objects, rather than simply as images. Animated lights and cameras can also be captured.

The Extract from Animation tool offers the means to extract and capture entities from animated sequences. Given that the shape of animated entities typically transitions through forms that cannot be created in other ways, animation as a form generation method adds some remarkable dimensions to the 3D modeling repertoire of form·Z.

• While all the tools that allow the animation of their parameters lend themselves to the new modeling through animation methods, the Deform and Morph tools, both of which produce controlled objects, add impressive new modeling capabilities. The forms that can be captured from the dynamic execution of these tools go significantly beyond what is possible with more conventional tools.

More modeling tools

The S-Loft tool executes skinned lofting, an operation that combines skinning and lofting, by using explicit or implicit paths, as it threads sets of selected source shapes. The most impressive among the variety of shapes it can generate are objects that branch.

The Cap tool allows you to pick a set of edges that form a closed loop in 3D space and create a surface from them. Given that these edges can be either free (open) or edges common to two neighboring faces and that the tool can be optionally instructed to generate surfaces that extend the curvatures of neighboring surfaces, the possibilities for form generation are enormous.

The Morph tool allows you to pick two objects, the source and the destination, and have the shape of the former change to the shape of the other by a certain percent. The operation can be executed dynamically or in one step. It can be used as part of an animation or by itself.

• The Deform tool has been drastically extended and has become a controlled operation that allows multiple types of deformations to be applied simultaneously. These can be subsequently edited and revised thus offering great opportunities for experimentation and design explorations. The new Deform tool can be used by itself or as part of an animation sequence.

• The Reconstruct Curve and Reconstruct Nurbz tools have been extended and can now optionally display the differences between the original and the new curves and surfaces.

The Text Search and Replace tool can search all objects in a project or only selected objects and match a specified string. When matches are found, they are replaced with a replacement string, which may be a completely different string or the same string in a different format, including font, size, and style.

• The Model Doctor tool has been enhanced and it can now heal incompletely formed smooth objects by filling in faces that may be missing.

The new Transform tool can be used to change the location, scale, and rotation of an object by transforming an objectÕs axes graphically. That is, it is a tool that combines all the other transformation tools, namely Translate, Rotate, and Scale.

• The Attach and Extend tools have been enhanced and now they also work with smooth objects, which adds some special flavor to these operations, such as attaching the face of one object to a curved face of another object causes the former face to take the shape of the latter.

"Texture baking" can be executed by using the Render Textures tool. This tool converts the procedural RenderZone textures of a surface style to one or more pre-rendered texture maps. These texture maps are then automatically mapped back to the faces.



Exporting color to 3D printers

Import/export support has been added for the ZPR format to facilitate prototyping. ZPR is the format of the Z Corp 3D printers and has the unique ability to carry color information. Thus physical prototype models can now be generated in full color and textures from virtual form·Z models.

Directly accessible electronic manuals

The form·Z User Manuals are now available as electronic documents and can be accessed directly from within form·Z. You can select a tool, menu item, dialog, or palette and invoke specific information about it or you can browse through selected sections of the manuals. Optionally, the electronic manuals can be printed or printed manuals can be ordered from AutoDesSys, Inc.


Automatic updates

A new automatic update option has been added to keep your form·Z installation up to date with the latest adjustments and corrections. form·Z checks for new versions based on a preference setting and automatically downloads and updates itself.