==================================================== T H E T E S S E L L A T I O N T I M E S #528 Issue #28 of 1995, for Tuesday, September 5th ==================================================== *The Tessellation Times* (*Tess*) is Columbine, Inc.'s weekly electronic publication usually (but not always) posted overnight Monday as a supplement to *3D Artist* magazine. The full Web version of this issue starts at: http://www.3dartist.com/tess/95/txt/28front.htm E-mail recipient count for this issue: 1,493 Also read in forums, on BBSs, and on Web sites worldwide. ________ CONTENTS 528.00 - Heads Up! 528.00.01 - The Fortnight in 3D 528.00.02 - Shows & Exhibitions 528.01 - VRML Architecture Group Formed - by Rob Glidden 528.02 - Macromedia Acquires Fauve 528.03 - Siggraph '95 Almost Concluded 528.03.01 - Ray Dream Studio 528.03.02 - Lenticular Printer 528.03.03 - 3DS Max Revisited 528.03.04 - Meanderings 528.04 - Readings 528.04.01 - Lotsa New Books 528.04.02 - Infoglutton Quickies 528.04.03 - Game Reading 528.05 - News Wrap 528.06 - Opinions Rendered 528.07 - Follow-Ups Departments Masthead - see "Details" below Calendar - events, galleries, classes & artists call grab ftp.3dartist.com/3dartist/calendar.txt Special Offers - grab ftp.3dartist.com/3dartist/offers.txt Contacts - see end of file _______ DETAILS This file may be passed among individuals and reposted in any online forum _as_long_as_ the file is not modified in any way. Post as TESS528.TXT (TES528.TXT where only six characters are allowed), or compressed with the appropriate DOS-style extension (ZIP, etc.). Reposting to *mailing lists* is _not_ recommended. TESS's master files are maintained with corrections on our Internet sites ftp.3dartist.com and www.3dartist.com, and are the only TESS files for which we can vouch file integrity. Opinions herein are not necessarily those of independent sites or forums carrying this file or pointers to our HTML editions. This file's contents are copyrighted and may not be reproduced in or with any other print or digital publication without permission. Converting to HTML is only approved for straight text without additional markup. Any trademarked names mentioned in this file are the property of their respective owners. Columbine, Inc. and its publications are totally independent. No companies or products are endorsed. Published by and (c)Copyright 1995, all rights reserved: Columbine, Inc. P.O. Box 4787, Santa Fe, NM 87502 USA 505/982-3532 (voice); 505/820-6929 (fax) 505/820-6929x3 voice mail E-mail: tess@3dartist.com _____ Staff Alex Kiriako, Editor, *Tess* Rob Glidden, Technical Editor Sally Beach, Vice Pres., Columbine, Inc. Bill Allen, Publisher & Pres., Columbine, Inc. --------- 528.00 - Heads Up! Well, it has been interesting and fun. And it has been a *lot* more work than I anticipated when we set out to produce a few *Tess* issues in a fashion more geared toward Web publishing. We've had some nice comments, thanks, but, starting next issue, we'll go back to what we did for the first two dozen weeks: produce a straight text *Tess*, then convert that to simple HTML. The idea of *Tess* is to get news to our readers fast while giving us more room and time to concentrate on how-to articles for *3D Artist* magazine. That's also the idea of moving our review process to the Web, but the *Tess* experiment convinces me that we need to revise what we had been doing (and almost started posting) so that *3DA Online Reports* will be simpler to prepare and maintain. It's easy to see how we could bring you a ton of stuff we already have inhouse or could assemble in short order if there was nothing else to do. But seeing isn't doing, and what we want to do will require a ton of time that we'll have to deliver in ounces and pounds here and there. I'm happy to say that one project is coming to fruition. *The Santa Fe Web Walk of Artists' Gallery Pages* is very near inauguration. This is a selected and annotated list of galleries. Watch for the button "Santa Fe Walk: Artists' Home Pages" to go active on our home page. --Bill Allen, Publisher 528.00.01 - The Fortnight in 3D Sept 11-13, Bellevue, Wash.: Asymetrix Developers Conference. 800/448-6543; 206/637-1504 fax. Sept. 12-14, San Francisco, Calif.: 8th Multimedia Expo West, Moscone Ctr. 212/226-4141, -4983 fax. Sept. 17-24, Montreal, Que., Canada: Int'l. Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA '95). 514/990-0229, 842-7459 fax; . Sept. 18, 7pm, Tampa Bay, Fla.: meeting of the 3D Artists and Animators of Tampa Bay at their new meeting site, the Irwin Technical Center. Contact Jeff Reisner at or 813/595-7263. Sept. 18-19, Bryn Mawr, Penn.: Autodesk Mid-Atlantic Expo, Gregg Conference Center at the American College, 270 S. Bryn Mawr Ave. A big AutoCAD show held by local dealer Synergis Technologies, 215/529-9900 x114, 536-9249 fax. Sept. 19-21, New York, N.Y.: Video Expo Image World, Jacob K. Javits Convention Ctr. 800/800-5474; 914/328-9157, -2020 fax. 528.00.02 - Shows & Exhibitions Nov. 7-11, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Doors of Perception 3: Info-Eco is asking the question, "How we can use current information technologies to slow down the wasteful consumption of matter and energy?" It features active workshops geared toward developing scenarios that will be reported back to attendees. Seminars and workshops include intriguing titles like Hi-Touch Telematics, Electronic Songlines, Virtual versus Real Communities, and Health and Inefficiency. Held by Netherlands Design Institute, Keizersgracht 609, NL-1017 DS Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 31/(0)20-55-16-506, -62-01-031 fax; . Feb. 21-23, Montecarlo, Monaco: Imagina is a conference for computer graphics professionals featuring workshops, panels, and debates on topics like virtual worlds, Internet, special effects, and industrial and business interests. It also features an international competition called the Prix Pixel-INA. INA-Imagina, 4 ave. de l'Europe, F-94366 Bry-sur-Marne cedex, France; 33/1-49-83-26-93, -31-85 fax; . 528.01 - VRML Architecture Group Formed By Rob Glidden A semi-official process for managing the VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) standard seems to be in sight. Last week, Mark Pesce, one of the original authors of the VRML, announced the existence of the VRML Architecture Group (VAG), an ongoing group that "is drafting a series of clarifications and specifications designed to meet the needs of VRML's users." The VAG is apparently a more formal continuation of an informal group of VRML leaders [*Tess*#523.01] who met August 21-23 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.. Of particular note is an apparent acknowledgment by Silicon Graphics of the legitimacy of the VAG. (SGI's Open Inventor 3D file format is the basis for the VRML 1.0 specification.) VAG member and SGI employee Rikk Carey (Director of Engineering for the Digital Media Systems division), is quoted in the announcement as stating that, "The VRML Architecture Group's mission is to establish VRML as the world's most reliable, useful, and widely used open specification for interactive 3D on the Internet and the World Wide Web, and to chart a course for the future versions of VRML." Furthermore, according to Carey, "The group established seven criteria against which all proposals [for extensions and clarifications to VRML] could be graded: enhancing user experience; performance improvements; scalability; simplicity; editability; diversity of applications; and extensibility." The announcement, however, did not specify the formal or organizational structure of the VAG. Apparently, the group intends to continue at least some of the Internet community spirit that has fueled interest in VRML. According to Pesce, "We started with a list of requests drawn up by the users of VRML, and we'll come back to them with solutions. At that point, the entire VRML community will work together to develop consensus on these proposals." The VAG promises that its proposals for VRML will be made public on September 15th. In the meantime, notes of the Half Moon Bay meeting are available at http://vrml.wired.com/VAG. The members of the VAG (and attendees at the Half Moon Bay meeting) are: Gavin Bell, Silicon Graphics; Brian Blau, Autodesk; Rikk Carey, Silicon Graphics; Jan Hardenbergh, Oki Advanced Products; Jon Marbry, Microsoft; Dr. William Martens, PhD, Headspace; Tom Meyer, Brown University; Mitra, Worlds, Inc.; Tony Parisi, Intervista Software; and Mark Pesce, co-inventor of VRML. 528.02 - Macromedia Acquires Fauve Macromedia announced 30 Aug. that, in a stock swap valued around $14 million, it has acquired Fauve Software, Inc. with its paint and image editing products Fauve Matisse and xRes, along with participation by Fauve's founding Krueger brothers Fred and Richard at Macromedia's vice-presidential level. It was stated specifically in the announcement and supplementary information that no new versions of the software are being announced presently, but that Macromedia will assume user support and continue the upgrade path. Also it states that "the xRes technology will be aggressively developed." Matisse competes with Fractal Design Painter, which Macromedia currently includes in its $995 Graphic Design Studio bundle. The annnouncement hedges about including or substituting Matisse, but describes the GDS bundle and lists its other constituent programs without mentioning Painter.--B.A. 528.03 - Siggraph '95 Almost Concluded By Bill Allen, except as noted Yep, *almost* concluded. For readers on the Web we still have a little photo gallery yet to run. And there's more to tell you about VRML contacts and doings--an ongoing story still in its infancy. (Visiting personal gallery pages, one can see that the VRML bug is catching on with artists whose sophistication far outstrips what one can do yet in this new *medium*. This is in contrast to the yawning reaction to VRML we thought we were sensing among desktop artists, and it should help give a big push that VRML needs to get real.) 528.03.01 - Ray Dream Studio The news comes like a jagged lightning bolt. Ray Dream, which has been around for so long as a 3D still image program for Mac, and more recently for Windows, is going to get _animation_! Ray Dream Studio will list at $499 (upgrade $149), and the company says outright that it expects a street price under $300. So RD Studio will push the trend that's removing price as a barrier to anyone serious about getting into 3D animation (assuming the hardware is available). Another barrier, however, is difficulty in learning 3D tools and how to get started. Ray Dream has set out to meet that challenge in the RD Designer 4 module with modeling and scene wizards, and by providing 500 render-ready models and 500 editable texture/shader combinations (including a glow channel). Experienced users should be pleased with RD Animator's IK, full object and texture timeline control, behaviors, deformation, constrainable object linking, and rotoscoping. It will be interesting to see how an add-on market might develop for a $300 product, but Ray Dream says every copy of RD Studio, which comes on CD, will include a full developer's kit. One possibility is VARs and consultants tailoring RD Studio to specific customers' needs. RD Studio ships "in the Fall" and will be available for any color Mac with system 7.x and 8Mb application RAM available (FPU optional), and for Windows 3.1/95/NT on 486 or Pentium with 8-bit or better color and 8Mb RAM. The program will have 3DMF file support import and export, but, as you might expect for current cross-platform software, no other QuickDraw 3D features. 528.03.02 - Lenticular Printer You probably don't have the "approximately $80,000" for "the world's first 3D digital image printer" from Image Technology International (5172-G Brook Hollow Pkwy., Norcross, GA 30071, 404/416-8848, -8847 fax) but this refrigerator-sized machine should find its way into service bureaus and thus help to make lenticular prints and transparencies far more common than they are today. Each print comes through in minutes, in 4x5" to 8x10" sizes. Input is from a series of Targas like we described in *3D Artist* #20. Image Tech announced at Siggraph that it had acquired the Dutch company, ND3D, which invented the micro-lenticular printer. The list of people involved in the resulting company includes an amazing amount of experience in developing photo and graphics stereo imagery. (ND3D itself was cofounded and partially owned by 3D software publisher ElectroGIG.) 528.03.03 - 3DS Max Revisited Like many of you, we're still asking questions and trying to understand just what kind of critter Autodesk's 3D Studio Max [*Tess*#525.01] will be. Here is some more info. 3DS Max will ship with a renderer presumably much like the one now in 3DSr4, but, whatever it is, it won't be the last word. Max will take plug-in renderers which should become available from third-party suppliers, and should finally move 3D Studio into raytracing and radiosity solutions. Underneath 3DS Max is an architecture called Heidi that was described to *Tess* as "the daughter of HOOPS." Heidi accelerates 3D graphics without hardware, but also can be tied into 3D hardware directly or via 3D application programming interfaces (APIs) such as OpenGL and QuickDraw 3D. HOOPS is an OpenGL-class API that Autodesk acquired when it bought Ithaca Software in 1993. (Ithaca is now officially the Graphics Development Group of Autodesk's Engineering Division.) Heidi appears to constitute a complete end run by Autodesk around SGI, Microsoft, Apple, and everyone else for the system-level means to accelerate 3D graphics and to facilitate cooperation among 3D programs. If Autodesk decides to license the full technology to all comers, it's possible that someday we'll look back and see the Heidi announcement as more important than the 3DS Max rollout where it first appeared. 3Dlabs was jolly on the spot announcing that it had been working with Autodesk on "highly optimized Heidi drivers that directly drive its Glint 3D processor chip." 3Dlabs' announcement claimed a doubling of speed compared with running 3DS Max on a Glint board through WinNT's OpenGL layer. The drivers will ship with Max and should work with "any Glint-based board," presumably including Creative Lab's new $350-range 3D Blaster. Another acquisition by Autodesk around a year ago was inverse kinematics and skinning technology that will appear in the company's Biped plug-in that is supposed to ship about the same time as 3DS Max. The programming team is lead by Michael Girard who, with Anthony Maciejewski, introduced the IK concept to computer graphics in their 1985 Siggraph paper, "Computational Modelling for the Computer Animation of Legged Figures." Another team member, John Chadwick, introduced skeletal deformation in his 1989 Siggraph paper, "Layered Construction for Deformable Animated Characters." 3D Studio product manager Bob Bennett tells *Tess* that "that initial research was a *long* time ago" and that Skinemation and Biped are "based on unpublished innovative techniques." "Skinemation" is the code name for a Biped module that can be applied to any 3DS Max object, not just Biped objects. Pricing has not been announced for Biped (or for 3DS Max beyond the uprgrade prices of $495 from 3DSr4 and $995 from earlier releases). However, the Biped news release may be sending signals when it says that Skinemation is "targeted at very high-end character animation users and applications." 3DS Max will read 3DS r1 to r4 .3DS files, but will have its own new .MAX file format. Things to look forward to: The ability to "create deformation effects without the need for morph targets." Plug-ins that can run inside the 3DS Max user interface. Better support for plug-in developers, and software protection that locks all plug-ins to a user's single 3DS Max dongle. Support for multiple CPUs through "extensive" multithreading. [http://www.3dartist.com/tess/95/txt/27max3ds.htm] points to three 3D Studio Max screen shots supplied by Autodesk 528.03.04 - Meanderings The Valis Group announced a 1.6 version update for Pixel Putty Solo ($399). New features include object instancing, a built-in flip book, path animation, and QuickDraw 3D 3DMF metafile import/export. Extended features include motion capture, better flex settings control, and improved welding. Version 1.6 is expected to ship this month. Upgrade pricing from version 1.2 to 1.6 is $200. Pricing from 1.5 to 1.6 is $65.--A.K. Digimation was showing a 3D Studio metaball IPAS that was literally in development during the show as two independent programmers, one from Canada and the other from Russia, combined talents. The resulting $495 metaball and spline/patch modeler, called Organix, has a preview window, "sticky" mapping and, of all things in polygonal modeling, refraction mapping. Animatek World Builder [*Tess*#516.01] attracted a lot of attention in Digimation's booth. They were selling version 0.9 that basically, they say, is the final product less shrink-wrapped box, final manual, and a few program changes. Version 1.0 will get the ability to read DEM data and support for more video cards. (Our copy came up without a hitch, but you need a CD drive and, for the full install, almost 300Mb of open hard drive space.) The price, previously given at $995, is now officially $1,495, but $995 continues as the introductory offer. Besides showing its new Digital Fusion [*Tess*#524.02], 4DVision (formerly Schreiber) was demo'ing their new Sculptor NURBS modeler for 3D Studio r4. (A version is also expected for 3DS Max, which has splines but not NURBS.) We don't have price and other details yet, but the beta doc says... begin quote>>Sculptor objects have no limitations on the 3D geometry they represent as long as the surface is continuous. They may overhang or intersect themselves if necessary... Mesh objects may be built from the same sculptor primitives to have the same vertex topology and therefore be morphable regardless of the amount of deformation they have undergone.<From Adobe Press------ Order from distributor Macmillan Computer Publishing, 201 W. 103rd St., Indianapolis, IN 46291; 800/428-5331; 317/581-3500, -3535 fax Review: *Interactivity by Design: Creating & communicating with new media*, by Ray Kristof & Amy Satran (ISBN 1-56830-221-5, $40), covers how to design interactive products from kiosks to training videos to CD-ROM titles. Nicely presented, this book covers the general design considerations necessary for getting an interactive project beyond the "wouldn't it be great if..." stage. While *Interactivity by Design* doesn't attempt to deal with hardware and software specifics in the fast-changing multimedia world, it comprehensively covers all the check points for development and production. It should prove invaluable for the first-time interactive content developer as well as provide helpful organization and design tips to the experienced developer. >From AP Professional------ 525 'B' St. #1900, San Diego, CA 92101; 619/699-6594 Announced: *Graphics CD-ROM Library* (ISBN 0-12-059756-X, $59.95), is an electronic compilation of *Graphics Gems* books I to III, *Radiosity and Realistic Image Synthesis*, *Quick Reference to Computer Graphics Terms*, and *Virtual Reality: Applications and Explorations*. It runs on Mac, Windows, and Unix machines, and has keyword searching, indices, and all the code and images found in the original texts. Announced: *Graphics Gems V*, edited by Alan W. Paeth (PC ISBN 0-12-543455-3, Mac ISBN 0-12-543457-X, $49.95), features new graphics techniques from a variety of sources. Contents include the math formulas needed to perform modeling and transformations. Other topics include curves, surfaces, raytracing, radiosity, halftoning, and image processing. >From Coriolis Group Books------ 7339 E. Acoma Dr. #7, Scottsdale, AZ 85260; 800/410-0192; 602/483-0192, -0193 fax; http://www.coriolis.com/coriolis Review: *Amazing 3-D Games Adventure Set*, by Lary L. Myers (ISBN 1-883577-15-2, $39.99), is an impressive book and CD allowing C programmers to get started on creating 3D games similar to Doom. It thoroughly covers design theory, decisions, and techniques necessary for creating contemporary interactive games. Important fundamentals like working with slices and ray casting techniques are given detailed discussion. More than this, it offers the author's PC 3D game development engine ACK-3D with source code (which runs in either DOS or Windows) for use in your own games. This game engine is said to have been used in commercial products making this an extraordinary resource for going "deep" into the closely guarded secrets of the game world, without spending two years doing research. We'd really like to see this type of book made available for the Macintosh side of things to help create exciting content which can take advantage of the PowerMac's processing power. Announced: *Microsoft Network Visual Explorer*, by Luanne O'Loughlin (ISBN 1-883577-66-7, $19.99), covers Q&A on Microsoft Network and lists the most interesting places to go. It includes info on how to access the Internet from Microsoft Network as well as detailed instructions on using the vendor forums, games, special interest groups, etc. If you're just getting started in Web publishing, Coriolis has several titles that sound like they would be of help. >From Peachpit Press------ 2414 - 6th St., Berkeley, CA 94710; 800/283-9444; 510/548-4393, -5991 fax; Announced: *Photos on CD* from Open House (ISBN 1-56609-173-X, $49.95), is a Mac-only resource CD-ROM with 15,000 thumbnails of high-resolution images available from a dozen vendors. It's all contained in a Fetch database for easy viewing and lookup with keywords and information for every image. Announced: *Director Demystified: Creating interactive multimedia with Macromedia Director*, by Jason Roberts (ISBN 1-56609-170-5, $39.95), is a book and CD-ROM covering the Mac version of Director 4.0 for beginners and intermediate users. It has a series of tutorials geared to get you familiar with Director 4.0 concepts, and reportedly includes an in-depth Lingo command lexicon. 528.04.02 - Infoglutton Quickies By Bill Allen Announcements from New Riders------ 201 W. 103rd St., Indianapolis, IN 46291; 800/653-6156; 317/581-3500, -3535 fax; http://www.mcp.com/newriders We're pleased to see more *3D Artist* writers getting into print as book authors. Heinz Schuller and Jim Lammers are the two latest. Heinz wrote the new *Kai's Power Tools: Filters & effects* (ISBN 1-56205-480-5, $45). He tells *Tess*... begin quote>>The book is mostly Photoshop/KPT geared, but has a small section on the Gradient Designer IPAS for 3D Studio illustrating animated, layered gradients. It will also include a CD-ROM with tileable & non-tileable texture maps, preset hub files, final artwork (a lot of it done in 3D Studio and Vivid with KPT-based materials), Arbitrary Color Maps (color curve files), and other stuff.< If you are involved in developing third-party products for the CAD market, you will be interested in the no-holds-barred *Upfront: the Semi-Month in CAD*, a free E-mail newsletter from XYZ Publishing, Ltd., publisher of the printed $60 *CAD++ Newsletter* and other publications. Just send the message "subscribe upfront" to . Issue #8, which just came out, and previous numbers can be found along with other resources at the WorldCAD Access Web site at http://nctweb.com/nct/wca.html. 528.04.03 - Game Reading By Rob Glidden Want to keep up with 3D games? Check out *Dimension-3*, a new game review magazine (issue 4 is on the stands) that covers "the next dimension in electronic gaming." *D-3* is aimed at spotting what's hot for high-end adult gamers (ages 18-34) with PCs (Pentium 90s preferred), Macs, and 3DOs. And judging from *D-3*, 3D is definitely what's hot for power gamers. Some current hot games according to *D-3* are *Need for Speed* from Electronic Arts/Pioneer Productions (the "new benchmark" for race games); *Hi-Octane* from Electronic Arts/Bullfrog; and *FX Fighter* from GTE Entertainment/Argonaut. For a taste of where power 3D gaming is headed, check *Flight Unlimited* from Looking Glass ("a 3D world that is truly photo-realistic" but on a P90 "in 1024x768 mode the frame rate was less than desirable"). Anyone remember the frame rate on Pong? Check your newsstand or contact Dimension Publishing, Inc., 567 Edna St., San Francisco, CA 94112; 908/549-5448. 528.05 - News Wrap It looks like a dark horse just won the race to produce the first shipping VRML creation tool, even if VRML output is just an extra capability among other new features. The new Strata Studio Pro has acceleration and other benefits from Apple's QuickDraw 3D API, and supports the QuickDraw 3D 3DMF file format. Our designated reviewer called 1 Sept. to say that version 1.75 had just started shipping.--B.A. RAD Software reports that it is shipping version 2 of Smacker, a $195 video and animation compressor for DOS and Windows 3/95/NT. The new version, according to the announcement, has a good variety of sound capabilities including sound sync, lossy and lossless compression, multitrack mixing, and support in DOS for Sound Blaster and in Windows for all Windows sound cards. Video and animation compression can be controlled on a frame-by-frame basis, and there is support for WinG, VESA VBE 2 fast linear video addressing, and full-screen mode for Windows 3 and 95. There are CD-ROM development tools, file conversion, new scripting commands, and the scriptor is supposed to be four times faster and playback faster by 30%. Compression of animations is claimed to be 25% down to 9% of original size, with playback at 30fps without hardware acceleration. Upgrade is $95.--B.A. Creative Labs intends to do for 3D what it did for sound, and details are starting to be announced for its 3D Blaster acceleration board. It will use a new 300SX games version of 3Dlabs Glint chip, which "provides real-time, true-perspective, [and] texture-mapped graphics" and is "designed to provide arcade-quality interactive 3D performance" with polygonal graphics. The 3D Blaster board was provided to developers in mid-August and is planned to ship in volume in time for the holiday shopping season. The race is on to make sure that game titles that support the board will be ready as well. The board, which the *Wall Street Journal* says will sell for $349, can work with a number of 3D application programming interfaces such as OpenGL and QuickDraw 3D.--B.A. The American Film Institue (AFI) is offering several introductory animation seminars for September in Los Angeles. > 3D Animation Overview introduces animation on the Mac with Infini-D, Strata StudioPro, and Electric Image, Sept. 14, 7-10pm, tuition $60. > 3D Tools Sept. 22-24, 10am-5pm ($395), requires basic Mac skills and explores the fundamentals of how to create animations using Studio Pro. > 3D Studio Introduction requires familiarity with Windows and the 3D Animation Overview class listed above. It's a survey of all the capabilities within 3D Studio which "will leave your head spinning with possibilities." Tuition is $200 for Sept. 26-27, 10am-5pm. Contact: Registrar, AFI Professional Training Div., 2021 N. Western Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027; 800/999-4234; 213/856-7690. 528.06 - Opinions Rendered *In presenting readers' letters, *Tess* reserves the right to convert text to our writing standards, to edit for length and focus, and to apply our flame filter. Anonymous letters usually are not published.* <>What's the deal about some program that will require 64 megs of RAM? Could it be 3D Studio? Such a vague comment should probably be left out; it's kind of like saying, "someone once said that something once happened." Sorry to be a pain, but Autodesk is not talking, and I'm needing a good upgrade path.--Anonymous *An anonymous writer complains about our use of an anonymous source! Though we all would like to hear otherwise, sorry, the news is as it was, and it is quite clear. A highly credible source, who works on one of several coming NT 3D applications, in April told *Tess* [#509.00.06] of concern that the potential customer base was still buying 486s. These machines would be useless for coming production-class desktop PC 3D programs, but that fact wouldn't become generally known for many months. This source advocated that professional users either hold off on purchases or spend a little more now for nothing less than a Pentium 90. 64Mb would be needed for the new apps, and the machine should have room for 128Mb or more, and also preferably for multiple CPUs to help leverage such a large investment in RAM. Since the writer brings it up, let's look at the coming 3D Studio Max. As we reported in *Tess*#525.01, the stated minimum system will be a "fast 486" and 32Mb RAM. For perspective, look at 3DSr4's minimums: 20MHz+ 386 with math coprocessor and 8Mb RAM. How close is that to the system you consider liveable for your current 3D Studio usage?*--B.A. 528.07 - Follow-Ups Back in July we reported that the Internet Avalon (now ftp://avalon.viewpoint.com) model repository had been acquired by Viewpoint. Recently we heard that people were having a lot of trouble downloading models, so we asked Viewpoint VP Eliot Jacobsen about the problem and here is his response: begin quote>>China Lake had a limit of 75 simultaneous users when they hosted Avalon... We doubled our access limit to 150 which seemed to be enough until about a week ago [mid-August]. [We have] decided to double it again and to make some system level improvements (decreasing the time-out time) which should help even more. There is no download limit. People can browse the Avalon site from our Web page without hitting the actual ftp site. So it is possible to browse without being counted as one of the 150 [now 300]. But the downloading process is by definition an ftp function, so if we're over limit, someone could get [an error] message when requesting a download but not during browsing.<>As many of you know Pixar is about to release a feature film, *Toy Story*. This film is the world's first completely computer animated film. It was created and produced at Pixar from our original story. *Toy Story* will be Disney's 1995 Holiday release. The production of *Toy Story* has brought Pixar a tremendous amount of valuable experience in rendering and many other areas. To prepare for such a large project, we have had to make a number of innovations directed at high end digital productions. During the course of this effort, it has become clear that the focus of Pixar's rendering tools should be at the high end of the market. As a result, Pixar will focus it's resources on high-end rendering tools for Unix and NT platforms. Pixar's Mac and Windows application products will continue to be available for sale and will be supported; however, we do not anticipate any new updates for these products. We have always valued our Mac and Windows customers. We have learned a lot from your use and feedback on our products and we appreciate your loyalty. We hope that you understand the reasons for our new direction.< 4DVision; 4800 Happy Canyon Rd. #250, Denver, CO 80237; 800/252-1024; 303/759-1024, -0928 fax, -3598 BBS; > Autodesk, Inc.; 111 McInnis Pkwy., San Rafael, CA 94903; http://www.autodesk.com/; vox 415/507-5000; fax 415/491-8311; vox 800/879-4233 or 800/225-6106 > Creative Labs, Inc.; http://www.creaf.com/; 800/998-5227; fax back 408/428-2389 > Digimation; 1000 Riverbend Blvd. #L, Saint Rose, LA 70087; 800/854-4496; 504/468-7898, -5494 fax; > Macromedia, Inc.; 600 Townsend St., San Francisco, CA 94103; http://www.macromedia.com/; vox 415/252-2000; fax 415/626-0554; vox 800/326-2128 > Pixar; 1001 W. Cutting Blvd., Richmond, CA 94804; Vox 510/236-4000, Fax 510/236-0388 > RAD Software; 307 W. 200 S. #1003, Salt Lake City, UT 84101; 801/322-4300, 359-6169 fax; CIS 73237,75 > Ray Dream, Inc.; 1804 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA 94043; vox 415/960-0768; fax 415/960-1198; vox 800/846-0111 > Strata, Inc.; 2 W. St. George Blvd., Ancestor Sq. #2100, St. George, UT 84770; http://www.strata3d.com/; vox 801/628-5218, fax 801/628-9756 > Valis Group; P.O. Box 831, Tiburon, CA 94920; 415/435-5404, -9862 fax; > Viewpoint DataLabs International; 625 S. State St., Orem, UT 84058; http://www.viewpoint.com/; vox 801/229-3000, fax 801/229-3300; vox 800/328-2738 ____________ OUR SPONSORS *Tess* and *3D Artist*'s other online activies are funded completely by *3DA*'s advertisers, subscribers, and newsstand readers. For more about the print magazine, please inquire to or grab the file ftp.3dartist.com/3dartist/3dartist/3dartist.txt. 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