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Think 3D. Think solidThinking

John McIver

A new 3D modeling and rendering environment for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT from Italian developer Gestel s.p.a. promises a complete toolkit for the creation of high-quality, professional 3D models and the highest quality photorealistic rendering.

Despite the impression given by this program’s name, solidThinking 3.0 is a sophisticated surface modeling program for Windows, and not a solid Modeller. It is a European product, produced by Gestel, based in Vicenza, Italy. The difference between surface and solid modeling is that surface modeling constructs surfaces in space to represent the 3D shape of an object, whereas solid modeling creates 3D objects by the addition and subtraction of virtual materials.

As a surface modeler, solidThinking is impressive, offering a broad range of commands for dealing with both NURBS and polygon surfaces. If there is a specific application for this program, it would have to be Industrial Design, due to its combination of excellent 3D surfacing functions and high quality rendering. But solidThinking 3.0 certainly has application in a wide range of other fields as well.

Requirements
The program requires at least a 100MHz Pentium processor and 32Mb of system memory, with the system running Windows 95, 98 or NT 4.0. A full installation will occupy some 120Mb of disk space, though this can be reduced to around 96Mb if none of the demonstration files or example images are loaded. Over 80Mb of the remaining installation is taken up by texture maps, so there is still scope to reduce the disk space requirements further if necessary.

The optimum display resolution for solidThinking 3.0 is 1280x1024 in true color (24 bits, or 16.7 million colors), while the minimum acceptable display is 800x600 in 16 bit color.

Installation
Installation of the software was as for a typical Windows application, with no problems encountered during the installation. solidThinking 3.0 uses an authorization code method for copy protection, with a grace period of about 20 days provided for the user to get the code. This code can be obtained by e-mail or fax, with a response to our e-mail being obtained within less than 36 hours of the initial enquiry.

Documentation
The program is very well documented, being supplied with a clearly written User Reference Manual, a companion Learning Guide and a brief Installation Guide. On-line help is also provided, working through a Web Browser, with Internet Explorer 4.0 recommended.

Operation
In operation, the program sports a very good user interface. The interface looks neat and clean, yet offers a substantial range of easily accessible commands for controlling the viewports. The interface has the feel of something which has been very well thought out. Of particular note are the ability to change from multiple viewports to a single viewport by simply double-clicking on the menu bar, and reverting with another double-click. Also, basic view control icons are included on the menu bar of each viewport.

The solidThinking 3.0 user interface.

These view control functions operate according to the particular keyboard key being pressed, in conjunction with the left and right mouse buttons. The operation was smooth and quite intuitive. It will be necessary to remember the keyboard commands though, as there is no alternative way to initiate these operations provided anywhere on the program's pulldown menus.

As for 3D modeling, an impressive range of surface editing functions are provided, enhanced by the ability to modify geometry interactively once it has been created. It is easy to select a curve defining a surface, adjust the spline points defining that curve and have the full surface update immediately on the screen in response (complete with shading and textures, if you wish). For industrial design applications, where aesthetic appearance is important, this is a marvelous capability.

As far as the particular functions available in solidThinking 3.0, for drawing lines in space a good range of options are provided. Standard commands exist for creating arcs, circles, ellipses, lines and polylines. It is also possible to draw NURBS and Meta Curves. The difference between these is that a NURBS curve passes near the defined points, while a Meta curve passes through the defined points. Curves can also be produced by applying an offset or blending, extracting a curve from the edge of a surface or projecting a curve onto a surface. In all cases the construction process is interactive, with the curve "rubber banding" as the next point is ready to be positioned.

For 3D surface construction, a range of primitives is provided, these being spheres, cylinders, cubes, prisms or the torus. Also on hand is an easily implemented 3D text tool, to create 3D text using your choice of TrueType font. There is an interesting Height Field option. This takes a raster image (bitmap) and produces a relief surface with the surface height varying according to the intensity of the particular pixel at the same relative point in the image. This worked very well and gave some interesting results.

Beyond the basic primitives a wide range of 3D surfacing tools is included, allowing for the creation of NURBS surfaces from cross-section or reference curves by extrusion, lathing, skinning and lofting, trimming and intersection, or driving a cross-section along a single or double rail (extrusion path). Blend and offset surfaces can be created, as can 3 and 4 sided (Coons) patches. For polygon surfaces, editing tools also exist, permitting the user to manually adjust vertices, tessellate a polygon mesh and perform other appropriate editing functions.

The program provides excellent rendering capabilities. Either of two renderers can be used, the included renderThinking renderer or the BMRT renderer. The latter, the Blue Moon Rendering Tools are a collection of rendering programs which adhere to the RenderMan(r) interface standard. This is a third-party product, not included with solidThinking 3.0, but directly downloadable via the Web.

An example of an object modeled and rendered in solidThinking 3.0

While the BMRT renderer is excellent, the renderThinking renderer is quite capable too, being able to operate in a variety of modes, including wireframe, Phong, scanline or ray tracing rendering.

The implementation of lighting is also excellent, with the ability to not only define the standard types of computer graphics lights (ambient, spot, directed, etc.), but also the ability to define Luminaires; real lighting fixtures with their performance defined by luminosity tables.

For maximum flexibility, a good range of file import and export filters is provided. Amongst these are the program's own native STM format, the Rhino format, from the new surface Modeller produced by Robert McNeel and Associates, Adobe Illustrator, IGES (Initial Graphics Exchange Standard), 3D Studio (3DS), Lightwave and Autodesk DXF. All these formats can be both imported and exported. A few additional formats are supported for export only, these being RenderMan RIB, STL (stereolithography), Maya and VRML 1.0 (Virtual Reality Modeling Language).

In operation, the 3DS and DXF formats were read and written without any apparent problems. The IGES format gave variable results, with some files accepted, while others caused a General Protection Fault in Windows. For the Pixar Renderman (RIB) format, files can be saved directly to this format on disk, for later rendering, or directed to the BMRT renderer, as an alternative way to get the same result.

Rendered images are able to be saved to disk in color raster format, as Windows BMP files, TIFF or JPEG files, at a variety of resolutions.

Of more interest, QuickTime VR Panoramic or Object Movies can also be created by solidThinking 3.0. The QuickTime VR Object movie is a particularly interesting output option, providing what is effectively a full 3D display of an object on a computer screen.

To enhance the appearance of the final rendered image, some neat visual effects are available, these being primarily effects for lens flare and depth of field.

When running under Windows 98 a few general protection faults were encountered during program operation. I suspect operation under Windows NT would give a more robust operation, and this is the preferred operating system according to the Installation Guide. This did highlight a very elegant feature of the program though. After a General Protection Fault, and without having had the opportunity to save my work, I assumed it was lost. When the computer was rebooted and solidThinking 3.0 restarted, it immediately offered the option to attempt to recover the previous drawing session. This it did successfully, one assumes from program temporary files still on disk. This has to be considered a very impressive feature.

Conclusion
Overall, solidThinking 3.0 is an excellent surface modeling program, supplemented with some powerful rendering capabilities. The interface is very well designed and the general program operation is such that a good quality 3D model could be built by a moderately experienced operator "on-the-fly", without recourse to 2D layout drawings.

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