The Traffic Accident Reconstruction Origin -ARnews-

Re: 3D Animation

Ed Livesay (elivesay@alltel.net)
Mon, 23 Jun 1997 08:45:32 -0400 (EDT)

Dennis:

I'd bet that you've already come to realize that the "de-facto" standards in
animation software (3D-Max, the Sun products,etc.) are quite expensive (even to
rent).

I've tried several "lower-end" products such as Playmation by Will Vinton
(creator of the Motown Raisins commercials of a few years ago). The end result
was OK but that particular package had a terrible tech support and manual. The
software itself was somewhat finicky as well.

I've been using "TrueSpace2" for the last few years with exceptional results.
The product has been upgraded to TrueSpace3 a couple of months ago. This
software has a significant majority of the features of the top-end products
at an exceptionally low price (about $400-500). Although not really designed
for accident reconstruction animations, it adapts quite well. It outputs your
work in several formats including Targa files (which can be sent out to a
production company which owns a "DPS" computer board for conversion to a good-
quality animation recording). If you don't mind a little loss in resolution,
you can use a cheaper scan-converter to transfer the rendered animation to
VHS-cassette yourself (a scan-converter is one of the ~$100-300 "Computer-to-
TV" converters advertised in most computer magazines). You can get
further data at http://www.caligari.com
Ed Livesay
elivesay@alltel.net

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