HyperShot '10: Part 2 - what's new?
OK - I've been hanging onto this for too long - let's take a whistle stop tour through what's new and improved and in HyperShot 2.0 - or HyperShot '10 - for the Mac. Let's take a look at what's coming up.
HyperShot '10 Standard UI mode - everything is available on screen, at once.
HyperShot '10 full screen UI mode - this gives you the maximum working space, toolbars can be pinned or can be hidden.
The UI has been updated and rewritten to give you the full Mac experience. This means in either full screen or standard mode, you have access to all of your operations, commands and variables from a single place. Dialogs pop up, are movable and have that tidy little transparency thing (which in the case of rendering, works very nicely indeed).
Camera controls - new sliders make settings much easier to fine-tune - and get that image just as you want it.
Dialogs, aside from look and feel, have been revamped. Previous versions of HyperShot had manual value inputs, which in some cases, could be somewhat cryptic. HyperShot '10 sees these extended with sliders. While it may sound like a small change, the benefits when working with some aspects of the systems, will be much more intuitive and dynamic - the control and setting of depth of field springs irresistably to mind.
The materials libraries, HDR image library and options settings are now much more dynamic and acessible. When combined with a decent workstation, you're looking at realtime feedback when you tweak the settings.
Alongside the UI overhaul, there's a couple of things that lept out at me when working with the beta, so let's look at those. There's a new tool for helping you to define the composition of your scene. The first is camera grid. While most will work with Thirds (as shown below), you can also have it set to halves and quarters if that's your bag.
The other is the Ground Grid, this shows you where things lie in relation to others and the horizontal plane you're working with (as below) - note how the grid is shown through the model, which helps a great deal.
Managing data
There's been a lot of work done on how you work with data within HyperShot '10. the Mac version has always had the problem of a much poorer set of data translation tools (limited, pretty much to SketchUp, Rhino, OBJ). This release sees that extended with IGES and STEP, but as yet, no interoperability tools with SolidWorks or Pro/Engineer. There is hint in the Beta of 3xml file import, but Bunkspeed aren't commiting this for release as yet - time will tell on that one, but interoperability with both Catia and other systems that support the format would be handy (as well as allowing you to use content from 3dvia.com).
Alongside this, the system now works with that source data much more intelligently. Firstly, you have the ability to view and interact with the product structure from your CAD data, allowing you to organise your work and scene - which is particularly useful when you're working with large datasets and large part counts. Also, updates made to HDR files can be quickly fed through into the system, whether you're using Photoshop or a more specialised tool like HDR Studio.
Another massive update for many users will be that you can Update geometry source and the system will reload your geometry file and make the appropriate changes - it'll also maintain your material and texture settings, saving you a great deal of work when dealing with design change.
Greater interactivity
In terms of scene set-up there's a whole host of new tools. The new performance mode will switch off the more calc-heavy functions and give you a much more dynamic preview that you can pan/zoom/rotate with ease to get things into place. Interactivity is something that's become a key factor in this release across many areas. Objects can now be moved interactively, rather than using the somewhat cryptic input of values in previous versions. Materials and textures can be dragged and dropped directly onto parts, parts can be dragged into a scene. All in all, the system works as you would expect, rather than you having to work out how to do something.
Oh and the render queue looks much more usable, which is something that heavy users are going to find pretty compelling.
There will be all manner of coverage on the release coming up soon, but a good place to start is Phil Renato's blog, who takes a look through this release as well and gives his thoughts - philrenato.blogspot.com
HyperShot '10 Standard UI mode - everything is available on screen, at once.
HyperShot '10 full screen UI mode - this gives you the maximum working space, toolbars can be pinned or can be hidden.
The UI has been updated and rewritten to give you the full Mac experience. This means in either full screen or standard mode, you have access to all of your operations, commands and variables from a single place. Dialogs pop up, are movable and have that tidy little transparency thing (which in the case of rendering, works very nicely indeed).
Camera controls - new sliders make settings much easier to fine-tune - and get that image just as you want it.
Dialogs, aside from look and feel, have been revamped. Previous versions of HyperShot had manual value inputs, which in some cases, could be somewhat cryptic. HyperShot '10 sees these extended with sliders. While it may sound like a small change, the benefits when working with some aspects of the systems, will be much more intuitive and dynamic - the control and setting of depth of field springs irresistably to mind.
The materials libraries, HDR image library and options settings are now much more dynamic and acessible. When combined with a decent workstation, you're looking at realtime feedback when you tweak the settings.
Alongside the UI overhaul, there's a couple of things that lept out at me when working with the beta, so let's look at those. There's a new tool for helping you to define the composition of your scene. The first is camera grid. While most will work with Thirds (as shown below), you can also have it set to halves and quarters if that's your bag.
The other is the Ground Grid, this shows you where things lie in relation to others and the horizontal plane you're working with (as below) - note how the grid is shown through the model, which helps a great deal.
Managing data
There's been a lot of work done on how you work with data within HyperShot '10. the Mac version has always had the problem of a much poorer set of data translation tools (limited, pretty much to SketchUp, Rhino, OBJ). This release sees that extended with IGES and STEP, but as yet, no interoperability tools with SolidWorks or Pro/Engineer. There is hint in the Beta of 3xml file import, but Bunkspeed aren't commiting this for release as yet - time will tell on that one, but interoperability with both Catia and other systems that support the format would be handy (as well as allowing you to use content from 3dvia.com).
Alongside this, the system now works with that source data much more intelligently. Firstly, you have the ability to view and interact with the product structure from your CAD data, allowing you to organise your work and scene - which is particularly useful when you're working with large datasets and large part counts. Also, updates made to HDR files can be quickly fed through into the system, whether you're using Photoshop or a more specialised tool like HDR Studio.
Another massive update for many users will be that you can Update geometry source and the system will reload your geometry file and make the appropriate changes - it'll also maintain your material and texture settings, saving you a great deal of work when dealing with design change.
Greater interactivity
In terms of scene set-up there's a whole host of new tools. The new performance mode will switch off the more calc-heavy functions and give you a much more dynamic preview that you can pan/zoom/rotate with ease to get things into place. Interactivity is something that's become a key factor in this release across many areas. Objects can now be moved interactively, rather than using the somewhat cryptic input of values in previous versions. Materials and textures can be dragged and dropped directly onto parts, parts can be dragged into a scene. All in all, the system works as you would expect, rather than you having to work out how to do something.
Oh and the render queue looks much more usable, which is something that heavy users are going to find pretty compelling.
There will be all manner of coverage on the release coming up soon, but a good place to start is Phil Renato's blog, who takes a look through this release as well and gives his thoughts - philrenato.blogspot.com
Labels: Bunkspeed, Hypershot '10, HyperShot 2.0, Rendering, visualisation
posted by al dean at
12:49
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