Autodesk Inc, Sausalito, California has been demonstrating a pre-release version of a $500 add-on to its AutoCAD software that turns three-dimensional wire frame drawings into shaded images showing perspective, lighting, and reflection: according to Microbytes Daily, the designer first creates a wire frame image in AutoCAD, chooses colours for the objects, sets up any number of light sources, and positions cameras; three dimensional symbol libraries are available for a variety of objects, and once created, the wire frame design file then becomes the input to the program, AutoShade, where the designer can adjust the reflection from the objects to simulate texture, select the camera, and specify the focal length of the lens to take a picture of the design; a series of snapshots may be saved to disk and replayed at various speeds to walk through an architectural rendering or, at the fastest speed, simulate animation, and hard copy can go to an in-line 35mm film recorder and to PostScript laser printer files – and AutoShade can even produce stereo pairs for 3-D viewers and create colour separations to produce colour film from monochrome output.
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