Ultra Cool SolidWorks Animation

A couple of weeks ago I was browsing around YouTube for some SolidWorks videos and stumbled on this old but awesome SolidWorks animation done by Mark Biasotti. Mark is known as the surfacing guru at SolidWorks Corporation (so I have been told) and after seeing this video again I know why. This video peaked my interest and I wanted to find out some more of the back ground information about it so I contacted Mark and here is what he sent back to me, word for word. Enjoy!

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The “Kill another CAD Process” Video was first presented at SolidWorks World 2003 in Orlando, Florida. I created it in the fall of 2002 while I was still a SW customer and working at IDEO. I built the Aston Martin Vanquish V12 on SW 2003 beta and it took me almost 3 months to complete the car itself. It is by far the most difficult model that I have ever built. I remember a meeting with Mike Payne a couple of years earlier when I was lobbying SW hard to get more surfacing capabilities into their product, where he espoused “Mark – we (SW) don’t do planes, trains, or automobiles!” Little did he know what I (and not many others) have attempted to do.

When I was creating the Vanquish, I remember that there was a fatal bug in the beta version that if not overcomed, the film would have never happened. In December the car model was almost finished but the file had become corrupt to the point that just passing my cursor over one of the features in the FeatureManager crashed SW. I sent the model to Jim Wilkinson (then in Tech Support) and in a few days, got back my Christmas Gift on Christmas Eve 2002; a fixed, and rebuilt version of the file. From this point on I could go forward and complete the film for SWW. I brought the 8 minute film to SolidWorks World on DVD without SolidWorks’ knowledge. On Monday afternoon, I showed the film to Jim, Scott Harris, and a few others and they in turn showed it to Johnny Mac (John McEleney) and Vic Leventhal  and by that afternoon, decided to show it the next morning in the general session. It goes without saying that the showing of it was an extremely gratifying moment for me.

The film shown at WORLD, is not the film that is distributed today. The original version of it has only been shown once (at SWW2003) and since then I edited it to eliminate the names of the antagonists in the film, which were AutoDesk, EDS (now Siemens-UG) and PTC to be more innocuous names. These three antagonists were represented by the Bell helicopter gunship, the FA118A Stealth fighter and the Hummer respectively. The film, of course, is a parody on the James Bond film that came out in late 2002 call “Die Another Day” and which features the real Aston Martin. Another hurdle to showing the film was to make sure that I was not violating any copyright laws with Aston Martin. I did contact their head of Engineering, but that really did not go anywhere so I worked out a disclaimer with our IDEO lawyer that is stated at the beginning of the film.

In addition to the Protagonist star of the film, the Vanquish, which was modeled in SolidWorks 2003, the rest of the film was made possible using LightWave3d, and final composite is in Adobe After Effects. You might not know it but the creators of our newest rendering product PhotoView 360 was created by the principle founders and architects of Lightwave3D, Luxology in San Mateo, California. I learned to use Lightwave3d at IDEO to step up the rendering and animation capabilities of the company and what we wanted to present our clients. When a small group of us here at SW were looking into new rendering technologies last year, Luxology was on the short list we wanted to pursue and Joe Dunne was responsible in establishing a relationship with them; of course, with my full blessing and enthusiasm. I think it was a good choice and I look forward to seeing what my next film could be given the partnership we now have with them.

The next “production” that I did, along these lines, was for SolidWorks World 2007 in New Orleans call “Better Products for the Future” in which, again, I used the combination of SolidWorks, Lightwave3D and After Effect to create. You can download it here: http://files.solidworks.com/special-videos/better-products-for-the-future.wmv

For a few years now, I have had an idea for another film that I want to do along the lines and would be way over the top, but demands of SolidWorks (and our customers) have precluded me from doing it. Perhaps I’ll have to take a sabbatical in 2009 and present it at SolidWorks WORLD 2010.

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On top of all of this great information Mark gave me some additional links to check out so I am passing them on to you. Check these out:

• You can view the hi-res version of the film here: http://files.solidworks.com/special-videos/kacp.wmv
• You can also get the poster (suitable for printing) here: http://files.solidworks.com/special-videos/KAC-for-print.zip
• Or the wallpaper for your windows desktop: http://files.solidworks.com/special-videos/KAC wallpaper.zip

Be sure you check this stuff out and if you hear anything about Mark taking a sabbatical during 2009 I would make sure you sign up immediately for SolidWorks WORLD 2010.