Amapi is the quirky little nugget of gold 3D modeler that has been around since hector was a pup and is just now finally coming into its own. Amapi was originally distributed under the TGS banner until recently when it bought out the developer Eovia to create a separate identity for the product. Eovia also owns the old MetaCreations product Cararra, which will be reviewed in this issue of the KotaPress Art Journal as well.

In the past Amapi has had a reputation of being very unstable and while the program still crashes occasionally much effort has been put into making the latest release 6.1 more solid. Wait, but that's not all, the upgrade also includes new Flash, Shockwave 3D Exports and owners of Amapi 6.0 can upgrade for free! While Amapi is primarily a 3D modeler it does offer some basic animation capabilities which should appeal to web designers when you factor in Flash, Shockwave 3D Exports and new the Web 3D and dynamics system called 3Space.

Models can easily be exported into a wide variety of file formats, 25 to be exact and rendered in other applications like Vue d'Esprit, Bryce, 3D Studio Max, LightWave...

Interface
The interface takes a whole lot of getting use to given the number of iconic commands many of which are not very intuitive. In point of fact Amapi really has two interfaces, a "Standard" interface which presents all of the modeling features in a single palette and the "Workshop" interface which doles out tools as you need them.

The interface is divided into 1) The assistant palette 2) Standard interface option displays all modeling and editing options 3) Workshop Interface displays options in palettes that change as the user move the cursor pointer outside the viewer window 4) Modeling table can be used to help visualize perspective 5) Control panel used to orient views, show/hide objects, link/unlink objects... .

Once you get a handle on where everything is and what everything does, the interface really begins to fit like pair of old shoes.

Modeling
While the interface is at first a bit cumbersome to use, the modeling process is really quite simple. Basically you use two tools to create primitives and curves, after which every other tool modifies the object you created. When using the "Workshop" interface, Amapi divides its tools into a number of palettes which are called Construction, Modeling, and Assembly.

Construction Palette The Construction palette features tools that draw and manipulate shapes. Shape creation is handled by the 3D primitives tool which offers a good variety of basic shapes like sphere, cone, cube, cylinder, grid which creates a flat mesh, platonic solids, and height fields which convert 2D gray scale images into 3D objects. Primitives shapes can be created as polygon or NURBS objects and can be manipulated a good deal during the creation process. In addition to primitives Amapi features a drawing tool that produces a wide variety of polygon or NURBS curves like circle, rectangle, curve, helicoid, etc.... The curve tool generates a curve controlled by points in a manner reminiscent of bezier curves. In fact if you dig deep enough into Amapi, you'll find an option to create real bezier curves. The final curve creation tool is the text editor which converts TrueType text, entered by way of a text box, into Polygon of NURBS curves.

All the remaining tools in the construction palette are used to manipulate created curves, and it is here where Amapi really shows its stuff.

Extrusions and sweeps can be accomplished on a facet, edge, or vertex of a shape which provides tremendous versatility in curve manipulation, not to mention a few unexpected surprises from time to time. Double Sweeping generates a surface from a section and two profiles which is great for making horns and other pointy things. Rules Surface, akin to loft in other 3D applications, basically creates a surface between curves. Surfaces are very cool and very powerful as you can create a surface, or skin, over a variety of curves.

OK, now the downside. Do not expect any of this to work the way you expect it to work. For example, you might expect a sweep to work by drawing a single curve and sweeping it 360 degrees, right? Wrong, first you must create a section, in other words a circle, and then ever so carefully attach a perpendicular profile curve and if all goes well you'll be rewarded with the shape you wanted. If the profile is not in exactly the right spot you get zip, or worse like the dreaded internal error alert followed by an application crash. You'll get use to saving your work often when modeling with Amapi.

Modeling Palette Switching from the one palette to the next palette is accomplished by simple moving the cursor outside the right side of the scene and then back inside the scene. You'd be surprised how much fun it is to quickly move between palettes this way. Yes, I know I don't get out enough. The modeling palette offers tools to fine tune the rough shapes created in the Construction palette. Deformer tools can twist, bend, taper, and spherize shapes. Other tools can stretch, bevel, smooth, and delete facets, edges, points, or entire objects. The thickness tool adds thickness to the inside or outside of an object; very cool. The cut tool does more than just boolean stuff. It also can extract a portion of the current object to making a new object in the process. Tessellate subdivides a facet into four facets, and when combined with the smooth tool, offers some of the rudimentary functionality found in subdivision modelers.

Is your surface too smooth? Forget about bump maps just try the Surface Relief tool which can either bump a surface or soften it. I had mentioned earlier that Amapi can convert 2D gray scale images into 3D mesh, now with the wrap tool you can wrap the mesh around just about any object. In fact you can wrap an object, like text, around another object, like a sphere.

Output
If modeling is Amapi's strength then traditional 3D rendering and animation is Amapi's weakness. That said, Eovia has made a concerted effort to extend Amapi's output options beyond "traditional rendering" and into the World Wide Web. With the introduction of Amapi 6 came a web-based 3D dynamic presentation system called 3Space. Models exported to 3Space are converted to the ZAP file format for streaming dynamic 3D images to browsers. However, 3Space is a browser plug-in which is not widely distributed at present. In my estimation the real news is the introduction of Flash and Shockwave 3D output in Amapi 6.1, which is a free upgrade to Amapi 6 users. Eovia has also released a free plug-in for 3D Studio Max 4 which seamlessly transfers Amapi models from within Max. The Amapi materials editor has also been improved with a newer, kinder interface.

Summation
OK, it's got a quaky interface, it's modeling tools a somewhat unconventional, it crashes more than most, and it's documentation isn't that great. All that aside Amapi is an application capable of producing world class models at a fraction of the cost of it's nearest competitor. If you are in the market for a modeler then I strongly suggest you download the Amapi demo and give it a spin.

Product	Amapi 6.1w
Cost	US $ 399
Developer	Eovia
URL	http://www.eovia.com/
System Requirements	Windows:	Pentium II 300Mhz or better, Windows 98/2000/NT 4.0 (with SP3 or later), 64 MB of Physical RAM, 24-bit Color Display, 3D graphics accelerator card recommended, CD-ROM Drive, 100 MB free hard drive space.
	Mac	Power Macintosh G3 266 Mhz or better, System 8.1 or later, 64 MB of application RAM, 24-bit Color Display, 3D graphics accelerator card recommended, CD-ROM Drive, 100 MB free hard drive space.