From: andrew@stone.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.announce
Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT: 3D Reality from Stone Design
Keywords: Stone 3DKit NeXTstep Modeling Shaders Rendering Wowzer
Date: 10 Sep 92 06:03:55 GMT
Reply-To: andrew@stone.com
Followup-To: poster
Organization: Stone Design, Inc.

News
For Immediate Release			For more info contact:
					Cliff Baltzley
					505-345-4800


	Stone Design Announces 3D Modeler for NeXTSTEP


ALBUQUERQUE, NM, Sept. 8, 1992 - Stone Design Corp. introduced today 3D  
Reality(TM), a 3D modeling and picture-creating program for NeXTSTEP computers  
that sets a new standard for ease of use and flexibility.  Just as Stone  
Design's revolutionary graphics package Create provided a user interface that  
makes all the power of PostScript accessible to mere mortals, so 3D Reality  
allows users to take advantage of the myriad of features provided by the 3DKit  
in NeXTSTEP 3.0 as well as the underlying RenderMan architecture.

3D Reality will be shown in the NeXT Computer Inc. booth at the Seybold  
Conference & Exposition, September 22-24 in San Francisco.

"Reality revolutionizes the way 3D graphics are made," said Andrew Stone, CEO  
of Stone Design. "Our goal was to create an environment that allowed first-time  
users to make fantastic  graphics by just dragging and dropping icons, but to  
also provide experts with the entire power of Interactive and PhotoRealistic  
RenderMan. And to really bring this power to the end user, we are introducing  
this product for only <under one hundred dollars> until the end of 1992."

"3D Reality is a beautiful example of an application that utilizes the 3DKit,  
one of the four new object kits in NeXTSTEP Release 3.0," said David Springer,  
Project Manager of 3D Software at NeXT Computer. Based on a RenderMan standard,  
3DKit allows developers to both add three-dimensional graphics to existing  
NeXTSTEP applications and build 3D applications from scratch. "With 3D Reality,  
Stone Design takes full advantage of 3DKit's object and rendering framework to  
create a very sophisticated 3D package from the ground up in record time,"  
Springer said.


With an easy-to-understand and powerful drag-and-drop user environment, 3D  
Reality will make the joys of 3D modeling and rendering available to a wide  
variety of users for creation of everything from logos, ads, headlines and  
flashy graphics to entire scenes. 

3D Reality offers:

 o Basic features:
    - lathe for turning objects
    - extrusion of 2D objects into 3D objects
    - direct inspection of shape hierarchy
    - full drag-and-drop interface for shaders, textures, shapes, RIB code
    - multiple perspective or orthographic views of 3D world
    - grouping/ungrouping of objects
    - scaling of individual objects and entire scene.

 o Text rendering
	3D Reality supports full 3D extruded text with special text effects   
such as letter bloating, movement of individual letters, shaders, textures and  
so on. It can also turn any PostScript font into a 3D font.

 o  Drag and drop of RIB-format clip 3D artwork
	Users can drag and drop RIB code from any external source.  3D Reality  
adds the RIB (whether it is a single object or a whole scene) code as if it  
were an object in the hierarchy.
	
 o Composite Solid Geometry
	Combine primitives, use one to "cut away" part of another, or take the  
intersection of the two.  Composite groups can be used within another composite  
group; one shape can modify another for effects such as drilling and cut-outs.
	
 o Powerful texture and shader environment
	Create RenderMan textures from any EPS or TIFF source. Textures are  
automatically installed in the texture library and can be applied to any object  
by dragging and dropping. Users can apply any of six different kinds of shaders  
to an object (Surface, Light, Displacement, Image, Volume and a surprise  
shader), save favorite shader parameters into a shader library, and drag and  
drop saved shaders from the library onto shapes in the image.  3D Reality also  
supports creation of custom shaders and textures, bump-mapping and texture wrap  
around any object.

 o Powerful control and constraints environment
	Constrain motion (scaling, rotation or translation) to any axis or  
combination of axes, or to a 3D grid. Users can also constrain to any  
coordinate system that exists within the scene.
		
 o Previewing
 	Stone Design's unique InstyRender(TM) allows users to easily render all  
or part of a scene in varying levels of accuracy, providing an extremely fast  
method of previewing an image.
	
 o Network rendering
	 Selection rendering can be done either on the local machine or within  
the network pool. An Image Manager allows users to view all currently active  
and finished jobs as well as non-image-oriented jobs.

 o Interapplication Communication
	 Services provided by 3D Reality include the ability to send 32-bit  
color images to applications such as Create, Mail and Edit, or accept any EPS  
or TIFF file for wrapping as a texture.	
		 	
 o Full access to RenderMan programming environment
	For the serious RenderMan user, 3D Reality provides an extensible,  
customizable RIB management and development environment. Users can develop  
shaders and textures quickly for use in complex scenes. A programmer's API will  
provide endless number of ways to customize and augment 3D Reality's  
functionality through direct access to underlying RenderMan functionality.  3D  
Reality supports dynamic loading of objects.  Included with the package are  
several 3D geometry projects with full source code, to demonstrate how easy it  
is to make custom shapes.

3D Reality has a suggested retail price of <under five hundred dollars> and  
will be available directly from Stone Design or your local NeXT dealer in the  
fourth quarter of 1992.
The program will carry a special introductory price of <under one hundred  
dollars> until January 1

Stone Design Corporation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, founded in 1984, develops  
a variety of business and design productivity applications for NeXTSTEP  
computers.

# # #

3D Reality, InstyRender and Create are trademarks of Stone Design Corporation.  
NeXT is a trademark of NeXT Computer, Inc. All other brand names mentioned are  
trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

[ thanks for dealing with the price issue Stone!  The price was hacked
  by Stone Design, with no help from me  -todd ]