Instant Object Studio

[Sidney Schwartz]

I've never before posted an endorsement for a product, but I think Flight1's Instant Object Studio is a great bit of work. It should be especially appealing to those of you who have wanted to make your own scenery objects but have been too intimidated by Gmax, FSDS and Sketchup. Here are pics of the a building I made in Sketchup a while ago and then duplicated using IOS while beta testing it. IOS is capable of much more than simple buildings, yet is, I think, easier to learn and use than any of the others.

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Check out the product page on Flight1's site, especially the video...

http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=insobjstu

[Sidney Schwartz]

Demo version now available. Works for 30 days.

http://flight1.100megabyte.com/instant_object_studio_demo.exe

[greggerm]

Sidney,

A few months in - what are your impressions of the tool?

I'm considering jumping in to use I.O.S. to help "annotate" some photoscenery I have (*using the tool in the sim will let me "trace" the building outlines I want to design!), but I have some modest concerns about the ease of use.

If I wanted to whip up a very basic, rectangular building with some generic warehouse/office textures, about how long would it take?

A penny for your thoughts?
-Greg

[kjb]

It takes only a few minutes. One thing to keep in mind is that IOS initially lets you draw the rectangle oriented N-S. To get it to match up to a building on an angle, you'll need to rotate it and probably resize it. That isn't hard to do.

IOS also doesn't produce models with LODs (level of detail) so if you're concerned with frame rates declining, you can run them through ModelConverterX and add an empty LOD to get the model to vanish at a distance.

[Madden91]

Good work!
Really like it.
Always find some interesting stuff within this board!))

[Sidney Schwartz]

A few months in - what are your impressions of the tool?

IOS became my primary object design tool. After getting used to it I found myself preferring to use it over Sketchup.

How long it takes to make a simple building depends on how proficient you are. For me, about 5 minutes if I already have the textures I want to use. Sometimes it takes me longer to find textures I like than to make the object. Good textures are key.