3D Nature's World Constructions Set 6 is a
Geographical Information System (GIS) based landscape creation
program. It can be used to create still work as well as animations.
It is based on a spherical planet using longitude and latitude. As
many of you know who have read my reviews in the past, I often
choose a certain perspective when I review a program. This doesn't
mean that I am biased, but I am looking at the program from a
certain position. In the case of World Construction Set 6 (WCS 6),
I am reviewing it from the perspective of an artist, which is what
I am. However, before I do, let me include some of the fields that
use WCS 6, according to 3D Nature. They are people in: Fine arts,
animation, film and TV, cartography, forestry, GIS, civil
engineering, games, scientific visualization, education, etc. What
are some of the features of WCS 6? This program resides on the
computer without having to go into the registry. It utilizes OpenGL
very well. It ran very smoothly under Windows XP without any
glitches. When one looks at a scene, at any point, one can see the
scene's data such as elevation, longitude, latitude, illumination,
slope, etc. Ecosystems, which I will discuss later in this review,
can be comprised of many materials and can be separated into
overstory, understory, and ground overlay. 3D objects can be
brought into these ecosystems. One can create real fly-over
animations of real places using WCS 6 alone, or with other GIS
software. To me the major strength of WCS 6 is its ability to
depict, in 3D graphical form, places that are geographically
accurate. There are interactive rulers available in WCS 6 that use
both linear and Great Circle methods. In WCS 6, objects are created
or imported and placed by means of a vector. Or vectors are drawn
and then attached to the object. Or Terraffectors are applied
along a vector. There are terms unique to WCS such as
Terraffector. Terraffectors are displacement effects, which can
change the shape of the terrain and at the same time, apply new
Ecosystem texturing on either side of the vector. The term
Ecosystem is also used differently in WCS, and means one type of
land cover. When one chooses to create a vector, the following menu
is activated.
The interface allows for drop and drag. Vectors can be dropped and
dragged onto their respective components without having to open a
new menu, for example. WSC 6 comes with a hardware key called a
dongle. When WCS 6 is used without its hardware key, it becomes a
render engine. This program can render on separate machines or over
a network. I did not try it as such, but I rendered a simple still
scene from one machine in a short time. One can export a scene and
a DEM (Digital Elevation Model) or combinations in the Lightwave or
3D Studio 3DS/PRJ format. However, the program refused to export in
the latter format. The render engine has the ability to do "pixel
fragment rendering." The rendering uses High Dynamic Range data,
which allows HDRI saving, lighting, and effects. There are a number
of menus allowing choices of rendering methods as well as what to
include or not to include. WCS 6 has improved shadows, new
volumetric atmospherics allowing for the creation of sunbeams and
crepuscular ray effects, 3 types of cloud models with combinations,
and a number of light types including the ability to use the
texture editor to apply "gobos" or "cookie cutters" to the lights.
When the lights are applied, they can also be set to exclude or
include elements in the scene. WCS 6 also allows for post
processing so that work does not have to be done in another
program. The post processing also has an include and exclude
feature for specific effects. DEMs are the cornerstone of WCS 6.
They can be imported or created. Below is a partial list of mostly
free sites gathered from 3D Nature's web site as well as from my
exploration of the web. DEM Download sites:
By accessing the Painting command, one can manipulate the
shape and elevation of the various elements of the terrain.
Once the form of a terrain is constructed, one can set up a full
environment from scratch or import one from WCS 6's Gallery.
Placed on a created DEM, the Grand Canyon looked like the
following.
There are other ways to start a project. One can apply ground
cover. Again, this can be created by importing or creating
different types of foliage; or one can bring in an Ecosystem from
the Gallery and either use all of it or a part of it. These
components can then be reworked and saved as new components in
their altered state. The Ecosystems can then be setup according to
the rules for that particular type of terrain as they occur in
nature or these rules can be overridden. The flexibility and
choices are huge in this program. Most variables are driven by
Textures. The "T" in the box means Texture. The
following is an example of all the elements that control the color
of the lake material.
The next screen capture shows the controls available for adjusting
just the intensity of the lake material.
Individual tasks in a scene have their icons on the main top
toolbar. The below screen capture shows a partial view of the
toolbar. There are other tasks such as moving and rotating, etc.
that are not pictured. Each Task Mode expands and is used to
create the elements that make up a scene.
The interface also contains some unusual aspects. For example, the
Undo command is generally attached to the menus and is not part of
the Edit command in the upper toolbar, as it is in most
programs. However, there are a few exceptions. The undo command for
creating vectors is part of the toolbar. WCS 6 is a very time
intensive program to learn. It comes with three CDs of tutorials in
two forms, html and movs. While the tutorials are systematically
written, most were written in 2002, and parts of them do not work
properly. This becomes a problem, when you cannot complete a
tutorial as shown in the html or mov. I used this program in
Windows XP. There were no drivers specific for XP, but the program
will accept other drivers. You need to let it find the correct ones
on the CD. However, when you upgrade to version 6.37, you need to
follow the link on the update page
of the 3D Nature web site as well as read the instructions on the
specified page. After going through all the tutorials, some a
number of times, in order to understand the program as well as
creating a number of scenes from "scratch," my evaluation for it as
a program for an artist to purchase is negative if a person wants
to learn a program quickly. However, as I found out, if someone is
willing to spend time experimenting and working with the program,
the results can be perhaps satisfying because almost every aspect
of a landscape can be controlled. Learning how to control it is the
key and this door is hard to unlock for a few reasons. One reason
is because there are limited avenues to acquire the necessary
knowledge. Where other programs have books or a number of forums,
WCS 6 has one Yahoo forum, some tutorials, and an online manual.
Most of the Yahoo community of users, seem to be using the program
for technical purposes and not artistic ones making the emphasis
different. Also, I found too many questions that I wanted to have
answered and didn't feel I should have to go to a forum. For
example, the term "Resolution" is used in a number of ways. When
you generate your own DEM, how you generate it generates its
"Resolution" in meters. I could not find out how to control this
when creating a DEM even though I could see a relationship. I like
to be able to understand a program so I can use it to its best
advantage. Another example of a hard to control area involved
creating a sky that had a good gradient color. While I had read and
experimented with gradients and their different blending modes, I
could not create a pleasing sky no matter how I manipulated the two
gradients.
While certain things were easy to create, others were very hard.
Realistic water, especially waves, fell into the latter category
while sand dunes were a snap. I am basing some of this from
experience using other landscape generating programs. I only worked
with still scenes except in the tutorials. According to the 3D
Nature rendering tutorial #9b, the time to render an animation can
be as long as 30 minutes per frame if you are using one computer.
The speed of the computer is not specified, but the windows
recommended system specs are: "1 GHz clock speed or better, Pentium
II or later, 256 MB Ram or more, 1GB of disk space or more, OpenGL
compliant Video Card, Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000 or XP." However,
you can set up render farms and use a multitude of computers if
they are available to considerably shorten the times. It is also
suggested that you download the freeware program Super-Conductor. I wholeheartedly see this program as
being an excellent program for industry that can have its personnel
trained to use it for a specific purpose. Its ability to create
projects that can contain longitude, latitude, and elevation and be
able to reference a structure, for example, by specific coordinates
is its undeniable strength. 3D Nature runs training sessions and
the cost of the training sessions vary. Of course, the best way to
decide on a program is to experiment for oneself, and WCS 6 is also
available as a demo version.
- The Paula Sander's Report is a regular
Renderosity Front Page featured column, where Paula investigates
and comments on graphic software, techniques, and other relevant
material through her reviews, tutorials, and general articles.
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