Related links on the Okino WEB site:
Okino Computer Graphics Announces "Golden Release" of its
Lightwave 6.5 and 7.0 Import/Export Converters for PolyTrans & NuGraf
Okino Supports new "Lightwave 6.5/7.0" 3D File Format, Overcomes Many Old LW 5.6 Limitations
Toronto, Ontario - January 28th 2002 -- After a successful testing and
release phase, Okino Computer Graphics this month announced the 'golden release' of
the completely new and rewritten Lightwave 6.5 and (now) 7.0 import/export converters
for its popular PolyTrans 3D data translation product, and NuGraf Rendering System software (available in the v2.2.30 or newer releases).
With the release of Lightwave 6.x in 2000 by Newtek, Inc. the file format
had changed significantly from Lightwave 5.6 (with numerous major improvements) and hence required Okino to completely rewrite its popular and well supported Lightwave converter modules. With the release of these new converters the 3D industry again has a direct path from Lightwave to and from all the major 3D file formats such as 3D Studio MAX, Maya, SoftImage, OpenFlight, IGES 5.3, ACIS SAT, DirectX, DXF, Pro/Engineer (SLP), QuickDraw-3D, Solid Edge, Solid Works
and many others.
The previous 5.6 version of the Lightwave import/export converter modules were some of the most mature and well developed converters in Okino software, starting their development from 1994. Likewise, this level of maturity and completeness was extended over to the new Lightwave 6.x compliant converter modules. The rewritten modules support the newest of Lightwave file format features such as uv texture coordinates, uv vertex colors, Bezier/linear/TCB/hermite/step animation curves (using a built-in Lightwave 6.x interpolation engine), layering, explosion of objects by layer, and handling more than 65k vertices of polygons per object. Camera and object animation based on the new Lightwave file format and function curve types is also handled with high fidelity.
"Providing top-notch support for the Lightwave file format has been a core part of
our development process and of our business throughout the 90's and now into the
new millennium." said Robert Lansdale, President & CEO of Okino Computer Graphics,
Inc. "Rather than simply convert data from one file format to another, we took
an entirely different approach when we started writing the Lightwave converters back
in 1994 - we decided to expand our core internal software (our NuGraf 3D toolkit,
renderer and database) to "emulate" the capabilities of Lightwave itself; thus,
over a period of 6 years we wrote a high-end animation engine to match the
capabilities as those in Lightwave, we rewrote our renderer to handle all the
Lightwave texture modulation methods and we added all the Lightwave uv texture
projection methods. As such, we can convert Lightwave scenes and animations
to/from all the major file formats with little loss of content; combined with
our developer-directed tech support, it has made PolyTrans a much used solution
to cross convert Lightwave data, from such markets as game development to
high-end CAD conversion. With the release of our new Lightwave6.x and 7.x
modules we decided to completely rewrite all the software from scratch since
the structure of the Lightwave6 files has changed (for the better). We are
very happy to see that Newtek has extended the Lightwave file format with
uv coordinate support, support for more than 65k polygons per object,
Bezier-based animation curves and many other additions that truly makes
the Lightwave file format the choice for open, cross-platform scene conversion.
Newtek has also made a wise choice to openly document the Lightwave6 file
format; this will ensure that Lightwave file support appears in other 3D
packages, and hence helps open up the door for PolyTrans to move more
content data into other applications (as an aside, the best way to move
SoftImage animation data into Electric Image is via PolyTrans and the
Lightwave6 import converter in Electric Image!)".
Jim May, technical director and 3D data translation manager at Westwood Studios
(Electronic Arts) states, "PolyTrans has become an integral and fundamental component
of our production pipeline. The newly revised Lightwave 6.5 and 7.x support
in PolyTrans has allowed us to interface Lightwave seamlessly with our Maya
and 3DS MAX production tools. We can leverage the strengths of Maya 3.1,
Max 4 and LightWave 6.5 without excessive duplication of assets. Even our
in-house tools work well with PolyTrans' importers and exporters for 3DS Max.
Robert Lansdale, the long term developer and supporter of the Lightwave
converters in PolyTrans, continues to provide us with speedy same-day
support and fine-tuning, to the point where I can export geometry originated
in 3DS MAX, from Maya into LightWave for some modeling changes, and then
back into Maya for animation, without any hiccups. The Maya-to-LightWave
animation translation is accurate enough to permit straightforward
compositing between the two packages, almost as if they were designed that
way from the ground up".
"PolyTrans was the corner stone of our model conversion pipeline for
the "Max Steel" time critical project. We had to convert more than 500
Lightwave models to SoftImage in a very short period of time. The level
of support we had from Okino was truly amazing," said Martin Talbot, Max
Steel Software Technical Lead, Mainframe Entertainment.
"I have been one of the more ardent users of Okino's Lightwave import
and export converters since I first purchased PolyTrans in early 1999," said
Marc Foreman, Technical Director for Buzz 3D Ltd., a UK company specializing
in interactive, immersive 3D environments for Businesses on the Web (
http://www.buzz3d.com). He continues, "for those not aware of the finer points of the Lightwave file
formats, they are quite verbose and riddled with complexities that make simple,
clean and dependable file format conversion non-trivial. As an early adopter of
Okino's newly rewritten Lightwave 6.5 import and export converters, I have
seen them mature to a very stable state in a short period of time. My
comments have been addressed and implemented in a timely matter by Robert
Lansdale. I primarily use PolyTrans to convert Lightwave scene and model
files into 3D Studio MAX for further processing prior to exporting to our
3D World databases. Having PolyTrans in our toolbox has enabled our artists
to avoid the need for an excessive degree of retraining, allowing them to
retain their preferred Lightwave platform for content production in the
knowledge our models will be preserved throughout the conversion process".
Supported Lightwave 6.5/7.x File Format Capabilities
The release of Lightwave 6.0 and 6.5 from Newtek was accompanied with a completely revised 3D file format for its .lwo data files, as well as an augmented version of its .lws scene file format. The Lightwave 5.6 format, which had been dominant for most of the mid to late 90's, was primarily a 16-bit format with no support for uv texture coordinates, vertex colors and other more common geometry file attributes. Newtek addressed most of these short comings with the new 6.x file formats, although the .lwo format still does not support vertex normals (common to almost all modern 3D file formats). Performing 3D data conversions from Lightwave to other file formats, however, has been made increasingly more complex due to the fact that each object can be layered with multiple sets of uv texture coordinates (not accommodated by most 3D file formats), and that an animation curve can now be created from a concatenation of different spline types (linear, Bezier, TCB, hermite and step); Okino has always focused on correct file format conversions, and thus has created solutions to overcome these generalities when importing from Lightwave.
Interesting features of the new Lightwave import and export converters include support for:
- Complete parsing of all Lightwave 6.x (or newer) IFF data chunks, and all older versions (4.0 to 5.6). The ability to recover from badly written Lightwave data files has been made bulletproof via a completely rewritten parsing system.
- Proper and accurate handling of LW 6.0 uv texture coordinates per-polygon, and LW 6.5 uv texture coordinates per vertex. This is by far the most complex aspect of the new Lightwave software from Newtek. In Lightwave 6.0 or newer, "sets" of uv texture coordinates are defined and then associated to specific texture layers of a material. Each texture layer of a material can be associated with a different uv "set". This provides great generality for Lightwave users, but it does not convert well to other 3D software packages which can only accept one set of uv coordinates per object. Okino's importer provides controls to import from specific uv layers, or overwrite uv's from the last layer to first layer.
- Proper and accurate handling of 6.5 vertex colors per vertex, both for import and export. This allows baked "radiosity" solutions from Lightwave, or other per-vertex color solutions, to be exported via PolyTrans to file formats and applications such as 3DS MAX, Maya, DirectX, OpenFlight, SoftImage and VRML. Likewise, vertex colors can be exported to Lightwave 6.5 from PolyTrans, from a similar set of file formats and applications.
- A complete "emulation" of the Lightwave 6.5 animation curve interpolation system was added to the new Okino importer. This has significant advantages for clean animation import from Lightwave and cross conversion to other animation programs. Lightwave 6.5 allows an animation curve to be composed of multiple "segments", and each segment can be composed of a different spline type (linear, Bezier, TCB, hermite and step); the problem is that few or no other 3D animation packages allow multiple spline types per single animation curve. By using the new interpolation engine in the Okino importer, animation curves with multiple spline types are re-sampled into a single new Bezier or TCB based spline curve, and thus can easily be cross converted properly to other animation programs. As a side benefit, keyframe reduction can be easily enabled and performed during the import process.
- Bidirectional import and export of Lightwave 6.5 object and camera animation channels are fully supported. Camera animation includes support for location, orientation and zoom factors.
- The new .lws scene file format for animation channels is fully supported. The .lws file format now has separate channels for each component of scale, rotation and translation that fit in well with the corresponding internal animation channel system used by PolyTrans.
- Objects can now have more than 65535 polygons and more than 65535 vertices.
- Lightwave 6.x introduced the new concept of "layers" inside the .lwo geometry file. In prior versions the .lwo file contained a single geometry object, whereas in the new file format the .lwo file still contains one geometry object but it can now be segmented by layer, as well as contain an internal hierarchy between the defined layers. Again, this is another area where much work was invested in the new Okino Lightwave importer; the .lwo files can be exploded by layer, exploded by material or exploded by a combination of layer and material. These options provide good generality for those wishing to export Lightwave files to other 3D file formats which do not provide layering capabilities.
- As a matter of convenience, the Lightwave import converter's "options" dialog box has been augmented with controls to easily set the Newtek "Contents" directory, as well as options to prepend imported texture map filename references with a specific directory or the current contents directory location. Thanks go to Mainframe Entertainment (Reboot, Max Steel producers) who used and tested the new Lightwave 6.5 import converter during their "Max Steel" third season production.
- The previous support for Lightwave 5.6 texture projection types (planar, spherical, cylindrical and cubical) has been augmented with an automatic method to drop the projections to explicit uv coordinates at the import phase rather than the export phase.
- The new layered texture channel BLOK system of the Lightwave 6.x forma is parsed, manipulated and recreated within the import process. The importer will handle unlimited layers of diffuse, specular, opacity, bump and other texture modulation channels; however, not all 3D rendering and animation packages can handle unlimited layers of texture.
- An interesting internal optimization system was added so that only a unique set of materials and texture definitions are created across multiple layers of a single .lwo file as well as across multiple instantiations of single .lwo files (which is very common in Lightwave scene layouts). This has not only resulted in much faster imports (for .lwo files for hundreds of layers) but also for cleaner export of Lightwave files to other 3D file formats.
A more extensive technical description of the new Okino Lightwave import/export converters can be found here:
Lightwave import converter documentation
Lightwave export converter documentation
Okino's "PolyTrans" and "NuGraf Rendering System" Software, An Overview
Okino's stand-alone 'PolyTrans Model/Scene/NURBS/Animation Translation System' for
Windows and SGI IRIX was released in August 1996 and has gone on to become one of the
most acclaimed and respected 3D geometry translators. Unlike translation programs which
only convert basic polygon geometry, hierarchy and some shading information, PolyTrans
is unique in its ability to convert the most important aspects of a 3D
model file; this includes all geometry (meshed polygons, NURBS and quadrics), object
hierarchy, pivot points, smoothing data (vertex normals), vertex colors, (u,v)
texture coordinates, lights, cameras, texture projection methods and animation.
In addition, PolyTrans accurately matches the color, shading and texture mapping
parameters between the input and output file formats resulting in models that
will render faithfully in the target rendering program.
Okino's NuGraf Rendering System is the
elder sibling of PolyTrans that includes,
in addition to everything in PolyTrans, high-end scanline and multi-threaded
ray tracing (for product and CAD visualization), material editing, bitmap and procedural
texture mapping, texture projection methods, extended user interface and text creation.
NuGraf received the "IEEE Technical Excellence Award" from IEEE CG&A Magazine and
recently the "Golden Pixie" award. It is intuitive for beginners, deep and
rich with features for experts.
Okino software is used world wide by thousands of professionals, covering such
varied groups as engineering, manufacturing, government, defense related,
production studios, digital effects houses, animation studios, 3D content developers
and most major 3D game development companies. An interesting list of notable
users can be viewed online at http://www.okino.com/conv/users.htm.
Animation Conversion Through Accurate Keyframe Resampling & Reduction
Through years of research, development and refinement, PolyTrans has come
to include the industry-leading major feature of animation conversion. Simply
put, animation conversion is a hard problem! To convert between the different
mathematics used by each major 3D animation package, and their different
methods of internally representing 3D animated objects, Okino Computer
Graphics has developed a unique "animation conversion engine". This engine
allows raw animation data to be imported from the most popular 3D animation
programs, accurately played back in real-time, resampled to alternate forms
of animation mathematical representation and exported to other 3D animation
file formats. Note that PolyTrans converts function curve based animation; it
does not convert procedural or Inverse Kinematics (IK) animation data.
As shown in the right diagram, the internal "engine" stores the raw
imported animation data as a series of hierarchical "channels" (such as X/Y/Z
translation), each of which has a "controller" which simulates the most
popular animation interpolation methods (Bezier, TCB, etc.), and to each
controller a series of keyframes representing the animation curve over time.
This ensures accurate retention of the imported animation data.
A vital aspect of accurate animation conversion is the "keyframe
resampling & reduction" algorithm of PolyTrans; as shown below, this
algorithm allows incompatible animation methods to be converted with
tolerance-based accuracy. The example below shows how X/Y/Z Euler rotations
(from Lightwave or Maya) are converted into the mathematically different
Quaternion rotation method (used by DirectX and 3DS MAX, for example).
Applicable WEB pages
The following are pertinent pages on the Okino WEB site relating to this press release:
Available Through VARs
The NuGraf Rendering System and PolyTrans are available directly from Okino Computer Graphics and through a growing number of Value Added Resellers (VARs) in the design, CAD and multimedia markets. Fully functional demonstration versions (with minor limitations) of the software are available through Okino's Internet WEB site at http://www.okino.com.
Product Pricing
For product pricing, to locate an authorized VAR or for customer inquiries, please contact Okino Computer Graphics at (905) 672-9328 or toll free at (888) 3D-OKINO (1-888-336-5466).
System Requirements
PolyTrans operates efficiently with Pentium-based computers equipped with Microsoft Windows, 64MB of RAM, a SVGA video
card, and a hard disk with 70Mb of available space. 3D hardware accelerators are supported for Windows
95/98/Me and XP/2000/NT but are not required. PolyTrans also runs under IRIX
4.2 or greater for Silicon Graphics machines as a command line program. The NuGraf
Rendering System operates efficiently with Pentium-based computers equipped with Microsoft
Windows, 128MB of RAM, a SVGA video card, and a hard disk with 55Mb
of available space.
Company Background
Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Okino Computer Graphics specializes in
the development of 3D photo-realistic rendering, visualization and model
translation technology. This technology is currently used within Okino's NuGraf
Rendering System product, its PolyTrans data translation program (and byproducts)
and its NuGraf Developer's 3D Toolkit. For more information on Okino Computer
Graphics, please call 905-672-9328 or visit Okino Computer Graphics' Internet
WEB site at http://www.okino.com.
Documents Available Electronically
Attention editors. This document, as well as screen snapshots and related
documents for the Press (inPDF format) can be obtained electronically by
visiting http://www.okino.com/press/magpics.htm.
NuGraf and PolyTrans are registered trademarks of Okino Computer Graphics,
Inc. Okino is a trademark of Okino Computer Graphics, Inc. Microsoft and
Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in
the United States and/or other countries. All other brand names, product
names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.
Editorial Contact:
Robert Lansdale
Okino Computer Graphics
T: (905) 672 9328
F: (905) 672 2706
Email: lansd@okino.com
WEB: http://www.okino.com