Discreet has announced today the availability of plasma , its professional 3D animation software specifically for Web 3D content creation. plasma provides Web designers the tools to produce 3D content for the Web without the need for an overly complex (and expensive) solution. Priced at US$650, the package comes with 3D content creations tools for Macromedia Flash MX and Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio.
Product Overview :
plasma is a Discreet product that simplifies 3D content creation for the web. The output can be rendered animations, still images, Macromedia Flash® and FlashMX (.SWF) and Macromedia Director® Shockwave (.W3D) files. Support for VRML97 (.WRL) is included.
As an example, plasma can be used to create a 3D animation that can be exported as a Shockwave file, and brought into Director for publishing on the web.
plasma includes Havok dynamics functionality (see www.havok.com for examples of Havok in action). This would allow you to animate, for instance,a bucket pouring out ping pong balls with very little effort on your part all the physical interaction is handled by the software. Skin and bones functionality allows you to create hierarchically linked and animated characters. Both Havok dynamics and the skin and bones functionality is supported by Shockwave 3D.
Compared to 3ds max :
plasma derives much of its development from 3ds max 4. The Shockwave and Flash exporters that work with plasma can be used by 3ds max 4.2, but note that plasma cannot use plugins made for 3ds max 4.
plasma can open 3ds max scenes, but saves in a .P3D format that cannot be read back into 3ds max.
plasma does not include the 3ds max Network Rendering functionality found in 3ds max
