3DA#30 Editorial Space

Growth & Changes

By Bill Allen, Editor/Publisher <ballen@3dartist.com>

3D Artist went to press this issue in mid-move to larger quarters here in Santa Fe, with new phone and fax numbers. And the press, for the first time, is Ovid Bell in Fulton, Mo. (PennWell Printing Co. in Tulsa, Okla., which had done such a great job for us since 1994, was recently purchased and its presses shut down.)
___ There was a time when the only place to find desktop 3D news gathering was in our pages, back when 3D Artist was the first to report stories such as Microsoft's earliest moves to incorporate 3D into operating systems, and the arrival of 3D hardware acceleration (Siggraph issues for 1993 and 1994).
___ Today you can find 3D-related news published in a multitude of places. And there is so much news now that we could fill every issue with it. But then we'd have no room for how-to's.
___ What 3D Artist does best is publish peer-to-peer how-to articles, so we have stopped most "run of the mill" news coverage to instead concentrate energy and space on advanced how-to articles to serve the growing sophistication of readers and the software you use. (We'll continue to publish some entry-level articles, such as Rick Greco's "Meshing Around" on page 14.)
___ Reviews and first looks are part of news coverage, but we are working to give such reporting more of a how-to component. With the ClothReyes report on page 6, for instance, Mike Beals takes what might have been a thumbs-down on under-documented, difficult software, and comes up roses by explaining how to make it work. Another tact is contextual reviews, such as Paul Kakert's "A Forensic Animator's Toolbox" in 3DA#28. How (and how well) does a product fit into an existing suite of tools?
___ The Tessellation Times will continue as an occasional E-mail letter to subscribers about subjects such as calls for tips/articles.
___ Because 3D Artist's advertisers are among the most important 3D news makers, and we want to help them get their news out, we have implemented the very active 3D News Direct! page at www.3dartist.com/ads/getnews.htm. You can jump from there to full news releases, uncut and unfiltered.
[Looking back at this from the year 2000, Tess did fade away, and the announced 3D News Direct! feature did not win support and was discontinued. 3D Artist instead grew away from news and reviews to concentrate 100% on what it always did best: 3D how-to articles.--Bill Allen]

This issue, we run our long-planned Escheresque gallery. And sufficient images and articles have come in for another one.
___ We are challenging cover artists to go beyond displays of prowess at photorealism to create works just for 3D Artist that say something about the art of 3D graphics. Michael Koch this issue is the first to answer that challenge. He also exemplifies 3D Artist's international readership. This issue we have contributions from Germany and Italy, and from U.S. contributors who hail originally from France and South Korea.

Revised: 14 Sep 00
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