By James Rankin, August 2, 2006
Boris Blue is a real-time 3D compositing and motion graphics application from Boris FX (www.borisfx.com). At first glance, it looks quite a bit like Boris Red. I've been a Red user for years; so I thought I could put aside the manual, fire up Blue, and go. As it turns out, there's quite a bit that's new with Blue that doesn't always follow the same rules as Red. In fact, if you're a brand-new user of Blue, you may find that you have the advantage of starting afresh, without any assumptions and habits based on using Red.
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Aside from the 3D controls and tools, the basic interfaces of Boris Red and Boris Blue are very similar.
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Boris FX supplied me with an HP workstation that had dual 3.2 GHz Intel Xeon processors, 1 GB RAM, and an Nvidia Quadro FX 3450 (PCI Express) card with 256 MB RAM. Blue comes with a few completed projects, which are great for reverse-engineering, but I built most of the projects for this review from scratch.
Some initial surprises
If you have experience with Red, one of the first surprises you'll encounter is that newly imported files appear within a 3D container track.
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Blue's 3D Container Track lets you apply global changes to all shapes within the track.
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A 3D container track enables you to apply transformations to multiple 3D shapes. Think of it as nesting for interactive 3D content. For example, you can apply parameter changes such as Scale, Position, Tumble, and Spin that will affect all of the shapes within a container track as a common unit-no need to adjust them individually. Another nice carryover from Red is the ability to define the order of rotation when you animate an object. You specify the order through a drop-down menu, and Blue calculates all of the necessary perspective adjustments.
With Blue, you can import custom logos and other shapes from Adobe Illustrator, extrude them in 3D, and apply a wide variety of textures. However, not all Adobe CS2 file types will import properly. For instance, .ai files from Adobe Illustrator may need to be saved as EPS files before importing. I also found that Illustrator CS2 text files did not display in Boris Blue without first creating outlines from the Illustrator Type menu. If you encounter other problems when bringing in EPS files, you can save them as Illustrator 8, which is the common workaround for matching up newer Adobe file types in non-Adobe programs.
Image processing
Blue handles image processing differently than Red. For instance, when you open Blue's default Filters menu, you might be surprised to find only two options: Motion Path and Motion Tracker. In Blue, what goes here is your list of third-party plug-in filters. Blue generates effects and textures internally by using shaders. Shaders allow you to simulate different surfaces of your 3D shapes including bump maps, light reflections, shading, and color of each pixel in real time. Blue has four main types of shaders:
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Blue generates most of its effects and textures through the use of four different kinds of shaders. The effects in the shader submenus work in real time.
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- Deformers are used to distort or warp a 3D container or shape track.
- Generators are used to create synthetic media on a texture map track.
- Image Processors act as filters that alter 3D container or texture map tracks.
- Materials simulate different types of materials on each face of the object.
"Materials" also refers to a type of track. When viewing the hierarchy of the timeline, you'll see that a container track houses one or more shape tracks. Each shape track has a material track (called a face track in Red). Material tracks have texture subtracks that can be modified in the Controls Panel to define how an image is mapped. Some of the options include Color, Bump, Reflection, and Texture. These options can be applied separately or in combinations to achieve some interesting results.
Real-time playback
I found that one of the biggest advantages of Blue over Red was real-time playback. Red requires you to use RAM Preview. Blue uses OpenGL hardware acceleration to speed up 3D rendering and 3D transformations (tumble, spin, rotation) as well as effects such as chroma keys and image distortion. To enable real-time playback, you need to turn off antialiasing in the Composite window by changing the Preview Quality from Best to Draft. This may affect some images more than others, but by keeping the Preview Resolution set to full, most images still look good. If you're using third-party plug-in filters, you'll have to apply them to a texture map track for real-time interactivity.
Even when importing new footage, real-time playback continues uninterrupted, and you can modify the effects parameters on the fly for near-immediate feedback. These speed gains-10 seconds here, 45 seconds there-really save a lot of time in the course of a real-life project. You can also keep your stream of ideas flowing, rather than waiting for the machine to catch up.
Image conversions
Boris Blue also includes a technique for converting raster-based images to vector-based, and has the added advantage of generating 3D extrusions with texture maps from those images.
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Raster-based images can be converted to vector-based in Blue, and then extruded and texture-mapped.
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This process isn't exactly intuitive, but it takes just a few steps and less than a minute to accomplish. In my test, I began with a raster image of the Boris logo. After converting it to a spline object, I was able to extrude it, map the original raster image to the front texture map, and animate it in 3D space. This sort of thing can be done in other 3D programs, of course, but the ones that come to mind all require much more effort and time to master.
You are not confined to the original texture of the image when you use these convert-and-extrude capabilities. Once the extruded spline object has been generated from either an alpha channel, RGB, or luminance value, the 3D shape will remain constant. If you want, you can modify the spline shape with the pen tool. You can then change the texture to any image or reflection that's available. There are a wide variety of presets from the Style Palette window, and you can also create and save your own custom styles for later use.
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The Style Palette has a variety of preset images and reflections, and you can create your own.
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Extruding alpha channel objects is very easy, and the process can be applied to either color or luminance channels as well. I experimented by tracing only the red channel information of a photograph, then extruding that part of the image. Instant 3D Photoshop? Not quite, but with some fine-tuning, you can get good results. The addition of a Pixel Chooser feature would be very helpful in getting more control over the image when doing this.
Importing 3D models
Although the 3D fish model that shipped with my copy of Blue gave me an idea of how the program works, I really wanted to see how Blue would handle 3D models that have much more complexity. I first tried a model of an Apache helicopter, exported from Autodesk 3ds Max 8, the latest version. After importing the helicopter into Blue, I found that some of the parts were missing. This may simply be a version compatibility or export parameter issue. I did have success importing an equally complex green monster from a .3DS file (created in an earlier version of 3ds Max) as well as a simpler car from 3ds Max 8 with all of their parts intact and aligned.
Another benefit that Blue inherits from Red is a feature called Convert To Container. This option unlocks the parts so they can be animated individually or by groups within the 3D container track. You can also create and animate your own textures right within Blue, and you have the additional ability to draw splines and use them as a motion path for multiple 3D objects.
Conclusion
I've only scratched the surface of what Blue can do, but it's important to note that there are some features in Red that are not yet available in Blue. Visit www.borisfx.com and check out the comparison chart. If Blue seems to be a good fit for your needs, you'll want to download a trial version and take a test drive. It's a powerful program, so pay close attention to the system requirements that Boris specifies.
Despite my ingrained Red habits and the differences between the apps, I was able to get comfortable using many of the new features after only a few short visits to the User Guide. If you're familiar with the Boris Red interface and the basic concepts of 3D animation, you'll find the learning curve to be an easy one. And if you're looking for a way to bridge the gap between 3D application content and your current motion graphics tools, Blue could be a valuable asset.
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