| Q&A |
 Stefano
de Carolis
President of Demicron AB
nov. 2007 |
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"Bump
mapping and glossiness mapping are two new features
that will both increase realism and improve the performance,
as you will be able to use fewer polygons in your models.
We have also implemented a new edge anti-aliasing that
will give more or less the same quality as the full-scene
anti-aliasing found in v4, but with up to 100% better
performance."
<
WireFusion 5 |
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| Q1 |
A
new release of WireFusion will be soon available, what are the
most wanted new features? |
| A1 |
OpenGL
and bump mapping are by far the most requested features. |
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| Q2 |
Why
should existing users update to WF 5? |
| A2 |
We
have rewritten almost the entire 3D engine and also the WireFusion
core engine, with the purpose to prepare WireFusion for the
future. Except for better performance, improved workflow and
a bunch of new features, it will be much easier and quicker
to develop and implement new features for WireFusion 5. This
will be obvious in the near future as we will soon release several
great features and improvements to WireFusion 5. |
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| Q3 |
Which
users are you targeting with this new release? |
| A3 |
Except
for our existing target groups, which mostly consist of web
and 3D artists, we will focus more on industrial designers,
architects and product companies. |
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| Q4 |
Concerning
the software 3D engine : What are the new features? How can
it help 3D artist to bring more realism? Will it be faster than
the previous one? |
| A4 |
Bump
mapping and glossiness mapping are two new features that will
both increase realism and improve the performance, as you will
be able to use fewer polygons in your models. We have also implemented
a new edge anti-aliasing that will give more or less the same
quality as the full-scene anti-aliasing found in v4, but with
up to 100% better performance. |
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|
| Q5 |
Concerning
the whole new 3D accelerated engine. How does it work? What
kind of performances users can achieve with it (FPS)? |
| A5 |
You
now have the option to publish your presentations with OpenGL
acceleration, making it possible to run quite heavy models smoothly,
even in full-screen. It is difficult to give exact numbers now,
as it of course depends on your hardware, but you will typically
be able to run 100.000-500.000 polygons in 10-20 FPS in full-screen. |
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| Q6 |
Are
all the WF's features available on the accelerated engine? |
| A6 |
We
are still in an early stage with the OpenGL support in WireFusion
and will add more features to it in the near future. The goal
is to have at least the same features found in the software
engine, meaning reflection, bump mapping, animated and interactive
textures etc. |
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|
| Q7 |
WF
introduce a new SDK. What is the role of it? |
| A7 |
The
SDK is a great way for developers to quickly create advanced
features and add-ons both to themselves and to the WireFusion
community. We have also opened up and extended the WireFusion
API, making it possible for developers to do even more than
before. |
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|
| Q8 |
Will
WF5 introduce changes on the workflow? |
| A8 |
At
a first look the user interface and workflow might look the
same, however, we have implemented some great improvements.
For example, we have changed the folder structure and improved
the way you group visual contents. We have also made it possible
to bundle multiple wires between objects into a single wire.
These new improvements will make your projects much cleaner
and easier to navigate. Another very useful improvement is that
you can now connect, for example, a Button object directly to
a diffuse color in-port to set the color. Earlier, you had to
put a Color object in between the Button object and the diffuse
color in-port. |
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|
| Q9 |
Collada
or FBX becomes more and more used in the DCC area because
3D artist often use several DCC Software. Do you plan to offer
more 3D formats? |
| A9 |
We
have plans for FBX. However, I can't really say much more at
this time. |
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| Q10 |
Java
has memory limits for Applet publishing. Could you please tell
how the new monitoring tools will works to help WireFusion developers? |
| A10 |
The
new CPU and Memory profiling tools in WireFusion 5 are really
great and easy to use. They will help you to find bottlenecks
in your projects. The CPU profiler simply finds which objects
that consume most CPU, and the Memory profiler lists how much
system memory objects and resources take. |
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