Bryce 2 & 3D - realistic landscapes software

Bryce 2, and then Bryce 3D. With these programs, you can create very realistic landscapes, manage the time of day, weather conditions, etc. The main advantage of this product is unpretentious management, understandably, if not the first, then with the second communication interface.

The possibility of animation from various points of view on the projection. All very comfortable and nice, and most importantly affordable. At a price of 300 - 400 USD. program requires a Pentium processor with a graphics card that supports 3D rendering, and about 32 mb. RAM. Last time the arena appeared immediately two products, struck the imagination of not only fans, but also professionals. Animatek's World Builder 2.0 - a designer software package that creates a truly realistic landscapes, with a feature set that belongs only to professional programs. Excellent integration with 3D Studio MAX allows you to fully realize the density imagination. Nevertheless, the product is considered semi-professional and accessible to many fans.

The basic hardware requirements - a powerful graphics card. The second product - World Construction Set 3.0. Package again generates landscapes, but in such a degree that apart from him no longer need other 3D modeling packages, although they use support for 3D Studio MAX. Package is designed for professional users and leaves far behind Bryce 3D, being equal only to that Animatek's World Builder. It exceeds all previous packets in the degree of integration with 3D Studio MAX, as well as by the presence of its own high-tech visualization.

Package runs on platforms PC / DEC ALPHA / MAC / SGI. This product brings us back to the professional systems modeling, and more precisely to the hardware for these systems. Hardware for RISC-platform. Platform Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) refreshed production model PowerONYX, relating to the senior family produced by workstations. These computers are installed processors R8000 (another name - TFP), manufactured by Mips Technologies. According to preliminary data, their productivity is four times the speed of the most powerful of the previously designed the company's Mips - R4400.V resulting performance model PowerONYX Single-chip R8000 (clock frequency 75 MHz) is approximately the same as those for graphics Station ONYX Extreme Deskside with two processors R4400, each of which operates at 150 MHz, and its price is somewhat lower: 102 thousand against 107 thousand dollars - in a configuration with 64 MB of RAM, hard disk drive 2 GB and Graphics Extreme.

With this new station clearly superior to their predecessors in the capacity expansion of the hardware configuration, and its alleged performance when installed in the computer processor 12 (the maximum possible number) is 3.6 GFLOPS. PowerONYX model comes with a graphics Reality Engine 2 (RE2) or Extreme. By increasing the processing power of high-performance workstations, SGI does not forget about the younger models. Thus, the firm announced the transfer to computers Indy XZ graphics accelerator, and invited the visitors a demo version of the new system. Was shown and LCD screen for stations Indy, providing 1280 * 1024 pixels with 24 - bit encoding of color. In general, these developments clearly indicate the desire to SGI to implement a fast high-quality graphics at a relatively low-cost models of workstations.

One of the modern artiscitc designer tools is the image to cartoon software packs. These all-in-one packs usualy able to do image pre-processing (lighness, color, saturation adjustments), create various processing effects and able to do images to cartoon transofrmation on base of source photo. This cartoon effects becames very popular as designer 'gadgets'.