Subject: HAM ANIMs
From: Ernie Wright <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 4 Sep 1994 16:07:45 -0700 (MST)

AC ([email-masked]) wrote:
>  There's a lot more "noise" in the anims generated by LW, why is that?

[email-masked] wrote:
>  320x200 does not seem to "happen" even though it's marked.

The basic goal in writing the HAM routines was to provide some kind of
native Amiga output without turning the stand-alone LightWave into an
image processing program.  This is why the HAM output is created from
a fixed palette and a limited number of screen resolutions.

The noise in these images is intentional.  Allen felt that gradients
banded too much, especially in 6-bit, without dithering, and I agree.
The banding is partly a side-effect of using a fixed palette and partly
a problem with 12-bit and 18-bit RGB.

It's true, as others have said, that you'll get the best possible HAM
ANIMs by saving RGBs and then processing them in a program like ADPro
or ImageFX.  This gives you complete control over cropping, scaling,
choice of palette, screen resolution and amount of dithering.  The down
side, of course, is that this is a 2-step process, and you have to be
the proud owner of a good image processing program.

Paul Griswold ([email-masked]) wrote:
>  Has anyone written a script that will take LW 3.5 standalone renders
>  and convert them to DCTV format and then display them?  (does that
>  make sense?)

Makes perfect sense, and I might have attempted DCTV output if I'd had
documentation for dctv.library.  I'm hoping someone will write a DCTV
plug-in for 4.0.  But not me, Paul.  These days I'm too busy tilting at
windmills.

- Ernie