World Construction Set
In-the-News

• "I Create Worlds"

  DV-Digital Video Magazine, March 2000
  If you can't find your own piece of heaven on earth, then make it yourself. By Jim Feeley, Senior Editor.

  

  World Construction Set image created by Jamie Krutz.
  (Note: the attribution for this image was incorrect in the article.)

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "World Construction Set creates photorealistic terrains and animations for engineering, architectural, educational, mapping and video uses."

  • "With World Construction Set you can re-create realistic images or imaginary scenes and animation of forests, mountains, grasslands and so on. WCS lets you build precise and accurate re-creations of specific real-world places. You can also create your own terrain with the program's Fractal Terrain Generator and DEM Designer."

  • "Through Terraffectors and Effects you can create features such as roads, streams, lakes, mountains and dams. The program's Texture Engine can make layered animatable textures that can be applied to 3D objects and terrains. Procedural and image textures give you control over the creation of rocks, bricks, asphalt and other surfaces."

  • "WCS supports standard terrain, 3D object, vector, point, image, image sequence and GIS data formats. It can handle unlimited terrain data files and map them spherically to reflect the curvature of the earth (or whatever planet you're modeling). The program can use satellite data as terrain textures and can even use the data to control other attributes including foliage growth."

  • "The (foliage) placement accounts for variables such as wind direction, altitude, and sun location to ensure that foliage grows where it actually would. You can adjust the rules to fit your needs."

  • "Perhaps as important as World Construction Set's creation features is the applications tight integration with other programs. WCS makes it easy to share data and scenes with programs including LightWave 3D, Inspire 3D, and 3D Studio MAX."

  • "WCS can also import 3D objects in LightWave, 3D Studio and DXF formats and render them. These 3D objects could be trees, created in LightWave, MAX, Onyx Tree Professional, Tree Druid, LSYSTEMS, or similar programs. Once inside WCS, you can apply translucency parameters to create leaves that realistically transmit some light."

  • "WCS is a deep, accurate, and creative tool that helps get certain projects done. Considering all it offers, World Construction Set is a very good value."

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• "3D Forest Modeling: A Personal Perspective"

  EOM (Earth Observation Magazine), January, 2000
  Written by David Balcaen of ViewScape 3D

  

  WCS Presents Realistic Logging Forecasts Copyright 2000 David Balcaen.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "World Construction Set is a landscape architect's ultimate tool."

  • "I have chosen World Construction Set, as it most closely matches the needs of a forester doing viewscapes of potential logging projects. It has the feature of standing 2D trees up on a 3D-terrain model, accurately portraying the forest."

  • "It is the WYSI-WYG (what you see is what you get) of the landscape design world. This is also a dream-come-true for planners."

  • "I find that World Construction Set is the best tool that I have by a long shot, for predicting what logging will ultimately look like."

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• "DEM o'Graphics Potpourri"

  3D Artist Magazine, January/February, 2000
  Written by Thomsen-Norre

  

  WCS Visualizes Black Hills DEM Data Copyright 2000 Thomsen-Norre.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "WCS with its exceptional ability to create an environment of choice provides the artist with a remarkable range of opportunities."

  • "WCS was chosen with the textures being applied using WCS version 4.55's new texture engine."

  • "Use WCS's native ability to load and merge the 90m decompressed DEMs in WCS for a more accurate resolution."

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• "Imagery Illuminates the Courtroom"

  Imaging Notes Magazine, September/October, 1999
  Visualization for litigation, by Mark Johnson and Arthur Ginzburg.

  

  WCS Visualization Copyright 1999 Visual Forensics.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "By the 1980s, most trial attorneys recognized that presenting a major case effectively meant developing visual presentations for the trial. Videotape, film and computer animation are standard fare for complex trials in this country, and that trend will only increase."

  • "San Ramon, Calif.-based Visual Forensics specializes in producing visual evidence presentations for major litigation cases across the country. And the company most often turns to satellite and aerial imagery to illustrate these cases."

  • "According to the aircrew, the virtual valley appeared natural and accurate based on their recollection of flying the real terrain. After flying many passes through the 3-D model, the aircrew endorsed a flight path that was converted into World Construction Set for final detailed rendering."

  • "The computer animation convincingly showed that an optical illusion was at work in the valley on the day of the incident."

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• "World Construction Set 4.5"

  Internet Eye Magazine, August, 1999
  A review of WCS 4.5 By Vikki Dawson.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "World Construction Set is Professional Quality Software that even a novice can use."

  • "I don't think that there is anything that Questar Productions left out when they created this software."

  • It is quite complex in what it can do. And although it completes extremely complex tasks, it is fairly easy to use.

  • "The manual is invaluable in getting you the knowledge you need to use the software. With step by step instructions from beginning to end, you will learn most of what World Construction Set can do. Another valuable source for information is right on the Questar Productions (now 3D Nature) site. Other users contribute the knowledge they have gained from using the software. These things give this software package a great start. I never felt lost from beginning to end."

  • "World Construction Set is a wonderful software application that can give you the real world solution you need."

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• "World Construction Set 4.5"

  BEYOND BABYLON : The Official Magazine Of The Babylon 5 Modeler's Guild, July, 1999
  A review of WCS 4.5 By Alexander Shareef, Editor.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "The name says it all really...WCS is a world creator! Rocks, trees, vegetation, moving water, and evolving clouds are all at your command as you seek out to create landscapes from the deepest depths of your imagination. The famous phrase "Seek out strange new worlds" is particularly poignant here, because with WCS whatever you can dream, you can create!"

  • "It's amazing."

  • "It allows you to control every single aspect of the scene, so you can modify and optimize the world in any way you want."

  • "The manual is simply great!"

  • "I'm really quite impressed with WCS, and not only the program, but the detail and thought which has gone into it all - that and the great company policies and support."

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• "Visualizing Future Environments"

  GIS User, June/July 1999
  Cover Story: Using World Construction Set for photorealistic GIS visualizations. By Andrew Hallam, Technical Manager at Ingenium Solutions Pty Ltd.

  

  Image copyright 1999 Andrew Hallam and Ingenium Solutions Pty Ltd.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "In the past the GIS community were limited to displaying terrain and feature data in two dimensions using contours and vectors."

  • "To demonstrate how this data can be used to create a photo-realistic image it was imported into World Construction Set 4.5 (WCS)."

  • "Photo-realistic visualisation is well suited to showing the results of future projects, particularly where there will be an impact on the natural environment. Whether it is a civil infrastructure, mine development or urban planning project, the use of photo-realistic images provide the means to visualise the impact on the surrounding terrain and ecosystems before work begins."

  • "Photo-realistic visualisation is also useful to contractors and consultants who wish to provide their clients with easily understandable information. High quality presentation materials can provide a competitive advantage."

  • "World Construction Set can import existing digital elevation models or create them from three dimensional vector data. In this case the elevation data as sourced from the ER Mapper file that was used to create figure 2. The vector data was imported using Autodesk's DXF format (other options are available)."

  • "To add the finishing touches to a photo-realistic image it is necessary to add some of the things that are take for granted in everyday life like clouds, seasonal lighting and waves on water surfaces. Most projects will also contain some kind of man made objects other than linear features like roads. In order to be included in a photo-realistic image these objects have to be created as three dimensional models. Objects that do not exist can be modelled from plans. Existing objects can be modelled from photographs using close-range photogrammetry techniques."

  • "In Australia, and many other countries, any project that is likely to cause change in the environment will require approval from an agency at some level of government, and perhaps also non-government parties. As environmental concerns increase it is likely that the effort required to obtain these approvals will also increase. Being able to present a project with the assistance of realistic images or animations can benefit everyone concerned. The project proposal can be more easily understood and will assist the approving party to make a more informed decision."

  • "Photo-realistic visualisation is a new and exciting field that complements current GIS technology. By removing the need for decision makers to have GIS or map interpretation skills it provides the means to reach a wider audience and convey more information, and that means getting more value from spatial data."

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• "'See' Possible Landscape Changes through Visualization"

  GeoWorld Magazine, March 1999, page 40
  World Construction Set is used to visualize a proposed mining expansion. By James A. Zack, senior GIS analyst and multimedia content developer, Geomega, Inc.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "When a precious-metals producer wants to expand its surface mining operations, the environment probably will be visually altered. Uncertainty about the degree of alteration and where landscape aesthetics will be affected can create adversarial positions between the metal producer and the public. Expanding mining operations requires a permit, and granting a permit requires public approval through formal review processes."

  • "Thus, it's in the best interests of the mine operators to present their proposal in a form that's accurate and understandable to the audience. Traditionally, artists' renderings have been used to show how landscapes would look from a given point of view at various expansion stages. GIS technology then was used to show viewshed and intervisibility analyses."

  • "More recently, however, 3-D modeling programs and graphics workstations capable of 3-D texture mapping have enabled users to 'see' what the visual impacts of terraforming operations will be from any point. The advantage of using 3-D modeling software within a GIS is that the model needs to be built only once, but images and animations can be produced wherever and whenever. "

  • "World Construction Set (WCS) versions 2 and 3 from Questar Productions LLC were used to produce the models. GIS data were prepared from Autodesk Inc.'s AutoCAD drawings using ESRI Inc.'s ArcView GIS software."

  • "After reviewing the images, the precious-metals producer decided to withdraw the permit for the leach pad as originally designed. The proposed leach pad was resituated and redesigned to reduce its visual impact."

  • "The precious-metals producer received a set of photorealistic images that may convince the public to approve a permit for surface mining operations expansion. But the same techniques can be used in logging permitting, phased-housing developments, park design, landscape architecture and other nonplanning applications."

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• "13 Best 3D and Special Effect Software Packages"

  Animation Magazine, Special 13th Anniversary Issue, February 1999, page 71
  WCS 4 is the only terrain visualization program recognized in the top tier of 3D and Effects packages. Other programs chosen include Alias/Wavefront Maya, Discreet Logic"effect"and"light", Houdini Side Effects, Avid Softimage, Kinetix 3D Studio MAX, NewTek LightWave 3D, Onyx Tree Professional and other industry leading software. By Bijan Tehrani, with contributions by Richard White.

  

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "World Construction Set has come a long way since its early days and each upgrade has rewarded its users with a new set of landscape creation and animation tools."

  • "Version 4.0 not only creates, animates and renders magnificent landscapes, but also lets you import 3D objects from many popular 3D animation packages, such as 3D Studio MAX and LightWave."

  • "World Construction Set's excellence is evident in its high quality water and cloud animation abilities."

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• "Visualization: A World of Your Own"

  CAD User, February 1999, page 22
  Cover Story review of WCS 4 and 4.5. By Jonathan Muller.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "If you need to produce and animate computer-generated natural landscapes, then this is your package."

  • "To begin a new landscape, you start with a"Project wizard."This window contains options for all the components that will make up your landscape. Once chosen, the remainder of your time will be spent adjusting and tweaking parameters to get exactly the look you want."

  • "Getting that look is made easier by the interactive nature of both the"map view"and"camera view"viewports. Cameras, camera targets and light sources can all be moved around directly in map view, while simultaneously updating in camera view. Both viewports have multiple display options, depending on the capabilities of your system and graphics card. Preview modes and individual options for interactively moving are available to speed up the creation process. An excellent preview render allows rapid previewing of the scene."

  • "You can create your own DEM by drawing vector objects onto an area, specifying z coordinates (height) for what you draw. There is an excellent tutorial on this, culminating in a custom designed volcano! The secret to the organic and randomized terrain that results lies with the extensive use of fractalization. Vector elevations and the slopes and transitions between levels are smoothed out and abstracted in a most convincing way."

  • "Most of the parameters for the Ecosystem can be animated over time. Individual editors are provided for motion, colour, terrain, ocean, waves, clouds, etc. Potential applications are for illustrating the seasonal changes occuring on a particular area of forest, or the visual impact of new developments on a landscape. The simulation of water and the 3D shadow casting, multilayered clouds are very impressive when animated."

  • "Documentation is provided in two parts; an excellent 580 page printed manual covering all the basics, mostly in tutorial form; and an HTML online reference system. The Questar website is informative as a source for upgrades and plugin updates."

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• "Designing Museum Applications"

  3D Artist, Issue 34 (December 1998), page 14
  How WCS was used to create realistic environment backgrounds for"People in the Past,"a CD-ROM program and museum exhibit for the Anasazi Heritage Center in Colorado. The artists also used LightWave 3D to create people and artifact objects. By Clay Hamilton, with Theresa Breznau.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "After wasting a lot of time trying to make a halfway decent landscape in LightWave 3D, we discovered World Construction Set (WCS)."

  • "Once we had our landscape, complex thatches of grass intermixed with wildflowers along with stands of pinyon pine and juniper were fairly easy to set up. We were even able to create a sequence showing environmental impact from occupation through time."

  • "By changing the values of ecosystems, we were able to show the harvesting of trees and introduction of crops."

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• "Forestry in the Third Dimension"
  

  EOM, November 1998
  Cover Story: How WCS solves the visualization problems of forestry professionals, including partial retention visualization; perspective-to-plan digitizing; species-specific tree imagery; road planning; satellite-based tree placement; GPS integration; and 3D object features. By Blair N. Allen.

  

  World Construction Set on the cover of EOM magazine
  

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "A paradigm shift in terrain visualization software is causing a revolution in the British Columbia forest industry. Taking center stage is an extraordinarily powerful new terrain modeling and visualization tool called World Construction Set (WCS). This single program is rendering obsolete virtually all previous technology for producing landscape imagery."

  • "The reason for this dramatic shift is due to the incredible number of functions in the program that were simply impossible to perform with older software. The program has the ability to quickly, easily, and economically produce remarkably realistic three-dimensional perspective view images of forested terrain that are indistinguishable from photographs."

  • "Foremost among the new users is the British Columbia Ministry of Forests. They are currently in the process of installing the software throughout the province at both the regional and district levels. Most forestry consulting firms in the province are abandoning their existing image generation systems and switching to WCS because of its tremendous capabilities. Even forestry giants like MacMillan Bloedel, which have been slow to adapt to new technology in the past, now use World Construction Set on a daily basis. In the remote sensing arena, firms like PCI are using it to visualize forest cover maps that were updated using the Indian IRS-1C satellite 5.8-meter panchromatic imagery."

  • "Although it is not a requirement of the forest industry now, the reader may be interested to know that WCS has the ability to place three-dimensional objects such as houses, power poles, cars, hydro sub-stations or even entire neighborhoods anywhere on the terrain. As such, the usefulness of the program goes far beyond the boundaries of the forest industry. It extends into virtually any industry where perspective view images that include man-made objects are required to assess proposed alterations to the landscape."

  • "World Construction Set has been able to solve every image generation problem that has faced the logging industry in British Columbia. With this software now an integral part of their own GIS departments, logging companies will be able to save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually by creating their own in-house imagery. For smaller logging companies that do not have their own GIS departments, or still wish to contract the work, there are increasing numbers of progressive forestry consulting firms which have adopted WCS and can create the imagery for them. The firms that do not incorporate this new technology will simply not be able to compete with WCS generated imagery, using what is seen by comparison as ancient technology."

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• "The Total Picture"
  

  Modern Agriculture, Winter 1998, page 12
  Cover story: using WCS and other GIS software for planning and visualization. By Marj Nelson.

  

  World Construction Set image on the cover of Modern Agriculture Magazine

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "WCS has tools needed to take the digital information about your farming operation and apply it visually. You can clear the trees from a building site, build orchards, vineyards, or terraced fields. The color maps in WCS can be applied to project satellite or other images onto landscapes, or specify exact placement of ecosystems."You can create an image of a farming operation today, and bring it forward to create a future scenario,"said Huber."WCS can even animate the view, so it appears as if you are flying through or around the site."

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• "World Construction Set 4"

  Keyframe Magazine, Issue #8, October, 1998
  A review of WCS 4.0, by David Warner. Keyframe Magazine covers LightWave 3D and related applications.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "I strongly recommend World Construction Set V4 to anyone who has a need to create super-realistic lansdcape simulations, or if you just want to make your LightWave animations look much better by adding incredibly beautiful backgrounds and settings, then this is the program for you!"

  • "Aside from an easy-to-use interface and fairly intuitive function layout, WCS' big advantage over other landscape renderers is that it works with true DEM data. This means that it can render an orbital view of a planet just as easily as it can render a close-up view of a mountain stream, with trees, flowers, grass, water, rocks and everything else you would expect to find in a photo-realistic landscape renderer."

  • "It is a major upgrade from previous versions and offers some excellent new features, especially for people who are going to use it with LightWave."

  • "With World Construction Set 4, it is now possible to import LightWave objects directly into a WCS landscape and render them with some pretty nice results. However, the way to truly use these two programs to their fullest potential is to layer WCS-rendered image sequences into a LightWave scene. This may sound like a difficult thing to do, but a special Z-Buffer plug-in provided with WCS4 makes this process very easy."

  • "A"Shadow-only"option allows you to make a LightWave object invisible, but still cast a shadow on the WCS landscape. When the real LightWave object is rendered and composited into the image with the Z-Buffer plug-in, the results can be quite spectacular!"

  • "Animatable Terraffectors are essentially displacement effectors that can change the shape and appearance of a landscape over time, but the variable polygon density features built into the WCS renderer make this feature very powerful and downright fun to use!"

  • "Animated Image Objects are another very useful, new feature in version 4.0. Any image or image sequence can be loaded as an animatable object and smoothly integrated into the landscape with very little effort."

  • "One of the most impressive things about World Construction Set is its ability to render images with varying levels of detail. If a mountain peak is way off in the distance, then there is no need to have a detailed object mesh with millions of poygons, but if the camera flies right up to that same mountain peak, then there needs to be a much higher number of poygons to render the fine detail correctly. WCS handles all of this automatically and it does so extremely well."

  • "Questar also regularly updates the program, sometimes adding major new features without any fanfare."

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• "World Construction Set 4.0 Review "

  NewTekniques, October/November, 1998
  A review by Jon Carroll. NewTekniques Magazine covers NewTek products and related applications.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "The immediately noticeable change is from the previous menu-and-window system to a new interface using an icon-based toolbar. Most of the tools you need are accessible from this toolbar, and animation controls such as keyframing are immediately available to the user. I have found that this greatly increases the efficiency of workflow within the program, which was a problem to some users before."

  • "World Construction Set (WCS) can now both import and export LightWave 3D motion paths and scenes. This means you can export a WCS landscape and scene into LightWave, create a motion path for your objects, and then import that motion path back into WCS. This becomes especially useful in complex scenes with multiple objects."

  • "WCS can import LightWave objects and either renders them directly in the scene, or uses them as objects for casting shadows onto the landscape."

  • "A WCS version 3 feature that has been expanded in the version 4 release is Terraffectors. These are objects that are drawn onto the WCS landscape that can directly control the shape of the landscape. I have found the best use for these is to place elements like roads, sidewalks, streams, lakes, etc, where placement needs to be consistent and creating 3D objects to fill these needs would be prohibitive."

  • "The CamView window's OpenGL preview window is now noticeably more responsive and responds better to the presence of hardware acceleration as well."

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• "Forward Migation Kit: Architecture Software for the Mac OS"

  MacCentral, Sept 22, 1998
  A round-up of professional architectural tools available for the PowerMac, by Dennis Sellers.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "Many professional users are moving up from terrain software like Bryce 3D and World Builder to the power of a Geographic Information System-based program. According to some MacCentral readers, WCS 3 offers the most comprehensive list of professional features and the fastest, most photorealistic rendering."

  • "WCS 3 for the PowerMac is completely compatible with World Construction Set files from other platforms, including Windows 95/NT Intel machines, DEC Alpha Windows NT systems and Amiga computers. Intel and Alpha Render Engine executables are included with the PowerMac version to allow animators to harness the rendering power of multiple machines."

  • ""This is absolutely fantastic landscape visualization software,"says Bill Buchanan."Unlike Bryce it supports accurate terrain data in CAD formats. It also has great tools for doing necessary things like cutting roads."

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• "World Construction Set 3.15"

  Visual Magic, Issue 11, June 1998
  Review by Robin Lankes. The author used WCS with MAX to visualize a new shopping complex.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "The strength of WCS lies in the way it handles high-resolution terrains, trees, clouds and water surfaces."

  • "One of the best features is that all these effects are entirely non-destructive and do not alter the underlying terrain permanently. You can modify or remove a lake or any other type of effect, at any time."

  • "The OpenGL preview is great! A spinner lets you set the level of detail and with the fireGL 3000 I could set it up for maximum grid resolution and still get a smooth and interactive display. You get an excellent feel for your terrain and this is definitely one of the best OpenGL implementations I've seen."

  • "The manual is very well written and contains detailed tutorials and a detailed section on tips and tricks."

  • "So is WCS worth its money? It sure is, whether you are re-creating landscapes for professional projects, or just want to have some fun with your computer."

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• "Questar Breaks Mac Ground with Terrain-Modeling Tool"

  MacWEEK, (June 12, 1998), page 7
  A news story by Rebecca Gulick.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "Questar Productions, LLC will debut the Mac version of its software for generating 3-D terrains this week at the Siggraph 98 show in Orlando, Fla."

  • "Questar's Terraffector technology will let users"bulldoze"terrains by drawing directly onto the landscape. In addition, users can apply a variety of effects to create lakes, roads, building sites, streams and glaciers. The software will import and export scenes from NewTek Inc.'s LightWave 3D and Kinetix's 3D Studio."

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• "Quick Rapids"

  3D Artist Magazine, Issue #32 (June 1998), page 19
  A Stream Effect tutorial, by artist Mike Swinford.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "World Construction Set Version 3 is both a fascinating and addicting program."

  • "One of the great new features of Questar's World Construction Set 3 is the Stream Effect. To help you get started and save some time, here are advanced settings for great looking streams with rapids that can be animated."

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• "Product News"

  Animation Magazine, May 1998, page 42
  by Bijan Tehrani.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "The new version of this photo-realistic terrain rendering and animation software from Questar Productions comes with a long list of new features."

  • "The new Terraffector technology lets you change the terrain by drawing vectors directly onto the landscape. Now you can render lakes, roads, building sites, streams, shadows, glaciers, orchards, fields, dams, hills and mountains. In WCS 3.0 you can animate waves, color and reflections for the lakes while WCS automatically adds breakers and beaches. New scaled image rendering options let you add street signs, fence posts and other objects. WCS V3 supports 3D Studio MAX by a special MAX R1 and R2 plug-in which has been improved over the earlier versions."

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• "World Construction Set 3"

  Computer Arts Magazine, May 1998, page 72
  A review of World Construction Set 3 in which WCS is rated as"Recommended."

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "World Construction Set is an extremely powerful landscape terrain modelling, rendering and animation package, designed specifically for creating realistic, real-world images."

  • "For sheer potential it makes VistaPro and Bryce 3D look like shareware programs."

  • "--Non-destructive Terraffectors enable you to create roads, dams, craters, mountains and so on.
    --New Lake, Stream, Ecosystem, Illumination, Shadow and Foliage effects, plus more.
    --Scaled-image foliage shading modes.
    --Refined interface with easier controls over version 2.
    --Point-and-click sun and moon positioning included.
    --Extensive new preview options.
    --Interactive Vector Object editing.
    --Lightwave and 3D Studio MAX scene import/export.
    --Arc/Info and ArcView shape file support.
    --Network rendering possible with Render Engine."

  • "WCS is astonishingly good at animating skies and water. Cloud banks can build and billow automatically over a sequence, with multiple layers of true 3D clouds that cast shadows. Sun and moon objects, the latter showing phases, are available and you can place them separately from the sunlight source."

  • "Controlling and animating waves on water is also simple, with breakers forming automatically. The beach itself appears automatically based on the slope of the land into the water, and you can even specify tides."

  • "Massive potential - Fantastic amount of control over everything - Does things no other package can."

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• "World Construction Set 3.0"

  GIS World Magazine, April 1998, page 69
  A first look by W. Fredrick Limp, director, Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "You and the other GIS team members have been up all night for the last week preparing the presentation. You performed the detailed spatial analysis, prepared the high-quality cartographic maps and created a killer presentation. Your team is sitting in the client's outer office, surrounded by presentation boards, maps and other materials, waiting to make your pitch. Across the office is the other candidate, and all he has is a small video tape."

  • "The presentations are given...and he gets the job! His secret? He had World Construction Set (WCS) 3.0 from Questar Productions LLC, Brighton, Colo. You had maps, flip charts and PowerPoint slides. He had a 3-D video fly-through of the proposed project, showing the GIS analysis results in images that would impress Steven Speilberg. You had a map that showed affected areas in red and green. He had images with realistic trees, planned roads and structures."

  • "That used to be a job for companies with rooms full of rendering systems and expensive specialized software. In addition, the data sources and methods used in data visualization were different from those used in GIS, so users essentially had to start from scratch. WCS 3.0 changes all that. It takes standard GIS data and, using sophisticated fractal rendering methods, converts them from dry, cartographic maps to realistic 3-D images. And it does this on machines that are accessible to users with less than Hollywood-sized budgets."

  • "Strengths: Extensive visualization and animation tools. Accessible graphic interface."

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• "World Construction Set 3 - First Look"

  3D Artist Magazine, Issue 31 (April 1998), page 22
  A first look by Christian Gahre. The author also contributed an article"After the Falls"on page 40 of the same issue, discussing how he used World Construction Set 3 with 3D Studio MAX to create a waterfall scene.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "If you have wanted a program that can handle large virtual worlds with amazing photorealistic terrain rendering, including tools for terrain building, foliage, water, clouds, atmospheric effects and animation, then the new Questar Productions World Construction Set (WCS, $940) version 3 may be the choice for you. WCS is designed to please animators, artists and natural scientists alike, while architects and engineers can use it for visualization tasks."

  • "The new improvements help both beginner and professional users, and are more flexible and easier to work with. The interface has a new toolbar that allows direct access to all tools, including animation. And it is possible to store and recall your own interface arrangements."

  • "The Project Wizard is helpful for starting a new project with default values for major project parameters, but isn't limited to just starting projects. A new interactive Online Reference Manual allows you to quickly read about every function, backed up by the 550 page Using WCS 3 manual with tips, tutorials and other useful information."

  • "You can easily build existing worlds using imported DEM (Digital Elevation Model) or GIS ( Geographic Information System) files. Or you can design new worlds using the WCS DEM Designer or by using vector objects with assigned effects."

  • "Vector objects and their functions, along with WCS's so-called 'Terraffectors' and 'Effects,' are the most important news in version 3. The Effects Library comes with ten different tools, each of which has its own settings. They affect the terrain at render time when assigned to a vector object, such as a lake, a stream, or a road over the terrain. Combinations are possible and more than one effect can be applied to a single vector."

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• "Landscape Generations"

  3D Artist Magazine, Issue 31 (April 1998), page 21
  A roundup of terrain programs, including World Construction Set 3, World Builder 2, Bryce 3D and VistaPro 4, by Douglas King.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "For the specific, realistic terrain Allen needed, he chose WCS since it offered him the most tools and detail. 'I use the program's Ecosystem Editor a great deal. This allows me to place trees and other vegetation based on the elevation, slope, etc. of the terrain. This gives me a tremendous amount of control over the accurate recreation of a forest.'"

  • "Allen concludes that, 'if you need realistic looking landscapes of actual locations, WCS is the only program that will faithfully recreate that for you.'"

  • "Another reason to choose WCS is the grand scale on which you can build terrains. Lynn Wallace is an independent animator who builds 3D weather maps for KUTV Channel 2 in Salt Lake City, Utah. 'I needed to show the Earth from space and, in the same animation, Utah's Wasatch Front Range area from a relatively low altitude.' Wallace found that only WCS allowed him to complete this project with no apparent loss of resolution."

  • "Atomic Games is using WCS to build terrain for Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far. 'To add authenticity to the game,' begins David MacFalls, an artist working on the game, 'we are using aerial reconaissance photography to design and build the numerous overhead-viewpoint game play maps. We use RAF and USAF period photos as templates in the WCS DEM designer.'"

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• "DV Review"

  DV Magazine, April 1998, page 28
  A review of Bryce 3D with comparisons to World Construction Set 3, by DV Technical Editor Rick Popko.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "In addition to slow render times, I was also bothered by Bryce's user interface."

  • "The other contender is World Construction Set Volume 3 from Questar Productions, which has a much deeper features, such as custom rendering, large scale rendering, and volumetric shrubbery for planting entire hillsides of trees in a few short clicks, as opposed to Bryce where you have to plant one tree at a time."

  • "If your livelyhood depends on creating very specific artificial terrains for clients, you'll probably find World Construction Set a more useful application for getting work done."

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• "Make the Earth Move Again"

  3D Design, March 1998, page 61
  A comparative overview in which World Construction Set Version 3 is recognized for superior rendering quality over World Builder 2 Yosemite, Landform Gold, and Bryce 3D. Article by Clifton Tipon.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "Transitioning from World Builder to World Construction Set doesn't require a lot of effort. You will find similar functions in both programs, but the rendering quality of World Construction Set is most impressive."

  • "The rendering quality is much better than that of World Builder."

  • "Questar doesn't skimp on tutorials and this program comes loaded with excellent documentation."

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• "For the Record"
  

  
  Animation Magazine, February 1998, page 43
  A correction to the Golden Pixie Award article from November (see below).

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "This image was incorrectly identified by the reporter in the November issue of Animation Magazine. It was created on World Construction Set from Questar Productions, winner of a Golden Pixie Award from Peter Plantec for Best Exterior Environment Generator."

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• "Is it Real or Data Visualization?"
  

  
  GIS World, November 1997, page 46
  A comparative review of WCS V2 in which WCS wins the best overall rating. The magazine features a detailed WCS rendering on the cover. Article by Jeffrey Rowe.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "I actually found WCS went beyond GIS in the traditional sense, as it allowed me to modify and optimize the natural world for specific visualization purposes."

  • "Strengths: Comprehensive documentation; good tutorials for novice and more advanced users; many unique and versatile features."

  • "One of the things I liked best about WCS was that I could alter the 'rules of nature' through parameters found in the package to completely change the look of the landscape. I could even insert a time parameter into the 'rules' to create landscapes that changed over time."

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• "First Place: Golden Pixie Awards"
  

  
  Animation Magazine, November 1997, page 26
  World Construction Set Version 2 is awarded first place in its category. A WCS picture is featured with the article. The image was created by Gary Huber, president of Questar Productions.
  
  

  Country Lane A Sunday drive through the fields of the Mid-West, the scent of ripening wheat in the air as the warm sun envelopes the land. Copyright 1997 Gary Huber and Questar Productions.

  
  
  In an unfortunate error, the WCS picture is misidentified in the article as having been rendered with a different program. The magazine has apologized for the mistake and will be printing a correction (printed in February 1998, see above). In an interesting comparison, the prereleased next version of World Builder managed a tie with the"old"WCS V2. Where that puts the new, ground breaking World Construction Set Version 3 is left to the capable mind of the reader. Bryce was an also-ran. By Peter Plantek.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "(World Construction Set) is a stand-alone production tool that works effectively with StudioMAX and LightWave among others. It gives you all the tools you need to create believable, hauntingly beautiful worlds with atmospheric effects and full animation. It depends on the user's artistry, but beautiful photorealistic scenes with awesome skies are not difficult. It's comparatively fast, as well, with frames rendering in minutes rather than hours."

  • "Very easy."

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• "Georendering for Forestry Applications"
  

  
  EOM, October 1997, page 22
  Using World Construction Set V2 to communicate sustainability studies for forestry and agriculture, by Laura Lang.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "WCS has sophisticated tools not only to specify height, density and species, but also render the landscapes with volumetric clouds, realistic lighting, water reflections and other effects."

  • "Georendering is an emerging technology for improving relationships between geographic data and lifelike visualization."

  • "Fifteen ArcView files, each representing ecosystem conditions for a decade (a total of 150 years) were imported into WCS to create photorealistic renderings of a watershed."

  • "There is no chart, no graph or no map that conveys how the landscape will look in the future as quickly or effectively as these tools."

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• "World Construction Set V2 Review"
  

  
  Pixel Planet, WWW.PixelPlanet.com, October 1997
  An extensive review of WCS V2

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "The package allows the creation of any type of landscape from the real to surreal, with complete control over every aspect of the look of the land. While the program has a lot of control and tons of features, it is actually pretty easy to learn, with a well thought out interface and excellent documentation"

  • "You can define an area for cloud coverage, and can set the clouds to evolve over time. Unlike many other packages, these are true 3D clouds that can change and evolve during an animation, and can cast corresponding shadows on the landscape. These are among the best-simulated clouds I've ever seen in a software package."

  • "Quite frankly, World Construction Set makes its competitors look like toys. If you want to create animated landscapes for a variety of applications, this is the program you must have."

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• "Xan and the Cosmic Callbox"
  

  
  Computer Graphics World, August 1997, page 17
  A story about a new educational/entertainment title based on the Montessori curriculum, by Donna Coco, Senior Associate Editor.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "The title, aimed at ages 8 to 12, gives children a chance to help solve problems for five cultures, notes Charles Jacobi, art director and lead artist on the title. Each mission takes place in a different environment, including a rainforest, a swamp, the arctic, a prairie, and a desert. To create those environments, Jocobi says they used a combination of World Construction Set (WCS) from Questar Productions (Brighton, CO) and 3D Studio Max from Kinetix (San Francisco)."

  • "'The way it worked was we'd lay out camera views and terrain and render out scenes with World Construction Set, then we'd export them to a Max file. (In Max), we'd take all the buildings and artifacts and place them. Max has a z-buffer filter (a plug-in from Questar Productions), so it can bring in backgrounds as part of files and will render the composites,' says Jacobi."

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• "Realistic Modeler: Photorealistic Terrain Rendering Tool"
  

  
  PC Graphics and Video, June 1997, page 98
  An announcement of V2.2 of World Construction Set and a discussion of new features.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "...an integrated, multichannel, spline-based keyframe animation [system] with more than 100 animatable parameters, field rendering, motion blur, and data import capabilites including direct support for USGS DEM files."

  • "Also included is an extensive and customizable foliage library."

  • "WCS's scene export and Z-Buffer plug-in enables you to integrate your scenes within Lightwave 3D and 3D Studio Max, so that 3D objects go in front of and behind WCS terrain via 3D compositing."

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• "First Looks: World Construction Set V2"
  

  
  Cadalyst Magazine, August 1997, page 59
  A first look at WCS V2.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "To create imaginary photorealistic scenes and worlds from a stream of digital information is inherently fascinating. It is even more fascinating when the images have their roots in reality. World Construction Set is a terrain modeler, a builder of worlds, that accomplishes this feat remarkably well and integrates with both AutoCAD and 3D Studio MAX."

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• "Animating Nature"
  

  
  Computer Graphics World, December 1996
  A discussion of CG tools for creating natural scenes, By Diana Philllips Mahoney

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "On the low end, there are the PC-level, self-contained terrain generators, such as KPT Bryce from MetaTools (Carpinteria, CA) and World Builder from Animatek (San Mateo, CA). Although these packages can create pretty convincing backgdrops, they're limited in that they rely on their own renderers, so there's no easy way to combine elements from other programs."

  • "In addition, because they are not full animation environments, these programs are limited in scope and thus are not useful for extensive production work."

  • "A more capable PC-based stand-alone landscape generator is World Construction Set (WCS) from Questar Productions (Brighton, CO). With this GIS-based terrain program, users can directly export scene files into both 3D Studio MAX and LightWave 3D, including motion paths, lighting, and terrain geometry. All of the landscape elements--the terrain, vegetation, clouds, and water--are rendered by WCS, while all the other 3D objects are rendered in LightWave or Max. Z-buffer compositing enables the Max or LightWave-generated objects to move in front of or behind the WCS landscape."

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• "A World In 7 Minutes"
  

  
  3D Artist, issue # 26, November 1996, page 18
  World Construction Set V2 Review by Pat Lichty

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "WCS V2 integrates impressive terrain data management tools, ecosystem editing features that are capable of incredible realism, and water and atmospheric effects that make this program a serious competitor among landscape generation programs."

  • "WCS landscapes show a variety of ground cover often missed by other programs."

  • "WCS offers some 'icing on the cake' to dress up landscapes. It utilizes wave generators to implement highly realistic 3D clouds that actually roll and churn, and controllable water wave sets complete with breakers. The program also does beautiful water reflections and has a configurable sun and moon, which can add some very nice touches to your scene."

  • "Imagine taking a grayscale image of your company's logo and turning it into a range of towering mountains!"

  • "World Construction Set offers a fine amount of realism and attention to detail. Many of its features, such as flexible ecosystem control, compatibility with may data formats, and integration with other 3D applications, show that Questar has created a competitive product for anyone needing relatively affordable, efficient and realistic landscape animation."

  • "Let there be no misunderstanding that WCS is capable of building very complex environments. In trying these quick steps, however, you can see that WCS, for all its features, allows users to get started on building new worlds in a matter of minutes."

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• "My Private Island"
  

  
  3D Artist, issue # 26, November 1996, page 19
  Tutorial by Christian Gahre in which the author shows how to create a custom island with World Construction Set V2.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "Questar's new World Construction Set V2 allows you to model in a very short time realistic landscapes that once would have been difficult and time consuming."

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• "In The Beginning"
  

  
  Digital Video Magazine, November 1996
  Tutorial by Bijan Tehrani in which the author shows how to combine World Construction Set with LightWave 3D.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "There comes a time in every animator's life when the real world begins to fall short of our needs. Perhaps the mountain range is too low, or the island too big, or perhaps you just can't afford to go to the proper site and film the footage you need. In those cases it is often better to just roll your own."

  • "WCS not only generates landscapes, but it animates them as well. You can use WCS to generate the animation, or to combine with a scene in LightWave 3D or 3D Studio MAX (via a plug-in). By following this tutorial, you will learn how to create and modify land, water, vegetation and atmospheric elements in WCS and then, using their plug-in for LightWave 3D, to combine them with a 3D animation. We will create a flight sequence over water, approach an island (reminiscent of Robinson Caruso's) and then use LightWave to add some grazing cows."

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• "Create Your World"
  

  
  Video Toaster User, August 1996, page 40.
  Review of World Construction Set V2, by Doug Johnson.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "Questar Productions has finally released its eagerly awaited World Construction Set V2. In case you've been under a rock for the last couple of years, you know World Construction Set is one of the most powerful terrain modeling and animation packages available."

  • "...the nearly 700 page manual is full of very clear easy to use information, and good tutorials to get you started."

  • "After working through one or two tutorials, you'll begin to see how cool World Construction Set really is, especially when used in combination with LightWave."

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• "In the News, Siggraph Blowout"
  

  
  3D Design, August 1996, page 14.
  A roundup of exciting new 3D products to be shown at Siggraph, including World Construction Set V2, by Kelly Dove.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "Photorealistic landscape generation will soon be multiplatform, as World Construction Set V2 for Windows NT Alpha, Windows NT 95 Intel, and Amiga computers are announced at the show."

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• "World Construction Set V2"
  

  
  A/V Video Magazine, July 1996, page 37.
  Review of World Construction Set V2, by Matt Drabick.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "World Construction Set from Questar Productions, offers an amazing amount of control over detail when creating still images and animations of realistic landscapes."

  • "Unlike less sophisticated terrain programs, WCS is actually a GIS, or Geographic Information System, using latitude and longitude coordinates for a perfectly spherical planet, user-defined ecosystems, and vectors representing roads, airports, man-made boundaries and the like."

  • "I found WCS fun to work with and surprisingly realistic...After loading an included sample of a typical western United States canyon, I created an exciting fly-through of a steep, water-filled canyon with the camera banking from side to side, mimicking the flight of an airplane. By adjusting the camera's altitude to hug the ground using the time-line window, I put my airplane through several close encounters with disaster before pulling up and flying away."

  • "WCS is perfect for creating realistic stand-alone animations of real-world or imaginary landscapes or for creating scenes that can be combined with objects from other 3D animation software."

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• "Plant A Tree in 3D"
  

  
  3D Design, July 1996, page 30.
  A roundup of programs that render trees, including World Construction Set V2, by R. Shamms Mortier. Includes a combined screen shot and picture.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "...World Construction Set has features no other scenery generator can boast -- volumetric clouds, cloud shadows animated on a landscape, animated waves, sun positions, and more."

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• "The World in a Box"
  

  
  Alpha VisualFX, Summer 1996, Page 11.
  WCS is included in a roundup of exciting new software products with native support for the DEC Alpha, by Dave Madden.
  
  

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• "God's Toolbox"
  

  
  Amiga Computing, Issue 94 (Christmas 1995), page 44.
  Review of World Construction Set V1 for Amiga by Ben Vost. Includes a variety of screen shots and pictures.

  Favorite Quotes:
  

  • "Vista Pro and Scenery Animator seem to have faded somewhat into obscurity, but there's no excuse not to keep up with your terraforming tasks now that World Construction Set is here."

  • "...World Construction Set beats them all hands down for features."

  • "The manual is very well written with a light tone that conceals some of the more complex topics that it covers. You never feel like you are trawling through some turgid textual treatise."

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