Background music is Copyright © 1996, 1997 by Michael D. Walthius. All Rights Reserved.
hapter
7 addresses shading. Shaders are defined as a set of surface
characteristics that may contain settings for color (includes texture
map), highlight, shininess, bump, reflection, transparency,
refraction and glow. Shaders may have just one of these settings, all
of them or any combination thereof. Chapter 7 reveals that each
object created in Ray Dream Studio 4.1 has a coat of primer over the
entire object. 
Ray
Dream Studio 4.1 comes with built in 3D paint tools to cover this
primer. The shader browser is where all the various shaders are kept.
The shader editor is where the shaders are edited and is accessed by
double clicking on a shader in the shader browser. Each of the
aforementioned 8 settings may edited. Objects can be shaded by the
drag and drop method or by selecting the object and clicking on the
apply button. There is some discussion about the pro's and con's of
applying shaders to just the non-empty channels or to all the
channels. Shader structure and content is discussed. All of the 8
components that comprise shaders are discussed in detail. I won't go
into all the various components but I will mention some of the more
interesting items. Color and black and white images can be used as
texture maps. A grayscale blend from black to white in the
transparency channel will allow an image to fade from opaque to
transparent. The texture map can be filtered using standard Photoshop
filters. There is an option in the preferences area to select a
plugins directory. I did this and immediately picked up all my KPT
3.0 filters, Adobe gallery effects filters as well as the 32 bit KPT
Convolver. 
It
did not pick up any KPT 2.0 filters or any of the dozens of 16 bit
filters I have downloaded from the internet. Any shader may be
modified to nearly any degree desired and the user can easily create
shaders. Mixing, adding, subtracting and multiplying are all readily
available. Checkers, stripes, wires, spots, wood, marble, .etc. are
all built in and instantly accessible. Of course they may all be
modified to any degree desired. Slider controls to manipulate size,
height, blending, direction, perturbation, count, .etc. are available
as is appropriate. Detailed directions are provided. As if this
wasn't enough, Ray Dream Studio 4.1 provides 64 shaders on the
CD-ROM. These shaders include a huge variety of woods, wallpapers,
marbles, waters, organics, papers, metals, liquids, geometrics,
fences, floors, fabrics, clouds, bricks, backgrounds, .etc. all of
which can be easily modified to the user's desires. Ray Dream Studio
4.1 has 3D paint capabilities. Any 3D object can be painted in a
variety of brush sizes and shapes. The paint applied is whatever
shader is selected. Painted areas can also be erased. Imported
brushes may also be used. Any 2D image in .bmp, .dib and .rle can be
used. Brush hardness, opacity, size, angle, .etc. can be adjusted. As
if all of the aforementioned didn't provide adequate control over an
object's appearance, the user can also go to the object properties
dialog box. There will be found control over the opacity, size,
position, .etc. of every paint application including an object's
primer. Each paint application can be adjusted as required, deleted,
moved to the back, .etc.
hapter
8 deals with lights and cameras. Ambient light can be of any color
and any brightness. New light sources may be distant, bulb and spot.
They may be placed anywhere, can be any color and any brightness.
Distant light also has a shadow option and can be a front or back
light. 
Spot
light also has a shadow option plus angle width, angular falloff,
range control and distance falloff. bulb light has shadow control,
range and distance falloff. All of these lights have a gel feature.
You can use the built in gels or create your own. A gel is a mask or
transparency that is placed in front of a light. The blind is one of
the built in gels. Controls are available for both horizontal and
vertical blinds. They can be up to 30 in number and can be of any
width. Vertical and circular 2 color gradients are also available.
Also any .bmp, .dib or .rle file can be used as a texture map. All
the various Photoshop type plugins can also be used in the texture
map situation. Movies can also be used as gels. Ray Dream Studio 4.1
supports sequenced .tga, .cpt, .tif, .psd, .gif, .pcx, .jpg, .bmp and
.avi files as gels.
amera
types are conical and isometric. Conical cameras may have wide angle
(24mm), normal (50mm), telephoto (200mm) or zoom (96mm to 500mm)
lens. Isometric cameras provide an unnatural view where distant
objects appear the same size as close objects. A zoom slider is
available for field of view control. Cameras may be panned, tracked
and dollied about to place anywhere the user may wish. Chapter 9
addresses rendering. Render effects are discussed. 
Reflected backgrounds may be none, single color, bi gradient
(includes both sky and ground/sea gradients), map (any .bmp, .dib or
.rle file) and movies (sequenced .tga, .cpt, .tif, .psd, .gif, .pcx,
.jpg, .bmp and .avi files). Backdrop may be whatever background was
previously selected or any single color, bi gradient, map or movie
that the aforementioned background supports. Atmosphere can be none,
cloudy fog or distance fog. Both fogs can have any color the user may
wish. Cloudy fog is adjustable to its top, bottom, density, lumpiness
and global scale. Distance fog is adjustable as to where it starts
from the viewpoint and to how much visibility is available past the
fog's beginning.
any
render settings are available. Image size and resolution can be
specified. Ray Dream Studio 4.1 will provide an estimate of the time
required. Ray Dream Studio 4.1 will also provide a guide for the best
resolution if you specify a certain time. File format output has many
choices. For the current frame the output can be targa, photopaint,
photoshop (2.5), .tif, .bmp, .pcx, .gif and .jpg. Many options are
associated with some of these file types. 
For example the .jpg image quality (compression) can be set from
excellent to fair in 4 total increments. The .gif output can be set
for the type 87a or 89a, interlaced or not, optimum palette, standard
palette, system palette, no dithering, pattern dithering, error
diffusion dithering, .etc. Some of these file formats support G-buffer
channels such as mask, 3D position, distance, .etc. For movie output
(sequenced .tga, .cpt, .tif, .psd, .gif, .pcx, .jpg, .bmp and .avi
files) again a wide variety of output options is available. Frame
rate is controllable from 1 fps to 60 fps. The .avi output can be
uncompressed or it will pick up the variety of cinepak, Microsoft,
Intel options you may have.On my machine it also listed my frame
grabber option. A slider is available to set the compression quality
where it is appropriate. Key frame and data rate controls are also
available where appropriate. Configuration control is also available
where appropriate. For all of the sequenced file options, the various
controls are available as it pertains to each file format as
previously stated for the current frame discussion. Rendering output
can be from any camera and the file name can be automatically or
manually assigned.
he
Ray Dream Studio 4.1 has 3 different renderers available. The draft
Z-buffer is for fast proofing. It provides an image with or without
shaders and reflected and transparent colors must be specified. The
production Z-buffer provides a better quality image and is still very
fast. Check boxes are available to soft shadows (with a slider for
quality), transparency (with a selection the maximum number) and
oversampling (with a slider for quality). A slider for silhouette
quality is available and an optimization selection is also available.
The RDI ray tracer provides the slowest and the highest quality
rendering. Reflection, transparency and refraction checkboxes are
available with settings up to 16 for each. Shadows, lighting through
transparent objects and bump also have check boxes. Silhouette
quality has a slider and adaptive oversampling has check boxes for
none, fast and best. Batch queuing of files is also available for any
rendering method. Chapter 10 deals with post production. The manual
immediately states that Ray Dream Studio 4.1 is an illustration
application and lacks comprehensive post-production features. However
if you have an application such as Photoshop, Ray Dream Studio 4.1
will export an image with a mask that will show up as a channel.
hapter
11 deals with importing and exporting. In the freeform mode Ray
Dream Studio 4.1 will import Adobe Illustrator 1, 88, 3, 4, CorelDraw
3 and 4, .WMF and .CGM file formats. In the 3D mode Ray Dream Studio
4.1 will import .dxf, .rd4, .rd3, .d3d, .b3d, .t3d, and .3mf. I was
only able to verify the .dxf format. I don't have access to any of
the other formats other than .rd4 which is Ray Dream Studio 4.1's
native file format. I easily imported a .dxf file from Poser. It came
in very small in size however once I enlarged it seemed OK. After
playing around for a while I discovered that I could specify the
scaling conversion factor which defaults to a value of 1. I changed
it to 30 and imported my .dxf image from Poser again and it came in
fine. Ray Dream Studio 4.1 also supports Adobe Photoshop acquire
plug-ins. The manual barely mentions exporting however the option is
there. The file formats supported are .rd4, .rd3, .d3d, .dxf, .b3d
and .wrl. The rest of the manual consists of a glossary, technical
tips and index.
his
is the end of the manual for Ray Dream Designer. At this point I
think a few comments are in order. The manual is very well written.
It has many tips and explanations. It is obvious that this is a
mature product. It may also be of interest to some that Ray Dream
Designer is included completely in Fractal Detailer. It fact they
shipped the same identical manual with Detailer that is shipped with
Ray Dream Studio 4.1. However it is important to note that Detailer
has no animation capabilities. That is what separates Ray Dream
Studio 4.1 from Detailer among other things. I also suspect that the
3D portion of CorelDraw 6 is identical to Ray Dream Designer 3
although I did not verify this. A quick look at my CorelDraw 6 manual
shows the CorelDream section starts off just like the Ray Dream manual.
All pages copyright © Roger A. Moncrief, Indepth Reviews, 1997
Thanks to Judy Gefter, !LuM! and Charles Blaquiere for their advice and counsel, some I heeded and some I didn't.