Light ROM 1/LIGHT-ROM 1 (Amiga Library Services)(1994).iso/imagine/text/archive.03

Text File | 1994-10-19 | 170KB | 3,988 lines

IMAGINE archive: collected off of [e-mail]

ARCHIVE III
Mar 10 '91 - Mar 25 '91

If you have questions or problems with this file, email Marvin Landis
at [e-mail]

Many thanks to Doug Dyer ([e-mail]) for the previous
versions of this archive

note: each message seperated by a '##'

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Subject: IMAGINE->DCTV->MAKEANIM->PLAYANIM/DCTV
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 91 16:35:38 PST
From: [e-mail]

I rendered a series of pics for an anim..24bit iff in Imagine..then I
brought each image into DCTV/PAINT and saved each image in DCTV magic
cookie format (also I had heard that there was a way to do this with
a single command and a wildcard..anyone heard of this?)..then I made
a file nameing the pics I wanted in my animation overlapping the first
two frame to accomodate continuous play..I then used MAKEANIM to string
these pictures together..now according to DCTV manual I should be able
to play back this anim and have DCTV recognize the ntsc data at this
point..and in fact as DCTV is doing its stringing operation it
displays each image it is adding to the image and they sure enough
show up on the composit side..but when I go to use PLAYANIM to play
the animation if I go over to composit a black screen stares back at
me..nada..

Has anyone successfully gone from Imagine to display animation via
DCTV? If so what animation tools did you use?

thanks...

-Mike

##

Subject: Newsletter
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 91 08:35:08 EST
From: John J. Rosner <[e-mail]>

I have not received the newsletter/1.01a upgrade notice either.  I thought it
was because of alphabetic processing and being Rosner would take longer.


##

Subject: Re: Bump Mapping
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 91 09:28:11 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> >As Altitude Maps (Bump Maps) use your own IFF creations, there is none
> >of the uncontrolled randomness that you get with Roughness.  They do
> >not require any "additional polygon detail," either.
> >   Udo Schuermann

> He is exactly right. I would just like to add that what the original
> poster is describing is called "displacement mapping".
>   [e-mail]

I'm sorry to have caused all this confusion, but I don't use Imagine for
rendering and as Bob Lindabury pointed out, Impulse often uses some very
non-standard terminology. And as Sean pointed out:

Bump mapping = preturb surface normals
Displacement mapping = preturb surface polygon vertices

The bottom line is, I mistook Impulse's term for bump mapping to be
displacement mapping, hence my original comment to Scott Sutherland.
Once again, sorry for the confusion.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%       `       '                Mark Thompson                          %
%  --==* RADIANT *==--           [e-mail]                 %
%       ' Image `                ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark       %
%      Productions               [phone]  [phone]           %
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##

Subject: Re: Bump Mapping
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 91 16:38:17 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> >Bump mapping = preturb surface normals
> >Displacement mapping = preturb surface polygon vertices

> Could you explain to me what the difference between these two
> is??  To my untrained ear (and graduate school-fried brain) these sound
> similar if not the same.

> Scott Sutherland
> [e-mail]

No problem. First of all, the lighting/shading of surfaces of a 3D polygon
based object is based upon the surface normals of each polygon and their
angle to the light source(s) and the observer. These surface normals are
computed based on each polygon's vertices. The idea behind bump mapping is
to modify these computed normals based on either some image or procedural
function (ripples, noise, dots, etc.). The net effect is that the shading
of the object gets the bumpy appearance without being bumpy. This is most
effective when using a shading model (like Phong) that interpolates the
normals across the surface of each polygon based on the adjoining polygons
in the object. In this case, every pixel has its own associated suface
normal which can be modified by the mapping function.

Displacement mapping on the other hand physically modifies the actual
vertices of the polygons. The mapping technique is the same, but what is
being modified is different. The displaced vertices will then yield
displaced surface normals which will look bumpy when the shading model
is applied. So in this case not only does the surface look bumpy, it is
bumpy. So if you ignore the coloration/shading and look at a sillohette,
a bump mapped sphere is smooth and round, but a displacement mapped sphere
will be nobby and irregular based apon the function or image used.
The advantages are obvious especially if you want to simulate an uneven
terrain on a flat plain. The disadvantage is that displacements can only
occur at polygon vertices, so if you want to increase the detail in your
bumps, you must also increase the number of vertices (polygons) in the
surface. Since bump mapping works with the normals and not the vertices,
a complex bump function can be created on a single polygon. Just in case
I've confused anyone, here a picture to really mess ya up.

        ^ ^ ^                 ^ ^ ^
  ^ ^ ^       ^ ^ ^     ^ ^ ^       ^ ^ ^    Surface nornals
         ____
  _____.|    |.____     _____.______.____    Actual polygon surface

 Displacement mapping      Bump mapping

Something else of note, I don't believe there are any existing algorithms
for implementing displacement mapping in a scanline based renderer
(only ray-tracers). The same is true of fur and other 'hypertextures' which
require similar types of rendering methods.

Hope I managed to make this all lucid enough.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%       `       '                Mark Thompson                          %
%  --==* RADIANT *==--           [e-mail]                 %
%       ' Image `                ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark       %
%      Productions               [phone]  [phone]           %
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##

Subject: Re: Bump Mapping (ooooops!)
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 91 18:05:17 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> Displacement mapping...blah, blah, blah....
> The disadvantage is that displacements can only
> occur at polygon vertices, so if you want to increase the detail in your
> bumps, you must also increase the number of vertices (polygons) in the
> surface.
> I don't believe there are any existing algorithms
> for implementing displacement mapping in a scanline based renderer.

I just looked over what I wrote and realized an overstatement. Displacement
mapping effects can be simulated in a scanline renderer provided you have
the extra vertices and you do it in a fashion much like Imagine's various
effects like explode. To do displacement mapping independant of number of
polygons and vertices requires very complex rendering techniques and
ray-tracing.

Sorry about that minor goof up.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%       `       '                Mark Thompson                          %
%  --==* RADIANT *==--           [e-mail]                 %
%       ' Image `                ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark       %
%      Productions               [phone]  [phone]           %
%                                                                       %
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##

Subject: Problem with player
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 91 20:23:41 CST
From: Colin Stobbe <[e-mail]>

Hello,
     I'm having no success at trying to play animations from outside Imagine
with the player.  I've had to render the frames, then load Turbo Silver, screw
around to get Turbo Silver to think it made them, and compile it into a Turbo
Silver animation.  Could someone tell me how exactly to play animations from
outside Imagine?  Don't tell me to use anim either.  I tried that, but it
didn't seem to like the legnth of the file (over 2.5 MB).
     If someone could tell me if they've had any real success at using 'EDIT'
(from the project editor), I'd like to hear it.  I haven't had any.

     I'm using an Amiga 3000 (25/100) under 2.0 with 10MB of ram.

          Colin Stobbe
          [e-mail]

##

Subject: Re:  IMAGINE->DCTV->MAKEANIM->PLAYANIM/DCTV
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 91 21:59:32 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Brian Bishop)

  Yes, I have successfully assembled 24-bit IFF's into a DCTV animation. It
did not work for me using Dpaint (though I may have done something wrong,
because the DCTV disks have an anim that works with the EA player prog).
The way I did it was to render all the pix with something (Vistapro in my
case), then use IFFtoDCTV to convert them. To convert all of them in one
pass you can use the AmigaDOS script 'spat' like this:

  execute spat ifftodctv foo#?.iff24

 ..assuming you have a mess o'pix name foo001.iff24, foo002.iff24, etc.
Then I assembled the pix using makeanim on the output. I believe the proper
DCTV format is 'image' not 'raw'. All done, 'showanim' displays the anim
nicely. Ah yes, turn on the '-b' option on the command line above. Then
the names will end up as 'foo001.DCTV' afterwards...


  Brian Bishop

##

Subject: Help on PlayIANM ....
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 91 09:15:46 JST
From: kddlab!nanko.digital.co.jp![e-mail] (Manjit Bedi)

This past weekend, I was fiddling around making 30 frame animations in
HAM interlace. My setup is a 3000 with 2M Chip & 2M Fast. I let the
animation go and make. It seemed to do that OK, I was usually asleep or
whatever when the make finished.  I then try to load the animation and
the software plods along; there is a lot of hard disk activity then
I get a dialogue box saying 'Not Enough RAM'.

I tried running only the CLI from both 1.3 & 2.0 still could not load.
I then tried to use PlayIANM but I was not able to use it.  I did not
receive any docs on it. I kept getting 'error in script file'.

How is this mysterious program used?

Or does anyone have suggestions on how I can use memory more efficiently
when running Imagine.  This whole experience has brought up a lot of questions
in my mind.  Are there utilities that will play a huge animation off a hard
disk that does not all fit into available RAM at one time?  What are some
essential utilities to have when dealing with creating and handling animations
?  If any of this stuff is PD could someone be gracious enough to E-mail to
me because I do not have FTP access at my site?

Currently, the only other animation stuff I have is Disney Animation Studio
& Deluxe Paint III.

I have worked around the problem by rendering in Lo-Res for now.

I would be so screwed up without this mailing list.  I actually know what I am
doing at times because of you guys!  I have no one to talk about the Amiga with
here in Osaka ( home is Vancouver Canada).

Thanks in Advance.







##

Subject: Re:  IMAGINE->DCTV->MAKEANIM->PLAYANIM/DCTV
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 91 22:30:53 -0500
From: david r watters <[e-mail]>

I believe the correct DCTV format is 'display' and not 'raw' or 'image'.

The anims look nice.   You can make anims with Imagine by importing the
images and then compressing them.

Dave

##

Subject: Re: Help on PlayIANM ....
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 91 7:59:57 CST
From: bloom-beacon!think!rutgers!texbell.sbc.com!tnessd!mechrw (Robert Wallace )

> I tried running only the CLI from both 1.3 & 2.0 still could not load.
> I then tried to use PlayIANM but I was not able to use it.  I did not
> receive any docs on it. I kept getting 'error in script file'.
>
> How is this mysterious program used?

Unfortunately, it isn't.  The playianm program on the Imagine 1.0
diskette is broken, as you have discovered.  There was a fixed
version posted to PeopleLink shortly after the 1.0 disks were mailed.

Could someone in a position to do so please ask Mr. H. if the fixed
version be posted to ab20?  Those without access to pay-per-view
machines would truly appreciate it.

-=-=-=-=-=

I finally got the mysterious Impulse Newsletter yesterday.  You
probably have, too, by now.  The deal is: send back your original
1.0 diskette along with a stamped, self-addressed disk mailer.
No exceptions. No other costs.

You'll get back a disk with the updated Imagine, a readme file,
and tutorial corrections.

A quick glimpse at the new features:
[quoted directly from the newsletter]

"POSE: We have found that the cycle editor needed more so we have
added a feature we call POSE.  This lets you create a complex
object in the Detail Editor.  Position the parts where you want
them to be at each KEY cell and then bring these new Key objects
into cycle in the POSE mode.  You won't have to deal with the
"skeleton" or polygons that are used in the present version of
cycle.  This feature makes it very easy to do fluid human motion
that is very hard to do in cycle.  You can still Export this as a
cycle to the Stage and it looks great."

"In the Stage editor there are times when it seems clumsy to go to
the action editor to do simple moves and rotations and sizing
commands.  WE have added a more direct method to do these things
directly in the stage editor without having to go into the Action
editor.  This does not replace the power of the Action Editor is [sic]
simply makes it easier to use the whole system: [sic]"

"In the DETAIL editor there are a few new changes:  1. You can now
toggle from the main window any object or set of objects into quick
draw with out having to go to the attributes editor.  2. We have
enhanced the use of the HIDE POINTS command, making it more useful."

"Several folks have complained that they find it difficult to use the
rotation or alignment command in the action editor.  We admit that it
is a bit difficult.  So we have added a new feature that will let you
do object rotations in with a very simple set of commands."

"We have added Bright Objects that accept no shadows, we have also
included a way to make objects as light sources."  [yeaaa!]

"There is now the ability to have more than one ground in a scene."

"In the Detail Editor you can both split an object as well as re-quantize
the amount of trinagles there are in a specific are [sic] of an object"

"Expert mode has been implemented for those who don't want to see the
alert or caution messages, like, Do you really want to Quit? Yes or No.
There is more but we don't want to steal all the surprises from you."

[end quoted material]

He later explains why there is no menu bar on the rendered scenes and
that you should always hit the ESC key to exit the dispplay.  I'm
assuming that this explanation precludes any new, better way to exit
the scene.

There are many more interesting tidbits and announcements in
the newsletter.  Enjoy!  I'm off to the Post Office with my
diskette.

Robert Wallace

##

Subject: Re:  Help on PlayIANM ....
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 91 13:21:20 EST
From: "Scott Sutherland" <[e-mail]>

Manjit Bedi asked some questions on problems with LARGE animations and
PlayIANM.  (I omit the original post to conserve space)


As someone already posted, PlayIANM is broken in version 1.0.  I hope that
the update has a working PlayIANM.  Now, as for working with large anims,
there are 'brute force' methods and more elegant methods.  The BRUTE force
method that immediately comes to mind is to render the animation in 2 parts.
You can then use a program like AmigaVision, CanDo, The Director, Lights!
Camera!Action!, or others to play these animations consecutively.  The only
drawback to this is that you MUST render the animation in ANIM format, not
the Imagine format.  As far as I know there is no way to directly convert
an Imagine format animation to an ANIM format animation (you could do this
with HASH's Animation:Editor IF you had a working copy of PlayIANM ;^(),
UNLESS you saved all 30 of the RGBN images.  If you DID save the individual
images then you can use Diamond Paint (I THINK, don't quote me on this since
Diamond Paint was developed for working with TURBO SILVER images) to load
them in and save them to IFF.  You can also do the same thing with The Art
Department.  However, if you are like most of us and have limited storage
space, you probably found out that these frames take up a lot of room and
you chose YES to the "Delete Frames After Using" requestor in Imagine after
choosing MAKE.  Thus, you will have to re-render the animation after choosing
the ANIM format.

    Now, using the ANIM format will NOT solve your immediate problem since
the ANIM MAY also be too large for your RAM, but you can use ShowAnim to
display it after a reboot, which will give you the most available RAM to work
with.  So, you can do some other things.  First of all, you CAN determine
the SIZE of your Imagine animation by looking in the drawer created by Imagine
called PROJECT.imp/SubProject.PIX/anim/#?.  (PLEASE USE YOUR OWN PROJECT AND
SUBPROJECT NAMES HERE TO ACCESS THE DIRECTORY SINCE THAT IS HOW IMAGINE NAMES
THEM).  Each frame in the ANIM will give you an idea of how much is changing
from frame to frame.  Add up the sizes of all the frames and you will know the
size of the animation.  My guess is that, since you have only 30 frames, you
are either doing a CAMERA fly-by or movement, your object(s) fill the whole
screen and are all moving or have their attributes changing, or you are
changing something in the lighting and/or global settings.  All of these will
cause most of each frame to change and create HUGE DIFF files for animations.
One option here is to RE-THINK your animation and try to minimize the
FRAME-to-FRAME changes.  If you cannot get your desired effect this way,
try the 'render it in two parts' mode (using ANIM format so that you can
later play them consecutively) or the Imagine format (to see what they look
like from within Imagine).  I'd suggest the former, since it makes your anims
compatible with the other programs mentioned above and others.  To PREVIEW it
first, either render it in LoRes (like you are already doing) or render a
small version of it (200x200 or something like that).  Not only will this
render faster but you will have a smaller anim to boot.

Finally, one other alternative is to RENDER the entire animation in the ANIM
format, save it to Hard Disk, and use either DiskAnim (from an older Antic's
Amiga Plus Disk and also part of a commercial program (don't recall the name))
or THE DIRECTOR 2 to play it DIRECTLY off the Hard Drive.  This way you can
play animations much larger than RAM, but the playback speed will be limited
by the SIZE of the DIFF files and the Hard Drive READ speed.


Hope this helps.  If you need more information, feel free to write me.

Scott Sutherland
[e-mail]

##

Subject: Newsletter.... Got it.
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 91 15:44:20 -0500
From: david r watters <[e-mail]>

Got the Winter newsletter today.   There is an upgrade for imagine that seems
to adress 1/100th of the things I noticed, and added some new features.
I will have to go in depth when I get back, if anyone wants to know anything.

The letter was mailed to my company, so maybe the newsletters are sent out in
order of apparent importance to impulse.  Company starts with an 'L' and my
name starts with a 'W' so I doubt it is alphabetical.

They are also offering a data disk containin a majority of the aircraft that
fought in the gulf.

The upgrade for Imagine is free (aside from postage both ways) and requires you
to send in your old disk.

They also mention Imagine 2.0 as a future item.

David
[e-mail]-state,edu
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Imagine vs Anim
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 91 07:53:07 EST
From: John J. Rosner <[e-mail]>

Scott Sutherland writes:

>The only drawback to this is that you MUST render the animation in ANIM
>format, not the Imagine format.

What are the savings in using the Imagine format over an Anim format?  Does
anyone have figures?  The bottom line is Anim is a defacto standard and unless
there are tremendous advantages in the Imagine format why bother?  I assume the
upgrade has a working playanim.

Later,

John Rosner


##

Subject: Imagine to Turbo conversion
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 91 11:46:36 EST
From: Richard Nollman <[e-mail]>

Someone sent me mail asking if Louis Markoya has developed a product like
Surface Master for Turbo or Lightwave.  I am not a Turbo user, so I could not
give him any information.  I did offer to post a question to the list about
converting Imagine objects, attributes, and textures from Imagine to Turbo.
The rationale would be to use Surface Master objects and convert them to
Turbo format.  I know there was some discussion of this a while ago.  Has
anyone had any success in figuring out how to do the conversion?

Rich

##

Subject: Re:  Imagine vs Anim
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 91 14:38:40 EST
From: "Scott Sutherland" <[e-mail]>

John Rosner writes:

>What are the savings in using the Imagine format over an Anim format?  Does
>anyone have figures?  The bottom line is Anim is a defacto standard and unless
>there are tremendous advantages in the Imagine format why bother?

    Many of you know the answer, but for those who don't, I'll tackle this
one.  The main advantage I can see with the Imagine (and TS) anim formats can
be seen in its looping capabilities.  Imagine (no put intended) a 50 frame
animation.  You want to do the following:

Play Frames 1-30 once
Play Frames 31-40 forwards, then backwards, then forwards TWO times
Play Frames 41-50 4 times

Now, in Imagine, you will ONLY need 50 DIFF frames to do this.  You write a
movie script and it gets done.  In IFF ANIM format this CAN be done, but
you will need 30 frames for the first part, 60 frames for the second part
(somewhat fewer if you do not repeat the end frames (e.g. 31, 32, ..., 39, 40,
39, ...  as opposed to ..., 39, 40, 40, 39, ...), and 40 frames for the last
part, making a total of, at most, 130 frames.  There is a NEW ANIM format
which will allow backwards playing, but I do NOT know if it is considered
a STANDARD or if it will allow LOOPING of small parts the animations.

This is the major advantage I can see for these non-standard formats.  If I
am mistaken in any of the above, please inform me (I'd really like to know).
The big disadvantage is that the Imagine/TS formats are NOT standard and
cannot be used with AmigaVision, Animation Station, AniMagic, the Director,
etc..


Hope this helps.

Scott Sutherland
[e-mail]

##

Subject: Animations
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 91 14:40:55 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Aaron Tucker)

Scott Sutherland writes:

"The big disadvantage is that Imagine/TS formats are NOT standard and cannot
be used with AmigaVision..." Remaining message truncated.

Wrong, I think. You can use AmigaVision's EXECUTE CLI APP feature to run
IMAGINE's PLAYANIM program (I forgot the exact name of it.) I would have
already tried this myself, except that I can't get the darn program to work
right. Every time I try to play an anim that I created, I get some kind of
script error. I tried a variety of things, but to no avail. Has anyone else tried this?

Side note: What is PHONG shading good for? I have hardly any more rendering
problems now that I don't use PHONG shading anymore. Which reminds me,(if you
IMPULSE guys are reading this, especially Mr. Rodriguez) that the manual
states that PHONG is off by a default. Wrong. Thought I'd let you know.


Juan Trevino
Modern Media


##

Subject: qeustions from a new user
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 91 09:12 MET
From: "Arthur van Rooijen, PTT RESEARCH, The Netherlands"

Hi,
I am new to this listserver and I have a couple of questions which probably
have been asked before.

Here they are:

- Is there a "frequently asked questions" mail. If so can somebody send it to
  me

- Where can I find some nice objects, animations , imagine projects ect.

- And now a tricky one:
  I use the turbo version of imagine. I have the A2630 and I use it with
  fastrom and data/inst cache. Now every time when I reset, after I have used
  Imagine, I am not able to start Imagine again. I get a divide by zero guru.
  Have you "turbo users" the same experience. If so how can I solve it.

I hope you all can help me.
--
                        Arthur van Rooijen

 PTT Research Neher Laboratories,    Phone  : [phone]
 2260 AK Leidschendam,               Telefax: [phone]
 P.O. box 421,                       Telex  : 31236 prnl nl
 The Netherlands.
                                           +----------------------------------
 Domain        : [e-mail]     |  As the people here grow colder
 EARN/BITnet   : [e-mail]    |  I turn to my computer
 PSS (DATAnet1): [phone]::ROOIJEN |  And spend my evenings with it
 SURFNET-2     : [phone]::ROOIJEN   |  Like a friend       "Kate Bush"

##

Subject: Re:questions from a new user
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 91 10:09:57 +0100
From: [e-mail] (Helge Egelund Rasmussen)

Arthur van Rooijen ([e-mail]) Wrote:

> - Is there a "frequently asked questions" mail. If so can somebody send it to
>  me

I haven't heard of such a beast, it seems that Imagine users don't have
frequently asked questions :-)

>- Where can I find some nice objects, animations , imagine projects ect.

Look at the ftp site ab20.larc.nasa.gov in the directory
/incoming/amiga/3d/Imagine. It contains lots of objects and at least one
project.

It is possible to use the ftp site even if you don't have direct access to
ftp; here is how:

Send an email message to:

   [e-mail]

It shouldn't have any subject and the body of the mail should be something like:

    FTP ab20.larc.nasa.gov UUENCODE
    USER anonymous user@domain
    CD /incoming/amiga/3d/Imagine
    DIR
    QUIT

(insert your own net address instead of 'user@domain')

This will ask 'bitftp' to send an ftp request to ab20 asking for a directory
listing of the Imagine directory.

When you have that, you can ask for files by mailing this to 'bitfpt':

    FTP ab20.larc.nasa.gov UUENCODE
    USER anonymous user@domain
    CD /incoming/amiga/3d/Imagine
    BINARY
    GET file1
    GET file2
    QUIT

The files will then be mailed to you.

I have used this procedure to 'ftp' some objects, and it work fine.


> - And now a tricky one:
>  I use the turbo version of imagine. I have the A2630 and I use it with
>  fastrom and data/inst cache. Now every time when I reset, after I have used
>  Imagine, I am not able to start Imagine again. I get a divide by zero guru.
>  Have you "turbo users" the same experience. If so how can I solve it.

I haven't had any problems of this kind with my GVP 68030 card, so I can't
help you with that.
Helge
---
Helge E. Rasmussen  .  PHONE + 45 36 72 33 00  .  E-mail:  [e-mail]
Compel A/S          .  FAX   + 45 36 72 43 00  .
Copenhagen, Denmark

##

Subject: Frequently Asked Questions
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 91 09:46:41 EST
From: Sandy Antunes <[e-mail]>

Hi folks.
Although this may be moot with the release of the Imagine upgrade
(just got my newsletter yesterday!), I have collected a lot of
the advice from this list and "organized" it-- arranged it
alphabetically and cut out headers and such.  Sort of a jerry-rigged
Imagine supplement manual.
  I will post it to... to... whatever the name new xanth is using
these days (abcs###?) within a week or so.  If anyone wants me
to email a copy, feel free to email the request to me, but realize
our mailer here is screwy and I may not be able to reach you.
  Also, most importantly, I have tried to keep mention of the original
authors for each bit of advice, and if anyone detects any errors or
any failure to give credit to someone, please email that to me!
 Hope this is useful!
                                                 sandy
------------
Sandy Antunes   "the Waupelani Kid" 'cause that's where I live...
[e-mail]            Penn State Astronomy Dept
NOTE-this is a new address as of 3/91!  Please adjust accordingly
------------ this is my new .sig... dull, isn't it! ------------

##

Subject: Re: Phong Shading
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 91 09:55:06 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> Juan Trevino writes:
> Side note: What is PHONG shading good for? I have hardly any more rendering
> problems now that I don't use PHONG shading anymore.

Well there are many different illumination algorithms each with its own
advantages and disadvantages. Phong is probably the most common simple
illumination algorithm used in ray tracers. Gouraud shading is simpler but
it is meant for scanline renderers. Phong advantages are that it is faster
than the more complex models like Torrence-Cook, Whitted, or Hall and it
does a fair job producing spectral highlights. It is also fairly easy to
use. However, unmodified Phong illumination is known for producing a
plastic look to all surfaces and doesn't come anywhere near the realism of
more sophisticated models. Lightwave uses a modified Phong which allows
metal surfaces to look more like metal and less like plastic.

There is also Phong normal interpolation which merely smoothes out the
faceted surface of a polygonal model.

The questions that come to my mind when I see a Phong button in Imagine are:

1) Does this enable/disable normal interpolation or does it change the
   lighting model?

2) If it changes the lighting model, what does it use when Phong is disabled?

I sure would like to know.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%       `       '                Mark Thompson                          %
%  --==* RADIANT *==--           [e-mail]                 %
%       ' Image `                ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark       %
%      Productions               [phone]  [phone]           %
%                                                                       %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

##

Subject: Re: Imagine to Turbo conversion
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 91 10:52:37 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> Someone sent me mail asking if Louis Markoya has developed a product like
> Surface Master for Turbo or Lightwave.

I have not heard of a similar product for Lightwave but I have gotten
the impression from NewTek that they plan to create a surface library
to complement their existing object library. This is purely
speculation on my part though. Also, the next software release is
supposed to have a complete object conversion utility builtin.

> I did offer to post a question to the list about
> converting Imagine objects, attributes, and textures from Imagine to Turbo.

Can't comment on Imagine to TS but I will say that I have successfully
used the Interchange TS 3.0 module to convert Imagine objects to
Videoscape and Sculpt formats. Based on this, it shouldn't be a problem to
go directly from Imagine to TS 3.0 or use interchange to go to TS 2.0.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%       `       '                Mark Thompson                          %
%  --==* RADIANT *==--           [e-mail]                 %
%       ' Image `                ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark       %
%      Productions               [phone]  [phone]           %
%                                                                       %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

##

Subject: Re: Phong Shading
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 91 03:38:54 -0500
From: david r watters <[e-mail]>

First I would like to complement Mark Thompson.  I am a senior in graphics
and everything he has posted has been right on the money, and well put so
that a number of Imagine users that do not have experience in coding
graphics can understand and appriciate what is happening behind the scenes.

I believe that the Phong switch in the attributes menu is for Phong smooth
shading, ie. interpolating the surface normal to give the appearance of a
smooth object.

This switch seems to have replaced the two mutually redundant switches in
TSilver (Facetted & Smoothed).   What I mean is that Silver had both
switches, but it had to be one or the other, so why not replace it with just
one switch.... which I believe they did.

As to which illumination model Imagine uses, I can only assume it is Phong

David
[e-mail]

##

Subject: Imagine Compendium on new xanth
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 91 14:38:58 EST
From: Sandy Antunes <[e-mail]>

Hello!
I have just uploaded a file called ImagineComp.91a to
the directory /incoming/amiga/3d/Imagine on abcfd20.larc.nasa.gov
(128.155.23.64).
  This files consists of collected postings from this list,
put together with minor editing.  Its chief virtue is an
index and alphabetic organization.  :)  Hopefully, it can
serve as a supplemental manual (that's what I use it for!)
  If anyone does not have access to abcfd20 and wishes me to
email them a copy, just drop me an email request.  Also, I
wish this document to be accurate, so anyone with comments or
critiques or corrections may also freely email me, I would
appreciate it.
  The following is the Index of what is in the document:
========================   INDEX   ==========================================

I.      Anti-Aliasing (and the dreaded jaggies)
II.     Attribute Fixes (avoiding weird effects)
III.    Attributes List (including 2 different glass)
IV.     Attributes, Source for (text reference books)
V.      Brush Wraps I (wrapping to a flat plane)
VI.     Brush Wraps II (the 3 basic kinds of wraps)
VII.    Brush Wraps III (wrapping to a Coke can)
VIII.   Brush Wraps IV (axis placement and wrapping modes)
IX.     Bump Mapping I (bump mapping IS altitude mapping)
X.      Bump Mapping II (vs. displacement mapping)
XI.     Bump Mapping III (still vs. displacement mapping)
XII.    Camera Focal Length (and how to change it)
XIII.   Coordinates (finding them, and using TTDDD)
XIV.    Cycle/Detail Groups (loading full objects into cycle editor)
XV.     Glass (the art of glass)
XVI.    Merge (how to use it!)
XVII.   Metals (how to set attributes for them)
XVIII.  Paths (simple advice for extrusions)
XVIX.   Rendering Time (what increases it)
XX.     Resizing Objects (undocumented way to avoid problems)
XXI.    Retracking the Camera (really quickly!)
XXII.   Skin (how to use it!)
XXIII.  Slice (how to use it, too!)
XXIV.   Snapshot I (what it does)
XXV.    Snapshot II (an example and problem solution)
XXVI.   Texture Axis (how to set it up)
XXVII.  World Size (how to change it)
XXVIII. Worley Project One (a way-cool idea)
XXVIX.  Worley Project Two (a large project with many ideas)
----------------------------------------------------------
                                     sandy
------------
Sandy Antunes   "the Waupelani Kid" 'cause that's where I live...
[e-mail]            Penn State Astronomy Dept
NOTE-this is a new address as of 3/91!  Please adjust accordingly
------------ this is my new .sig... dull, isn't it! ------------

##

Subject: Playing Anims For DCTV Answer, Finally
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 91 11:16:33 PST
From: [e-mail]

There has been a lot of discussion lately on this group about DCTV
and how you play anims, such as one made in Imagine. I ran into this
problem this week and contacted Digital Creations and have an answer
on the questions.

First of all, as everyone probably understands, you have to transfer
animations from IFF format to DCTV format frame by frame. So in Imagine
you don't want to create an anim, you just render all your frames.
Then you transfer the frames to DCTV. You can do this from within
DCTV in the convert module. But it is easier and faster for you to
have the computer transfer them automatically. To do this you
need to use the separate program called IFFtoDCTV which comes with
the DCTV software. If you read the addendum readme file that also
comes with DCTV it gives instructions on IFFtoDCTV and even gives
an example (using SPAT) to give it wildcards so you can transfer a
series of frames at once.

After you have DCTV format frames you have to then string them
together to make an anim out of them. There are several ways to
do this. The automatic way to do this is using MakeAnim. This is
a program by Right Answers Group, which comes with The Director:
Toolkit. There is also a PD version of the program, by Right
Answers also, which doesn't have all the features, but it is PD.
I had some small problems using MakeAnim (I have the Toolkit version).
Firstly, I rendered my Imagine pics at 736x482, which is the largest
resolution that DCTV can handle. MakeAnim wouldn't work with this
resolution. When it got to the second frame it failed, saying
"out of memory/file write error". It obviously isn't a memory
problem, I have a 10MB 3000 and the files are only 100K each.
I talked to Right Answers and they said they had heard of the
bug before and would track it down for me. I was able to use
MakeAnim successfully with a lo res version of my renders. But
there was a problem playing them back, which I'll describe in a
minute.

The second way to make an anim out of the DCTV format pics is simply
by using DPaint. Go into DPaint, load up the first frame, to get the
correct resolution and palette. Then change the number of frames to
the number you want to have. Go to frame 2, load picture 2, go to
frame 3, load picture 3, etc. This is a little bit tedious, but you
can use the keyboard commands ("2" and "a") to make the procedure
go faster. I will say that this procedure makes it's anims more
successfully than MakeAnim. Anyway, when you are done "save anim".

Now, the question that a lot of people have had, playing back the
anims. DCTV format anims and pictures have a magic cookie at the
beginning of the files, whenever a DCTV format anim or pic is
display the DCTV hardware AUTOMATICALLY recognizes that it is DCTV,
and sends it out to the DCTV monitor. The problem is that DCTV
must see it's images in the CENTER of the screen to display them
properly. Otherwise they will be messed up. This is why you can't
use showanim to display the anims. Showanim plays the anims from the
left hand side of the screen and can't be adjusted. When you do use
Showanim, you will see a black and white version of the anim, with
lots of horrible horizontal lines running through it. If you EVER see
this using DCTV, it means the picture needs to be shifted to the right.
I tried using "Play", which they use for their demo and comes with DPaint,
but I couldn't get it to work at all. When I called Digital Creations
they told me that View works. View is the player that comes with
3D Pro. They gave me the number of a BBS where I could find View.
View is a nice anim/ILBM viewer with lots of options. Most importantly,
when the anim/ILBM is being viewed you can use the arrow keys to
shift the screen horizontally. Some notes here: when you start up the
anim, it will look messed up and you will need to shift the screen
to the right. When I tried to play back the version (lo res) that
I made using MakeAnim, it worked for the first time through, then
subsequent loops were messed up, I don't know why this is. The
version I made using DPaint, worked beautifuly and looped forever
once I adjusted the screen for the first time. Last note, this was
the hi res version (736x482) and while it played fine, it ran
VERY slowly, and again, I'm using a 3000 running at 25Mhz. This
could be expected though, we're talking about hi-res overscan
with 4 bitplanes.

Well, that's the story. I hope I've helped someone out so they
don't have to go through the same hassles I did to get this
to work properly.

Good Luck.

=======================================================================
Sean Schur                        USENET: [e-mail]
Assistant Director Amiga/Media Lab        Compuserve: 70731,1102
Character Animation Department            Plink: OSS259
California Institute of the Arts
=======================================================================


##

Subject: "Imagine: A Guided Tour"
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 91 11:09:09 PST
From: [e-mail] (Dennis Humphrey)

I noticed in the April edition of AmigaWorld a Creative Computers ad for a
90-minute tutorial video called "Imagine: A Guided Tour". According to the
ad, it has separate segments covering all aspects of object creation,
attributes, lighting, rendering and animation, among other things.

Has anyone heard of or seen this video? Does anyone know who the producer is
and where else it could be obtained? Out-of-country orders from CC must be a
minimum of $100, it seems.

Thanks for any help you can give.


--------------------------------------------
DENNIS HUMPHREY
UUCP : [e-mail]
Fido : 153/734 (Ed-Net)
GEnie: D.HUMPHREY8
--------------------------------------------

##

Subject: Re:  Playing Anims For DCTV Answer, Finally
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 91 18:34:24 -0500
From: david r watters <[e-mail]>

More about DCTV...

The NEW version of DpaintIII (I don't know the version $)  will load in a
series of pics with similar names, so you do NOT have to do the load pic,
next frame, load pic, ect......

I have shown a DCTV animation with Showanim, so I don't know what the problem
Sean is having there.

Still, the BEST way to work with DCTV is to Convert all the IFF24 files made
by imagine with the IFFtoDCTV utility, it will convert a mass with one
command, and then use IMAGINE to compress in either Anim5 format or Impulse's
movie format.  You do this by selecting import files after you choose IFF12
or what ever, and imagine will compress all the DCTV Display format images
in the anim format you have chosen.

Anyone have some stories about Ham-E or ColorBurst to relay?

David
[e-mail]

##

Subject: Help me Enterprise!
Date: 17 Mar 91 14:00:00 EST
From: [e-mail]

Folks,

I am stumped... :-)

I am trying to do Tutorial 11, this is the tutorial concerning IFF brush
wrapping.  I have managed to do things as the manual says, until you get
to rescaling the brush to the outline of the flag.  I can get an outline,
but when I press the space bar ... it changes my brush scaling back to
the original settings?

Any help would be appreciated!  It is hard to explain this stuff in a
2d text editor! ;-)

 -mark=

 +--------+   ==================================================
 | \/     |   Mark D. Manes   "Mr. AmigaVision,  The 32 bit guy"
 | /\  \/ |   [e-mail]
 |     /  |   [phone]    "Make up your own mind! - AMIGA"
 +--------+   ==================================================




##

Subject: IFF brush axis alignment
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 91 16:00:25 EST
From: [e-mail]

Mark Manes writes:

> I am trying to do Tutorial 11, this is the tutorial concerning IFF brush
> wrapping.  I have managed to do things as the manual says, until you get
> to rescaling the brush to the outline of the flag.  I can get an outline,
> but when I press the space bar ... it changes my brush scaling back to
> the original settings?


To get the changes to "stick" change the axis in "local" mode. For example,
to change the Y axis size, do not type   's Y' type 's l Y'. This should
work. I don't understand why world coordinates don't work- maybe it has
something to do with aligning a brush relative to an object, as opposed to
just spinning or scaling an object in the real world.

Keep on rendering!

-Steve

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------





##

Date: Sun, 17 Mar 91 15:48:16 mst
From: steven lee webb <[e-mail]>


Fellow CPU hogs:

Had a little tid-bit for those programmers out there...

(This pertains to Silver more than Imagine...)

Since it's possible to make our own textures with the Texture_Kit that
was included with SilverSV, do you think that a texture such as "GRASS"
would be possible?  Perhaps it would be possible to even make lawn-mowing
stripes in the lawn, or grass that NEEDED to be cut!  Maybee you could even
make it possible to zoom-in and see single blades!  MAYBEE EVEN ANIMATED!

Or maybee SNOW, like they have in 3D-Pro?

P.S. Has anyone been reading up on the "Real-life WAVE" algorithms that are
being made for Pixar, Symbolics, and Silicon Graphics?  The article that I
read was posted in "Computer Graphics World"  -  (A very good publication if
you're into SuperComputer graphics.  They even mention the Amiga every now
and then.)
    Maybee some genius programmer out there could figure out the alorithm and
port it over to Imagine!
    (The waves that were discussed in the mag were capable of being told where
to crest and break, like on a beach, and were shaped due to the surface of
the ground under the water..  ie. deep water was non-crested, shallow water
was crested and breaking, and inches of water was foam.)
    I realize that this could end up to be a programmer's nightmare, and I'm
not that great in texture-making either, but if Pixar can do it...
                             So can the Amiga!

P.P.S.  HURRAY FOR IMPULSE & THEIR CONTINUING RELEASE OF GREAT SOFTWARE!!!
   (If it wasn't for them, I'd have to turn my machine off on occasion!)
     _________
    /  ______/\
   /  /\_____\/    -----------------------------------------------
  /_____   /\      It is easier to get forgiveness than permission
 _\____/  / /      -----------------------------------------------
/________/ /
\________\/teven Webb  Reply to: [e-mail]
           A Computer Science Major @ Colorado State University
     "Spelling" is NOT a prerequsite for a degree in Computer Science!
            I have an amiga 500 with 5MEGS RAM, and a 50MEG HD.
                   [why are you looking at me so funny?]
                     (Yes, I HAVE voided my warranty!)


##

Subject: Animating waves
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 91 22:13:20 EST
From: [e-mail]

Steven Webb says "waves would be way-cool! Pixar can do it, why can't we?"


Turns out I'm working on it---- test renders look terrific. No animation yet,
but it's the next extension. [No complex wave breaking or contour following.
My model uses the 2-D frequency spectrum of long-fetch ocean waves.]

I wrote a C program that outputs height as a 24 bit color pic- I then just
use this as an altitude map on a simple (2 triangle) plane. Works really well.

I'll post a pic in a week or so when I get a really nice render.

-Steve

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

##

Subject: The best of Imagine.
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1991 10:51:59 +0100
From: Marek Rzewuski <[e-mail]>

I'm looking for noe really good pictures made using Imagine.
I'm not interested in pictures like two mirrorspheres and one
checked floor, but I'm interested in advanced objects.
Could someone please tell me where I could find such pictures?
I would like to see what is possible to get out of Imagine.

In advance, thank you.

M.R.
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Mirrors, glass balls and STUFF!
Date: 18 Mar 91 08:26:00 EST
From: [e-mail]

Greetings all,

Yes,  Yes-n-deed doing the local scaling worked great for tutorial #11.

Thanks everyone!

Now the next question, which doesn't seem to be in the manual:
   - How does one render a mirror like surface
   - How does one render a clear or colored see-through type object?

The more I use Imagine, the more I love it.

I am thinking about a project and I would like to know what you folks
think.  This is a scaled-down version of what I originally had in
mind!  I hope that I am not told this is far far too big a project
for a beginner!

I thought it would be interesting to design a little house and create
all the individual rooms.  Then have the camera go through every room
in the house.  It could be a small house :-)

Your thoughts are appreciated!

-mark=


##

Subject: Glass,mirrors, and houses
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 91 12:04:08 EST
From: [e-mail]

To Mark, who asked for glass and mirrors-

The short answer- anything reflective enough looks pretty much like a mirror.
Too much reflection, though, and the object becomes too perfect and its tough
to see its outline. Try a dark grey color, no roughness, no shininess, no
filter, and maybe 2/3 on all guns reflection, and wing it from there.

Glass is much trickier. The key- NO (None!) (Zero!) Shininess!


The long answer-

 I wrote a really long article called "The Art of Glass". Read it. It tells
how to make beautiful transparency. I also wrote up a list of useful
attributes, including  mirror (or was it chrome?). Both articles can be found
in the imagine archives on ab20.larc.nasa.gov or hubcap.clemson.edu.


Houses: Hmmmm- sounds cool.

Two problems I forsee- lights and paths. You will need light in all of the
rooms, so carefully placing them is going to be important. You might have
a light follow the SAME path that the camera is following (so it's really
on top of the camera) so that every thing will be illuminated.

The camera path is not going to be much fun to make. I don't think the
stage editor has a "hide points" mode, which would be invaluable for
mucking around with interior points. Perhaps straight line segement
paths would be easier to implement because you can do them in the detail
editor.

Anyone have ideas about making really really complex paths?

Good luck, Mark.

-Steve

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Vista Pro objects
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 91 19:07:29 EST
From: [e-mail]

Would someone with Vista Pro do us a great service, and make an
Imagine object of a landscape, and put it on ab20? I'd love to
see how well it works.

I know the objects are huge, but just think how cool a jet flying
by mountain peaks would be, with an ocean view twinkling off in
the distance... Ah, even a still.

I'd really love the landscape, and I bet a lot of the other Imaginers
(Imaginites?) would too.

If the output objects are what I hope, I'd probably plunk down the $$ for
Vista Pro myself. I can't convince myself to spend $100 on a piece of
software that I don't know will do what I hope it does.

-Steve

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

##

Subject: Paths through a house
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 91 23:57:45 EST
From: [e-mail]

A message from Rick Rodreguez relayed through me-


>Actually, Steve, making paths is simple.  Add a Path in the Stage, go
>to edit path mode and then Split Segment.  Drag the new segment to the
>place you wish the camera to visit and then split the segment again to
>create the new stopping point.  Paths are bezier curves which conform to
>the placement of the axes that define individual segments (similar to
>knots in Sculpt Animate's splines).  The more segments you define, the
>more complex your animation.  Individual knots can be moved or rotated
>so that the camera or object will pitch, bank and roll.
>Hope this helps.
>--Rick


My reply-

 Yes, this is EXACTLY how to produce nice paths in the stage editor- it
works wonderfully, and camera motion especially benefeits from the smooth
interpolation between knots.

The problem that I was trying to convey wasn't difficulty in making a
path, even a complex one. In the scene that we're talking about, though,
is a walk-through of a house. It is _VERY_ difficult to resolve and
define locations in the tri-view when the object's interior has detail,
like this house will. My complaint was that the Stage editor lacked a
"hide points" mode like the detail editor, and it might be worth
the lower path quality (using straight line paths, ick!) just to be able
to place the path accurately since you can take out the extra floors and
rooms of the house using "Hide points."

Now that I think about it, maybe the best solution is to use the detail
editor and put an axis at each of the "waypoints" along the journey
through the rooms. You could name the axes "Start" and "Point 1" and "Point
4" and "End", and so on. Then group them and save it.

 In the Stage editor, you can load this big thing, then make your spline
path by using these pre-done waypoints. To find a waypoint, you don't have to
sort through the mash of lines each view shows you- you just use the
"find by name" requester which will gladly highlight each point in turn
for you!

This seems like the most reasonable solution to me, at least until we get
a "hide points" command in the Stage Editor. Imagine 2.0, I guess.. :-)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: mirrors, glass balls and STUFF!
Date: 18 Mar 91 12:28 -0600
From: Colin Stobbe <[e-mail]>

Hello,
     In regards to your 'housing project', it sounds like an interesting
idea.  Don't let anyone tell you it's 'far far to big a project for a
beginner', however.  When I first got Turbo Silver, people told me that
what I was attempting was too ambitious, but I did it anyways, learned
a lot about the program and won 1st place in the local user groups
animation contest.  I don't know about anyone else, but I don't really
learn when I'm just doing really simple things, by trying something
'too hard for me', I may not accomplish it, but at least I'll learn alot.
     Some suggestions for you project.  Make the house modular and have
rooms only 'exist' in the scene when they can be seen.  Make a basic form
when trying to make a path for the camera to follow.  Quick to render, and
simple to understand in the 3-view system.  As an added touch, put a
picture of yourself in the scene (like a portrait or something), one way
to make yourself famous.
     Well, have fun.

          Colin Stobbe

##

Subject: Re:  Glass,mirrors, and houses
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 91 14:58:52 EST
From: "Scott Sutherland" <[e-mail]>

    Another problem that Mark will have is the SIZE of the animation.
As many of us know, any animation that involves camera movement can be very
large since there is a good chance that most of the pixels in each frame
will change.  This will be even more true IF you use Steve's suggestion of
having a light follow the camera, since in each frame the light will be in
a different location, causing the illumination to be different on each
surface.  This is even true for 'AS SUN' light sources but to a lesser
extent.  I was able to make an object LOOK as if it had shadows on it
by putting the light source ALMOST directly above it (just a little to one
side and a little toward the camera).  The bottoms of each part of the object
did not have as much light and were darker, giving the illusion of shadows
without the rendering time expense (of course there were no shadows on the
ground ;^))).  I have NOT tried to make any paths in Imagine, but if it
is anything like TS, complex paths are NOT hard.  Just make sure that you
define the edges that define the path in the order you want them followed.

Let us know how it turns out.

Scott Sutherland
[e-mail]

##

Subject: Backgrounds
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 91 14:46:07 EST
From: [e-mail]

Does anyone have a good way of making backdrops or frontdrops for a scene?
These are flat images that you want to put in back of (or occasionally in
front of) a scene. For example, you might have a nice jungle picture, and
you want to make  a three-d tree with a parrot in it in front of this
simple picture. The use is pretty obvious, the application is not.

The best way I've come up with to make a backdrop is the obvious one. You
take a plane (or ground for that matter) and color map the image onto it. Then
just sorta prop it up in the back of your scene, using the camera view in
the stage editor to get the position and size right. You should be careful to
keep the specular colors OFF (otherwise you'll get flat highlights on a
supposedly 3d scene).

This works all right, but shadows fall on the backdrop look just like
they're falling on a flat wall, destroying the illusion.

Frontdrops are a bit tricker. You create a plane, and colormap the image
onto it. However, you should make a SECOND copy of the plane that is black
where there is a real image and white where its just background. You then map
this onto the SAME plane,  as a TRANSPARENCY map. This means that the
airplane or whatever you're composting in front will be opaque, and have
colors like an airplane. However, the outline around the airplane is
perfectly transparent, so you can't see it at all. Helge Rassmussen
used an effect like this in his Castle anim (the trees), and it works.
Its not perfect, but it's a quick and dirty solution.

Problems with this method are the same with the backdrop- shadows on
it look stupid, shadows it CASTS look stupid, and highlights destroy
it.

Any ideas, people? Of course the real answer is a 24 bit paint program.
Unfortunately, I don't have one...

-Steve

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

##

Subject: Imagine and GENLOCKING... Hmmmm???
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 91 15:29:37 EST
From: "Scott Sutherland" <[e-mail]>

    I have an interesting I idea that I have tried which worked, but I
also have a couple of problems with it that one of you might be able to help
solve.  I just started playing with my AmiGen genlocking device.  I overlayed
some of Eric Schwartz's Aerotoons over Top Gun segments.  Just by accident
I got the actions of the animation to coincide with what was going on in
the movie (especially the words:  e.g.  One aerotoon shows a jet looking
behind itself and then showing a look of surprise.  It then 'high-tails' it
out of there.  In the video, one of the actors says (as the plane is acting
surprised) 'Oh Sh*t!!').  Okay, so you had to be there.  Anyway, this
interaction looked so nice that I thought it would be really fun to make my
animations look as if they were interacting with (or reacting to) stuff
going on in the background video (like Roger Rabbit, Mary Poppins, and a
Gene Kelly movie (don't recall the name)).  Of course my aspirations are not
so lofty (YET!), so I tried something simple.  I have a mannequin object AND a
video of some Tex Avery cartoons.  In one of the cartoons a taxi pulls up
in front of a hotel, one of the characters gets in, and the taxi leaves (very
quickly).  I want my mannequin to look as if it is leaning on the back
of the cab and, as the cab speeds off, have him fall down.  His final position
is with his head propped up, one leg bent, other hand on hip tapping in
disgust (no facial features, so I cannot make a disgusted look ;^().  Well,
I got the animation done and figured out something that makes it much
easier to coordinate the ANIM and live video.

    First, record the animation in IFF ANIM format.  Then open AmigaVision
and create a script that 1) preloads the ANIM, 2) has a picture display
icon up (load the ANIM in the requestor), 3) has a mouse click icon set to
ANY CLICK/ NO POINTER), and 4) an ANIM playing icon (load the ANIM in this
requestor as well).  Now, run the script.  After a few seconds you will see
the first frame of your ANIM on screen.  Start the video background several
seconds before the desired scene.  Then, a second or two before the beginning
of the desired scene (you'll have to 'time' this), click on the left mouse
button.  The ANIM will then play.  This makes it easy to coordinate the
ANIM action with the part of the video you want.  ALSO, in both the IFF and
ANIM requesters there is an X and Y offset.  With these, you can fine-tune the
exact position of your animated character w.r.t. the video character.

    Problems.  The ONLY problems I have encountered are 1) a delay between
when I click the mouse button and when the ANIM starts, and 2) the speed at
which AmigaVision plays my ANIM.  The first one can be worked around by
timing the delay and adjusting when I click the mouse.  The latter is a source
of concern to me.  AV plays back the ANIM MUCH slower than other programs I
have (Animation Station, AniMagic, etc.).  There is NO jiffie delay time set
for each frame.  There is NO item in the ANIM requester of AV for adjusting
the playback speed of ANIMS.

Does anyone know why AV would play the ANIMs back so much slower (as if I had
put a 10-15 jiffie delay on each frame!!) than the other programs?  Does
anyone know if it is possible to adjust the playback SPEED of an ANIM in
AmigaVision?

This ANIM/Live Video stuff is fun and it makes you really plan out your
animations, lighting, and camera settings.  Try it!  You'll like it!!

Later...

Scott Sutherland
[e-mail]

##

Subject: Re: Help me Enterprise!
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 91 11:44:49 PST
From: [e-mail] (R. L. Zarling)

From [e-mail] Sun Mar 17 11:21:21 1991
>I am trying to do Tutorial 11, this is the tutorial concerning IFF brush
>wrapping.  I have managed to do things as the manual says, until you get
>to rescaling the brush to the outline of the flag.  I can get an outline,
>but when I press the space bar ... it changes my brush scaling back to
>the original settings?

This had me going for a while, too.  They neglect to tell you that you
*must* do a "local" scaling.  Press S for scaling, L for local, then
any of the x, y, z restrictions you might want.  Do your scaling, and
when you press space bar it will stick.

--Ray Zarling
[e-mail]

##

Date: Mon, 18 Mar 91 17:22:43 -0600
From: Donald Richard Tillery Jr <[e-mail]>

It's relatively official.  Impulse has the 1.1 upgrade available for Imagine
users.  I personally haven't gotten the newsletter, but I have a friend who
has gotten it and it says to send your original disk back with a SASE (self
addressed stamped envelope - or mailer) to Impulse for a _free_ upgrade.  I
called Impulse anyway, because I am a bit miffed that I didn't get the
newsletter.  They said they'd send out "another one" to me.

I probably won't have much time to mess with this update when it comes in
but I would appreciate comments on improvements within it.  I do have a bit
of time to read my mail and catch up on the news every other day or so, so
I hope you all can reflect its improvements so I know what I'm looking
forward to once I get through this semester.

Rick Tillery ([e-mail])


##

Subject: Imagine...Objects that go BUMP in the Knight..
Date: 19 Mar 91 09:14:00 EST
From: [e-mail]

Greetings!

First off, may I say what a "GREAT" mailing list!  Despite the mailer deamon
at one site. :-)

Thanks to all of you who sent me mail through the list and directly to me
on the glass ball and the mirror stuff.  I got it to work first time.  :-)
Well, ok, it was the second time!

I created the ever so popular mirrored ground... wow, the first picture
that sorta looks decent.  Things are looking up.

I have now completed all of the detail editor tutorials.  Rick, you
did a great job.  It would be greater however, if the tutorials talked
about textures a bit more, and also described to a greater detail
how to set colors/reflection etc.

I will probably not start on my house project until I finish the cycle
editor and stage editor tutorials.   It is difficult for me to decide
to go this way as I want to go plunder and blunder.  However, I figure
I could reduce my aggrevation ten fold if I finish the tutorials. :-)

I have enjoyed you folks dicsssing this house project, I am keeping
every posting about it.  I suspect I will need all of the ideas!  I
love the idea of putting my picture inside the house.  :-)

I am wondering if making the house rather large will make the placement
of objects on the inside any easier?  I am also wondering why I can't
make little desk lamps and place them in each of the rooms?   I
kinda liked the idea about the light being attached to the camera
as well.

I am also curious as too memory.  Right now I have a A3000 with a
100 mb hard disk and 5 mebabytes of memory (4 really after I load
kickstart and use the memory for the hard disk).  Is my house too
big a project for my dinky computer?  :-)

Thanks again, keep the mail a flowin'.

 -mark=

 +--------+   ==================================================
 | \/     |   Mark D. Manes   "Mr. AmigaVision,  The 32 bit guy"
 | /\  \/ |   [e-mail]
 |     /  |   [phone]    "Make up your own mind! - AMIGA"
 +--------+   ==================================================




##

Subject: Imagine update
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 07:35:39 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Ed Chadez)

On Mar 18,  5:22pm, Donald Richard Tillery Jr wrote:
} Subject:
}
} It's relatively official.  Impulse has the 1.1 upgrade available for Imagine
} users.  I personally haven't gotten the newsletter, but I have a friend who
} has gotten it and it says to send your original disk back with a SASE (self
} addressed stamped envelope - or mailer) to Impulse for a _free_ upgrade.  I
} called Impulse anyway, because I am a bit miffed that I didn't get the
} newsletter.  They said they'd send out "another one" to me.
}
}-- End of excerpt from Donald Richard Tillery Jr

I called Impulse Monday and asked about the update...and the newsletter.
Apparently they are having the mailing list maintained by a third party and
not all of us (or at least Donald and myself) didn't make it to the new
list.  Also, the really nice guy I talked to said they're sending the
newsletter bulk this time, instead of first class.  This saves Impulse
money (good) but may take up to three or four weeks to distribute them to
everybody.  I'm going to return my original disk with a mailer, and request
that I 1) get a copy of the newsletter and 2) confirm that I'm on the
mailing list.  If it hadn't been for imagine@athena I wouldn't have even
HEARD about an update....  Hmmm, good think I subscribe, hu?

I have a question for the group, however....  I made a copy of the original
disk and put it away.  This means that my original doesn't have my name
tacked onto it.  Does anybody think this will be a problem??

--ed


--
--//---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\X/ [e-mail]/Edward Chadez                    CARL Systems(303)861-5319
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

##

Subject: Automated HAM-E conversions using spat??
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 11:43:44 EST
From: "Scott Sutherland" <[e-mail]>

A while back Brian bishop wrote:

>Yes, I have successfully assembled 24-bit IFF's into a DCTV animation. It
>did not work for me using Dpaint (though I may have done something wrong,
>because the DCTV disks have an anim that works with the EA player prog).
>The way I did it was to render all the pix with something (Vistapro in my
>case), then use IFFtoDCTV to convert them. To convert all of them in one
>pass you can use the AmigaDOS script 'spat' like this:
>
>  execute spat ifftodctv foo#?.iff24


    Anyone know if this can also be done using the HAM-E and its software?
BTW, what IS 'spat' anyway??  I hope to get my defunct HAM-E working soon to
test this out.

Thanks,

Scott Sutherland
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re:  Glass,mirrors, and houses
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 11:52:10 -0500
From: david r watters <[e-mail]>

Like Scott said, having a light follow the path with the observer creates the
illusion that someone is walking through the office in the middle of the night
with a flashlight, and also makes the anim size VERY large.
One solution is to crank the ambient light and don't even have a light located
in the scene.  Another would be to have no roof for the current floor you are
on and have a light high enough directly above so the shadows look as true
as possible.

Of course somebody could write a Radiosity F/X! Big :-)!

As for making the path and seeing what you are doing:  I assume with a project
that requires a lot of data like this you would have everything in "piecesparts"
which means that you could just load the walls and create you path (which is
obscenely easy thanks to Imagines awsome paths! God it's good to be rid of
SA 4D!) or load the walls and any major obsticle like a desk... then load the
rest when the path is done.

About paths:
What is the best way to creat a perfect circle path?

About object rotations!!!:

The best way, that I can see, to rotate an object about it's own axis is to do
it like we used to in SA 4D.  Add a circular path at the so their local axis are
right on top of each other. (Easily done by loading one right after the other).
Assign the object position to the path and alignment to the path.  Now make the
object VERY Small.  Very SMALL!
The object will now rotate, Perfectly, arund it's own axis.  You can then assign
the path's position to any path or keyposition you want the object to go in and
it will rotate around it's own axis as it moves.

I imagine you can use the SAME technique with another path for that path, thus
letting you add rotation in another degree.

You have now replaced the rotation part of STORY of TurboSilver!  (Which I wish
was still imployed somehow, but who's complaining! :-)  )

-Dave

##

Subject: House paths
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 12:59:55 EST
From: [e-mail]

Forwarded thru me:



>The problem that I was trying to convey wasn't difficulty in making a
>path, even a complex one. In the scene that we're talking about, though,
>is a walk-through of a house. It is _VERY_ difficult to resolve and
>define locations in the tri-view when the object's interior has detail,
>like this house will.

I have an idea about that...
Make 2D floor plan of the house the same size as the original house. Then
load it into the sage editor and put you nice smooth camera path over that.
Then delete the floor plan and load in the house.

Just make sure you don't go through the roof (unless you want to :) )
because the floorplan will have no height information. Allthough you could
leave the walls there too without cluttering up you view.

                            Tom the Smith


I like it- this might be the easiest way to go. -Steve

##

Subject: [e-mail]'s House Project
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 10:38:34 PST
From: [e-mail] (R. L. Zarling)

Must be something about houses--I have had a long-standing interest in
doing a computer model of my house, and after a number of false starts
finally got going on it a couple of weeks ago.  The false starts had to
do with the inaccuracy and/or tedium of trying to get the dimensions of
everything to scale, and lined up with other objects.

Freehand drawing doesn't even begin to cut it.  I learned early that I
needed to enter coordinates.  This can of course be done in Imagine or
Turbo, but I found that I make mistakes, and need to "remake" a certain
section of wall, for instance, to slightly different dimensions to get
things to fit.  In other words, I need to create these objects from
scripts.  Alas, Imagine doesn't seem to have an ARexx interface or
scripting capability.

Another problem is too many points!  This comes up most easily when I make
a wall with a window, for instance.  Imagine's "slice" operation seems
ideal for this:  just make a flat wall, and slice windows into it.  Alas,
the windows come out with, of course, one point on each corner, but also
with an addition point on each side (why?!).  In addition, there is all
that (non-script-based) deletion of unwanted slicing products.

My solution:  I used PageRender 3D for creating the walls.  It has a very
powerful scripting capability (including great stuff like subdivide, dome,
crevice, twist, array (to make multiple copies of an object), etc.).
Of course it shows you what it's building as it happens, for debugging,
although this view leaves a lot to be desired by comparison with Imagine
(it is sometimes even wrong about what object is in front of another!).
I used a scaling of 1 cm = 1 inch of actual measurement, to make data
entry easy.  Then use Interchange to convert to Turbo format, use Interchange
again to point-reduce (so where two walls join, there is only one set of
points).  The images in Imagine are uncanny in their realism!

--ray zarling
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Paths through a house
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 12:54:36 PST
From: "Jim Lange" <[e-mail]>

In-Reply-To: WRPYR:[e-mail]'s message of 03-18-91 23:57

Regarding Steve Worley's House project, he writes:

> ... It is _VERY_ difficult to resolve and
> define locations in the tri-view when the object's interior has detail,
> like this house will. My complaint was that the Stage editor lacked a
> "hide points" mode like the detail editor, and it might be worth
> the lower path quality (using straight line paths, ick!) just to be able
> to place the path accurately since you can take out the extra floors and
> rooms of the house using "Hide points."

I've only had Imagine for about a week (version 1.1), but I've noticed that
objects that are set to quick draw in the detail editor display as bounding
boxes in the stage editor as well.  So you could save your walls, floors,
furniture and other house features this way and then "build" and furnish your
house in the stage editor.  Or save the main house structure (floors, walls,
doors, etc.) as one quick-drawn object and then create a second wire-frame
object that defines the floor plan and major features that can be loaded into
the detail editor (positioned within the bounding box for the whole house).
The wire-frame representation would be invisible when rendered, but would allow
you to easily create accurate paths.  Other objects in the house such as
furniture, doors, pictures, pets, etc. could be positioned and animated using
their bounding box representation.

Also, version 1.1 supports objects as light SOURCES, so you can have accurate
lights in each room.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Lange
[e-mail]



##

Subject: Re: Backgrounds
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 15:57:49 -0500
From: Udo K Schuermann <[e-mail]>

> Does anyone have a good way of making backdrops or frontdrops for a scene?
> ...
> [Brush onto flat plane]
> This works all right, but shadows fall on the backdrop look just like
> they're falling on a flat wall, destroying the illusion.
>
> -Steve

Bump maps may be the answer, provided your backdrop doesn't have
radical outcroppings (such as an airplane's wings).  The rounding of a
tree trunk would be feasible, and the foliage shouldn't be too much of
a problem, either.
    As to shadows, Imagine v1.1 now has bright objects, which do
not show shadows.

 ._.  Udo Schuermann        And now for something completely different:
 ( )  [e-mail]    An Iraqi dictator without his underpants.

##

Subject: Stupid Bumpmap Tricks.
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 16:42:12 CST
From: [e-mail]

All this talk about bump maps got me wondering... What would happen if
someone had an iff picture of the moon, and brush-wrapped it around a sphere
to give the sphere the appearance of the moon.

Then get the same iff picture and convert it to grey scale and wrap it around
the sphere the same way, exept use it as a bump map??

Would we then have an awesome sphere that looked like the moon, complete
with mountains? If the greyscale moon picture was of a full moon, there
should be no shadows that would be confused with mountains.

If anyone has a picture of the moon, I would be interested to see how this turns out.

                        Tom the Smith

##

Subject: Re: Stupid Bumpmap Tricks.
Date:    Tue, 19 Mar 91 19:52 EST
From: "Doug Bischoff" <[e-mail]>

     I tried something similar... I took a flat picture of a landscape generate
d from a visual-fractal landscape generator (non-Vista related) and wrapped it
both as a color map (from the IFF) then as an altitude map (grey-scaled from
ADPro).  It had no apparent effect.

/---------------------------------------------------------------------\
| -Doug  Bischoff- |    *** ***    ====--\         | "I'm not God...  |
| -DEB110 @ PSUVM- |   *  ***  *     ==|<>\___     |    I was just    |
| -The Black Ring- |    *** ***        |______\    |       misquoted!"|
| --- "Wheels" --- |      ***           O   O      |   -Dave Lister   |
| Corwyn Blakwolfe |     T.R.I.     -------------  |    RED DWARF     |
\---- [e-mail]  D.BISCHOFF on GEnie  THIRDMAN on PAN -----/

##

Subject: Re: Vista Pro objects
Date: 19 Mar 91 22:46:58 EST
From: Rick Rodriguez <[e-mail]>

Unfortunately, Steve, VistaPro objects are a major disappointment.
After looking at the program's internal renderings, the Imagine/Silver
objects it creates aren't acceptable.  I have been able to create
lo-res objects (fewest number of triangles) and have used VistaPro
hi-res renderings (24 bit) as IFF brushes.  This technique is somewhat
more satisfying.
--Rick


##

Subject: Re: Automated HAM-E conversions using spat??
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 23:04:24 PST
From: [e-mail]

>    Anyone know if this can also be done using the HAM-E and its software?
>BTW, what IS 'spat' anyway??  I hope to get my defunct HAM-E working soon to
>test this out.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Scott Sutherland

SPAT is a System program standard on the Amiga. Actually, I can't say
for sure that it is standard under 1.3, I only know that it is
under 2.0 for certain. It resides in your S: directory.

Basically, it is an extenstion of the EXECUTE command. Anything you can
run using EXECUTE, you should be able to use SPAT as well. The difference
is that with SPAT you can also pass the command you are executing a
number of arguments and variables. Using the DCTV example:

    execute spat ifftodctv foo#?.iff24

This will pass any arguments for IFFTODCTV along using all possibilities
for the wildcards. So the answer to your question is, yes, I think.
I personally am not familiar with the HAM-E software, but if it can
be executed from the cli, then it should work.

=======================================================================
Sean Schur                        USENET: [e-mail]
Assistant Director Amiga/Media Lab        Compuserve: 70731,1102
Character Animation Department            Plink: OSS259
California Institute of the Arts
=======================================================================


##

Subject: Moon pictures
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 91 10:52:16 CST
From: [e-mail]

Rick,
Your tape sounds cool! Could you put a copy of the Moon iff picture on
ab20.larc.nasa.gov? I think there is an /incoming/amiaga/iff directory
there. And, if you don't mind a picture of your moon that you did with
Imagine? I'd love to see it!

                        Tom

##

Subject: Upgrade still available?
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 91 11:15:00 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Ron Baalke)

I was wondering if the Imagine upgrade to Turbo Silver owners is still
available, and if it is, how much is the upgrade.  I didn't upgrade
right away because I didn't want to struggle with a beta version of a
new product, but now that I hear version 1.1 is shipping, I think now is
a good time to do the upgrade.

##

Subject: Paths in Detail Editor
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 91 16:39:39 PST
From: "Jim Lange" <[e-mail]>

Possible dumb question:

Since extrusion paths in the detail editor consist of one axis and multiple
points or lines, what are spline paths made using Make Path from multiple axes
good for?  Can they be loaded into the Stage editor?

[I struggled for some time trying to extrude to a path as described in the
manual, then read the Readme file that came with my 1.1 disk (my first version)
which explained that extrusion paths have only one axis.  Has the method
changed from 1.0 to 1.1?]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Lange                [e-mail]
Oracle Corporation            {uunet,apple,hplabs}!oracle!jlange
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Vista Obs
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 91 20:19:34 EST
From: [e-mail]

Mark Davis sent me a pair of Vista landscapes (of El Capitan) via mail.
He doesn't have access to ab20.larc.nasa.gov, so I put them there
for him. [In incoming/amiga/3d/Imagine].

The text explanation he included:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a UUENCODED Lharc file called Vista_objects.lzh.
Vista_objects.lzh contain two TURBO SILVER/IMAGINE OBJECTS of a portion of
a valley from the VISTA DEM(digital elevation model) landscape of El
Capitan in Yosemite valley in California.  The objects were saved from a
scene rendered at night. I didn't take the time to set the palette, tree
line, snow level, etc...so the colors may be a bit monotonous (gray
on gray).

When the lzh file is expanded there will be two object files, vista.obj
and vista1.obj.  Vista.obj was saved in the lowest resolution that Vista
can save Turbo Silver object files and the scene was "cropped" a bit more
than Vista1.obj. Vista1.obj was saved at a higher resolution.  There
are two higher resolutions that object files can be saved in but the size
of the objects produced require quite a lot of memory to render.  I saved
at the lower resolutions so folks with modest memory can utilize them. These
object files contain color information.

     Mark Davis    [e-mail]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you, Mark!!!! I already rendered the complex version, and it looks
pretty good. I am disappointed in the coloring, but the terrain-like
detail is excellent. Also, the object is a checkerboard of grouped objects,
which is a NICE way of saving landscapes- you can delete a cel if you don't
need it. However, Phong shading is NOT set on these objects, and you really
want the smooth shading, so turn it on. Have fun clicking, or join 'em into
one big object.

Of course, this thing will suck up your RAM like candy.

"If you aren't always running out of memory, you're not trying hard enough."

-Steve

PS- Colorburst ships roughly two-three weeks (RSN). I'm on their list, finally!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------



##

Subject: Fonts and Logos
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 91 20:03:21 EST
From: [e-mail]

I was mucking around trying to make a new "Imagine" picture for the startup
sequence, and thought it might be neat to ray-trace a nice version.

The question is what is the best way to get nice 3D fonts? Well, you get
a nice big font (I used my Pro-Page Helvetica-Bold at about 80 pixels high)
and save the word(s) as a picture, then convert this to an outline in
the Detail editor and extrude. You can auto-face using "slice", being careful
to only slice 2 or 3 letters at once to keep an Imagine bug at bay. [It will
hang if you have too many letters. It's not the number of points- perhaps
too many pieces. Anyway, a bug.

This gives you a nice 3D font.

Well, not really. It gives you a 3D font, but to be honest, its kinda boring.
Its just flat letters with depth. Ugh.

Wouldn't some neat color or chiseled edges or something help?

"Yes!" I said to myself. Beveled edges all the way around would look
way-cool! OK, lessee, I can put a smaller copy of each letter on top of
itself, um, no, I could drag the points on the outline in, um, no, argh!!!

It is VERY difficult! I couldn't come up with a good way to do it. Remember,
you don't want a letter becoming smaller as it reaches the surface of the
letter, you want it to become THINNER. A smaller copy on top would make
a cone-like effect. Not what I'm looking for.

Finally, I came up with a method that worked really well. First, go into
DPaint and pick up your word or whatever as a brush. Then use shift-O to
THIN the brush. I thinned three times- you might do more with a bigger
font, less with a smaller font. An font less than about 50 pixels high
is gonna die.

I then saved the picture with "IMAGINE" stamped on it twice- thick and thin.
I loaded it into Imagine and converted to an outline.

Now, I wanted to make a surface that went from the big outline to the thinner
one. An ideal job for skin, right? Yes!

Well, almost. Skin requires both objects to have the same number of points.
(What would it do with the extras on one or the other?) The thinned letters
were considerably more complex than their thick versions. [The curves were
tighter, and right angles were rounded.]

What I did was copy the thick font's outline, and superimposed it onto the
thin version. Then I used "drag points" on each letter to make the big font
look just like the thinned one. I also used my judgement in what looked good-
the thinned font was a guide, not an absolute.

When I was done, I deleted my original thin letters. I was left with "IMAGINE"
in normal letters, and "IMAGINE" with thin letters. Both versions had the
same number of points.

The letters should have some depth, so I copied the thick version again,
and extruded it into a tube.

To make the chiseled faces, I placed the thin version directly on top
of the un-extruded version, then raised it up a little bit in the
direction towards me. Then I picked them both and skinned.

Putting a front face on the letters was pretty easy. I just used the
slice method shown in the tutorial manual. Messy, but it works. I used a HUGE
triangle (primative plane, one corner deleted) placed over the IMAG
letters at a depth JUST under the thin letters, and sliced. I deleted
the crufty leftovers (the outside triangle bits, the VERY small parts
chopped from the skinned chisel section). I repeated for the INE
letters. I then selected all of the faces and chisel parts, and JOINED
them into one object.

I was then left with an "tube" and a "cap". I placed the cap (the
front face and chisel edge) directly over the tube and joined them
both. I didn't bother with a back face, but you could face it if you
like, or even copy the cap and scale it in its depth direction by -1
to get an inverted version that will fit on the back.

Thats it! I used "merge" at the end to connect everything together. Be
careful to turn Phong _OFF_. You WANT a faceted appearance.

I haven't completed the picture, and I should really work on my water
waves. Or my thesis. Sigh.

Anyway, the final letters looked VERY slick. Try it!

Another idea would be using the letters to slice out a hollow in a
solid object, to get a carved/stamped surface.

-Steve

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------




##

Subject: Strange...
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 91 22:58 CST
From: [e-mail] (Duane Fields)

This may have been discussed before, but....
I rendered a clear ball on a a black vase, on a hunk of
wood, all sitting in the corner of a shiny/green/reflective room.
When I rendered in color-shaded-wireframe it looks fine, green
walls, brown wood... But in trace or  scanline, the walls turn
white, solid white. And the wood is black.... The glass looks fine tho!

Any ideas???

Duane

##

Subject: render bug
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 91 21:55:21 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Aaron Tucker)

I haven't gotten my 1.1a upgrade or newsletter for that matter. That is really
upsetting that I am not on thier mailing list. I am just going to have to send
in my original, which I hate to do.

Anyways, I generated a scene with a company logo converted from a PDraw clip
file. It was surrounded by a clear glass sphere. When I did a scanline preview,
the scene looked correct. So, I did a ray-trace. Do my shock, the top half of
the clear sphere disappeared. You could see the background (simple B&W checker)
fading into the background without any glass distortion.
Has anyone encounted a problem like this?

Anyways, off to the Post Office I go.


Juan Trevino
Modern Media


##

Subject: Fonts and Logos
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 07:56:50 EST
From: [e-mail] (John Mitchell)

hi.

>The question is what is the best way to get nice 3D fonts?

Your method sounds really interesting.  If you need more fonts, you might
check out the graphics toolkit "vogle" (avail at ftp sites everywhere) --
it has a Hershey (stroked font) translator.  There's 25 fonts, including
old english, greek, italic, and special glyphs.  The translator works by
replacing "strokes" by cylinders or rectangles (your choice).

Big advantage is that you're not losing any resolution.  (And, it's free).

Have fun.

                        - john

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
John Mitchell, Systems Guy, Image Research Center
University of Maryland Baltimore County
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Fonts and Logos
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 08:35:04 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> Beveled edges all the way around would look
> way-cool! It is VERY difficult!

Some modelers actually do this for you. I asked Allen to add it to Lightwave.
We'll see.

> Finally, I came up with a method that worked really well. First, go into
> DPaint and pick up your word or whatever as a brush. Then use shift-O to
> THIN the brush.

Great idea!!! I'm going to have to try this out with Pixel 3D. Pixel 3D allows
multi color images so you could do the entire conversion in one step.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
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##

Subject: Imagine Bugs or Colorbust-DCTV
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 09:45:46 EST
From: John J. Rosner <[e-mail]>

[e-mail] (Duane Fields) writes:

>I rendered a clear ball on a a black vase, on a hunk of
>wood, all sitting in the corner of a shiny/green/reflective room.
>When I rendered in color-shaded-wireframe it looks fine, green
>walls, brown wood... But in trace or  scanline, the walls turn
>white, solid white. And the wood is black.... The glass looks fine tho!

I've had virtually the same thing happen, but my rendered object was fine in
scanline and rendered either all white or all black in trace.  I'm waiting for
1.1.

On another note, Colorburst, I read in one of the postings it does 'overlays'
is this the same thing as genlocking?  I, like many of us, am wrestling with
the DCTV or Colorburst question.  I believe it's sort of appropriate for this
group as far as it relates to questions like how easily each accomodates
Imagine.

Later,

John Rosner


##

Subject: Re: Fonts and Logos
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 09:32:32 PST
From: "Mark W. Davis  206.865.8749" <[e-mail]>

I use InterFont by Syndesis.  It comes with 10 or so 3-D fonts
but will let you take ANY bit-mapped Amiga font and convert it
into a 3-D font.  The conversion process is tedious(it took me
about 2 hours to do it), you have to place polygons over the
bit map, but once the font is created you can use the single
letters or create sentences, extrude them, scale them, and since
it comes with Interchange you can convert them to other 3-D formats.
This is from memory since I haven't used the program in a year
or so.  If you do logos in 3D this works great.  When I get some
time I'll try to get some 3-D letter objects to ab20.

mark

##

Subject: Re: Fonts and Logos
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 14:05:01 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> I use InterFont by Syndesis. The conversion process is tedious(it took me
> about 2 hours to do it), you have to place polygons over the
> bit map.

The best program I have seen for creating 3D fonts/logos from bitmaps
is Pixel 3D. Not only is it totally automatic and fast, but it does
such a good job that there is no need to tweek any point when its
done.  Also, not only does it handle complex bitmaps (the kind Imagine
totally barfs at) but it supports multi color bitmaps so that the
polygons created take on the colors of the image it was autotracing.
The only minor complaint I have is that the programmers didn't do any
creative dynamic RAM allocation: you must specify how much memory you
are going to limit yourself to at startup. If your object exceeds
that, restart the program with more. It supports a number of object
formats but I will have to check if TS/Imagine is one of them. Anyway,
I highly reccommend it. Street price is aroud $50.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%       `       '                Mark Thompson                          %
%  --==* RADIANT *==--           [e-mail]                 %
%       ' Image `                ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark       %
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%                                                                       %
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##

Subject: axis position
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 21:26:29 MEZ
From: [e-mail] (Thorsten Ebers)

Hi folks,
how can i reposition an axis of an object ?

I want to center the axis from outside to the center of the  object I have.

Thorsten


##

Subject: Re: Imagine Bugs or Colorbust-DCTV
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 11:51:12 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

John Rosner writes:
> On another note, Colorburst, I read in one of the postings it does 'overlays'
> is this the same thing as genlocking?

No, they are different. Colorburst can be used with a genlock but does not
provide genlock functionality. The overlay is is another set of image planes
that can be manipulated independantly of the primary image. Here is a quote
from Gary Rayner, the designer of ColorBurst:

"ColorBurst has 2 hardware stencils. (1) gives pixel by pixel control over
which 24 bit playfield will show in 48 bit mode (24 bit screen with 24 bit over
lay). The (2) second stencil allows pixel by pixel switching and priority con-
troll between Amiga and ColorBurst graphics (YES! you can freely mix ANY Amiga
and ColorBurst graphics on a pixel by pixel basis , sort of like a genlock but
you can actually specify with the stencil that ColorBurst graphics appear over
the top of Amiga Graphics. You can backdrop or overlay ColorBurst graphics to
any Intuition Screen. Eg: Deluxe Paint or Workbench)"

> I, like many of us, am wrestling with
> the DCTV or Colorburst question.  I believe it's sort of appropriate for this
> group as far as it relates to questions like how easily each accomodates
> Imagine.

Here are my feelings on the subject:
For approximately the same cost, Colorburst will give a superior image and
technically, it is a more advanced product. When running its output to a
Sony LVR5000 video disk recorder, you can achieve broadcast quality output
second to none. I am told that a number of third party developers are working
with MAST to support the product. On the flip side, nothing is currently
available including Colorburst. At the Amiga World Expo they were unable
to demonstrate nearly any of its abilities. Whether this was because
software was lost in shipping (as they said) or because it is simply not
ready yet is up to speculation. I tend to believe them but I still haven't
seen it really operate. Another thing, to use Colorburst with most conventional
video equiptment will also require an encoder to convert its RGB output
to component or composite video.

DCTV on the other hand is designed specifically for video, is available now,
comes with one of the best paint programs I have seen, and can display some
incredible animation. Because DCTV uses a highly compressed image format,
animation is much faster than Colorburst. With the appropriate software
written for Colorburst, the speed advantage could conceiveably change.
DCTV also allows slow scan digitizing to create full color backdrops and
texture maps for Imagine. Colorburst does not. The image quality of DCTV is
good. Its not as good as the Toaster (which is also composite video) and no
where near as sharp as Colorburst since it is RGB. As it has been said before,
if you like the quality of a good TV, you will like DCTV.

Bottom line. If you want the best image quality available and don't mind
waiting for all the software to be developed, go Colorburst. It is an
engineering marvil. But if you want low cost video animation, digitization,
and a spectacular paintbox right now, you want DCTV. My reccommendation
is to wait a few weeks and see what Colorburst can do before jumping the
gun and getting DCTV.

I personally have opted for DCTV because it compliments the Toaster very
well and I need the paintbox and animation now. However I have tried to be
as impartial as possible. Hope this helps.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%       `       '                Mark Thompson                          %
%  --==* RADIANT *==--           [e-mail]                 %
%       ' Image `                ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark       %
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%                                                                       %
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##

Subject: Re: Vista Obs
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 09:10:01 PST
From: "Mark W. Davis  206.865.8749" <[e-mail]>

The color of the landscape can be adjusted to your liking in VISTA PRO.
As stated, I didn't take the time to adjust them but when you do
you can produce some very striking images.  Someone mentioned creating
an animation of the camera traveling across the landscape produced.  With
VISTA PRO you CAN create the animation.  I haven't used this portion of
the program, though.  My experience with VISTA PRO is that it takes
quite a lot of trial and error to get the "right" image due to the
variables involved--light direction(and inclination), four shades each of
cliff, sea, ground, etc...THEN you have 2 types of dithering, a roughness
setting, "smoothing", and a lot controls to modify your image further.
Camera height, target height, snow level, tree line, haze, camera and target
position, sea level, camera lens setting, waves in the sea...
Reminds me of Imagine ;^)  So much I want to do, so little time.

mark


##

Subject: Re: Fonts and Logos
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 15:23:09 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Ed Chadez)

I didn't know you didn't have TS!?!?!

Hmmm---you're missing out a piece of history!  Like MS-DOS users who've
never heard of CP/M...like WordPerfect users who've never heard of
WordStar.  It's all history, my friend....

Well, when TS 3.0SV (stereo-vision, eg, xspecs compatible) came out,
included with it were about five or six fonts of REALLY NEAT fonts,
including Gothic, Italic, Ghost (where parts of the letters are missing),
and so on.  They MAY be available from Impulse, Inc., at a cost...probably
around $30 or so.  *OR* they may be freely distributable, in which case
I'll mail you my disk.  Somebody (either you or me) needs to get ahold of
Impulse.  I'll check on my original disk's "read me" file to see if I can
send them to you.  I hope I can--they're REALLY neat, even though you have
to extrude them your self (they DO have faces and splines).

I'll get back to you on this.

--ed

--
--//---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\X/ [e-mail]/Edward Chadez                    CARL Systems(303)861-5319
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

##

Subject: Colorburst Rumor
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 16:09:01 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Brian Bishop)

   Hmm, not that I wish it any ill will, but the local Video Effects guru
at the local computer store swears that there is a licensing problem with
a Hitatchi chip that is going to hold up Colorburst sales permanently.
But I seem to recall from here that sales are supposed to start at the
end of March so I guess we should know soon. Has anyone seen one live at
a show or something, or does anyone know if this rumor is true or not??


  Brian Bishop



##

Subject: Re: Render bug
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 19:59:15 CST
From: [e-mail]

Juan Trevino writes:

>  I generated a scene with a company logo converted from a PDraw clip file.
>It was surrounded by a clear glass sphere. When I did a scanline preview,
>the scene looked correct. So, I did a ray-trace. Do my shock, the top half of
>the clear sphere disappeared. You could see the background (simple B&W
>checker) fading into the background without any glass distortion. Has anyone
>encounted a problem like this?


  Yes, I have had that problem. When ever I use scanline on something of
significant size. But raytrace is fine right? I think the problem is in the
way Imagine does scanline, and needs all the polygons in memory. So if you run
out of free memory, it can't show anymore polygons.

  I have a A500 with a measly 1 meg, so I get this problem with scanline a lot.
I have a face object with many polygons in it, and I noticed that the polygons
that Imagine loads last in the face (in the detail editor) are the ones left
out of the scanline picture. I hope Imagine 1.1 over comes this.

 By the way does anyone knowwhat changes Imagine 1.1 has? Just bug fixes, or
are there new features?

                            Tom

##

Subject: Neato statue.
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 21:07:29 CST
From: [e-mail]

Howdy,
There was an Amiga world issue in december, I think, that had a picture of something that a guy rendered in Turbo Silver. It had a statue of a girl in it. Does anyone know how the statue object was made?

                            Tom

P.S. Ed, I was seriously thinking about getting a hardrive with some ram too,
     but I'm saving up to get an A3000 :)

##

Subject: Centaur Imagine tape...direct from hell!
Date: 22 Mar 91 08:28:00 EST
From: "SYSTEM MANAGER" <[e-mail]>

Warning Will Robinson... Danger, Warning!

Folks, I recently checked out the new Imagine video tape from Centaur
Software... in a word, I think it, well, sucked.

I hate to use words that strong, but the narration was terrible.  I
felt as though I was hearing stream of thought rather than a nice
presentation of the Imagine program.  Further after watching the
nearly 90 minute tutorial (yawn) the creation that I suffered
90 minutes to see was ugly to bone.

The tutorial seems to be disjointed and does not explore the
detail editor with any depth.  Further it breezes through the
description of adding faces to an object without ever really
showing you how to do it.  I about died when I watched the section
on the attributes requestor, the tape said things like the filter
gadget adjusts the filter settings!  Great, I could not have
guessed that.  :-)

I _have_ created many interesting pictures just from following the
tutorials in the Imagine manual!  This tape would be great if
they had simply recreated the tutorials that are in the manual,
instead of taking me on a disjointed chaotic trip through Imagine.

This tape should be avoided at all costs.

 -mark=

 +--------+   ==================================================
 | \/     |   Mark D. Manes   "Mr. AmigaVision,  The 32 bit guy"
 | /\  \/ |   [e-mail]
 |     /  |   [phone]    "Make up your own mind! - AMIGA"
 +--------+   ==================================================




##

Subject: Re: Centaur Imagine tape...direct from hell!
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 07:06:56 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Ed Chadez)

Is this the same tape offered in the Impulse newsletter for ~$30??  I
understood Rick R. who penned the manual made the Impulse video.

--ed

--
--//---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\X/ [e-mail]/Edward Chadez                    CARL Systems(303)861-5319
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

##

Subject: position axis
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 10:18:36 EST
From: John J. Rosner <[e-mail]>

Thorsten Ebers writes,

>how can i reposition an axis of an object ?
>I want to center the axis from outside to the center of the  object I have.

Use M instead of m and go into L (local mode).

Later,

John Rosner


##

Subject: Centaur Imagine tape
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 10:28:30 EST
From: Richard Nollman <[e-mail]>

I met the guy who did the
Centaur Imagine tape.   He was stapling the plastic bags of people going
into the Creative Computers booth (large Amiga mail order house) at the
AmigaWorld Expo in NY last weekend so that people would not steal things.
Pretty crude I thought.  Anyway, I went to the Centaur booth to see the tape
before I bought it, and their machine was broken.  The person in the booth
suggested that I talk to the person who made the tape, took me over the
the bag stapler, and introduced me.  I questioned him for about 10 minutes
or so (which was very difficult -- Creative Computers was very busy and
every 10 seconds or so a new crowd of people would need to be stapled before
they entered the booth).  Anyway, I described the initial problems I had
with the manuals, the help I received from the Imagine mailing list, and
a friend who spent quite a bit of time working through the various editors
with me.  I told him that I was creating simple animations with spheres
moving and camera moving and doing chrome and reflectivity etc.  He said
honestly that he felt that at that point I was beyond the tutorial.  It really
was designed for people who could not use the manual to get started.  He
said that it did not really get into much depth on setting attributes and
things at that level.  So fortunately I did not spend the money.  I met a
poor soul who had some very nice Imagine renderings that were being displayed
at the Black Belt booth who had bought the tape (very excited about it).
We had a great discussion about Imagine and ray-tracing.  He seemed very
advanced.  I am sure he was pissed when he played the tape...I hope he can
get his money back...

Rich Nollman

##

Subject: Centaur Tape
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 10:35:35 EST
From: Richard Nollman <[e-mail]>

I believe that this IS NOT the tape offered in the Impulse newsletter.  I
talked with Steve Worley last night who is in frequent contact with Rick and
asked the same question.  He said that as far as he knows it is not.  I thin
k Steve said something about it not being finished (not sure about this).
But the best person to ask of course (or second best) is Steve.  I am sure
he will post something about this.

##

Subject: world size
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 10:22:20 GMT-0600
From: [e-mail] (Randy Carris)

Does anyone know how world size affects the scene?  I've had problems with
parts of objects being "sliced off" in the rendering.  The Impulse tech line
said that I needed to set the global world size larger.  What is the maximun
size?  Do larger worlds sizes increase rendering time?  If not, is it always
advisable to set it to max.?
                            Thanks,
                             [e-mail]

##

Subject: missing faces
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 10:29:10 GMT-0600
From: [e-mail] (Randy Carris)

Can anyone explain this: I make an object, say a marbe tub of water with
rounded ends, everthing loks fine int the detain editor, even in the shaded
perspective mode, but when I render it, some faces are black. (How's that for a
run-on sentence?)  The faces I'm having troubles with are on the inside edge
next to the water line.  I've tried blasting them with light and they are still
black, but the face next to them is fine.  I know this is confusing, but This
is the best I can decribe it with words.
[e-mail]

##

Subject: Amiga DTV and Textures...
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 14:42:16 EST
From: "Scott Sutherland" <[e-mail]>

    For those of you out there who are really into Desktop Video for the
Amiga, I just found a book that may be for you.  Yes, there are 2 other books
(at least) out there on Amiga DTV (Compute! and Abacus), but this one looks
different.  The main readily evident difference is that this book spends a lot
of time on starting a business with Amiga DTV.  The book is called

The Amiga Desktop Video Workbook
Author:  Jay Gross
Publisher:  MicroSearch
        9896 S. W. Freeway
        Houston, TX  77074
ISBN: 1-879211-00-9

I'd post a summary of this book, but I am preparing to move to Tennessee next
weekend to start a post-doc.  With only one week left to prepare for the move,
I am going to be very busy.


TEXTURES:

The last page of this book is an advertisement from MicroSearch for the
following:

Materials Texture Library:  Volume 1: Stone Surfaces

This is a collection of high resolution (704 x 480) color HAM (they must be
mistaken, since you cannot have HAM at 704. S.S.) mode images of various
surfaces.  These include:

    . Fifteen different surface textures on five disks (over 3.5 Megs)
      Includes Marble, Granite, Asphalt, Pebbles, Bricks, and more.

    . Each image is 704 x 480 x 4096 colors (IFF HAM mode)
      (Again, an error, I think. S.S.)

    . Future volumes will include Wood, Cloth, and Organic textures.

They show a B&W image of 6 Bowling Pins Image mapped with some of these
textures (they look really nice) using Imagine(!).

The address is the same as given above.  NO PRICE is given.  Their phone
number and FAX number are given below.

MicroSearch

Phone: [phone]
FAX:   [phone]


Scott Sutherland
[e-mail]


**************************************************************************

    As I mentioned above, I will be leaving Florida to begin a post-doc
in Knoxville, TN (job starts April 1).  As a long-time user of Turbo Silver
(I even have a copy of Silver (including the docs) and the original
pre-release versions of the Turbo Silver docs.  I upgraded all the way through
TS 3.0 SV, was one of the few (unfortunate?) people to purchase Video Page
(now discontinued), purchased the SEGA glasses converter for 3.0 SV, and
got copies of Diamond Paint and Terrain.  Finally, I upgraded, as many of you
have, to Imagine 0.9, 1.0, and soon 1.1.  So, as you can see, I am a real
Impulse nut.  I've had my ups and downs with their customer support, as have
most of you, but the quality of the packages (bugs and all) usually cause me
to forget these problems soon after they occur.  I am glad that I was able
to participate in this special interest group.  I learned a lot of undocumented
things about Imagine, and some really nice, sophisticated tricks.  I hope
that I have been of some help to others in this group with some of your
problems and that I may have inspired at least one of you to greater
expectations with TS and Imagine.

    I will most likely lose access to the net and this group as of
next Friday.  Even though I will read all postings until then and may even
post a couple of articles, I would like to take this opportunity to say that
I have really enjoyed the contacts I have had here.  I will miss all the ideas
and project discussions, especially since Knoxville is apparently not much
of an Amiga paradise.  It has been fun, informative, and extremely helpful.

Keep on tracing....

Scott Sutherland
[e-mail]

Videophile and Amigaphile


##

Subject: lit objects
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 15:55:56 EST
From: [e-mail] (Kevin Goroway)

I've been trying to get "soft shadows" by using a planar light source.
It has not been successfull to say the least.

1) When I trace (not scan-convert) I often end up with a black image.
2) It looks okay when scan-converted, although, no shadows of course...

The scene is simple.  white ground, white plane hovering over it, and,
above that, a plane that is a light.

anyone?
Also, do spherical/conical/cylindrical make sense for an object?
Thanks...

+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
| Worcester Polytechnic Institute   | "It happens sometimes, people just     |
| [e-mail]                  |   explode, natural causes."-Repo Man   |
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

##

Subject: Imagine 1.1
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 14:48:50 PST
From: "Mark W. Davis  206.865.8749" <[e-mail]>

I received my copy of Imagine 1.1 in the mail today.  Looks like
they fixed a bug that has been annoying me since I received Imagine.
That was the white sections on objects rendered.  They have added
quite a few options that will makthe motion of objects quite a bit
easier.  I also have found some menu entries in the Detail Editor that
are not documented anywhere.  Fracture?  Taut?  hmmm... time to play.

mark

##

Subject: Re: missing faces
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 17:50:08 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

[e-mail] (Randy Carris) writes:
> Can anyone explain this: some faces are black.
> The faces I'm having troubles with are on the inside edge next to the
> water line.  I've tried blasting them with light
> and they are still black, but the face next to them is fine.

Sounds distictly like a hidden surface removal error. All the light in the
world won't fix it. Do the same polygons render black every time? Try
rendering with a different camera angle, does that change anything? Which
surfaces are screwing up, the tub? the water? both? Are you using scan-line
or trace mode and is Phong smoothing enabled. There are some known problems
in some cases using Phong smoothing. Imagine most likely uses a software
Z-buffer in scan-line mode. Z-buffers are notorious for not dealing with
transparency well. Try fiddling with the surface attributes, particularly
Phong smoothing and transparency. Anything else that you can say is unique
about the polygons that are rendering black?
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%       `       '                Mark Thompson                          %
%  --==* RADIANT *==--           [e-mail]                 %
%       ' Image `                ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark       %
%      Productions               [phone]  [phone]           %
%                                                                       %
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##

Subject: Re: lit objects
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 18:16:30 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> I've been trying to get "soft shadows" by using a planar light source.
> It has not been successfull to say the least.

Though I could be wrong, I didn't think Imagine supported soft shadows.
It would require some sort of light source jittering.

> Also, do spherical/conical/cylindrical make sense for an object?

I assume you are asking about spherical/conical/cylindrical light sources
when you define an object to be a light. Which one you chose depends apon
your application. If you are modelling a light bulb or candle, you want
a spherical source. A spotlight or certain street lights are conical.
Neon and flourescent lights would use a cylindrical source.

Hope this helps.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%       `       '                Mark Thompson                          %
%  --==* RADIANT *==--           [e-mail]                 %
%       ' Image `                ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark       %
%      Productions               [phone]  [phone]           %
%                                                                       %
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##

Subject: Bevelled Text
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 17:51:23 PST
From: "Jim Lange" <[e-mail]>

I am trying to determine the best way to create block text with a bevelled
edge.  I am creating the initial outline from a brush using convert IFF/ILBM
which I would then extrude and slice to get normal block text with a flat face.
What I would like to end up with is this:
    ____________._____
   /____________/     \
  ||           |       |
  ||     ______|       |
  ||    |\______\_____/
  ||    | |  |
  ||    | |  |
  ||    | |  |
  ||    | |__|__._____
  ||    |/______/     \
  ||           |       |
  ||___________|       |
   \____________\_____/

Where the cross-section is an octagon.

These are the options I am considering:
 1)  Copy the converted outline then manually shrink the outer borders
     and stretch the inner borders (for the insides of O's, etc.) to what
     will be the new face.  Make two copies of each and do a Skin
     operation to create the sides, then attach the filled face and back.
     This is very labor intensive.

 2)  Manipulate the bitmap in DPaint using Trim Brush so I have two bitmaps,
     one for the larger dimension and one for the face.  Convert each one to
     and outline in Imagine, then proceed with the skin and face operations
     as in #1.  However, the Convert IFF/ILBM operation may not produce the
     same number of edges for each brush (since one is bigger) requiring
     manual correction before attempting the Skin operation.

 3)  Create the 3 edges that represent the bevelled edges and side then extrude
     it using the outside outline of each letter as a path:
                             _____
    object to extrude:  /     \

     Of course it would have to be extruded the other direction for the
     "holes" of some letters.  This may be more trouble than it's worth.

One of the effects I'm after is block text with a slightly curved edge (as if
the block were sanded) so that I get nice highlights in many places, but I've
noticed that Phong shading applied to a rectangular cross-section makes the
text look like it was molded of clay with irregular mounds on the faces.  I
thus need extra bevels on the edges to prevent the Phong algorithm from
"smoothing" the face polygons that I want flat.  So the cross-section would
look like this (dots are points between edges):

          _______._.
                    \.  <- 3 faces for Phong smoothing
                    |.
                    |
                    |   <-- Flat face
                    |.
                    |.
          _______._./

Does anyone have any good shortcuts for achieving this effect?  Could an
altitude map applied to the face be used to "curve" the edges (by having the
only the outer few pixels of the brush darker)?

I will experiment tonight and see how these options pan out.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Lange                [e-mail]
Oracle Corporation            {uunet,apple,hplabs}!oracle!jlange
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Bevel,bevel, toil and tevel.
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 23:00:55 EST
From: [e-mail]

Jim Lange is looking for a beveled text method.

Jim, I see that you tried my method. You're right, it works beautifully, but
IS labor intensive.

I really like the extrude idea! A problem would be in covering the faces, since
the edges don't cover the whole thing. Also, if two edges are too
close together, they are going to "cross over" and it will get really
messy. Still, there's definate promise, especially for small, subtle
bevels, or arbitrary edge-shapes- sorta a virtual router, for those
who know power tools. :-)

I don't have a good idea how to create bevel-like edges other than my
"drag points on a big copy to shape of a thinned version, then skin." Perhaps
what we need is a skin that would handle different #s of points (this
would be tough to program!) Hey! Think of a skin that handled
different connecting surface shapes, like a wavy pattern between two
outlines, or a cantenary! An improvement for Imagine 4.2, I guess.

How can you Phong shade just part of an object? Good question. It
would be nice if it was a polygon by polygon selectable option, like
color, reflection, and transparency. I know of two ways of doing it.

First is to split the object into two parts, Phongable and not. Then
group them. If they're positioned right, they should have a seamless
fit. This should work.

A more advanced technique is a harder to do- you can try to make
every flat face have its OWN points that it doesn't share. For example,
you could have two triangles that are in the shape of a plane plain
square (I mean both of those homonyms!) but instead of using 4 points
(with two points shared) you use 6. Then when Phonging, Imagine
doesn't try to Phong across them since they are not "connected". You
can see this artifact in some old old objects I created and posted to
ab20.larc.nasa.gov (obs1-3). You can Phong all day long, and it won't
work. To MAKE it smooth, you use "merge" which merges these duplicate
points together.


I actually use this for flat extrusions. Think about the letter S, in
a simple, boring extrude. You want the sides to be Phong shaded, so
the serpentine curve comes out, but you DON'T want the front to be
Phong shaded otherwise the corners are "going to look like clay", I
think Jim called it. The solution is to extrude the body, make the
front face, JOIN them, but _not_ MERGEing the letter afterwards. There
is a duplicate point everywhere the front face meets the side. Imagine
doesn't realize these are connected unless you MERGE them, so even
though Phong is on, it doesn't smooth going from the front to the edge.


Ed Chadez said he has some funky 3D fonts (not just flat extrusions)
from an old Turbo Silver version. He's checking to see if they're
distributable.

-Steve

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------





##

Subject: Help removing Imagine.pic
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 91 10:41:28 EST
From: Sandy Antunes <[e-mail]>

Hi!
So, one of the most useful things about Imagine1.0 was the
incredibly useful hack by Rick Tillery which enable it to
skip the showing of Imagine.pic whenever you loaded it,
thus saving hours and hours of time.
  Has anyone figured out how to do this for the updated version?
I mean, Imagine 1.1 is fantastic, but I am selfish and dislike
waiting 30 seconds to watch a rather dull picture come onto the
screen before I can start working!
  (For starters, with Imagine1.0 Mr. Tillery's hack was to change
(using NewZap or similar) the $66 to $67 in block 376 after the
first occurence of $189c (integer version) or in block 373 after
the first occurence of $1830 (floating point version).
                                              sandy
------------
Sandy Antunes   "the Waupelani Kid" 'cause that's where I live...
[e-mail]            Penn State Astronomy Dept
NOTE-this is a new address as of 3/91!  Please adjust accordingly
------------ this is my new .sig... dull, isn't it! ------------

##

Subject: Re: lit objects
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 91 11:35:37 EST
From: [e-mail] (Kevin Goroway)

I was under the impression that a surface light source would create "soft
shadows".  If you draw it on paper, it makes sense.  A plane as your object,
and a larger plane, somewhere "above" it, is your light source.  If every
point on this lighted plane gives off light in a "spherical" direction, the
shadow under your object plane will (should) be darker in the center, since
no light get there, yet, the outer edges of the shadow should get some light
from the edges of the large planar light source...anyone?

My other question was about spherical/conical/etc.. settings for a lit object.
I guess this does make sense...square spotlights come to mind...
problem: if you make a sphere into a cylindrical light source, which way does
the cylinder shine? everywhere? isn't this spherical?  I think one could come
up with other similar inconsistancies.

Anyway, none of this solves my problem of the whole scene being black when
tracing a scene with the only light being an object...  these work fine
in scan-line mode, but no shadows! Has anyone else had this problem?

Thanks!
-Kevin
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
| Worcester Polytechnic Institute   | "It happens sometimes, people just     |
| [e-mail]                  |   explode, natural causes."-Repo Man   |
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

##

Subject: Video and Videotape
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 91 13:17:31 EST
From: [e-mail]

Rick is still working on his instuctional video- I know he wasn't done
as of Wednesday. I would imagine he'll be done in 2 weeks- I seem to
remember him saying about that long. I don't know what will be on it,
other than a tutorial on how to make water waves using the "wave"
effect. When I get a copy I'll review it for you guys.

Ian Lichter mailed me personally about dumping to videotape. There are three
avenues you can take. If you have a 24 bit display and want to record the
image in its professional glory, you're going to need a single frame video
tape recorder, (about $2500!) and a transport controller to contol it. (
I get the feeling these run like $300, but I don't know). I don't know
the details- I don't know anyone who has actually done this.

A second, easier and cheaper solution is to use a product like DCTV, which
animates and outputs direct NTSC which can be plugged right into your
standard VCR. The quality is way lower than 24-bit, but the quality is
also way higher than standard Amiga output.

If you don't have a DCTV, you can dump standard Amiga output to video using
a genlock. This is a device that overlays Amiga graphics on video, but it
can be used to dump JUST the amiga graphics. The Video Toaster will do this,
as well as any genlock. I've never used one, but I've read several good
reviews of the $190 Minigen, and several bad reviews of the $99 Amigen.

What do I use? I havn't had the $$$ for a genlock, so I have a piece of
hardware called an encoder- it just converts Amiga RGB to composite video.
In fact, you might really want to pick one of these up- I have an A520
"RF Modulator for the Amiga 500", which I bought new for $35. It does
a superior job at encoding- as good as any genlock or the Toaster. [A
friend with a Toaster was in a huff until we compared videotapes. Couldn't
tell the difference, both were excellent.] Don't let the name fool
you- the A520 outputs both RF (for direct  plug-in to a TV) and
composite (I feed this to my VCR). It also works on any Amiga (I have
a 3000). It plugs into the RGB port, though it does  NOT have a
pass-through for a monitor. The A520 is definately the cheapest way to
go if you just want to dump Amiga animation.

Something to look for is Colorburst, which MIGHT be able to do really
impressive color animation. [Nobody's seen this wonderful stuff yet, so
its still vapor.] It outputs RGB, which would have to be encoded by an external
genlock (or an A520) before being able to be saved on videotape.

-Steve

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: The Router effect.
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 91 14:17:01 mst
From: steven lee webb <[e-mail]>


                               Hello again!

Just to put in my two-cents worth, I called Impulse about chamfered edges or
as they are more popularly called, "Bevelled text" about 9 months ago, and
they said that the Amiga didn't have a good enough "geometry engine" to
program a routine to do it.  I then mentioned that it was a simple matter in
pixar's renderman, and it was a fairly simple matter to do on such CAD
machines as ComputerVision (CADDS 4X), AutoTrol stations and even AutoCAD.

However, to get the job done, I'd have to agree with Steve Worley, the DPaint,
to outline, to trim, to skin method is probably the best and fastest way of
gettign descent results.

Some programmer could make a BUNCH of money if they spent a little time to sit
down and make a program to do things like this!  I bet that the routines can
be found in your local campus library.

            Oh well.  Enough from me, I've got REAL WORK TO DO!

                 ("what time do the 'Simpsons' come on?")
     _________
    /  ______/\
   /  /\_____\/    -----------------------------------------------
  /_____   /\        Give your child mental blocks for Christmas
 _\____/  / /      -----------------------------------------------
/________/ /
\________\/teven Webb  Reply to: [e-mail]
           A Computer Science Major @ Colorado State University
     "Spelling" is NOT a prerequsite for a degree in Computer Science!
            I have an amiga 500 with 5MEGS RAM, and a 50MEG HD.
                   [why are you looking at me so funny?]
                     (Yes, I HAVE voided my warranty!)

##

Subject: Version 1.1
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 91 14:17:42 mst
From: steven lee webb <[e-mail]>

>Bob, you'll be happy to know that Version 1.1 of Imagine, now available,
>does support acceleration/deceleration on paths, as well as other substantial
>touchups, like "hide" points not reappearing until you go back to the object
>mode, a "fracture" mode like Sculpt's "subdivide", a "split" function that
>isolates selected points from the object by disconnecting them from it, a new
>camoflage texture, and more...
>   The usual disclaimer, I'm just a happy animator...
>* Scott Busse email:           O    O   O_     _      ___ .....
>* CIS 73040,2114              |||  /|\  /\   O/\_     /         O    )=|
>* [e-mail]           l   | |   |\    / \   /\                _\
>* uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!Scott_Busse     Live Long and Animate... \

                            Thank you Impulse!
     _________
    /  ______/\
   /  /\_____\/    -----------------------------------------------
  /_____   /\        Give your child mental blocks for Christmas
 _\____/  / /      -----------------------------------------------
/________/ /
\________\/teven Webb  Reply to: [e-mail]
           A Computer Science Major @ Colorado State University
     "Spelling" is NOT a prerequsite for a degree in Computer Science!
            I have an amiga 500 with 5MEGS RAM, and a 50MEG HD.
                   [why are you looking at me so funny?]
                     (Yes, I HAVE voided my warranty!)

##

Subject: Re: lit objects
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 91 18:37:39 CST
From: bloom-beacon!think!rutgers!texbell.sbc.com!tnessd!mechrw (Robert Wallace )

>> Also, do spherical/conical/cylindrical make sense for an object?
>>
>I assume you are asking about spherical/conical/cylindrical light sources
>when you define an object to be a light. Which one you chose depends apon
>your application. If you are modelling a light bulb or candle, you want
>a spherical source. A spotlight or certain street lights are conical.
>Neon and flourescent lights would use a cylindrical source.

>Hope this helps.
>       `       '                Mark Thompson                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I created a spherical object and made it a cylindircal light source.
I animated it spinning around it's Z axis.  It seems that the light
shines out the Y axis.

Now I'm going to try exploding a spherical light source and see what
happens...

Robert Wallace


##

Subject: Re: lit objects
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 91 23:41:30 EST
From: [e-mail] (Kevin Goroway)

Robert Wallace says that light shines out the Y axis of a sphere lit as a cone.
Does anyone have any information as to whether this is true for all faces?
Would a tumbling plane look really great?

Since no one has told me that they have also had problems tracing lit objects
that cast shadows I'm assuming for the moment that it is only my problem...
Then again, no one has claimed success in tracing a lit object that casts
shadows...anyone?

-Kevin
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
| Worcester Polytechnic Institute   | "It happens sometimes, people just     |
| [e-mail]                  |   explode, natural causes."-Repo Man   |
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

##

Subject: The Router effect.
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 91 08:04:17 EST
From: [e-mail] (Bob Lindabury - SysAdm)

steven lee webb <rutgers!handel.cs.colostate.edu!webbs> writes:

> Just to put in my two-cents worth, I called Impulse about chamfered edges or
> as they are more popularly called, "Bevelled text" about 9 months ago, and
> they said that the Amiga didn't have a good enough "geometry engine" to
> program a routine to do it.  I then mentioned that it was a simple matter in
> pixar's renderman, and it was a fairly simple matter to do on such CAD
> machines as ComputerVision (CADDS 4X), AutoTrol stations and even AutoCAD.
>
> However, to get the job done, I'd have to agree with Steve Worley, the DPaint
> to outline, to trim, to skin method is probably the best and fastest way of
> gettign descent results.

Am I missing something here or wouldn't it be just as easy to make a
copy of your outline of a letter object in Imagine, shrink it say 10
points and then move it in the Y direction 10 points and then skin
between the two or manually create the edges and faces?

I guess I will have to play with this to see what the result is but
if you just made a copy of your initial letters, you would certainly
have the same amount of points for the second part of the letter.  Of
course this only leaves you with the front portion of the text.
Can't we then pick the outside edge of the letter for extrusion and
then paste a copy of the front beveled letters onto the back?

Just seems to me there must be an easier way to do this.

-- Bob


 The Graphics BBS  908/469-0049  "It's better than a sharp stick in the eye!"
 ============================================================================
  InterNet: [e-mail]                | Raven Enterprises
      UUCP: ...rutgers!bobsbox!graphics!bobl      | 25 Raven Avenue
    BitNet: bobl%graphics.rent.com@pucc           | Piscataway, NJ 08854
    Home #: 908/560-7353                          | 908/271-8878

##

Subject: More Bevelled edge stuff! (yum!)
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 91 15:43:39 mst
From: steven lee webb <[e-mail]>

>> Just to put in my two-cents worth, I called Impulse about chamfered edges or
>> as they are more popularly called, "Bevelled text" about 9 months ago, and
>> they said that the Amiga didn't have a good enough "geometry engine" to
>> program a routine to do it.  I then mentioned that it was a simple matter in
>> pixar's renderman, and it was a fairly simple matter to do on such CAD
>> machines as ComputerVision (CADDS 4X), AutoTrol stations and even AutoCAD.
>>
>> However, to get the job done, I'd have to agree with Steve Worley, the DPnt
>> to outline, to trim, to skin method is probably the best and fastest way of
>> gettign descent results.

              [e-mail] (Bob Lindabury) writes:

>Am I missing something here or wouldn't it be just as easy to make a
>copy of your outline of a letter object in Imagine, shrink it say 10
>points and then move it in the Y direction 10 points and then skin
>between the two or manually create the edges and faces?

Well, at first glance, your method SHOULD work, but we don't want a smaller
copy of our original, we want a skinnier one (or a thicker one), and this
brings up our original problem with "skinning" two objects with a different
number of points, as Steve Worley posted here a few days ago.

Basicially, the act of making "bevelled text" is taking the sharp 90-degree
corner that is made if you consider the face of the letter one ray of the angle
and the extruded faces the other ray, and changing it to make it two 45-degree
angles.  In drafting terminology this is called "chamfering" and can be done
at all sorts of angles, not just 45 degrees.  In super-computing graphics this
produces a nice "machined"-look for letters, and more chances for HIGHLITES!

Let's pretend that the figure below is an extruded "o" - and we chopped off
the outside "sharp" angle of the letter (usually, the inside would be chopped
too, but as for the limitations of ascii text/graphics, I'll leave it as shown.
         _______________                        ______________
        |               |                      /|            |\
This is | -  -  -  -  - |                     |-| -  -  -  - |-|
the text|               | <- center of "o" -> | |            | |
  face  | -  -  -  -  - |                     |-| -  -  -  - |-|
        |_______________|                      \|____________|/
         These are the
         extruded faces.
            (BEFORE)                                (AFTER)

If we just used the "shrinking" method that Bob mentioned above, the hole would
also be shrunk, and we would get ourselves a 'cone' effect.

        So, to be completely redundant & longwinded, I'll wrap-up.

    As Steve Worley stated, the method of making bevelled or chamfered text is
greatly inhanced by the use of DPaintIII's Outline/Trim function.  Make two
brushes for the IFF/ILBM conversion in Imagine.  One normal one, and one
trimmed or outlined.
    Now you have the two out-lines in Imagine with different points.  Make both
of the outlines the same size and add or delete points so that you have two
outlines with the same point count.  Re-size the one that was shrunk or
enlarged originially.  Skin the two outlines, add faces for the front face,
mirror it, and add the extrusion.

                                   EASY!
     _________
    /  ______/\
   /  /\_____\/    --------------------------------------
  /_____   /\        Down with categorical Imparatives!
 _\____/  / /      --------------------------------------
/________/ /
\________\/teven Webb  Reply to: [e-mail]
           A Computer Science Major @ Colorado State University
     "Spelling" is NOT a prerequsite for a degree in Computer Science!
            I have an amiga 500 with 5MEGS RAM, and a 50MEG HD.
                   [why are you looking at me so funny?]
                     (Yes, I HAVE voided my warranty!)

##

Subject: Re:  Video and Videotape
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 91 21:04:30 EST
From: "Scott Sutherland" <[e-mail]>

Steve Worley writes:

>A second, easier and cheaper solution is to use a product like DCTV, which
>animates and outputs direct NTSC which can be plugged right into your
>standard VCR.

    Just to clarify, the DCTV hardware itself does not animate (I am sure
that all of you realize that, but (as they say about winning the Florida
lottery) 'Ya Never Know'!).  What it can do is to 'decode' images with the
special DCTV color information in them as they are played back using the
standard RAM animation techniques (ANIMS ;^)).  It DOES look really nice.
The HAM-E will do this as well.


On Genlocking devices...

>I've never used one, but I've read several good
>reviews of the $190 Minigen, and several bad reviews of the $99 Amigen.

    I read many articles on genlocking devices for the Amiga, including
some very technical ones which analyzed their output with professional
equipment (way out of my field) including a vector scope, all of which panned
the Amigen.  Well, I was using a CMI VI-500RF (now DigiFEX, I think)
encoder, similar to the A520, for dumping my video to tape (it also has a
really nice output and can easily be converted to work with SVHS as well).
I had wanted to play around with genlocking video and graphics, so when I
got a chance to buy a used Amigen for $50, I did it, despite the BAD reviews.
I have played around with it, as mentioned in one of my previous postings,
and the quality is surprisingly good.  At least for my HOBBY work.  The
colors look nice and bleeding is not too bad.  It IS hard to read text (same
for my encoder), but that is to be expected.  I understand that where the
poor output of the Amigen will hurt me will be if I do multi-generational
dubbing and/or copying.  But by then the VHS quality will not be to great
either.  For JUST putting TITLES on videos or simple one-pass video/graphics
interactions, the AMIGEN will work just fine.  If you see one used and want
to play around with genlocking (I highly recommend it.  It's GREAT FUN and
can really get the creative juices flowing!!!), I recommend it.  If you are
doing anything that will be BROADCAST or even dubbed/edited into a final copy
and your final generation will be third or so, the Amigen will probably fail
miserably (my guess is that this is true for the Minigen and Progen as well).
However, when doing this type of editing, you will probably be doing SVHS
anyway, so that might help.  BROADCAST quality IS OUT, though.

Scott Sutherland
[e-mail] (for a week or so, at least :*)

##

Subject: Re:  Bevelled Text
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 91 21:28:12 EST
From: "Scott Sutherland" <[e-mail]>

This may be a stupid observation, but why not take the octagonal cross-section
(using the letter C example), get it looking EXACTLY the way you want it and
1) either extrude it along the entire C path (but make it have the 45 degree
turns you want in the corners and ALIGN TO Y (I think that is the one) to
keep the cross-section perpendicular to the path) OR simply create the
three pieces of the C (actually only 2, since the top IS the bottom but
rotated about X 180 degrees) using a two section SLICE.  Take the Octagon
cross-section, look at it EDGE ON, COPY it, MOVE it to the LEFT (-X in the
FRONT view) the distance you want, ROTATE it -45 degrees (it may NOT be 45
degrees when doing it this way, but I am guessing off the top of my head)
about Y (so that it slants like this: \   |  (the | is the front view of the
original octagon and the \ is the translated/rotated copy)) and then SLICE
to make the TOP piece.

To make the LEFT side, take the octagon cross section, copy it and move it
to the left a set distance, rotate the left section -45 degrees about Y and
the right cross section 45 degrees about Y to give this:  ( \     / ).  SLICE
to make the vertical part of the C and rotate the entire object -90 degrees
about Y.  Thus you get three parts:


                ________________
                \               |
                 \              |
                  \_____________|


                |\
                | \
                |  \
                |   |
                |   |
                |   |
                |  /
                | /
                |/

                   _____________
                  /             |
                 /              |
                /_______________|


You would then have to create teh BEVELLED parts to join them, or maybe,
if you positioned them correctly, JOIN would fill in the 45 degree bevel for
you, to create your letter.  It might be possible to create a library of the
vertical and horizontal parts and, by rotating and scaling them, create the
entire alphabet.  Is this TOO much work, or would it NOT give the desired
result?  Using this method, you could make the cross-sectional outline EXACTLY
the way you want it BEFORE you make any letters.  Then all the letters would
look like the same FONT.

Just thinking.... (things that make you say   Hmmmmmmm??? A. H. (Woof! Woof!
                   Woof!)).


Scott Sutherland
[e-mail]

##

Subject: Bevels.
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 04:27:53 EST
From: [e-mail]

I never thought my bevel idea would create this much discussion!

Scott Sutherland's idea to create fonts piecemeal is reasonable for
straight-edged fonts. His example of the C made of 3 straight sections
works, and, indeed, you could create an entire font this way. You could
NOT create real curves though, and some letters would be very trying,
like R, B, G, or g. The effort would only have to be done once, though-
anyone want to volunteer? :-)

An ideal solution would be to add a way to skin objects with differing
number of points. I'm very tempted to use TTDDD (Glenn Lewis' object
description to text converter) and a bunch of C code to input two objects
and interpolate extra points on the simpler one until they had the same
number  each. If you restricted the program to outlines, this might work
really well... Hmmm.  We'll see what I can do, if I get time.

I did a little research for algorithms, and didn't find much other than a
neat essay on chamfers and fillets, which are two ways of describing
connecting surfaces between two objects like a the front and side of an
extruded font. A fillet is a concave surface like the scraped mortar
between bricks, and a chamfer is a convex version. Chamfers and fillets
are especially used with right-angle bends, fillets being much more common.
A bevel is a degenerate chamfer or fillet- it is the transition between the
two. Anyway, there is a lot of interest on how to smoothly join objects
in computer graphics, and chamfers and fillets are the best tools to use.
They can take eny shape, from a straight-line bevel to a cylindrical
outline, or even complex shapes like routings a shape defined by
cross-section, like a fancy molding for a floor. Most common are
straight lines (bevels) and more complex and smoother looking are
conic shapes. A "sanded-edge" letter would use a chamfer along its
edges, probably with a constraint to make it have zero slope with
respect to an edge where it touches it so you wouldn't even see a
discontinuity.

Imagine (and no other modeler I know of for any computer) does not deal with
this issue at all, but it's a method computer object definition is starting
to really pursue. The uses are obvious, implementation is not. For a reference,
you can look at "Blend Surfaces for Set Theoretic Volume Modelling Systems"
by Middledich and Sears, from the July 1985 SIGGRAPH report. A dry paper,
but neat pictures. They give methods for simple conic surfaces.

Have fun, guys. Remember not to MERGE your fonts if you're going to
Phong them, or the faces will smooth with your sides, and you get
instant fuzzy edges. Ugh.

Keep rendering! Anyone want to lend me $1000 for an 040?


-Steve

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

##

Subject:    Bevelled Text
Date:       Mon, 25 Mar 91 10:09:31 EST
From: [e-mail]

     I've been following the discussion on bevelling text, and while I
haven't tried this, it sounds similar to something I do all the time.

     To whit: Draw the letters in the X-Z plane, using lines.
              Fill the letter. (make it solid)
              Extrude it 4 levels.
              Select the points on the face of the letters on the "front"
                and "back" (extreme Y points, Ymin and Ymax)
              Shrink them to taste.

 Graphicly:
    z
    |
    x--y          1)  o            2) o--o--o--o     3)    o--o
                      |               |  |  |  |          /    \
                      o               o  o  o  o         o o  o o
                      |               |  |  |  |         | |  | |
                      o               o  o  o  o         o o  o o
                      |               |  |  |  |          \|  |/
                      o               o--o--o--o           o--o

The drawing is not 100% correct for 3), 'cause the exteme Y centre points
should all be closer togeather (and there's points missing in the drawing)
but you should get the idea.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Dennis Grant   3rd year CS student at Le College Militaire Royal de St-Jean
  [e-mail]
  How much do I love thee? My accumulator overflows!

##

Subject: Lit objects
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 10:59:06 EST
From: John J. Rosner <[e-mail]>

Robert Wallace writes:

>>A spotlight or certain street lights are conical.
>>Neon and flourescent lights would use a cylindrical source.

Unless this is different in 1.1 the cylindrical light source acts as a
spotlight, it does not spread.

Later,

John Rosner


##

Subject: Re: Video and Videotape
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 11:01:28 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

Steve Worley writes:
> If you have a 24 bit display and want to record the
> image in its professional glory, you're going to need a single frame video
> tape recorder, (about $2500!) and a transport controller to contol it. (
> I get the feeling these run like $300, but I don't know).

Actually, animation controllers run from about $1500 to $6000. However, the
soon to be released JVC S-VHS VCR will do single frame recording without
one (the first of its kind). It should sell for about $2200. Also, recordable
video disk units do not require a transport controller.

> A second, easier and cheaper solution is to use a product like DCTV, which
> animates and outputs direct NTSC which can be plugged right into your
> standard VCR. The quality is way lower than 24-bit, but the quality is
> also way higher than standard Amiga output.

I was doing this over the weekend. In 3bit mode I got about 15 fps and some
fairly high contouring (banding). In 4bit mode, image quality was much better
(though contouring was still evident) but my frame rate dropped dramatically,
maybe 5 to 7 fps. I was using PageFlipper F/X on a 2500/30 with 640 x 400
images. I might note that these were camera "flybys" through a city scape
at up to 105 miles/hour so there was a good sized delta from image to image.
The 60 frame animation was over 5meg in 4bit mode and about 3.3meg in 3bit.
Anyway, one thing to note about DCTV images converted from 24 bit renderings,
both 3 and 4 bit modes exhibit a fair amount of rainbowing. Any area that
is too "hot" (too much color bandwidth) will show a rainbow of colors. DCTV
includes a filter to reduce this effect (at the cost of sharpness).

> I have an A520 "RF Modulator for the Amiga 500". It does a superior
> job at encoding- as good as any genlock or the Toaster. A friend with
> a Toaster was in a huff until we compared videotapes. Couldn't tell
> the difference, both were excellent.

You will probably not notice much difference on a low quality VHS unit.
But believe me, when viewed with high quality video equiptment (D2, U-matic
SP, recordable laser disk, etc.) there is no comparison. In video, one rule
*generally* holds true, "you get what you pay for".
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%       `       '                Mark Thompson                          %
%  --==* RADIANT *==--           [e-mail]                 %
%       ' Image `                ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark       %
%      Productions               [phone]  [phone]           %
%                                                                       %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

##

Subject: Soft Shadows
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 11:04:30 EST
From: John J. Rosner <[e-mail]>

For creating "soft shadows" wouldn't raising the ambient lighting in the
globals requester do that?  I haven't tried it, just seems that the more
ambient lighting bouncing around the more washed out the shadows.

Later,

John Rosner


##

Subject: soft shadows
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 11:18:11 EST
From: [e-mail] (Kevin Goroway)

Raising the ambient light will not make the edges of shadows any softer, it
will just lighten the picture as a whole.  Also, ambient light doesn't
bounce much...it is factored into the equation as a simple constant...

-Kevin
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
| Worcester Polytechnic Institute   | "It happens sometimes, people just     |
| [e-mail]                  |   explode, natural causes."-Repo Man   |
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

##

Subject: Re: Soft Shadows
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 11:21:23 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

John Rosner writes:
> For creating "soft shadows" wouldn't raising the ambient lighting in the
> globals requester do that?  I haven't tried it, just seems that the more
> ambient lighting bouncing around the more washed out the shadows.

It will reduce the contrast but it will not "fuzz" or soften the shadow edge.

>>A spotlight or certain street lights are conical.
>>Neon and flourescent lights would use a cylindrical source.
>Unless this is different in 1.1 the cylindrical light source acts as a
>spotlight, it does not spread.

Ooops, I forgot.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%       `       '                Mark Thompson                          %
%  --==* RADIANT *==--           [e-mail]                 %
%       ' Image `                ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark       %
%      Productions               [phone]  [phone]           %
%                                                                       %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

##

Subject: RAND keyword... an idea whose time has come!
Date:    Mon, 25 Mar 91 13:52 EST
From: "Doug Bischoff" <[e-mail]>

     Okay Imagineers... picture this.

     You've got an animation you want to be a little different every time you
render it (why, I don't know... maybe so you'll be surprised at the results!)
(As if we don't get enough surprises....).  What if there were a way to have a
margin of randomness in any numbered requester?

     For example, any requester that normally takes a numerical value (and
there are enough!) you could substitute the keyword Y+RAND(x) where x is a +-
tolerance range.  So 150+RAND(10) would be calculated at generation time and
yield a result from 140 to 160 randomly.
     As a programmer, I can see that this would be pitifully easy to implement.
I can see uses for this, does anybody else agree?  Mr. Halvorsen?  :-)

/---------------------------------------------------------------------\
| -Doug  Bischoff- |    *** ***    ====--\         | "I'm not God...  |
| -DEB110 @ PSUVM- |   *  ***  *     ==|<>\___     |    I was just    |
| -The Black Ring- |    *** ***        |______\    |       misquoted!"|
| --- "Wheels" --- |      ***           O   O      |   -Dave Lister   |
| Corwyn Blakwolfe |     T.R.I.     -------------  |    RED DWARF     |
\---- [e-mail]  D.BISCHOFF on GEnie  THIRDMAN on PAN -----/

##

Subject: Re: Video and Videotape
Date:    Mon, 25 Mar 91 15:26 EST
From: "Doug Bischoff" <[e-mail]>

     I'd been wondering about that little Encoder gadget!  So it's a Genlock
minus the overlay capability!  Exactly what I need, actually.  :-)

     My question is... there are two video outputs on the back of an A3000.
One is (I think....) 15 kHz, the other is 30something kHz.  Can you have an
A1950 plugged into one and the Encoder in the other and use both at the same
time?  Or... is there a switcher somewhere that would avoid swapping plugs
every time I wanted to dump an animation?  Thanks!


/---------------------------------------------------------------------\
| -Doug  Bischoff- |    *** ***    ====--\         | "I'm not God...  |
| -DEB110 @ PSUVM- |   *  ***  *     ==|<>\___     |    I was just    |
| -The Black Ring- |    *** ***        |______\    |       misquoted!"|
| --- "Wheels" --- |      ***           O   O      |   -Dave Lister   |
| Corwyn Blakwolfe |     T.R.I.     -------------  |    RED DWARF     |
\---- [e-mail]  D.BISCHOFF on GEnie  THIRDMAN on PAN -----/

##

Subject: Re: Video and Videotape
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 15:53:07 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

>      I'd been wondering about that little Encoder gadget!  So it's a Genlock
> minus the overlay capability!

Well not exactly. In the truest video sense, genlock does not in any way
imply overlay. The typical Amiga genlock is a three function device:
1) sync Amiga output to incoming video
2) encode Amiga RGB output to composite video
3) switch between incoming video and Amiga output (using color 0 for control)
Only #1 is normal genlock functionality. The only thing an encoder does
is convert RS-170A RGB into composite video (#2). If your RGB signal is not
RS-170A, then a more expensive scan converter is required. This is one of
the reasons why the Amiga is so much more economical for video than other
platforms.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%       `       '                Mark Thompson                          %
%  --==* RADIANT *==--           [e-mail]                 %
%       ' Image `                ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark       %
%      Productions               [phone]  [phone]           %
%                                                                       %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

##

Subject: Re: missing faces
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 15:12:53 GMT-0600
From: [e-mail] (Randy Carris)

Mark,
 The faces are one the inside wall of the tub, right above the water line. They
seem to render black every time.  I'm using the default trace resolution with
phong enabled.  Different camera angles don't help either.  I just got v1.1 and
haven't tried it to see if the problem is fixed.  If it doesn't, do you have
any suggestions?
[e-mail]

##

Subject: Re: Video and Videotape
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 16:53:18 EST
From: "Scott Sutherland" <[e-mail]>

Doug Bischoff writes:

>Can you have an A1950 plugged into one and the Encoder in the other and
>use both at the same time? (on an A3000. S.S.)


    I cannot speak for the A520, but IN PRINCIPLE it is possible since
the encoder plugs into the RGB output on the 3000 and the 1950 plugs into
the 15 pin 31 KHz port.  However, IN PRACTICE, I cannot plug both my CMI
VI-500RF (now DigiFEX) encoder and my 1950 into my 3000 at the same time.
There are 2 reasons.  One, the two video ports are TOO close together so
the 'thumb-screw' plug of the 1950 and the encoder cannot physically fit
side-by-side.  Two, ALL the outputs of the encoder
(Chroma and Luma, Composite, RF) face toward the 1950 port, so even if there
was enough room for both of them, I could not access the Composite out RCA
plug.   This lack of room also prohibits me from hooking up the 1950 with
either my old 2002 OR my AmiGen (for the exact same reasons as above (not
including the port problem)).  Note:  my 2002 cable also has the 'thumb-screw'
cable.

    I think that, if my 1950 had the METAL connector that requires a
screw driver to attach it (like the DEALER display model I saw), there would
be enough room for the AmiGen and/or the encoder (I'd still have the port
problem with the encoder, though).  Also, if either the 1950 OR my 2002 cable
(or both) had these metal connectors, I would be able to connect them both
as well.  Anyone know if it is possible to get an EXTENDER cable for a VGA
15-pin type connector that has a female connector on one end and a male on the
other (both metal) so that I could do this???  It is UNFORTUNATE that
Commodore chose to NOT allow the 1950 plug to be removable at BOTH ends, since
that would allow anyone to change to a metal connector to help the spacing
problem.

    Hey, they built a fantastic machine but forgot some of the practical
details.  I guess I can forgive that, right? ;^)))

Later...

Scott Sutherland
[e-mail]

##

Subject: A590 and A3000s
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 19:03:46 EST
From: [e-mail]

Doug asked if the A590 and multisync had to be swapped.

Nope! I have both of them plugged in and going ALL of the time. No switching
or cable swapping necessary. In fact, every Friday I stop rendering and
its "game night" at my place where people sit around and watch my 25"
TV show Lemmings or Star Control. You wouldn't believe the entertainment
value of these games (especially Lemmings!) for spectators. Most people I've
had was 15 people watching 2-player Lemmings for over four hours. Yow!

Mark Thompson is probably right- I wouldn't doubt the A520 would start
to lose using an S-VHS recorder or single-frame video-disk. What would
professionals use? A SuperGen 2000, which has S-video outs? The Toaster
doesn't have S video, either. Still, the quality of the A520 and especially
the Toaster is well within even semi-professional levels.

DCTV question- Mark Thompson said ranbowing during sharp color changes was
a problem, and could be solved at the expense of fuzzyness by setting a
filter. Question: can you implement this filter for just one area of the
screen? That would be very convienient.

-Steve

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

##

Subject: Threads
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 20:58:40 EST
From: [e-mail]

Anyone have any good ideas on how to make threads, like on a bolt?

Extruding along path sounds like a good idea, but how do you get a
smooth spiral path?

Or how about an object like a rod that spins the long way around as it
slowly advances along a straight-line path along the spin axis- this sounds
promising. By using blunt caps or sharp ones, you can get different types of
threads.

This would leave _very_ deep threads but you could "immerse"  a
slightly smaller cylinder in the bolt to form the solid core. This
would form a VERY complex object, I bet.

You could also make screws with pointed tips by scaling the spinning rod
as it moves.

Any ideas? I'll have to play with it some when I get home. I don't like
my solution- there must be a more elegant method.

Note that once you have a bolt you can use slice on a plain rectangular
solid to make a nut. I LOVE slice, once you've learned how to usually
avoid the edge/point problem. [practice!]

-Steve

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

##

Subject: An Introduction to the List
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 20:54:32 EST
From: [e-mail]

OK, it's about that time when I re-introduce the list, tell you what
it's for and how to use it, especially for those members who are newly
added.

I am Steve Worley, an MIT student, and I created and maintain this
list. The list began the last week of January 1991,  about 3 weeks
after I got Imagine and wanted a forum to discuss problems, questions,
and tricks for this wonderful piece of software. [Wonderfully
frustrating, sometimes!] The list is alive and well, with roughly 6-12
posts  a day.

Membership of the list is at 174 as of this morning, and I add about
one person a day. Near the beginning of April I'll post another invite
on c.s.a.graphics, which might net about 30-50 more. We recently
passed the 450 message mark.. we should have a party or something for # 500.

Anyway, for those new to the list, you probably realize that this is a
discussion group about Imagine, Impulse's ray-tracer and modeler for the
Amiga. Tips, questions, answers, comments, complaints, bug-workarounds,
and anything somewhat pertaining to Imagine is fair game. This includes
DCTV/Colorburst questions (what a thread!), Lightwave comparisons
(Ask Mark Thompson), removable media drives (for big anims), and reviews of
Vista (Virtual landscapes in a box), which are just a few of the tangent
subjects that I remember seeing discussed on the list. They're all fair
game, though baseball stats are probably a bad thread to start.

Probably the highest volume traffic is question and answer- "My objects
don't all render in trace mode, but it's fine in scanline. Whats up?"
There are a lot of people on the list at different experience levels,
and if you've been reading you realize there is a lot of support out
there. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO POST TO THE LIST! Even the most experienced
users might not have thought of your idea or question before, and
everyone benefits from the discussion. Odds are you'll get help and
advice- remember the ideas that came our from Mark Mane's (sp?) idea
about a walk through of a house? There were about 8 posts giving
suggestions, and pointing out possible path and lighting problems and
fixes for them.

How do you send something to the list? It's pretty easy. You just send
mail to "[e-mail]" as the recipient's name. Your letter
is copied 171 times and mailed to everyone on the list. That's it! If
you want to deal with administrivia like adding/subtracting a name on
the list, mail me personally, [e-mail], and I'll try to
help out.

One danger- if you REPLy to a mail message from the list, you are
probably NOT sending a copy to the list, but only to the original
owner. To post a  followup to the list, either compose a new letter,
or remember to change the "To:" line in the reply to
"[e-mail]", unless of course you WANT a private reply.

Occasionally when you post, you might get a very strange bounce message,
from a place you've never heard of before. These are problems caused
by users with buggy/lame/confused mailers that I've added to the list.
When the mail sent to them is bounced, their brain-dead mailer doesn't
send the bounce to the SENDER (the Imagine server) it sends it to whoever
is in the "From:" line (you!). If you get these when you post, you can
ignore them. (If you're worried, wait until you see your message appear,
usually about a 24 hour turnaround) You can also send me personal mail
if you like- I keep culling the bad addresses (from users I've just
added) and it might help. Summary, though- don't worry about the bounces
from stuff you send, as long as you see your message appear on the list.

There are two semi-archives of this mailing list, and two FTP sites where
you can find them. The archives are found at hubcap.clemson.edu as well
as ab20.larc.nasa.gov. In addition to these excerpts, there are also a
couple of megs of Imagine objects (That I converted long ago) as well
as some other fun things, like a Vista landscape, a new Imagine icon, and
a complete project called "Castle" by Helge Rassmussen. I have in my
own account a COMPLETE archive of all the messages, and someday I might
even edit-assemble them together.

One last note- this list and its messages are completely
distributable. A couple of BBSes carry our discussion, and a few "members"
of the list are actually mailing lists in their own right. Feel free to
copy or distribute the info on the list, as long as you 1) credit the
authors of individual messages (keeping their names is all you need) and
mentioning the source, the USENET Imagine Mailing List,
[e-mail]. That's it!

Remember, don't be afraid to post! It's free! It's fun!

Keep on rendering,

-Steve

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Worley                                           [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------