Week of June 22 1998 Jun 26 MEDIA With the release of Poser 3 comes Digital Puppets Magazine a web based magazine that will be devoted to using computer software and "digital puppets" to create movies. The web site is supposed to go live in September. At the moment you'll find some interesting information, particularly the "How to make motion pictures" section. <www.jps.net/puppet/> MEDIA While you're at it, you might want to check out Digital Movie News, which has some very informative articles about digital video production (with an accent on do-it-yourself production.) <www.el-dorado.ca.us/~dmnews/> For those interested in digital cameras, the Digital Corner of Zone Zero has an excellent comparison of the Olympus D600L, Nikon CoolPix 900, and Kodak DC 260. Does a good job of covering the strengths and weaknesses of each camera. <www.zonezero.com column "Digital Cameras Yes! Part 2" Jun 25 Macormedia has released the Flash Generator Public Beta 1 for Power Macintosh (template authoring only.) Power Macintosh with System 8.0 or later 48 MB of RAM (with Virtual Memory turn on) Flash 3 Authoring software, Trial software available from <www.flash.com> The Mac OS Runtime for Java 2.0 (MRJ) is required for installation of the Flash Generator for Power Macintosh. MRJ 2.0 is part of the standard OS 8.1 install, but not part of OS 8.0. If you need to download MRJ 2.0, you can do so from <www.apple.com/java> The Windows NT/95 version, already available, supports both the generator server and template authoring. Flash Generator supports both online, or real-time, graphic generation using the server, as well as offline, or automated, graphic creation. The online content is created each time a user hits a site. The offline Flash Generator allows for graphic content to be updated at set intervals -- hourly, daily, monthly. It replaces the content that a web server looks for when a user hits a site. Flash Generator Public Beta 1 for Solaris will be available soon (you can sign-up to be notified when it's released at the site.) <www.macromedia.com/software/generator/download/>   You can use VRML to display photo-panoramas (like QuickTime VR) and to prove the point, Cosmo Software has posted an example. Stephen Hawking, the world's leading cosmologist recently visited CosmoSoftware, and they "used a standard Olympus digital camera, panoramic lens and packaging software from IPIX, and Cosmo Worlds, the leading professional VRML composition system" to create a photo-panoramic scene. It works; after a fashion. Unfortunately, the picture itself is very poor in quality, making it hard to judge the quality of the playback itself. We also found it hard to navigate within the scene (it was slow to update on a Pentium 133, and we also found it difficult to retain a vertical orientation when we dragged enthusiastically.) Still, this example does prove it can be done! <www.cosmosoftware.com VRML photo-panorama example "Cosmologist Stephen Hawkin Appears in Cosmo Player"> Jun 24 Media 100 has announced plans to bundle Puffin Designs' Commotion Version 1.5 with its Media 100 xs and xr systems. Commotion brings real-time paint and effects capabilities to the Media 100 environment. Commotion is bundled at no additional cost from June through September 1998. <www.media100.com> If you're looking for a digital camera the Nikon CoolPix 900 has been receiving some very positive reviews. Of particular interest for those producing sequences of images for stitching into panoramas, the 900 includes an exposure lock which will look the exposure setting used for the first image in a sequence and use it for the rest. NOTE: Some people actually question the effectiveness of using exposure locking with a digital camera. They argue that because of the narrow exposure lattitude of digital cameras you are better off exposing each image in a sequence at the optimal setting for the camera, then fix any problems in a paint program or a stitching tool. <www.macweek.com review "Coolpix 900: Pro features for less"> <www.image-acquire.com user report "Coolpix 900"> Jun 23 Agfa has announced the ePhoto 1680 digital camera which offers image resolution of up to 1.9 million pixels (1.3 million pixel image enhanced by Agfa's PhotoGenie technology) a swivel zoom lens (3X optical and 2X digital), a 2-inch high-resolution color LCD screen and removable flash memory. Software includes Agfa's PhotoWise application for accessing, managing and enhancing digital photos, LivePicture's PhotoVista, for stitching together seamless panaromic and 360(degree) surround images, and LivePix SE. The ePhoto 1680 will be priced at $899 and will ship in August. <www.agfahome.com> Of particular interest, CycloVision Technologies and Agfa have announced a distribution agreement to offer 360° immersive digital imaging through the Agfa distribution channel. The combined offering will include Agfa's newly announced mega-pixel ePhoto 1680 digital camera and CycloVision's ParaShot, a one-shot 360° digital imaging attachment. The ParaShot looks cool! Similar to the Be Here Portal 1 lens, (which we recently played with) but at a tenth the price. The Parashot incorporates 360° imaging optics and unwrapping software, that is compatible with Agfa's Photo Genie. Like the Portal 1, the ParaShot captures a donut shaped image (ParaFrame), which is then unwrapped using the ParaViewer software. With the ParaViewer software, users can navigate the 360° image with pan, tilt and zoom capabilities on the Web or within new media applications with the click of a mouse. The ParaShot will ship in September for a list price of $995. Example images can be found at CycloVisions' website. <www.cyclovision.com> <Our review of the Be Here Portal 1 lens> MetaCreations is now shipping Poser 3, a powerful 3D figure posing and animation tool. This new release includes high-resolution human and animal models, facial posing and animation capabilities, a walk animator and poseable hand models. Poser 3 is available now for a suggested retail price of US $299 and an estimated average selling price of US $199. Upgrade from earlier versions cost US $99. <www.metacreations.com> Jun 22 Macintouch reported over the weekend that Frontier users had received an email announcement from UserLand that the upcoming version 5.1 would change to a license based structure with a minimum fee of $300/year for a personal license. UserLand itself hasn't posted anything about this to their website, though they have acknowledged the posting on Macintouch. Frontier, which was previously free, began life as a scripting "system" for the Macintosh. It is now available for Windows and is described by UserLand as a "content management system that combines an object database, outliner, scripting, and a multi-threaded runtime" which can be used to generate web sites. <www.macintouch.com points to license text> <www.userland.com>   MacWEEK has a luke-warm review of Interactor Pro 1.2 from MBed. <www.macweek.com review "Interactor Pro 1.2 is attractive, imperfect">   MacWEEK has also reviewed Premiere 5. <www.macweek.com review "Review Update Premiere 5">   Last year was HyperCard's 10th birthday, and while Apple wasn't been celebrating, several users organized a HyperCard 10th Anniversary Stack. This was a collection of anniversary greetings and messages from users concerning how HyperCard "has affected their lives". You can download the stack at HyperCard Heaven <members.aol.com/hcheaven download HyperCard 10th Anniversary Stack> Of even more interest, they maintain a collection of information about the long awaited HyperCard 3.0 (the first report is from 1996!) <members.aol.com/hcheaven info page HyperCard 3.0> Get QuickTime 3.0 ImageReady beta Cosmo VRML plug-in | Multimedia Workshop | Industry News | Online Reference | Contact Us | Find | Copyright 1998 by Multimedia Workshop. All rights reserved Send news or comments to : news@m2w.net All trademarks, service marks, and graphical logos appearing on this website are the property of their respective owners, and are used for identification purposes only. No endorsement of Multimedia Workshop by the trademark owners is intended or implied.