Subject: WOA-Toronto
From: Stephen Bowie <[email-masked]>
To: Multiple recipients of list <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 1995 07:55:51 -0500

WOA Toronto Report - Day 2 

Where to begin....  OK, let's begin with corrections :( 

re: the HD 'update' memo of yesterday, the drives in question are 
specifically the  Seagate 4 and 9 gig drives, NOT the 2.1 gig. 
If you have either of the others, call to check whether your revision
requires the 'modification'.  

I have had a number of interesting conversations today, but let's give 
precedence to LW for Amiga: The following includes some healthy dollops 
of my personal reading of what was said, along with some unattributable 
remarks. 

Don't expect to see 4.0 SA under your Xmas tree (maybe Feb.96?) Other 
projects, like Toaster and Flyer software are apparently taking 
precedence, although it is close to if not actually completed.  Expect 
continued Amiga development from NewTek.  AT has been visiting NT nearly 
weekly, often in the person of Petro Tyshenko...the marked difference in 
attitude from C= days has been noted at NewTek and they are even now 
continuing to hire Amiga people! There are veiled hints of amazing new 
'black projects'using Amiga technology over time.  

Ports to the upcoming Power Amiga are definitely in the realm of 
possibility, and, given time it does not seem ludicrous to hope for the 
re-compiling necessary to take advantage of some of the third
party speedups in the pipe (such as the 060's, Draco Alpha option, and the
Phase 5 RISC solutions).  

Speaking of Phase 5, they are represented by their General Mgr., Wolf 
Deitrich...I had a nice long talk with him, and am convinced Amiga users 
will be greatly encouraged by some of the things they are 
doing...basically Power PC boards for all 32 bit amigas, incl
1200's!  Look for a low end 603e at 120mhz at roughly US$800.00 with 64
bit memory option; 604/150's for 3000's and 4000's at about $1500. with an
optional SCSI add-on.  They think that a ShapeShifter Mac emulation would
make a nice additon to their PPC systems.  

These guys are in a real rush, feeling that slowness is not an option if 
the "Back for the Future" Amiga is really going to materialize....thus 
they are themselves porting the AmigaDOS exec kernal to native RISC, with 
the rest of the necessities being in emulation mode for the time being 
while AmigaDos makes the full transition under AT's timeline.  BTW, some 
of you will be delighted to know that Phase 5 have just taken delivery of 
1,000 060/50's ,and have Motorola's assurance that from Jan/96 future 
delivery schedules will be met!  

Eric Kloor of Draco (US) told me about their plans: the MovieShop
Pro concept has been dropped in favor of taking the already developed
'pro' features and adding them to the plain vanilla MS in a future
upgrade.  This will give EDL, SMPTE and VITC support to a post 3.0
upgrade, although it may require some hdwe. additions to bring all of this
to those who want it.  The DEC Alpha option for the Draco will be extended
to a Z3 slot board for all the 32 bit machines....it will use a
21064(?)-233 Motorola chip, and there will likely be a 166mhz option as
well.  The main purpose of this board is to do MS effects in virtually
real time, but there is a strong possibility of significant other software
being compiled to take advantage of it's speed as well. This Z3 board is
tentatively called the "Palladin". Another interesting project in the pipe
is the Viking, for VIdeoKING (cute, eh?)- this is targetted at the high
end-consumer, low end prosumer editing field, and is basically a Draco in
a small box, using an icon-driven gui to access a sort of MovieShop Lite.
They are demo'ing the next version of MS(3.0) which adds the following to
2.6 - thumbnails on the timeline option, support for up to 4.0 gig
partitions, a new preview window for effects, and 40-50% faster effect
rendering due to new optimization.  

Also here, as previously mentioned, is CineReal,an Ottawa company 
distributing the Broadcaster Elite. While I have not had a chance yet to 
get a good look a this system, some may be interested in their 
announcement of Soundstage Pro, a Z3 DSP sound board intended to provide 
up to 16 sync'ed audio tracks to their system....it appears to be a 
serious piece of work, incl. both RCA and (finally) balanced XLR 
connectors!  The DSP power across the 32 bit bus can also apparently be 
harnessed to speed up rendered effects and transitions.  It is said to 
reduce a 3 second transition that would take 2 minutes on a stock 4000 to 
a mere 12 seconds!  

Finally, for this post, a few words about some new competition in the 3D 
market:  

We have been treated to the English speaking world's introduction to 
Maxxon's Cinema4D.  This package has been around a while in Europe, and 
the version we were shown is farfrom an introductory one! There are some 
significant LW necessities left out of this version (bearing in mind that 
the fellow doing the demo has only had the program for three days and is 
still 'exploring') such as DOF, field rendering, motion blur, and 
importing of image sequences. However, what is present is VERY nicely 
done!  

In some respects C4D is even 'friendlier' than LW.  The interface allows 
for a Caligari like one world perspective view, or a traditional 
quad-split screen.  The same screen combines both 'layout' and 'modeler' 
functions, making subtle changes a breeze.  Point editing is a snap, just 
click and drag.  It runs amazingly well on a 1200/030, and requires a min 
of 3 megs RAM....minimum system is a 68000 with lots of patience! The gui 
is more 'amiga-tized' than LW, with a nice tool bar, and standard 
pull-down-menus.  Movement and navigation is very quick and intuitive. A 
lengthy list of primitives is complemented by a 'material manager' with a 
huge number of preset textures, ranging from 'brick' to 'moon' to 'starry 
sky'.  Render modes include wire- frame, scan-line, and raytrace.  

I really couldn't beleive how guick C4D was at tracing reflections even 
on the 1200. Yesterday I mentioned a 'skeleton' object built in....this 
turned out to be more of a 'marionette', but provided a convincing 
demonstration of the easy IK functionality. Surfaces are easily assigned 
to the ground and sky planes, as opposed to the backdrop colour mode 
familiar in LW.  A time line window serves the function of the LW motion 
editor, and provides pretty much the same purposes while seeming perhaps 
a bit simpler to grasp. 'Effects' may be added to the object from the 
timeline, such as explode, melt, etc. with the click of a mouse....the 
melt looked pretty darn good too!  Something called 'Magic Link' provides 
access to other object formats, incl. Imagine, DXF, LW, and others.  
Graphics card support is there as well.

Particularly impressive was the interactive placement and adjustment of
textures placed on the object....once placed in planar, spherical, or
cylindrical fashion, the texture shape appears in a ghosted,
point-delineated fashion.  Drag a point, or the whole surface to shift,
scale, perspective rotate or otherwise modify it's placement or
orientation.  This is a real improvement over anything I've seen, and is
tremendously flexible....the glitch is that the demonstrator couldn't seem
to figure out how to avoid revealing the white default surface underneath
when manipulating an overlying texture...but presuming it is possible to
use this ability to precisely place hmmm...say, a decal, or to adjust a
texture's shape to that of flowing lava, over a second texture...voila!! 
It seems likely to me that this is possible, as without it this function
has no real use...I am however wrong occasionally.  Regardless, at a show
price of CAN$390.00, this program is astonishingly good, maybe good enough
to buy anyways as a complement to LW.  

That's enough for now.  The mood here is VERY positive, very forward 
looking and aggressive....quite a change from the WOCA of two years ago.  

Maybe the Amiga really is BACK FOR THE FUTURE!!  

Regards, Steve

[email-masked]