Canoma 1.0

by Metacreations

Product Details

Product Manual [675kb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00002SADN
• Item model number: CNM-P10-DE-R
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 10, 2002
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,771 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

With Canoma you can create photorealistic 3-D models from scanned or digital photographs quickly and without extensive 3-D skills. Using a push-pin metaphor, Canoma lets you attach 3-D, wire-frame primitives on top of objects in a 2-D image such as a scanned photograph, piece of stock photography, or even a digital drawing or painting.

With the click of a button, Canoma renders a 3-D image by wrapping the 2-D surfaces around the 3-D primitives. You can either mirror textures to fill in the "invisible" sides of objects or use multiple photographs of a single scene.

This method of modeling allows you to create realistic 3-D models without any previous 3-D modeling experience. Create furniture, interiors, buildings, or whole city blocks, and even walk-through models or animations.

Canoma can take any 2-D digital source image as input, whether from a digital camera, historical materials, artwork, or hand-drawn sketches.

Canoma can generate 3-D models in MetaStream format and can also write VRML 2 output. Users can apply their MetaCreations Painter or Adobe PhotoShop skills to prepare and retouch photographs and textures.

Here are some potential uses: Online catalog customers can preview hard goods such as furniture or appliances. Travel, tourism, and real estate Web sites can provide 3-D previews of the destinations and properties. Graphic designers can modify packaging, designs, and environments. Artists can quickly create photorealistic "clip objects." Architects, urban planners, and property developers can interactively preview the urban context in which their new building is placed. Interior designers can quickly generate "what if" scenarios, changing carpets, wall colors, tiles, and furniture to easily create 3-D interiors of buildings for interactive walk-throughs. Game developers and level builders can create low-polygon-count 3-D models and environments with realistic textures, suitable for rendering in real time on today´s hardware.

Canoma imports 2-D files in GIF, JPEG, PICT, PNG, PSD, and TIFF formats. It exports 2-D files in the same formats, plus QuickTime animation and sequential PCT. Canoma exports 3-D files in AutoCAD (DXF), MetaStream (MTS), Poser Prop (PP2), Truespace (SCN), VRML 2 (WRL), and Wavefront (OBJ) formats.

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Modeling 3D objects is one of the hardest tasks for an artist. Correctly accounting for perspective, size, and shape (especially for real objects that viewers would easily recognize) can be a painstaking process for those just getting started with 3D. Many programs available now make it easier to create 3D models than before, but no program has ever made it simple to turn a complex 2D photograph or image into a polygon-rich world until now. MetaCreations's Canoma does exactly that. It enables you to quickly, that is to say within five minutes or less, turn a fairly detailed 2D image of a building or object into a polygonal 3D object that you can rotate, zoom, and export to other 3D apps.

The first time you transform a 2D image into a 3D model is nothing short of breathtaking. The process is simple and intuitive, and MetaCreations's signature interface, which people either love or hate, actually complements the authoring process. The fundamentals of Canoma are simple: Click one of Canoma's shape buttons to create a wire-frame polygon to map onto a 2D image (the wire frame must match the shape of the image), move the wire frame into position over the 2D image while being careful to align the corners and sides of the wire frame to the corners and sides of the image, and click render. Canoma will then create a polygon in 3D space and map the 2D image to the sides of the 3D model. Of course, the process we just described produces a very primitive 3D model, but the work required to create a complex 3D image is essentially more of the same: choosing a wire frame that resembles the shape of the 2D image you want to model and lining it up.

The process of aligning wire frames uses a metaphor that works beautifully. If you want to transform a 2D picture of a square building into a 3D model, you would begin by putting a matching 3D wire frame into the image. Canoma's version of a square probably won't match the square building exactly, therefore you have to line it up by putting a pin in one of the corners of the wire frame and pinning that wire frame corner to a corner of the building. Once pinned in place, the corners stay fixed unless you move them. You can pin all the visible corners in this way, which makes alignment quite simple. A second method of alignment is to use a handle, which MetaCreations calls a bead, to pull an entire side to where it should be.

Determining height in a 3D world can be difficult, but Canoma allows you to stack and align new wire frames with existing wire frames. If you're modeling a ziggurat, for example, this would ensure that each level actually sits atop the level below it as opposed to hovering slightly above, a mistake many newcomers to 3D make. To lock the wire frames together, you can use a Glue tool to stick a wire frame's corner to a side or corner of another wire frame, ensuring a tight fit.

Once you map a picture with wire frames, Canoma renders it as a 3D model that you can circle and look at from any angle just like any other 3D model. Of course, the sides of a 3D model that Canoma can't see (the ones behind the visible sides in a photograph) won't have any bitmapped images on them. To correct this, Canoma offers several options. One is to mirror the bitmap such that opposite sides of the model look the same. This approach doesn't always yield useful results, however, as the image will probably become distorted. As a second option, you can use a photograph taken from the opposite angle of an object and map it to the back of the 3D model, covering all sides of the object. This approach works very well, but only if photographs of multiple angles of an object exist. The third possibility is to make 2D textures either from a photograph or by hand, then assign them to the different sides of the wire frame polygon. Aside from offering a way to cover or enhance the appearance of a 3D model, this approach also allows you to really experiment with the model's look. For example, a picture of a brownstone, modeled in 3D, could easily have a straw or clay texture mapped to the sides to create a very different look in seconds. The possibilities for experimentation here are virtually unlimited.

On the technical side, you can export 3D models created in Canoma in the usual formats, including DXF, WRL, VRML2, and MetaCreations's own MetaStream. Canoma also features a relatively simple keyframe animation function that you can use to create walkthroughs of 3D models or flybys.

Although Canoma is an amazing product, it does show its version 1.0 youth. The biggest problem is that Canoma doesn't handle curves or spheres easily. The Creation palette ships with a lot of useful 3D wire frames, including tables, arches, roofs, and stairs, but try to model the Epcot Center or a dome, and the program starts to feel a little limited. Texture seams, where white shows at the edges of two sides of a polygon, can also prove difficult to correct, as the wire frame may appear to be correct in the pinning view, but then not quite line up when rendered. Textures applied from 2D images also have a tendency to stretch or warp near edges and corners, even though the pinned wire frame looks correct. Some of these quirks are simply inherent to working in 3D, while some are due to Canoma's relative youth.

Canoma's ability to quickly make 3D worlds out of a 2D image and map any bitmap to any facet in that 3D world is delightful to use and unsurpassed in ease. There is no question that Canoma is an amazing product. Aside from a few technical issues, only the price holds this product back. At $499, Canoma is expensive. To game designers and 3D artists it will be a boon, but as a utility, not a final modeling solution. To the other markets Canoma is aimed at, including professional designers, Web site developers, and interior designers, Canoma is, again, a very expensive utility. Potentially the biggest market for Canoma is hobbyists getting into 3D. If Canoma sold for only $150, it would probably ship in 10 times as many units. -- Rick Sanchez

Good News: Quickly generates 3D models from 2D images. Interface complements functionality.

Bad News: High price. Doesn't handle round or curved objects well.

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