IN THE BEGINNING
Genesis is a much talked about new product that began as a plug-in for Photoshop and then entered into the realm of plugins for 3D packages. It is currently available as a plug-in for 3D Studio Max (Kinetix) and Lightwave 3D (Newtek). I used the Lightwave version for this review but the main features are similar in all versions.

WHAT IS GENESIS ABOUT?
Genesis is the most sophisticated lens flare generator currently available to the digital artist. It takes this type of special effect a step further than any previous plug-in has been able to. You can easily create the standard type of simulated camera lens flares but Genesis also allows you create very advanced plasma effects. It is the perfect tool for those special effects like extra turbulent jumpgates, magical sparkles, novas, nebulas, and explosions.

SO, HOW DOES IT WORK?

Figure 1. -- Click for a larger version.

Basically you can divide working with Genesis into two stages building an effect and applying it. In the first stage, you build up the desired effect by adding elements to it. These elements can be a single flare / glow style effect or a combination of multiple layers, which add and subtract the available glows and tones to form a complex effect. Each layer can interact with the others in several different ways, you can work with RGB channels individually and noise can be added to give it the effects of plasma or lightning arcs. Two types of noise may be applied, standard Perlin noise and Turbulence noise.

When you have created the type of effect you want to use, you can apply this effect alone or the effect can interact with another programs particle system (such as Particle Storm for Lightwave). You can also use Genesis VFX as a particle shader allowing each particle in a system to become a Genesis effect. Effects can then animate over time, or particle age. In Genesis for LightWave 3D you can also completely randomize your effect controlling noise animation over effect colors, size, rotation, intensity and alpha channel.

Figure 2. -- Click for a larger version.

THE INTERFACE
At first glance the interface is quite intimidating but once you work with it a bit you get a feel for it and it becomes quite intuitive. Response on the interface is very fast, but on slower machines, you can turn off the real time previews. As a plug-in developer myself I must say that Genesis has probably one of the best plug-in interfaces I've seen in a long time. It's very professionally designed and works very reliably.

ISN'T THERE ANYTHING BAD TO SAY?
Well, no. It's a very robust plug-in which works fast and does the job it's supposed to. Bezier controlled falloffs would be a nice addition but you can't expect everything. In short, if you need to do a really impressive looking explosion, bursting with plasma beams, pulsating and radiating rays of lethal looking arcs of lightning, this is the plug-in for you.

Click here to download a short Quicktime demonstrating Genesis VFX.


Henrik Bengtsson is a freelance digital artists and plug-in developer living and working in Sweden. He can be contacted by email at henrik@gfxprod.com and has a homepage at www.gfxprod.com.

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