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News
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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For more info contact:
Cliff Baltzley
Phone: 505-345-4800
info@stone.com
	
	S T O N E   D E S I G N   S H I P S   R E A L I T Y
	
           3D Reality - the easy 3D Modeler for NeXTSTEP


ALBUQUERQUE, NM, Halloween, Oct. 31, 1992 - Stone Design shipped
3D Reality(TM) today, a 3D modeling and picture-creating program for
NeXTSTEP computers that sets a new standard for ease of use and
flexibility.  Just as Stone Design's revolutionary graphics package
Create provided a user interface that makes all the power of
PostScript accessible to mere mortals, so 3D Reality allows users to
take advantage of the myriad of features provided by the 3DKit in
NeXTSTEP 3.0 as well as the underlying RenderMan architecture.

"Reality revolutionizes the way 3D graphics are made," said Andrew
Stone, CEO of Stone Design. "Our goal was to create an environment
that allowed first-time users to make fantastic  graphics by just
dragging and dropping icons, but to also provide experts with the
entire power of Interactive and PhotoRealistic RenderMan. It is 
totally extensible and comes with an Application Programmer's Interface,
as well as 18 shaders with source code and 2 powerful VALIS shaders."

"To really bring this power to the end user, we are introducing this
product for only <under one hundred dollars> until the end of 1992. 
Moreover, the software is available on the archives as a totally
electronic distribution, in order to conserve precious natural resources.
Its context sensitive and hyperlinked on-line help put support at your
fingertips", Stone said.

Based on a RenderMan standard, NeXT's 3DKit allows developers to both add
three-dimensional graphics to existing NeXTSTEP applications and build 3D
applications from scratch. "3D Reality is a beautiful example of an
application that utilizes the 3DKit, one of the four new object kits in
NeXTSTEP Release 3.0," said David Springer, Project Manager of 3D Software
at NeXT Computer.  "With 3D Reality, Stone Design takes full advantage of
3DKit's object and rendering framework to create a very sophisticated 3D
package from the ground up in record time."

With an easy-to-understand and powerful drag-and-drop user
environment, 3D Reality will make the joys of 3D modeling and
rendering available to a wide variety of users for creation of
everything from logos, ads, headlines and flashy graphics to entire
scenes.

3D Reality offers:

o Basic features:
 - lathe for turning objects
 - extrusion of 2D objects into 3D objects
 - direct inspection of shape hierarchy
 - full drag-and-drop interface for shaders,textures,shapes,RIB code
 - multiple perspective or orthographic views of 3D world
 - grouping/ungrouping of objects
 - scaling of individual objects and entire scene.
 - fully extensible API provided (see below)
 
o Text rendering
   3D Reality supports full 3D extruded text with special text
effects such as letter bloating, movement of individual letters,
shaders, textures and so on. It can also turn any PostScript font
into a 3D font.

o  Drag and drop of RIB-format or Native Clip 3D artwork
   Users can drag and drop RIB code from any external source. 3D
Reality adds the RIB (whether it is a single object or a whole scene)
code as if it were an object in the hierarchy.
       
o Composite Solid Geometry
   Combine primitives, use one to "cut away" part of another, or take
the intersection of the two.  Composite groups can be used within
another composite group; one shape can modify another for effects
such as drilling and cut-outs.
       
o Powerful texture and shader environment
   Create RenderMan textures from any EPS or TIFF source. Textures
are automatically installed in the texture library and can be applied
to any object by dragging and dropping. Users can apply any of six
different kinds of shaders to an object (Surface, Light,
Displacement, Image, Volume and a surprise shader), save favorite
shader parameters into a shader library, and drag and drop saved
shaders from the library onto shapes in the image.  3D Reality also
supports creation of custom shaders and textures, bump-mapping and
texture wrap around any object.

o Powerful control and constraints environment
    Constrain motion (scaling, rotation or translation) to any axis
or combination of axes, or to a 3D grid. Users can also constrain to
any coordinate system that exists within the scene.
               
o Previewing
    Stone Design's unique InstyRender(TM) allows users to easily
render all or part of a scene in varying levels of accuracy,
providing an extremely fast method of previewing an image.
       
o Network rendering
    Selection rendering can be done either on the local machine or
within the network pool. An Image Manager allows users to view all
currently active and finished jobs as well as non-image-oriented
jobs.

o Interapplication Communication
     Services provided by 3D Reality include the ability to send
32-bit color images to applications such as Create, Mail and Edit, or
accept any EPS or TIFF file for wrapping as a texture.
                       
o Totally Extensible
     For the serious RenderMan user, 3D Reality provides an
extensible, customizable RIB management and development environment.
Users can develop shaders and textures quickly for use in complex
scenes. The Reality Application Programmer's Interface, RAPI, 
provides third party developers the opportunity to create their own
shapes. For example, a stock broker might want to render some data on
a stock's performance over time. You can create your shapes and 
inspectors, as well as create your own tool bundles. 3D Reality
supports dynamic loading of objects. It's easy to customize and
augment 3D Reality's functionality through direct access to
underlying RenderMan functionality. Included with the package are
several 3D geometry projects with full source code, to demonstrate 
how easy it is to make custom shapes.

3D Reality has a suggested retail price of <under five hundred
dollars> and will be available directly from Stone Design or your
local NeXT dealer in the fourth quarter of 1992. However, in the
holiday spirit, Stone Design will offer the program for a special
introductory price of <under one hundred dollars> until Dec 31, 1992.

Stone Design Corporation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, founded in 1984,
develops a variety of business and design productivity applications
for NeXTSTEP computers. (505) 345-4800. info@stone.com

# # #

3D Reality, InstyRender and Create are trademarks of Stone Design
Corporation. NeXT is a trademark of NeXT Computer, Inc. All other
brand names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of
their respective owners.

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!!      Andrew Stone            !!        (505) 345-4800        !!
!!    andrew@stone.com          <>       Stone Design Corp      !!
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