World Builder Pro 4 Reviewed

World Builder Pro 4 Reviewed
By Wm Alexander WDA Design

 

 

 

This is an out of the box review of World Builder Pro 4 from Digital Element. The best way to describe World Builder Pro 4 is Terragen on steroids. The highlights are the basic spline deformations of a mesh, the ability to paint elevation information at impressive render times, and quality of scenes. Everything in between has very high level of control through direct parameters to modifiers and shaders. It is a full-blown free form organic world-modeling tool, coupled with "connections" to other applications.

 

 

 

A quick technical note: WB4 was installed on a custom build; Asus P4C800-E Deluxe Mobo, P4 3.2Ghz HT, 2 gig of DDR3200 Ram, Adaptec SCSI, XP pro sp1, 128mb ATI Radeon pro 9800 . WB4 was run with MAX 6, PS CS, C4D, Modo, MotionBuilder 5.5

The review will attempt to touch upon the depth of the program and drill down through the basic spline deformations used through out the application by looking at landscape creation. It does not feel much like CG modeling, but rather more akin to sculpting and painting. The best place to start is with the Graphic User Interface (GUI).

GUI

The overall GUI is well set up. Access to all commands and operations are straight forward and "tree" oriented for deeper controls. The colors are customizable through the typical File>preferences application properties dialog box. The preferences include settings for hyper threading / processors, shortcuts, OpenGL rendering etc.

The view ports have many configurations with "tear off" moveable windows. The tool bars, properties dialogs and some specific creation dialogs also have a separate movable window capability. The individual view ports can be set to render from bounding box to production rendering typical of actual render. The OpenGL capabilities greatly improve the construction workflow with fast accurate renders and the production rendering has incremental rendering feature. This feature for making changes and only rendering the changes to the scene while retaining the initial render a great time saver for environmental effects.

Looking at the tools of the GUI see the list in the image below.

MENU TOOLBAR - contains the file system, undo, rendering options, selection and filter and object/sub object clone, transform and a path editing tool.

CREATION TOOLBAR - access to all of the created objects and systems. Lights; parallel, point and spot all have shadow map capabilities. Cameras; typical camera w/out target, vista point for cylindrical panoramas and panorama camera for creating a full 360 pano.

CREATION EDIT -The edit commands appear here for anything created and or selected. They vary for spline-based lines (Free & Surface "skeleton"), and the different mesh oriented objects such as landscape, areas (defined by closed splines).

SCENE TREE - Beyond view port selection is the 'Workhorse', the scene tree. Here the scene object selection accesses the properties sub tree. The "right click" mouse function and multiple selections give the options to; hide/show, delete, rename, group, un/tag all (selected) and invert all. Taking the place of layers with one stop flexibility and controls, also allowing access to the sub-tree parent assigned children scene objects like areas for landscape, cloud-sky-sun disk objects for compound sky objects and their properties.

PROPERTIES TREE - The scene objects properties are displayed here with copy/paste and disable controls through right clicking. The default properties applied vary to type of object and additional properties applied in the property panel.

PROPERTIES PANEL -This is where it all really happens. The panel displays the controls for modifying all the root level objects properties. There are buttons to preview the property or object with the property. Others to add more properties, to deform a mesh object all the way to a material's shader such as applying an RGB Phong instead of the default assigned shader, allowing for the customizable depth of control over all objects.

NAVIGATION TOOLBAR -Has the scene navigation tools and the display buttons for the GUI Toolbars, properties windows, Landscape Painter and the Curve editor.

ANIMATION TOOLBAR - Play animation controls, key navigation, key set/remove, record and animation parameters dialog button.

TRACK EDITOR - Direct access to the animation keys through a typical track editor

Work Flow Overview
The best way to explain World Builder Pro 4 is to run through the basic spline deformed mesh of the landscape object and drill down through some of the possible properties, modifiers.

A "landscape" object consists of a spline (Skeleton Line) drawn over the mesh object, landscape. By selecting the skeleton line you can move the vertices in 3D space to deform the mesh to a desired look and feel, you can also fractalize (random distortion based on a fractal model), add/delete vertices, cut and close the spline, so many possibilities. You can add additional skeleton lines to create a mountain range just as easily. The only thing to consider is scale and dimensions, as they are relative beyond an accurate scene to quite a number of properties and modifiers. Here is the basic landscape object with its affecting skeleton line used in the "World" built for the review.

 

Through the scene tree the properties of the landscape mesh can be modified. The object can be 'manipulated' in 3D space in the view port or here in properties panel shown in Fig 1. Many of properties and modifiers use visual references to help explain the functions.
The settings allow the mesh density to be changed in Fig 2.
The Skin property of evolution deforms the mesh similar to the geological aging of a mountain over time. The roughness takes a smooth mesh and makes it rougher in appearance. The controls can be seen in Fig 3.

Next would be to apply materials. This is done through the default assigned area to the entire mesh. New areas are created for the mesh for a number of modifiers and properties. For this example, the area was used to apply material properties. The Library allows access to predefined libraries; you can create your own custom materials and libraries also. Take a close look below at the extensive libraries of objects and scene components to build from.
For this scene used the "Stones" library. These contain customizable gradient based procedural materials, compared to the image based 'stones' in the "Library:Material" window.

 

There are four materials applied to the Landscape object's entire default area. In the properties panel for the area are feather controls of all the materials applied as shown in Fig 4.
Fig 5 shows the Phong Shader and parameters with the very helpful visual aid. At this level you can add modifiers to the Area such as Vegetation, scattered objects, imported plants, Utilities (Fractalizers) and additional materials by using the "+" button. All of these can also be added by the GUI Tool bars and drag and drop from a library. Selecting a material\, using the "+" add properties brings up a list of 9 groups with 34 additional material modifiers cover bumping, displacement, UVW, transparency and Mask to "foam & Clouds" object dependant shaders.
Fig 6 demonstrates the placing property of materials. The visual aid really helps explain the parameters. The property allowing for some very sophisticated placement of materials.

Additional Object modifiers placed to further refine the mesh. Refer to figures 1-3; the Terraces Maker does just that creates terraces based on parameters and mesh density. The Landscape Erosion modifier softens and can create gullies and washes in the mesh, great for alien worlds or maybe modeling a gravel pit.
The image series below shows the landscape mesh before the additional modifiers, then with terraces and finally with subtle erosion.

As you can see the level of control makes the use of a tree based window needed. The complexity makes the process difficult to explain. The process of building a World can be very ordered, very flexible and not difficult.

General Components

All of the Components have the level of control touched on previously. They are broken down into Terrain, Surface/plants, and Water/Skies.
The terrain meshes can be created as described or by using imported bitmaps. There is also the Landscape Painter. You can paint with gray scale or color using varied shapes and brush controls. Lanscape Painter is tablet compatible. Lnadscape Paint having blending options and effects such as unsharp mask, Sharpen, Noise, Median Filter and Blur. You work on layers in the painter window that controlled in the property tree. A highly integrated and valuable tool for creating and customizing what the spline and modifiers may not do.

 

Surfaces are areas as described previously, objects can be placed or scattered on them. The objects can deform the landscape mesh in that area by creating "footprints" using the object’s mesh. The footprint modifier can create a 'moonscape' or boulders in a muddy riverbed.
Plants get placed or scattered in an area of a surface. The library of pre made plants is good, the ability to make your own is better and WB4 give you that capability. It takes a little to getting used to but well worth the effort for diversity and detail for close in shots. In addition, a Plants wizard allows the "Cross Breeding" of plants. However when they get created the properties can yield unlimited variations of height, rotation and placement. The available library plant types range from cactus to grass.

Water elements created in the form of oceans and rivers using skeleton lines or through a wizard. The water materials can generate waves, reflections as well as all of the typical shaders and flexibility to create new materials. Sky components come in two flavors 2D, the compound sky and 3D Cumulonimbus objects. These can cast shadows too. Once again a wide range of property parameters for great control. Do not forget the waterfall object.

Below is the basic scene using many of the features available and no where near all, in WB4

 

TECHNICAL STUFF

Lighting options are Parallel, point and spot. They all use only shadow maps. The controls can give a very sharp edge through increasing map size, range (sampling distance) and bias. The color, intensity and opacity are controls as well.

Cameras are the rendering, output, projection, and image composing nodes. The cameras are standard, Vista (Cylindrical Panoramic) and Panorama. The standard camera allows animation, has collision detection, and follows road path objects.

Environment atmospheric effects, haze-fog-underwater caustics are done at the scene object level. There are also objects to create rainbows and rain/snow.

Animation is part of many plants, water & sky objects properties; Drift, waves and wind effects being procedural to the objects. There is keying capabilities for most objects as well as curve editing. The keying options are; manual, automatic and recorded through the track editor and animation tool bar.

The Communicator object links other apps scenes to the WB4 environment. This allows detailed modeling in Max and Poser and working with those meshes in WB4. The link allows for updating from outside apps and using the cameras and lights in the outside apps. This works with well with Max, Poser was not tested. The "Rosetta" plug in communicator allows Lightwave, Maya to work in a similar fashion as the tested Max Communicator object.

Rendering is very flexible in terms of quality vs. time. The OpenGL rendering is effective for building the scene in real time. Draft, preview and production are of incremental quality for view port rendering. The Production allows for an incremental save of the rendered scene, then rendering only changes made to the scene. Final rendering renders at the production quality with size parameters, anti-Aliasing, output to file path, and control over post process filters associated with objects. The final render time for the final scene was 14 minutes at 1042x781, the preview quality was about 4:30 mins and OpenGL redraws were about 35 secs. These times included shadow maps from the semi transparent cumulonimbus clouds.

Supported import file types include: 3ds, Poser OBJ Sequence, WaveFront Object, Lightwave-motion-scene-object, DXF, USGS DEM.
Supported export file types: 3ds, VRML, Lightwave, DXF.
Many of the formats were tested with compatible apps-Max, C4D, Modo and Motion Builder. The scene used was too large to directly import into max as a 3ds file, simpler scenes worked fine. The lwo file was sliced into pieces, exported as seperate files, opened well in both Modo and C4D. Some limited testing with Motion Builder with good results.

Summary

World Builder 4 is a very detailed oriented program and is easy to learn and use. The documentation includes online help files, a hard copy manual and 2 CDs with video training. There is a great deal of ground to cover. The only real problem experienced was some hangs/freeze of the application. This was primarily due to pushing too hard, initiating a command while a view port was still rendering. It's not totally obvious when it’s done or in between rendering objects. Being aware of this eliminates any problems.

Overall, this is a very good program. Not that it can't be done in most 3d apps. WB4 takes much of the difficult and repetitive work of creating a very complex scene of this nature and allows the artist to focus on the look rather than the technical CG details. The overall time spent rendering seems to be greatly reduced through the flexibility of the view port rendering. With the available libraries, much can be done on a drag and drop basis eliminating creating detailed meshes and materials. Much of the object content is parametric allowing for changes on the fly. A dynamic well thought through flexible program.

From a technical CG/VFX standpoint, WB4 seems to integrate well for many uses. The panoramic outputs used for spherical environments in apps like C4D for both visual and lighting components. The animation capabilities and import options allow for integration of many applications for direct rendering of imported objects in WB4. Of course, the compositing possibilities are quite numerous through image sequences and AVI file extensions. There seem to be many gaming possibilities also. The Archviz uses are many with the ability to import DFX and two types of DEM files.

Believe that sums up the review, without out giving actual detailed tutorials to evaluate WB4.

Final thoughts
World Builder Pro 4.0 can be a very good value for anyone who needs to build complex worlds. With the apparent time savings over direct modeling in many apps the cost of WB4 could pay for itself in a relatively short period of time, while creating wonderfully detail "Worlds".
There is user support and more product information on the Digital Element Site.

World Builder User Forums

Highly recommend a test drive if at all intrigued
World Builder Pro 4 download page

World Builder Pro 4 product page on the parent site of Digital Element.

Wm's Bias
Wm is a Full time AutoCAD/ADT & Discreet Viz/max user and Freelance Architectural Illustration.

 

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