Light ROM 3/Light ROM 3 - Disc 2.iso/tess/tess504.txt

Text File | 1995-03-21 | 17KB | 370 lines

From [e-mail] Tue Mar 21 07:43:38 1995
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 01:44:09 -0600
From: 3D Artist magazine <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: TESS#504

==================================================
 THE   T E S S E L L A T I O N   T I M E S   #504
     Issue #4 of 1995, for Monday, March 20th
==================================================

TESS is Columbine, Inc.'s weekly electronic publication usually posted
Monday evenings to supplement 3D ARTIST magazine.

See the end of this file for contact information for companies whose
products are mentioned here.
_______________
TESS on the Web
On The Graphics Alternative BBS Web server in the Multimedia Resources area:
http://tgax.com/resource.htm
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  This file's contents are copyrighted and may not be reproduced in or with
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  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: [e-mail]

Staff:
Alex Kiriako, Editor, TESS & Sysop, 3dartist.com <[e-mail]>
Bill Allen, Publisher & Pres., Columbine, Inc. <[e-mail]>
Sally Beach, Vice Pres., Columbine, Inc. <[e-mail]>
Carol Williamson, Admin. Asst. <[e-mail]>

This issue was assembled primarily by TESS Publisher Bill Allen.
________
CONTENTS
504.00 - Heads Up
504.00.01 - The Week in 3D
504.00.02 - Price Cuts & Special Offers
504.00.03 - Upgrades
504.00.04 - Artists' Call Deadlines
504.01 - 3D Online
504.01.01 - 3D Sites
504.01.02 - A Two-Minute Tour of Raytracing Online by Eric Haines
504.02 - Two 3DS IPAS Programs from Positron
504.03 - On High: Workstation News
504.04 - More News
504.O4.O1 - Galleries & Shows
504.04.02 - User Groups
504.05 - What's Up in Santa Fe
504.05.01 - TESS
504.05.02 - 3D ARTIST #18
504.05.03 - 3D ARTIST Coming Issues
504.06 - Contacts: Where to get more info

504.00 - Heads Up
Here's the stuff you need to know the soonest...

504.00.01 - The Week in 3D

AutoCAD r13 On the Road tour, 3/21/95 in Houston, Texas and 3/23/95 in
Orlando, Fla. $99 one-day class held by the AutoCAD Helpline. Call
800/373-3284 or fax [phone]. Reportedly "bypasses the glossy brochures
and boring slide shows," and tells "what's fixed and what's not." Also in
Cleveland 3/29, Denver 4/4, and Los Angeles 4/6.

504.00.02 - Price Cuts & Special Offers

According to a mailing received here today, 3/20/95, Macromedia is offering
a free Showcase 3.2 CD-ROM about their multimedia tools and how they are
being used by developers. It requires Mac 68030/better or Windows
486-33/better, 8Mb RAM and 40Mb drive space. Call 800/326-2128 x999 (and
tell 'em TESS sent you).
  The real point of the mailing is to promote Director Multimedia Studio
which, at $1,995 list, includes Director 4.0, MacroModel 1.5, SoundEdit 16
v1.0 (Mac) or Sound Forge 3.0 (Windows), Pixar RenderMan, and Adobe Premiere
4.0.

See TESS#502.01.01 about Byte by Byte's 50% cut in Sculpt 3D v4 prices for
Mac, and TESS#501.01.01 about their competitive upgrade offer available
through April 15th for SoftF/X for Windows 3.1/95/NT.

504.00.03 - Upgrades

In a news release dated and received 3/13/95, Intergraph announced ModelView
Advantage ($995) and ModelView Professional ($2,500), to ship 4/1/95 for
Windows NT, and for Windows 95 when available. The upgrade will be free from
ModelView 3.2 to MV Pro for registered users.
  Common to both of these raytrace rendering and animation products are
features such as being OpenGL-based with support for hardware acceleration,
ability to take advantage of multi-CPU machines, "interactive rendering"
that allows you to change surface attributes without having to re-do a long
render, and perspective matching. Both products work closely, of course,
with Intergraph and Bentley Systems' MicroStation 2D/3D CAD program. They
also work with DWG, DXF, and IGDS/IDGN files.
  The Pro version includes network rendering, image manipulation, and video
and multimedia postprocessing including soundtrack editing and integrating
live video.
  Purely on the basis of paper weight received, we have to say that
Intergraph appears to be the most enthusiastic supporter of newly available
OpenGL hardware acceleration for PCs.
  On 3/15/95 we received the latest report about MicroStation PC working
with AccelGraphics hardware, in this case using their OpenGL Engine (MOGLE
v2) software and AG's ActionGraphics 300 PCI board. This combination is
claimed to "eliminate the last barrier to using a standard PC...in a [CAD]
production environment by offering 3D graphics performance previously
available only from expensive, high-end Unix workstations." Features include
not only fast screen display, but also transparency in shaded view (so you
can see through layers), and even fog/depth cueing for wireframe and shaded
views.

504.00.04 - Artists' Call Deadlines

Here's a lead time you can live with: According to a news release dated and
received today, 3/20/95, the deadline is 8/15/95 for Ray Dream's 3rd annual
"Modern Masters of 3D" contest, with a theme this year of "Spirit of
Invention--Build a Better Mousetrap" (no further explanation). The winner
gets the choice of a complete PowerMac or Pentium computer system.
Submissions can be done with Ray Dream Designer or AddDepth-- alone or with
other software. Contact the company at 1804 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain
View, CA 94043; 415/960-0768, -1198 fax.

March 24 for 1995 Caddie Awards, with categories for still images, still
image series, and animations created with software from Autodesk and
Autodesk developers. Call 503/343-1200 for rules and instructions. 3D ARTIST
magazine is a co-sponsor.

April 13th for New Mexico-based artists for the "Binary Vision" juried
exhibit for 2D and 3D computer art. Contact The Printmaker, 1807 - 2nd St.
#40, Santa Fe, NM 87501; 505/425-9456.

April 24th for the Electronic Cinema at the Int'l. Symposium on Electronic
Art, Sept. 17-24, Montreal, Que., Canada. Call 514/990-0229, fax
514/842-7459, E-mail [e-mail].

April 26th for the Computer Animation Festival/Electronic Theatre at
Siggraph 95 (Aug. 6-11, Los Angeles, Calif.) Contact: Frank Foster,
310/280-7603, or E-mail [e-mail].

May 1 for 3rd annual New York Digital Salon, hosted by the School of Visual
Arts. Contact Dr. Timothy Binkley at the school, 209 E. 23rd St., New York,
NY 10010; 212/592-2535, -2509 fax; E-mail [e-mail].

504.01 - 3D Online

504.01.01 - 3D Sites

The Alpha Channel BBS (415/759-6563) is a First Class connection for Mac 3D,
whose sysop, Sean Wagstaff, is author of Hayden Books' "3D Starter Kit"
[TESS#501.04.03]. In a 3/13/95 message, Sean <[e-mail]> said the BBS
"is getting fully up to speed" with around 150 users and "an all-new
interface."

The following message came in 3/14/95 (no real name given): "I'd appreciate
it if you can add my WWW page to your directory of 3D graphics resources.
I'm located in Thailand (AKA 'the middle of nowhere') and the web site is in
the US for faster access."
> Site: http://homepage.eznet.net/~frac/3ds.html
> E-mail: [e-mail]
> Focus: 3D Studio & related, pointers to related sites

504.01.02 - A Two-Minute Tour of Raytracing Online
By Eric Haines <[e-mail]>

To explore 3D online, you should know about
--avalon.chinalake
--the povray archive
--wuarchive
--and Princeton
These have about 80% of the good 3D graphics stuff covered, especially since
wuarchive mirrors many other good sites.

avalon.chinalake.navy.mil
> This site was created to be a 3D object "repository" for the net, and is
mirrored at wuarchive.wustl.edu. It has 3D objects in multiple formats,
utilities, file format documents, and textures.
> Administrator: Francisco X DeJesus <[e-mail]>

ftp.uwa.edu.au
> This Australian POVray archive also has many "unofficial" POV files.
> North American users should use ftp.povray.org instead.
> E-mail: <[e-mail]>

ftp.povray.org
> An extremely large collection of information. Mirrors ftp.uwa.edu.au.

wuarchive.wustl.edu
> This site has almost everything, but is also very busy. Try during
off-hours. Go to /graphics/graphics to get the contents file for a roadmap.
Within this directory are a wide range of resources, including:
(bib) various ray tracing, radiosity, and general bibliographies
(books) code from books and errata listings for various texts
(objects) various object databases (TDDD, SPD, OFF, polyhedra, NURBS)
(program packages) raytracers, image manipulation, CAD, and other graphics
(non-3D) 4D and hyperbolic space visualization
(virtual-worlds) VR-related material.
  The mirrors directory is huge, with many major sites including the
official POV archive, the Oldenburg POV site, the Geometry Center, NCSA,
SGI, Virtual Worlds archive, Avalon object descriptions, Virtual Reality
archive, and more.
> Administrator: George Kyriazis <[e-mail]>

ftp.princeton.edu
> Home of lots of raytracing-related software, such as...
  /pub/Graphics (note capital "G"): Rayshade raytracer, color quantization
code, Utah Raster Toolkit, more
  /pub/trees/drinkwater - tree images from Drinkwater's growing program
> Administrator: Craig Kolb <[e-mail]>
______
Eric Haines hosts the raytrace SIG meetings held quietly at Siggraph every
year, and puts out an online publication called *The Ray Tracing News*. Last
week [TESS#503.03.03], he wrote about the Siggraph Online Bibliography Project.

504.02 - Two 3DS IPAS Programs from Positron

In news releases dated 3/10/95 and received today, 3/20, Positron Publishing
announced that it will soon be shipping its Dynamic Motion Module (DMM,
originally written for LightWave 3D) and MeshPaint 3D, both as plug-ins for
3D Studio.
  DMM sets up keyframes for object interaction based on the physics
associated with object mass and environmental factors such as gravity and wind.
  MeshPaint allows the user to directly paint on an object in 3D, rather
than going through the process of applying 2D maps and dealing with seams.
The process is like "painting on a piece of pottery."
  Positron is owned by Brent Malnack and Phil Kurz, whom many TESS readers
will remember from *AV Video* magazine.
  (We would like to hear from users of the DMM version for LightWave.)

504.03 - On High

In a news release dated 3/20/95, Engineering Animation announced VisLab 1.3
($9,500), which for an additional $975, now supports Structural Dynamics
Research Corp.'s mechanical design automation software. This high-end
combination is aimed at product development and visualization using SGI
workstations.

504.04 - More News

504.O4.O1 - Galleries & Shows

Ongoing through March 31, 9-5pm Mon.-Fri., New Mexico computer artists/Rio
Grande Siggraph show, KiMo Theatre, 423 Central Ave., Albuquerque, N.M.
505/982-3532, [e-mail].

This may or may not have a 3D component, but a news release received 3/19/95
indicates you better be really, really sure where you are before attending
to any personal business during 4/1-30/95 at the Wexner Art Center at Ohio
State Univ. An interactive installation there, entitled "Rest Rooms" by Dr.
Timothy Binkley (of the School of Visual Arts, New York City), explores
"What privacy will be like in cyberspace." Rather than try to summarize
this, here's the full description:
  "The installation consists of two [connected] computers installed in two
rest rooms outfitted with video cameras. The screen of each is divided into
four regions. One displays a small video image from the camera located at
that site. A larger area displays an image from the video camera in the
other rest room. This enables people in each rest room to see and talk with
people in the other room. A third region is a common "graffiti" space, in
which people in both locations can write or draw simultaneously on their
common "bulletin board." The fourth region continuously runs Quicktime
movies of snippets from gender-related television advertising. The
installation offers a forum in which participants can discuss existing and
future spatial, political, and social demarcations that separate the sexes."
  Reminds me of going into a restroom many years ago. A chap standing at a
urinal asked if I had anything to write with. When I said "no," he used a
quarter to scratch a message on the wall. The only time I ever saw someone
actually coin a phrase.--B.A.

504.04.02 - User Groups

We got a call 3/16/95 that Connecticut now has a 3D Studio user group, the
3D Artists & Animators of Connecticut, c/o Lee Steel, 300 Beardsley Rd.,
Shelton, CT 06484; 203/925-9852; CIS 74547,177. They plan to meet the second
Tuesday of each month in Hartford.
  They join Raleigh, N.C. as the second 3DS SIG to be started in another
state by former members of the very active Tampa, Fla. group <CIS 75031,1525>.

We're waiting to hear back from someone starting a trueSpace users group,
and would like to learn of any others forming. We also need to find all the
LightWave 3D user groups (a lot of people are going to be looking for you
soon!).

504.05 - What's Up in Santa Fe

News is a little thin this week--perhaps a calm before NAB three weeks from
now. Meanwhile, we're on track for getting 3DA#19 out close to our goal of
six weeks between issues.

504.05.01 - TESS

Deadline for TESS#505 is 1pm Mountain Time (3pm New York time), Monday,
3/27/95. (Deadline usually is Monday, but will be 4/7/95 for TESS#507
because NAB starts 4/10.)

At 10 mins. to go to upload last Monday, our contact for a major software
announcement recalled permission to be on record [TESS#503.01]. We thought
we'd be able to run the story in this issue, but it's a no-go until maybe
April.

504.05.02 - 3D ARTIST #18

3D ARTIST magazine issue #18 went into the mail on 3/14-15/95, except
out-of-North America surface mail, which was scheduled to ship via KLM
airlines 3/17/95. Our distribution to Barnes & Noble and some other chain
stores is scheduled to hit early this week.

504.05.03 - 3D ARTIST Coming Issues

For 3DA#19, we're still taking SIG and calendar listings, and classified ads
through this week.

Editorial and space deadline for 3DA#20 is 4/18/95. Looks like the issue
focus will be hardware for 3D graphics.

3DA#21 will have as its focus 3D medical illustration and we're looking for
related articles.

504.06 - Contacts
The following companies have products mentioned in this issue of *The
Tessellation Times*. When you contact companies, please BE SURE to say you
heard about them from TESS.
> AccelGraphics, Inc., San Jose, CA; 408/441-1556
> Autodesk, Inc.; 111 McInnis Pkwy., San Rafael, CA 94903; 800/879-4233;
415/507-5000, 491-8311 fax; autodesk.com
> Byte by Byte Corp.; 8920 Business Park Dr. #330, Austin, TX 78759;
512/795-0150, -0021 fax; bytebybyte.com; http://bytebybyte.com
> Engineering Animation, Inc., 2625 North Loop Dr., Ames, IA 50010;
800/324-6777; 515/296-9908, -7025 fax
> Intergraph Corp., Huntsville, AL 35894; 800/345-4856; 205/730-5499;
http://www.intergraph.com
> Macromedia, 600 Townsend St., San Francisco, CA 94103; 800/326-2128;
415/252-2000, 626-0554 fax
> Positron Publishing, 1915 N. 121st St. #D, Omaha, NE 68154; 402/493-6280,
-6254 fax
__________________
3D ARTIST magazine
If you haven't seen 3D ARTIST and can't find it on a newsstand or through
your local user group, E-mail your snail mail address to
[e-mail] for a sample issue in North America. Elsewhere, we send
sample pages or ask for $2 to cover surface postage for a complete magazine.

[end]