Suzy B Software 2/Suzy B Software CD-ROM 2 (1994).iso/textfile/txt_l2z/lexicor/lexicor.asc

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(C) 1991 by Atari Corporation, GEnie, and the Atari Roundtables.  May
be reprinted only with this notice intact.  The Atari Roundtables on GEnie
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To sign up for GEnie service, call (with modem) 800-638-8369.  Upon
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==========================================================================

                          August 7, 1991

                          <[Sysop] Jeff>
On behalf of the Atari ST Roundtable, I welcome all of you to the
Lexicor Software RealTime Conference featuring Lee Seiler. Before
getting started, some business about how an RTC works. While the
RTC room is in Listen-Only mode, you can only address our guest
when I let you talk.

To get my attention, just /RAIse your hand. Just enter this from
your keyboard:  /rai

I'll acknowledge your raised hand as soon as I can, but please be
patient. I -WILL- let you know when your turn is coming up.

Some other RTC commands are:

  ?     -  Lists all RTC commands.
  /sta  -  Status (list) of everyone in
           the RTC room.
  /exi  -  Exit the RTC, but you remain
           logged onto GEnie.
  /bye -   Log off of GEnie directly from
           the RTC.
  /rai  -  Raise your hand.  Lets me know
           you wish to address our guest.

In addition to our featured guest for the evening, this is a
special night for the ST Roundtable. As part of GEnie's Hot Summer
Nights promotion, this Realtime Conference is FREE!!! The normal
$6.00/hour connect fee has been waived. I hope you all enjoy the
conference and please feel free (pun intended) to participate.

And now, let's get started.

We are fortunate to have Lee Seiler as our guest for this evening.
Lee is the president of Lexicor Software, developers of some
exciting graphics and animation products for the Atari ST and TT
line of computers.

Welcome, Lee. Thanks for taking the time to be with us this
evening. I'd like to start the questioning by asking you to give
us a little history of Lexicor Software and then to give us a
brief run-down of the Lexicor product lineup.

(You folks can start /RAIsing your hands now.)

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
Thank you Jeff and hello to all. Thanks for inviting me to speak.

Lexicor Software is composed of former ANTIC developers.

Our main interest was and is to continue what was started by ANTIC
in 1987.

Our products have been designed to make the Atari into an offline
graphics work station.  That goal is now a reality. In fact, just
today, I spent the day at Lockheed in Sunnyvale demonstrating the
Atari and Phase-4 to the nation's best engineers They were ecstatic
about the Atari and the power it has.

I could go on and on but I would rather have all of you guide this
confer so let's have the first question?

                         <[Sysop] JEFF.W>
Can we start with a product list and a very brief description  of
each?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
Our Phase-4 is really a series of programs which each run on their
own but can also be used together in a LAN system for group
project applications.

Currently we have two products in release.

They are Chronos 3D object motion control program. This is basically
an object animation program which does everything that CAD3D
Studio did except that there is no longer any need for scripting.
This program moves and morphs objects, it has features that cut,
copy and paste both time and motion. This program also produces
some very good rendering as well.

The next program in release is Prism Paint. This program is a post
production tool for the object animation program. It is also a
very nice basic paint program which supports from 2 colors to 16
million colors depending on the sort of ATARI it is run in.

We are about to release Rosetta. Which is our cross platform
translation program. We have also finished with our TRUE color
rendering program, which we are holding until the three current
color and resolution extension cards for the Atari are released to
the ATARI market.

We will be uploading some true color photo real animations and
.PNT files in the coming weeks.

                         <[Sysop] JEFF.W>
Thanks, Lee.  I'll start taking questions from the floor now...

Go ahead, Jim.

                    <[jim from AE] J.HEISER3>
When will these new products be released, and the approx. price
range?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
Two products are now shipping: they are Chronos $249.99 and Prism
Paint $89.95.

Rosetta should be out the door in a month give or take a few days.
We are waiting on the printers, it will be $79.95.

The True Color. render program will be awhile depending on the
hardware Mfg's. We think about two to three months is a good
guess. Cost of our true color board $400, cost of the program to
run it $89.95.

                      <[Larry Rymal] LRYMAL>
Hi Lee. I've been reading with interest reports of your product
line. For me, a dream has been for an affordable large monitor
like the Mac portrait monitors with card for under $600.00. Do you
think you can offer something similar?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
I don't think so, we are only offering a color card because we did
not think any one else would. Now there are two! I do  think that
as the ATARI re-emerges as a graphics work station there will be
many hardware after market venders coming to the ATARI market
place.

                      <[Larry Rymal] LRYMAL>
Ok, Lee. I just wish some lower cost options could be made
available on the ST for video display and DTPing. Lots of high
end, but low end similar to what can be found on the Mac is
hurting.

                       <[Wilton] W.VARGAS2>
Good evening Lee! Will you be advertising the PHASE-4  system
outside the ATARI world (i.e. T.V., video, and film magazines like
Video Systems, Millimeter, AV Video, etc.?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
No Wilton not at this time. We have at least a year or work just
in the ATARI market. We will be looking at other platforms in the
future but for now just finishing what we started and  keeping our
promised work station promise is about all we can  handle.

                         <[Sysop] JEFF.W>
By the way, folks, we have quite a few folks waiting to ask
questions, so I'll have to limit you to one question per turn. You
can / RAIse your hand to get back in line again to ask more
questions.

                           <R.MONFORT1>
Ok. Lee how is Prism-Render?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
Ringo, you're so bad! It is finished and I will be sending up some
.FLM and .PNT files for all to see. Of course some will have to be
dithered down for ST viewing, I may also send up.GIF or IFF
formats, Sorry but the only way to really view these is on the
TT.

This week I attended a Symposium at ATARI for Dealers and
Developers.  Lexicor has arranged to send Syquest disks with true
color animation to these dealers so that they can be viewed at the
store on the dealers TT's.

                           <J.STRAND1>
Will your color cards work with all the speed up boards out for
the ST?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
J, I am not sure. We have three different kinds now and so far so
good. Dave Small is sending us several of his SST's for testing.
At this point, we (developers) are all doing our best to see to it
that all our products are compatible. ISD and LEXICOR have just
become fileformat cross compatible so you don't have to depend on
finding an old copy of Sculpt to use Chronos.

                            ---------
[Due to a problem with my copy of the transcript, I lost a
question that was asked of Lee, but I have his response.  The
question asked about color support in Lexicor products.  - JEFF.W]
                            ---------

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
We support from (2) colors to 16 million, the number that you
might have to use will depend on the ATARI you have and what kind
of extended color hardware you are running. Our software is
"System and resolution" independent.

                       <[rick] R.HARRIS34>
I am interested in getting desktop video with a Sony 801
camcorder and svhs vcr. What advantages are there in going the tt
and phase four route as opposed to the newtek video toaster on the
Amiga?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
Rick, the basic difference is at this time that one system deals
in True colors and the other in a Hardware version of
Spectrum512.  As a practical matter either is fine and about the
same in quality at the basic machine level. But, and this is the
hook, if you ever plan to do any "High" quality rendering you will
have to wait for now with the AMIGA. The ham mode falls to  pieces
in resolutions above Super VGA equivalents. I think that from now
on you will begin to see the AMIGA price come down and the
production qualities of both systems become very equal. Then it
will be a matter of user preference instead of basic features.

                       <[Jack] J.PREVOST2>
Since most of the people who now work at Lexicor were at ANTIC,
and you are working on old ANTIC projects, I assume that the
Phase-4 package is somewhat like that. What are the major
differences between the two systems, particularly the advantages
to using Phase -4 over Cad-3d.

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
Jack, The main difference is that now the user has an unlimited
range of motion and animation approaches which require nothing more
than a mouse and imagination. There are uncountable animations
that could never be done in the old Cad3D world, which now are
easily done in very short time period. We have tried to make the
programs as intuitive and easy to use as possible.

                      <[John Cole] J.COLE18>
Could you describe in detail your True color boards, ie.  what
computers will they work on (st,ste,mst,mste,tt) what rezes there
will be and how much it will cost.

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
John, We have just one color card of our own. It runs in  512X512
res. It is a True color card which means 16 Million colors plus.
The cost is $400 right now that may change but if it does it won't
be much. Our cards attach at the VME or 68000. To the best of our
knowledge they will run in any VDI compliant ATARI.

                          <V.MASCARENA1>
Lee, could you tell us if you are going to enter multimedia and
high quality graphic animations that are equal or greater to that
of PIXAR or other companies. I see those animations on PBS and
would someday like  to see something coming from an Atari computer
using your software.

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
V, Thats a great question! Lexicor is a licensed Renderman
developer. Much of our code is from Pixar! So the answer is in
large measure Yes. We hope to have RendermanATARI for the atari
user. That is in our future, it is mostly a matter of time.

                         <[Sysop] JEFF.W>
Folks, just for your information, the free time in the RTC is
about to end. It clicks off at 11:30 Eastern. The conference will
continue, but the normal rates ($6.00 /hour) will be going back
into effect.

Please stick around if you can. If you have to leave, there  will
be a transcript of the entire RTC in the Software Library sometime
this weekend.

                        <[Brian] B.COVINS>
This question may be a little off subject, but it's the only one I
have not already asked, I'm curious about the color & resolution
upgrade cards, would it be possible for me to upgrade my STfm into
an STe?  That is, allow it to run software normally allowed only
on the STe?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
Brian, I don't think so! if you call Jay at Dover research he
could tell you that. I wish I had a better answer! Sorry.

                         <[Sysop] JEFF.W>
Brian....I believe that JRI has a 4096 color board that is
compatible with the STE color palette.

                           <A.BREWSTER>
Lee, My interest in animation is for use on a national cable
network. Are your products "Broadcast Quality," and do you have
literature that may answer these type questions?  Amiga's Video
Toaster will not pass our QC  dept.(if thats helpful.)

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
A, I know that! the output on at least two of the color cards that
we are supporting are QC compliant and contain Y  and C signals as
well as a hard locked NTSC output.

                           <A.BREWSTER>
Thanks.  I"ll be in touch regarding getting more info.

                           <A.RIDLEY1>
Lee, I'm still interested in more specifics on the true color
board, what effect will it have on software other than the
Lexicor software, will other software developers  support the new
features?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
A, 2- At first you will only be able to run our software on our
card, the other cards have GEM drivers. We will also  provide a
GEM Driver but there will be a wait on that. You will be able to
switch out of our color environment when you want to run regular
software.

                       <[Wilton] W.VARGAS2>
Hi again Lee! Could you describe what the process is to  create an
animation that can be considered "commercially-acceptable"  (i.e.,
for broadcast TV). The system would be a MEGA ST4 with  PHASE-4
(of course!) and rendering would be on (for example) a MAC II
with a High-Rez 24-bit color card.

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
Wilton, It is fairly straight forward. You would do the animation
in a wireframe, then do a scan line test, then a frame render to
true color, then a frame to video or film transfer.  Thats the
basic process.

                        <[bill] B.WEHLER>
Lee, will we be able to get copies of your animation lectures
that are on Compuserve? I would be very interested in learning
from an expert like yourself.

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
Bill, Yes I have been in contact with the Genie powers that be and
as soon as the redtape is completed we will start the same online
graphics tutorial here on Genie if there is enough interest. Maybe
all those who wan't this service should send mail to Genie and
push things along.

                         <[Sysop] JEFF.W>
I think if we started a poll in the Bulletin Board you would  see
PLENTY of interest! <smile>

                            <S.FARWIG>
Your color board requires a new jack. How does that effect other
paint programs?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
S, That's right it does.  In fact two, one for the monitor and the
NTSC output. It will have no effect. You may want to get a signal
switcher and just use one monitor or you could use two monitors.

                           <J.STRAND1>
Lee, are you working with Jim Allen to see if your color card will
work with his turbo 20 and 30 boards

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
J. No we have ask for some units but have not heard back from him.
We are testing with DSmall's SST however.

                           <L.MCDANIEL>
Hi Lee, I have most of the Antic Cyber line.  Will Prism Render
work with CAD 3D and Cyber paint files ?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
L, no, not before they have been loaded into Chronos and saved as
.ANM or 3D4 files. But you can use all cad files you have created
up to this point, and we have a neat little utility now available
to convert SEQ files to .FLM files. So you can, if you wish, use
both CAD3D and Chronos together.

                            <J.LYNN2>
What, from the equipment that is available NOW do you recommend for
professional quality animation (The TT & Phase 4 of course, But
what extra hardware?)

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
J. Another interesting question! Right now no home video
equipment is really suitable. Most professional equipment starts
at about $4 to 6 thousand dollars. We have catalogues and other
information. As soon as our area is set up we will upload arm
loads of such information for you to use in making  purchases.

I am sorry not to be more to the point but there is so much to
choose from it would be unfair to make such a suggestion it could
be very right or very wrong for you or others.

                      <[John Cole] J.COLE18>
Lee, with Atari flirting with high-end DTP, will Lexicor jump on
the pro sys group bandwagon and shoot for Professional/High end
video production? How about describing the markets you hope to
reach with your current products.

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
John, Actually No Lexicor won't be doing that! You will...

We are tool makers, you the ATARI users, are the artists and
creative producers who will become professional computer graphics
authors and film makers.

                         <[Sysop] JEFF.W>
What markets are you shooting for?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
We are shooting at the existing ST user and the TT user of the
future. Our products stop at the interface between ATARI output
and Film or tape interface.

                         <[Sysop] JEFF.W>
Will you be trying to draw non-Atari professionals to the  Atari
platform with Lexicor products?  How do you think you will go about
that?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
Jeff We are doing that now!

                         <[Sysop] JEFF.W>
Cool! With ads? Paying visits on potential clients?  Advertising
in graphics mags?  Appearing at trade shows?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
Jeff, we get calls from multi media, and Engineering Imaging
companies requesting information and the names of ATARI  graphics
artist using our software. Currently we are focused on getting the
ST user up and running in the US and the TT user in germany online
with Matrix.

                        <[J R] J.WENZEL2>
Lee, You mentioned that the PHASE-4 line of programs have the
ability to work on a LAN. Could you expand a bit on that and
perhaps tell us what kind of things would be possible in such a
setup?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
JR! Hi bad dude:-) We have an internal communication system we
call ADEPT which allows our programs to share resources when
connected in a lan system. This means that several computers can
all work on one file or rendering at the same time or that several
users can work in the same program at the same time.

JR....."ADEPT" means Application data Exchange protocol.

                        <[J R] J.WENZEL2>
So, by using several systems linked together a user would be able
to increase the effective speed of producing an animation (I.E.
multiprocessing )?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
JR, thats right, but in addition you could be using the same
resources, ie graphics lib, math co-processor, math lib, HD  etc.

                        <[J R] J.WENZEL2>
Lee, Could you tell us about some of the features that will  be
available in PRISM-RENDER?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
JR, yes Prism render is a basic rendering engine that uses Scan
line and Ray trace technology. It can do all the expected tricks,
shadows, reflections, surface textures, opasity (sic) Transparancy
etc.

Once this is released we will then release a texture editor that
provide the user the tools to create original textures and surface
effects.

                            <J.NICITA>
LEE, 1ST GREAT .FLMS FOR THE TT, ITS ALL I HAVE TO PUSH MY TT TO
ITS LIMITS (WELL NOT REALLY) I JUST WANTED TO KNOW WHAT EXACTLY
IS INCLUDED IN THE PHASE 4 PACKAGE AND IS IT TT OR ST GEARED (OR
BOTH?)

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
J. Phase-4 will run on all ATARI computers that use VDI (gem) so
you can use all our stuff on your TT, or any other ST you  have.

Is that what you were asking?

                            <J.NICITA>
just wondering what the package (as far as programs) includes.
thanks.

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
OK it contains Rosetta which translates file from other  computers
Chronos which animates objects, prism paint which is a post
production tool to add SFX like explosions etc, prism render which
is for photo real rendering of the animations created in chronos.
We also have several tools like render for Sculpt  which lets you
render an object you are building in cyber sculpt. Seq to FLM and
Auto desk .FLI to . Atari .FLM animation  conversion for viewing
auto desk animations on the ATARI.

                           <J.STRAND1>
Lee, with a 1040STE and your color card and Multi-Sync monitor can
you get more than 26 colors

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
J, With our color card you get 16 Million colors and Video Res No
matter what the palette of the STE is!

                           <J.STRAND1>
I meant on screen at one time

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
OK Good Question! That depends on the Monitor. The standard  1224
RGB will display 262,148 different colors, My NANO flexscan  will
display 474,396 different colors at one time. the number  depends
on actual screen surface area. The size of the pixels stays the
the same.

                         <[Sysop] JEFF.W>
Well, this has been a fun and informative conference. Lee, thank
you very much for spending the time with us.  Do you have any
closing comments before we shut this down?

                         <[Lee] L.SEILER>
Yes.

In spite of the general talk about ATARI upper management, I  have
to comment that I just spent three days at ATARI in a very
productive ATARI Partners Symposium. There are some very good
things coming from ATARI, the ATARI dealers, and the ATARI
Developers. I wish I could just tell you all how and what is
coming but I can't.  Just take my word for it it will only get
better and and better.  Watch and See!

Thanks to all who were here and I hope to see all of you more
often! just as soon as poor Jeff can teach me how to stay un-lost
in Genie! :-) Thanks again

     Lee Seiler
     Lexicor Software
     415 453-0271

                         <[Sysop] JEFF.W>
Lee, thanks again. And many thanks to all the folks who  attended
and participated in this conference.

Next week, we have an RTC on Stealth, the new terminal program.
Our guests will be Hagop Janoyan and the folks from PDC Software.