Light ROM 1/LIGHT-ROM 1 (Amiga Library Services)(1994).iso/imagine/text/archive.28

Text File | 1994-10-19 | 150KB | 3,917 lines

IMAGINE archive: collected off of [e-mail]

ARCHIVE XXVIII
Oct. 1 '92 - Oct. 28 '92

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

note: each message seperated by a '##'

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

Subject: taping animations
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 11:09:57 EDT
From: [e-mail] (William V. Swartz)

I am not sure what capabilities are inlcuded with the DKB single frame
controller so I would look there first.  A package calle Transporter from
Amazing Computers in Tampa may help as it is a scriptable image transport
system.  Hope that puts you on track.


##

Subject: Fog behind glass
Date: Thu, 01 Oct 92 14:56
From: [e-mail] (Oldfield, Mark)

Has anyone noticed that fog objects disappear when placed behind a glass
object?   If so, what causes this and are there any work-arounds?  A fog
length of so much as 1 seems to cause the object to disappear.

- Mark Oldfield


##

Subject: RE: Water Waves
Date: Thu, 01 Oct 92 13:10:45 -0700
From: [e-mail]

Regarding the question on waves, I have actually gotten some acceptable results
using disturbed. I've seen even better results using the bumps texture in
Essence. I've tried a number of things to get a good IFF for altitude mapping,
but none of them have been quite what I wanted. You might try making a wavy text
ure in Hi-res 16 color and blurring it in an image processor. Save the results
as a 24-bit IFF for smoothness. For ideas on composition of the IFF you could
check out Steve Worleys "wavebrush." I got it from Portal, but I'm sure you
could find it on hubcap or some other ftp site.
Good luck,

Mars  [e-mail]---

p.s. Imagine 2.0 doesn't do file interpolation between IFF's. You might
look to one of the 2D morphers for that (ImagesMaster, CineMorph,
etc...). Imagine will take the series of morphed IFF's and wrap them
sequentially on your object.


##

Subject: Re: Polyhedra
Date:     Thu, 1 Oct 1992 12:24:17 -0400
From: John J Humpal <[e-mail]>

Steven Bloomfield writes:
>
> I recently ftp'd a file called "polyhedra" from hubcap.clemson.edu.
> It was located in the objects directory for imagine, but the files that came
> out of the archive aren't imagine format.  How can I convert them?
>
> Also, where can I find "writetddd"?
>
    Get Glenn Lewis's T3DEXE distribution from hubcap in the
imagine/tddd directory.  WriteTDDD is obsolete.  Glenn has put together
ReadWrite instead, which subsumes both ReadTDDD and WritTDDD in one
program.  There are also a number of utils in the same directory for
converting various formats via ReadWrite.


--
-John

John J. Humpal -- [e-mail] -- short .sig, std. disclaimer


##

Subject: Re: Water Waves
Date:     Thu, 1 Oct 1992 12:29:14 -0400
From: John J Humpal <[e-mail]>

Leon Woestenberg writes:
>
> However, the problem is to make some great looking waterwaves, using the
> altitude map (OK, look-alike alt map...) function of Imagine 2.0. I know 2.0
> does some interpolation on these brushmaps, so waterwaves should be really
> smooth looking. I've tried different brushmaps (made with DPaint IV) but
> they don't give me the realworld impression of waterwaves.
>
    Steve Worley created a great "waves" image to use as a brush
altitude map.  It used to be ftp-able from hubcap in the Imagine/brushmaps
directory (or whatever it's called).  Looked great.  It was called
WAVEBRUSH I think.

--
-John

John J. Humpal -- [e-mail] -- short .sig, std. disclaimer


##

Subject: Re: Water waves
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 16:47:36 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Steven)

No, unfortunately Imagine doesn't interpolate brush maps, so when you
zoom in close you'll just get a hash of pixels. So the answer to your
question is to use as big a brush as you can! If you're making an
ocean backdrop, you'll want the brushmap to be at LEAST as wide as the
picture you're rendering, and even then you'll get pixel artifacts in
the foreground. Repeating brush maps in Imagine also have a bug in
them when you use them for altitude mapping forming ugly lines at the
location of th edges of the brush.

In terms of MAKING the brush, I was never able to make one
satisfactorally with DPaint, so I cheated. (This was about a year ago)
I wrote a C program to physically model ocean waves driven by wind (my
physics background coming in use!) and generated a 24 bit gray
brushmap. My old old picture "Ocean Sunset" uses this brushmap. I
think both that render and the brushmap ("wavebrush"??) are on hubcap.

But lately I've really really cheated, since I've been playing with
algorithmic textures. I've transformed that math model into an
algorithmic texture which will make seamless, infinite ocean waves
without pixel artifacts. The waves are completely animated. And the
texture is only about 20K in size. (oooo!) I used this in the picture
"Rough Voyage". It is CONSIDERABLY higher quality than the old
brushmap I made. The texture will probably be put into Essence Volume
II. It's done now, though probably needs some speed optimization.

These solutions only work for OCEAN waves driven by wind... (A "large
fetch" model). If you want random ripples , you can play with
Essence's Bump (which ctually doesn't work too badly) or Impulse's
Disturb.  Disturb is probably more appropriate, but you can't animate
it. :-( [To animate bump on a plane, just translate it up and down.]

So the short term answer is "get wavebrush and have fun!" and the long
term answer is "hang on a bit. It's coming."

-Steve

[e-mail]


##

Subject:      hubcap
Date:         1 Oct 92 19:47:31 CST6
From: "Mike Jiang"  <[e-mail]>

    I tried to FTP to hubcap.clemson.edu, and after I entered
anonymous for my ID, and my email address for my password, and had
typed "dir", I found out that there was nothing there.
    Does anyone know what the problem is?

                            Mike Jiang----------------------------------------------------------------------
| "Cognito cognito ergo cognito sum." | email==> [e-mail]  |
| "I think I think,                   | or    [e-mail]  |
|  therefore I think I am."           |                              |
----------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: igensurf
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 22:26:55 -0700
From: John Ammes <[e-mail]>


  Has anyone successfuly compiled Igensurf? With did you use?


##

Subject: Laser Recorder for Sale
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 1992 12:48:11 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Eric Fleischer)

U> Does it support PAL video? Controlled by ascii? Doesn't it require a
U> SFC of any kind?
U> / Jorgen Ekstrom, Sweden
U>  Via Squish 1:109/40.0, Thu Oct 01 1992 at 14:26 UTC

    The TQ-3031F is an NTSC model. Panasonic may make a PAL version, but this
one isn't it. It is controlled by ASCII text through an RS232 serial cable, and
does not need a single frame controller. We us an AREXX script to load the
pictures into a FireCracker and then send the record string out the serial port
to the recorder.

<ELF>, Virtual Image Labs
[e-mail]



##

Subject:      Essence
Date:         5 Oct 92 08:38:19 CST6
From: "Mike Jiang"  <[e-mail]>

    Is Essence out?
    If so, where can I get a copy?
    If not, when will it be out and where can I get a copy?

                                    Mike Jiang


----------------------------------------------------------------------
| "Cognito cognito ergo cognito sum." | email==> [e-mail]  |
| "I think I think,                   | or    [e-mail]  |
|  therefore I think I am."           |                              |
----------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: EditMaster Quality?
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 92 10:14:35 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

    Has anyone out there actually SEEN editmasters' output?  If so
could you tell me how it is?  I assume it is better than DCTV even with
NTSC.  But just because it has SVHS outputs doesn't mean it has to be
that much better.  If anyone has any knowledge of what it looks like and
how well it works....(ie: quality at minimum of 30fps) please let me
know.  Thanks

               Michael Comet
               [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: EditMaster Quality?
Date: Tue, 06 Oct 92 14:07:50 EDT
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

>     Has anyone out there actually SEEN editmasters' output?

I have not personally seen it, but..... I spoke to a friend who went to
WOC in Pasedena and he said all he saw them do was simply digitize input
video and pass it straight thru. I don't think there was much supporting
software running at the time. However, I did give these guys (DMI) a call
and if what they told me is true, it could make one hell of a single frame
recorder for animation. The key specs are:
30fps at video resolution of 720 x 486
RGB output
compression ratios from 10:1 to 75:1

The actual usuable compression ratio will vary depending on hard drive/
controller speed. I have eyes that are very sensitive to image quality
and on the average, I consider a 20:1 compression ratio nearly negligable
in image degradation. This would require a disk speed bandwidth of about
1.6MB/s. This can be easily achieved with any of the newer fast disk
controllers with a good drive. Assuming DMI is doing a respectable job
with the quality of their JPEG implementation (they are using the LSI
chipset) and you use the RGB outputs fed into a high quality video
encoder, then it is conceivable that this board could deliver realtime
video output from a HD that was better than Beta SP quality, perhaps
about as good as D1! This would be both wonderful and amazing especially
when compared to other currently available products.

The reservation I have is that these guys (DMI) have absolutely no scrupples
for truth in advertising. The claims they have made for their Vivid24
board are absolutely baseless and reflect a complete abuse of numerical
specs. I hope this is not the case for EditMaster because if it does
function as I have outlined above, it will obsolete the video disc recorder
and D2 unit I am currently using. Replacing a $60,000 video recorder with
a $2000 Amiga peripheral that actually does a better job is my kind of
upgrade :-)
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Re: EditMaster Quality?
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 15:26:04 -0700
From: Jeff Walkup <[e-mail]>

It must be good.  I know that JPEG images with 20:1 compression look, to me,
as good as the original.  If you have a fast disk, you can probably go even
lower on the compression scale.  The SVHS outputs will certainly help too.

A question about the WOC demo:  I know they just had it "passing thru", but
were the frames being stored/retrieved from a hard disk as well, or were
they simply going from the input of the board to it's output?

Re: DMI's specs.
Well, there has certainly been a lot of smoke about this on Usenet, and on a
local BBS.  But you know what?  A lot of it is just that, smoke.  The thing
isn't even out yet, nobody has really put it to the test, so I don't see why
anybody is in a position to critisize it.  Another thing.  DMI says the
Vivid can beat some of the SGI machines, benchmarks-wise.  DMI compares
their benchmarks to SGI's benchmarks.  Perhaps DMI's numbers are inflated,
but can't the same also be said of SGI's numbers?  If you apply the
marketing-fudge-factor to both companie's claims, the Vivid still comes out
on top, doesn't it?  Even if it doesn't, it's a HELL of a lot cheaper, and
still a great board, for the money, if you ask me!


##

Subject: Can't get rid of screen
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 92 02:16:51 -0700
From: [e-mail] (Jose Ochoa)

I'm using Imagine version 1.1 on a 2.04 Amiga OS 2000.

I've been able to generate several 3D objects but when I do a "SHOW" in
the project editor I can never get rid of the screen once it's drawn
the object.

HELP!  (I know it must be something simple but I've tried both mouse buttons
and every key combination I can think of on the keyboard)

Joe
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: EditMaster Quality?
Date: Wed, 07 Oct 92 10:47:30 EDT
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> Re: DMI's specs.
> Well, there has certainly been a lot of smoke about this on Usenet, and on a
> local BBS.  But you know what?  A lot of it is just that, smoke.

This may be true, but then DMI specs are just that also, smoke. The
polygon rates they are quoting have never been achieved (not even close)
and are in actuallity pure conjecture (or fantasy) on the part of some people
who know little of what can be realistically done.

*Wait* something just occurred to me....I just looked at the marketing blurb
and it does not say anything about what those polygons are. The typical
bechmark is: Gouraud shaded, Z-buffered, clip tested, random oriented,
meshed, 50pixel triangles possibly with backface culling and/or Z culling.
Without knowing what polygons they are quoting, the numbers are completely
meaningless and could vary over three orders of magnitude. This does not
belittle the fact, however, that DMI's quoted rates have never been attained.

> DMI says the
> Vivid can beat some of the SGI machines, benchmarks-wise.  DMI compares
> their benchmarks to SGI's benchmarks. Perhaps DMI's numbers are inflated,
> but can't the same also be said of SGI's numbers?

SGI's quoted rates have been actually achieved and measured. I won't get
into some of the tricks that SGI uses to make their numbers look better, but
at least their numbers are real.  I am not critisizing the DMI board, I'm sure
its a fine product, but their marketing is a bit over zealous.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Re: Can't get rid of screen
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 92 08:56:31 PDT
From: [e-mail]

>I've been able to generate several 3D objects but when I do a "SHOW" in
>the project editor I can never get rid of the screen once it's drawn
>the object.

after "show" DO NOT click on the mouse buttons ! just press the escape key.
if you accidentally
click on the screen, pull down the screen with the image, click on the
screen below, then
hit the escape key.

this was actually fixed in the later versions of Imagine...

kevin kodama
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Transfering animation to film
Date: 07 Oct 1992 09:48:19 -0800 (PST)
From: "Alan Braggins, SDL" <[e-mail]>

Not directly Imagine related but...

I want to produce an animation which has to be seen on a large screen
(4000 seat auditorium). High resolution isn't important, but it does have to
be seen with a certain amount of ambient light (though there isn't a lot
happening on stage at the time, which is why the director wants this animation
in the background). A couple of animations (which needn't be synched) either
side of the stage is also a possibility.

This is for something at the 1995 World Science Fiction Convention, in Glasgow,
is case anyone is interested.

As I see it, my options are

i) Render to video, use a video projector. The conference center's video
projector is in a different room, and unlikely to be movable. We have doubts
a projector which will be bright enough is available (or rentable at affordable
cost).
ii) Render to 35mm slides (just taking screen shots with camera and monitor
on a rigid framework, unless someone tells me about a cheap film recorder),
fading successive frames into each other over a few seconds. Possible, but
the director would prefer actual animation.
iii) Get a 200 exposure magazine for my camera, and splice the results into
a film.
iv) Buy an 8mm cine camera with single frame advance. Pay someone to transfer
it to 35mm film (probably - would a smaller format be bright enough?).
v) Buy 35mm cine camera. Too expensive.
vi) Render to video, and pay someone to transfer it to film. This seems the
most plausible.

Any advice?


##

Subject: An Essence surprise
Date:     Wed, 7 Oct 1992 21:48:05 -0400
From: John J Humpal <[e-mail]>

I just uploaded a small test rendering I did using Essence.  I applied
two textures -- bump and turbscolor -- to a ground object, mucked
about with the parameters and came up with a really nice and totally
unexpected effect.  My ground rendered with what look like little
spotlights beaming down on it all the way to the horizon.  The lights
correspond to the lightest shades in the turbscolor and the higher
elevations in the bump textures.  This image uses only a single
light source and absolutely no ambient light, yet the highlights
go all the way to the horizon.  I think it looks pretty cool, kind of
spooky.

Glenn Lewis, co-author of Essence with Steve Worley (great job, guys!)
suggested I make the image available.  I also included the ground
object so those of you who already own Essence can see the parameters
I used.  Those of you who don't own Essence:  go buy it!

Anyway, the image is called essence-ground.lha and it's on hubcap
in /pub/amiga/incoming/imagine/pics.  The image is a JPEG'ed 24-bit
image, 784x482 so if you don't have a 24-bit display, you'll need
to convert it (sorry).

I am not connected with Apex Software Publishing (makers of Essence)
in any way other than as a very satisfied customer.

--
-John

John J. Humpal -- [e-mail] -- short .sig, std. disclaimer


##

Subject: Re: EditMaster Quality?
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 92 02:09:28 PST
From: [e-mail] (**)

In <[e-mail]>, Jeff Walkup <[e-mail]> writes:
> It must be good.  I know that JPEG images with 20:1 compression look, to me,
> as good as the original.  If you have a fast disk, you can probably go even
> lower on the compression scale.  The SVHS outputs will certainly help too.
>
> A question about the WOC demo:  I know they just had it "passing thru", but
> were the frames being stored/retrieved from a hard disk as well, or were
> they simply going from the input of the board to it's output?
>

I saw the demo at the WOC and It looked really good.  It was on a big
screen TV whitch dropped the quality a bit.  I think that they were
storing the Jepg files to Ram.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[e-mail]        Amiga Animator, President of PSI Animations
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Re: EditMaster Quality?
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 2:48:35 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Aaron Tucker)

>
> I saw the demo at the WOC and It looked really good.  It was on a big
> screen TV whitch dropped the quality a bit.  I think that they were
> storing the Jepg files to Ram.
>
Well, I talked to the DMI representatives there a little about their board.

1) It was NOT being saved anywhere in the Amiga. Not to hard drive or RAM. It
was running straight through from source to Editmaster to output. No type of
storage was taking place because they had no software for it yet. They had
just finished the hardware in time for the show.

2) I asked if this board would support the bandwidth of formats like S-VHS
and MII, but they had no clue. They told me to ask their engineer. He was
not there at the time, or possibly not at the show, I am not sure which.

3) This would be great for single frame animators that don't want to unload
the dollars for single frame equipment. Unfortunately, for the price of
Editmaster and a descent SVHS deck, you can get a PSFC and a SMPTE SVHS deck
capable of single frame input. It is just easier on the heads.

4) You will most likely have to invest in new hardware. BIG HARD DRIVES! This
means AT LEAST 600MB with a high transfer rate, not just access time. 19ms
doesn't mean shit on these little 3.5" drives that spin at 3600rpms, which is
what 90% of Amiga hard drive owners have, I would guess.
    You will have to purchase either a 3.5" drive at 4800rpms or a 5.25"
FH Data Eater like a Fujtsu 1GB, or some such beast. These drives have VERY
high transfer rates because more acreage moves under the read/write heads
per second than 3.5" drives.
    Disregard cache benchmarks also. 11ms Quantums are really 11ms cached
reads, 19ms writes.
    You will also have to make sure your controller can handle the
throughput. It should be able to sustain about 750k/sec for JPEG files that
are 25k in size. This compression rate is a lot higher than 10:1.
    Disk fragmentation is another thing to consider, unless they take
over an entire partition and have their own filing system.

Before anybody makes any haste decisions about buying this, I would carefully
consider the facts. Editing on the computer through hard drives is VERY much
a virgin technology, at least for PCs. I don't know if there are any high
end custom machines around that do this efficiently.

These are my opinions. I am not affiliated with anybody. Take my advice with
a grain of salt or with a margarita. Chow.

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> [e-mail]        Amiga Animator, President of PSI Animations
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Juan Trevino
[e-mail]


##

Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 20:26:13 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dave Wickard)

Excuse me for a moment please, I am practicing
my Morphing techniques...





Sam Malone   Sav Malone   Save Malond   Save Macklond
Save Wacklord     Dave  Wicklard     Dave Wickard






Hey! That works pretty dang smooth.  :-)

Michael Jackson, eat your heart out.

Well, a few things are in order.

1. The Contest Update.  Plenty of mail regarding the Contest
   from all over. Sounds like we Americans are going to
   have plenty of competition from Amiga users around the
   world. Glad to hear it. But we aren't gonna let
   them have _all_ the prizes are we?  GET WORKING!

   The biggest questions are about using commercial and
   publically available products (fonts, objects etc).

   Be certain to claim all creations/products/etc
   that are not your own on the Entry Form. Give credit
   to other Amiga artists where due.

   Also, many people have asked if it would be alright to
   use a compression method on their entries since postage
   is expensive when sent internationally.

   Compression is fine. If you use a shareware or public
   domain type of compression, be sure to include
   the decompressor with your entry. If there are any
   special directions, naturally, include those as well.
   If you use Quarterback to do the backup/compression,
   be certain to let me know that...as well as what version
   of it you used. I _can_ deal with that. Any other
   commercial types...be sure to contact me for a
   verification on whether I can handle your compression.

   We are nearly 6 weeks into the Contest period.
   Don't put off your submission to the end. Get to it!


2. Address Change.  On November 1, 1992  Unisys will be
   changing it's address scheme for Internet mail.

   At this time, the new address for the Imagine Mailing
   List will be:

   [e-mail]
                    ^^^^^^^

   Paramax is the Defense Division of Unisys. They
   have decided that paramax would be a more
   appropriate domain name for our mail.

   For several weeks, there will be dual domain.

   Mail sent to the current address will _still_
   make it to the List as well as mail sent to the
   new one. I will post a few reminders on the List
   as well as in the appropriate comp.sys.amiga.*
   groups just to be sure.


3. A.M.I.G.A ( Imagine SIG) group meeting. I will be going to the
   meeting again next week. (3rd Thursday of every month)
   Mike Halvorson is again hosting the meeting at
   Impulse headquarters. We will be discussing
   the group project (as you remember from last month,
   a video production exercise with everyone contributing
   objects) and I will hopefully be able to update you
   all on the procedures we use. I will also be quizzing
   Mike for new information regarding Imagine-PC and
   the 3.0 release for the Amiga as well as anything else
   that I can squeeze out of him.
   Keep your eyes here in about 10 days for that stuff.


4. Contribution. We have a new contributor to the
   IML Contest since it was announced. The prizes,
   the description, and all the contact info for
   the vendor will be sent out tomorrow. As was previously
   announced, all prizes contributed after the initial
   announcement will be given out to random Contest
   entrants. In other words, you do NOT have to be some
   major Amiga Artwork Dude (tm) to win something.


5. Talk it up! If you have any trouble posting to the
   Imagine Mailing List, LET ME KNOW. I would like to
   hear from everyone who's mail to the List bounces.
   There _is_ a solution. We are growing, so there
   are plenty of new users out there. You are certainly
   welcome here.  :-)   Don't be shy. ASK.
   If nobody responds to your question...ASK AGAIN.
   Mailing Lists are a powerful way for us all to
   share info, but it only works if we all take the time
   to read and answer whatever questions we can.


6. International Imagineers. You may be suprised to see
   just how widespread and divergent we really are!
   Today, we are at 338 sites. As far as the obvious
   locations, we have this distribution:

   Netherlands    -  6
   Canada         - 20
   Germany        - 13
   Australia      - 11
   New Zealand    -  4
   Sweden         -  7
   United Kingdom -  6
   Denmark        -  1
   Finland        -  3
   Norway         -  3
   Soviet Union   -  1
   Greece         -  2
   France         -  1
   Mexico         -  1
   Italy          -  2


   Kinda interesting, don't you think?

   Well, I have obviously overstayed my welcome.
   Continue your projects. I will be talking to you all
   again real soon.


Dave Wickard  [phone]   "I don't know his name, but his
[e-mail]         face rings a bell."
[e-mail]       -punchline to an old joke


##

Subject: wish list
Date: 09 Oct 1992 14:22:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail]

My small wish list, comments requested.

1.  I'd like to be able to set screen size, and have Imagine open a public
    screen so that I could open Turbotext ontop of Imagine and be able to
    easily record changes that I am maing to objects/action.

2.  Utilize an accelerator rather than main CPU for rendering, similar to
    the several RISC boards available to Mac/PC users. I realize that this
    could be accomplished using several Amiga 4000's, but who wants to
    maintain a network? :) (that last was a joke)

3.  What about being able to specify staging in RenderMan RIB files? Am I
    completely off the wall here? I have experience writing shaders for
    RenderMan, I know that it is very complex and demands a lot from a
    front-end (the best one on the Mac that I have used is VIDI Presenter,
    a mere $2500) to access all of the features of RenderMan, most of which
    are offered in Imagine.

    My reason for this is that RenderMan offers network rendering. Once again,
    yes, I could just have several Amigas running the same project in Imagine.
    However, it would seem that workstations will always have the speed
    advantage over desktop machines.

    I have thought about the cost advantages of having to purchase a RISC
    machine from one of the majors, Sun, SGI, etc..

My background is a BFA in photo, and for the past 2 years I have been using
Mac's and the Amiga to generate a variety of still images, both 3D and using
scanned artwork. I'm presently studying C programming at NYU, and hope to
enter the Interactive Telecommunications Program next fall. Meanwhile I am
partners in a graphic design business where we produce artwork for sales
presentations, trade shows, some advertising (print) and now I've been
learning animation techniques for a few years.

That's it. Andrew.


##

Subject: Auto sizing for renderings
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 92 23:17:31 -0700
From: [e-mail] (Stefon Bertrand Podell)

Here is my situation:  I am working on a print project involving many images
of varying sizes (for those interested: 450X450 up to 1625X1125).  I would
like to somehow automate the process of rendering this set of images.  Is
there any way to do this?  AREXX would be a nice addition to Imagine 3.0,
dontcha think?

Even Sculpt-Animate 4D had a scripting language of its own.  Might there be
a parallel in Imagine which I haven't found yet?

        Thanks muchly,
        Stefan


##

Subject: TDDD format help needed !
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 14:44:39 +0100 (MET)
From: Johan Andersson <[e-mail]>

  Hi fellow Imaginers...

 I'm quite new to this mailing list but it seems to be the right place
 to ask the following question.

 Is there anybody out there that can help me with the TDDD format ?
 I would like to write some small utilities to help create some
 objects that I find it hard to create inside Imagine.

 It's not impossible to do it, but it's tedious (is that the right word ?)

 What I would like is a format description of all possible data that is
 implementable to the objects, i.e. form, attributes, mappings and so on...

 I have Imagine 1.1 at the moment but will upgrade in the near future and
 I'm looking forward to the new manual, the old one is a bit... well.

 Where can I find this information ?

 If someone could help me either with the information or with where to
 go look for it I would be very grateful.

 Hoping for answers.

    Johan.

*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*
! Address: Johan Andersson              Email: [e-mail]            !
!          Fredriksbergsg. 2                                                  !
!          856 41  Sundsvall            New to this list, but don't flame me  !
!          Sweden                       Still rendering in 1.1 :*)            !
! Phone:   [phone]                                                 !
*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*


##

Subject: Wishlist or fantasy ?
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 14:59:52 +0100 (MET)
From: Johan Andersson <[e-mail]>

  Hi again !

 I'm sitting here at fiddling with one our little 'club's' machines, a
 Sun 3/80 at the moment, and I was wondering...

 Impulse is releasing the new version of Imagine (3.x) for both Amiga
 and the infamous PC-series, I know, they do calculus rather well :).

 What I would want to see would be a small calculus packet for some
 workstation, medium sized computers that I could put my projects to
 render on, that would free a lot of time on my Amiga for other stuff
 that I use it for.

 Since I do have an ethernet card in it, I could very well download
 my projectfiles, start the rendering, and continue to work...

 Is this a to far fetched idea ? Or is it something that might be
 something for Impulse to think about ?

 I absolutely adore my Amiga and would never trade it for anything,
 with the exception of an uptrade to the 4000 model, but I could very
 well imagine (:-)) that a workstation release of the software would
 strike the market rather well, then again, I've been wrong before :)

 Don't take this letter to serious fellow Imaginers, just poking around
 in my area of interest. The idea fell to me because that the Sun 3/80
 is a 68030 w/68882 25 MHz and a CG6 board, and my server is a Sun 3/480
 which is the same but 33 MHz, booth of theese machines have MUCH more
 memory and disk than I have localy, so it would be nice to be able to
 use it, wouldn`t it ?

     Johan

*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*
! Address: Johan Andersson              Email: [e-mail]            !
!          Fredriksbergsg. 2                                                  !
!          856 41  Sundsvall            New to this list, but don't flame me  !
!          Sweden                       Still rendering in 1.1 :*)            !
! Phone:   [phone]                                                 !
*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*


##

Subject: Aspects
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 92 07:23:22 PDT
From: [e-mail]

This may have been posted already but.....
What is the correct aspect ratio for Toaster 752 x 480 screens?
Thanks,
Randy Carris


##

Subject: Re: Wishlist or fantasy (alternate rendering platforms)
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 92 12:37:48 EDT
From: Steve J. Lombardi <[e-mail]>

>
>  What I would want to see would be a small calculus packet for some
>  workstation, medium sized computers that I could put my projects to
>  render on, that would free a lot of time on my Amiga for other stuff
>  that I use it for.
>
>  Since I do have an ethernet card in it, I could very well download
>  my projectfiles, start the rendering, and continue to work...
>
>  Is this a to far fetched idea ? Or is it something that might be
>  something for Impulse to think about ?
>
>  I absolutely adore my Amiga and would never trade it for anything,
>  with the exception of an uptrade to the 4000 model, but I could very
>  well imagine (:-)) that a workstation release of the software would
>  strike the market rather well, then again, I've been wrong before :)
>

I had proposed the idea of porting just the project editor portion
of imagine to other platforms such as VMS. It's real easy to hook
an amiga up to DECNET these days (contact syndesis). The port would
not be difficult as the interactive editors would still run on the amiga.
Projects would be staged on the amiga and then rendered under vms.
At the time I talked to Impulse they were more interested in a
transputer of some sort dedicated to rendering. I suppose this
became cost prohibitive in the amiga market, as they were talking
about a sticker price of over 5000. I welcome the PC version of imagine
as it will allow me to set up my projects at home but render them on the
6 PC's that the company that I work for owns. They sit idle all night
just begging to render!  However I wish they would consider a VMS
port of the renderer. BTW. does anyone know any features of the new
imagine 3.0.  Not a wishlist but actual features that we can expect.

 /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
 \                            /                                               /
 /                           /       Surviving this way is a crime.           \
 \  Steve Lombardi          /     I will not commit it.                       /
 /  [e-mail]    /           Most of the World lives this way       \
 \                        /     working another slave labour day.             /
 /                       /                              -- Azalia Snail       \
 \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/


##

Subject: CONTEST UPDATE
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 92 15:48:35 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dave Wickard)

Greetings Imagineers!  :-)


As I indicated in my earlier post, we have gotten
another contribution to the IML Contest!

The products donated are:

Exotic Cars Volumes I and II.

The Exotic Cars Series is created by AmiGrafix Inc or
Apopka FLA, U.S.A.

One of the cars is the Jackhammer. It appears similar to
a Corvette. The second is the Ectasis which has a resemblance
to a Ferrari. Very nice indeed!

AmiGrafix president Mark Aydelotte has donated 2 of this
package to the Imagine Mailing List Contest.

Both cars are fully articulated objects (i.e. the windows
roll up and down, the wheels roll and turn, the
headlights go up and down, and the doors open).

There are both full blast versions and a Low RAM versions
included in each package, so this exciting set should be
of interest to _all_ Imagineers! Each car is a perfect
Cycle object and is ready to animate. There are attribute
files for each, and nice little features like bump maps
for dashboards and complete object scaling info as well as
Hints and Tips for Rendering from the vendor.

There are image maps for instrumentation, tire treads
and license plates.

A most exciting package and a prize that's right up
our alley.

As stated in our Contest file, all prizes contributed
after the initial Contest announcement will be given
to a randomly selected entrant. That means you could
be a winner no matter how finely tuned your Imagine
skills are!

What's that? You simply can't *wait* to see if you've
won? You absolutely MUST have each of the prizes
in the Contest? Well then, calm down...grab
the phone, and get ready. The contact info for every
vendor sponsoring the IML Contest was included with
the initial mailing. And natch, here is the
scoop on ordering Exotic Cars Vol. I and II:

Vendor:  AmiGrafix Inc.
         P.O. Box 2063
         Apopka, Florida  32704-2063
         USA

         [phone]

Retail Price-  $49.95


As always, if you do order from vendors who support our
Mailing List, be certain to let them know you
appreciate their support either by phone, or on your
Product Registration card.

Vendor support is a two-way street. Software
worth using is software worth paying for.
*Don't Pirate*


Dave Wickard  [phone]
[e-mail]           "Hey, they overrode the veto(e)!"
[e-mail]          Vice Pinhead Dan Quayle


##

Subject: Chip RAM & anim speed
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 14:15:39 -0700
From: Harvey Weinman <[e-mail]>

I've been led to believe that the bottleneck in the  playback speed of
animations (clunky hi-res -> clunky DCTV) has to do with the rate of
access to chip RAM.
On page 59 of the Oct. '92 issue of A Meager World magazine there is
an ad for a company called Black Knight Periferals selling a device
called  "The Fast Lane Chip RAM accelerator & 2MB chip ram expansion" .

My questions are
1 Is the basic premise here (.ie faster chip ram=faster anim playback )
  true?
2 Is ,in theory, such a device possible?
3 Does anyone have any knowledge and/or experience with this particular
  device? ie. Has anyone actually seen and used one? Does it work? Does it
  mess with other computer functions? Is it reliable or is it flakey?
4 Does anyone know anything about Black Knight Peripherals? Has anyone had
  any dealings with them? If so , what is your experience? ie. should one
  read "FLY BY" instead of "Black"?
Answers to, and continuing dialog around, these questions are greatly
 appreciated.
Any other information about getting faster animation playback at higher
resolutions is good also.


 "just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get ya."

                                Harvey Weinman
                                Berkeley Ca.       [e-mail]


##

Subject: Chip RAM accelerator
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 92 16:44:35 -0600
From: [e-mail] (Charles Cazabon (186-003-526))

In a previous message, Harvery Weinman says:

On page 59 of the Oct. '92 issue of A Meager World magazine there is
an ad for a company called Black Knight Periferals selling a device
called  "The Fast Lane Chip RAM accelerator & 2MB chip ram expansion" .

My questions are
1 Is the basic premise here (.ie faster chip ram=faster anim playback )
  true?
2 Is ,in theory, such a device possible?
3 Does anyone have any knowledge and/or experience with this particular
  device? ie. Has anyone actually seen and used one? Does it work? Does it
  mess with other computer functions? Is it reliable or is it flakey?

Well, I believe the basic premise is correct.  This is at least
theoretically sound.

I don't know if such a device is possible or practical.

However, in a recent issue of AmigaWorld, they said that the company had
shown such a device at a show recently...they gave no details, but they
did mention it.  This to me would mean it isn't vapourware at the least.


--Chuck Cazabon, [e-mail]
* alternate address:  [e-mail]
* In the immortal words of JFK..."I am a jelly donut!"
I went to Israel on holiday, and all I got was this lousy gunshot wound.


##

Subject: Re: Chip RAM & anim speed
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 92 21:24:02 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Aaron Tucker)

> On page 59 of the Oct. '92 issue of A Meager World magazine there is
> an ad for a company called Black Knight Periferals selling a device
> called  "The Fast Lane Chip RAM accelerator & 2MB chip ram expansion" .
>
> 4 Does anyone know anything about Black Knight Peripherals? Has anyone had
>   any dealings with them? If so , what is your experience? ie. should one
>   read "FLY BY" instead of "Black"?

Major FLY BY. Black Knight is owned by the same people as MAST was. In fact,
Black Knight was opened up just prior to MAST closing. They then left a huge
debt, took all the equipment to Australia, and transferred the money through
a swiss bank account.

I just became aware of this very recently. I had worked for MAST when they
were trying to sell the Colorburst. They tried shafting the Colorburst's
designer, Gary Rayner. He now has his own company, Opal Tech, and distributes
OpalVision through Centaur here in the states. Buy one!

Anyways, I would be highly cautious of any of their products. Although they
are in my area, I have very little desire in purchasing any of their products.

RCS, the makers of the Fusion Forty have a Chip RAM Accelerator also. When I
called them, they said they had one working, but it did not accelerate the
animations as much as they had hoped. So, they are still working on making a
faster one. This was from a conversation about 2 months ago, maybe 3.

> Answers to, and continuing dialog around, these questions are greatly
>  appreciated.
> Any other information about getting faster animation playback at higher
> resolutions is good also.
>
Buy an A4000. :-)
>
>  "just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get ya."
>
"Wake up. Time to die." -Leon from BladeRunner

>                                 Harvey Weinman
>                                 Berkeley Ca.       [e-mail]
>
Juan Trevino
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: TDDD format help needed !
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 92 07:38:24 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Glenn M. Lewis - ICD ~)

>>>>> On Sat, 10 Oct 1992 14:44:39 +0100 (MET), Johan Andersson <[e-mail]> said:

Johan>   Hi fellow Imaginers...

    Howdy!

Johan> I'm quite new to this mailing list but it seems to be the right
Johan> place to ask the following question.  Is there anybody out there
Johan> that can help me with the TDDD format?  I would like to write
Johan> some small utilities to help create some objects that I find it
Johan> hard to create inside Imagine.

    You came to the right place.  I am the author of T3DLIB, which
is a shareware package that assists programmers in algorithmically
creating, modifying, reading and writing TDDD files.  I will tack on the
TDDD format document below.  You can find T3DLIB on hubcap.clemson.edu
[130.127.8.1] in the directory: pub/amiga/incoming/imagine/TTDDDLIB.

    In case you have never ftp'd before, type:

ftp hubcap.clemson.edu            [or if that doesn't work, use 130.127.8.1]
name: anonymous
password: [e-mail]
ftp> cd pub/amiga/incoming/imagine/TTDDDLIB
ftp> binary
ftp> prompt
ftp> ls
ftp> get T3DLIB33_exe.lha         [for the Amiga]
ftp> get T3DLIB33_src.zoo         [for source code to compile anywhere]
ftp> cd contrib
ftp> mget *                       [gets all the files]
ftp> quit

Johan>  It's not impossible to do it, but it's tedious (is that the
Johan> right word ?)

    Yes, that is exactly the right word!  :-)

Johan>  What I would like is a format description of all possible data
Johan> that is implementable to the objects, i.e. form, attributes,
Johan> mappings and so on...

Johan>  If someone could help me either with the information or with
Johan> where to go look for it I would be very grateful.

    Since I am sending a courtesy copy of this message to the
mailing list in case other newcomers would find this information useful,
I will not include the (long) TDDD format document here, but will send
it directly to you, Johan, in a separate message.

                        -- Glenn Lewis
                        (co-author of Essence)


##

Subject: Re: Making 3D Fonts
Date: 13 Oct 92 08:43:53 EDT
From: "Syndesis Corp/J. Foust" <[e-mail]>

To: [e-mail]

[e-mail] (Leon Woestenberg) writes:

> To all those desperate Imagineers who want to bake their own
> professional looking 3D fonts theirselves.

There's also InterChange Plus, just released.  It now includes
the InterFont Converter, formerly sold as part of InterFont.
With this, you select from one of the 23 pre-made outline-based
InterFont fonts, enter up to five lines of text, select extrusion
depth, texture, smoothness, press a button, and out comes the
words you want, in any format supported in InterChange, meaning
Imagine, Turbo Silver, LightWave, etc.

Of course, you also get all of InterChange Plus's conversion options,
such as the ability to convert a LightWave scene to a hierarchical
Imagine object, or vice versa.

InterChange Plus is now available at your local dealer, or direct
from Syndesis - call [phone].


##

Subject: Making 3D Fonts
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 12:52:43 MED
From: [e-mail] (Leon Woestenberg)

To all those desperate Imagineers who want to bake their own professional
looking 3D fonts theirselves.

I'll describe how to import fonts from a bitmap source.

At first, you need a bitmap version of the font (yeah, really!). The higher
it's detail, the better they will look. So, make them BIG, and later scale
them down with the transformation requester. OK, there are two ways to get a
bitmap version of your text.

    1. Under Kick 2.0 and Workbench 2.04 (or above) and using Imagine
       2.0 (yes, all 2.0!) use 'Fountain' from the System drawer or
       'Intellifont' from Workbench 3.0 (Yes, on the A4000) to add a
           large bitmap version of your favorite vectorfont. These are the
           wellknown Compugraphic Fonts, giving excellent quality.
       Now do 'Functions/Add/Font Object' and select your predefined
           bitmap size of the font. Now enter the text in the requester and
           Imagine 2.0 will do the rest. Finally, do 'Add Faces'.
    2. If you've got PageStream, generate a small page with your text in
       your favorite (vector) font and select a size of about 72 or 108.
       Now 'Configure Printer' and select the 'IFFILBM' Driver. Now
       print the page to (RAM) disk. This will generate a good quality
           bitmap of your text. Use 'Object/Convert IFFILBM' to import this
       into Imagine. Also 'Add Faces'.


Now we've got the text converted into an Imagine object. Now let's extrude
this. 'Object/Mold/Extrude/100' to do this. Now where going to smooth the
typefaces correctly. This means we have to smooth the faces you see looking
from top and right, not those you see from the front view.

First select 'Mode/Pick Mode/Drag Box' and then 'Mode/Pick Edges'. Select
the upper row of points in the top view. Keep Shift pressed and select the
bottom line of points also. You now have selected the front and back faces
of your text. Let's keep these rock sharp, by selecting 'Functions/Make
Sharp'. Now 'Mode/Pick/Object'. The other edges will be smoothed, because
the phong button is default in 'On' mode.

OK, that was all folks.

---------
If you want some really nice looking effects, use Pixel 3D.

Question: Does anyone know a program that converts Compugraphic
(Intellifonts) DIRECTLY into Imagine, without having to convert between
bitmap graphics?!

---------

Leon Woestenberg ([e-mail])

---------


##

Subject: Attention Australian Imagine Users!
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 08:21:59 EST-10
From: [e-mail]

I just heard that there are 11 Aussie subscribers to the Imagine
Mailing list!  I thought Kevin Wong and I were it! (Hi Kev!)

Hey guys, where are you located.  I might be living next door to one
of you (unless you're a little old lady, I really doubt it...)
Please mail me direct to the address in my sig.

Also, has anyone got Essence yet, and if so, from where and for how
much????

(Please note I have removed my From field in a desperate attempt to
stop the trillons of bounces that I know will result from this post ;-) )

   ____ John    ____       Australian Developer   FAX   [phone]
  //      Rowe //               Christian         VOICE [phone]
 // __        //--          Amiga Programmer, Renderer, 3-D Animator
//__//rafix  //__ffects   EMAIL [e-mail]
     OR EMAIL cbmaus!cbmozq!wilson!rowe![e-mail]


##

Subject: Aladdin 4D
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 08:02:59 EST-10
From: [e-mail]

This was recently posted to the DCTV mailing list by Mark Davis.
Since I haven't seen it here yet, I thought I'd post it.
Looks interesting...
(Please note I have removed my Reply-To and From fields in a desperate
attempt to stop the trillons of bounces that I know will result from this
post ;-)  My address is in my sig.)

Mark writes:
I just got a brochure from Adspec Programming on Aladdin 4D... here it is
minus the great pictures.  I do not work for Adspec nor own Aladdin 4D nor
am advocating anything, etc...  The program sounds great, though.  They
also have an upgrade offer for owners of the various 3D/paint/drawing
packages.  The following is pretty much verbatum from the brochure

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

Aladdin 4D is an advanced 3D modeling, rendering and animation system.
Work through a direct window into 3D space creating your objects with
powerful modeling tools including extrude, sweep, resize, magnetism, clone
and much more.  Polygons can have any number of sides.

Animation of objects is as simple as drawing a path.  Paths also control
rotation and can be linked for easy complex motion.  Also included is a
near real time wireframe preview of anims.

Shading can be in facet, Gouraud or Phong.  Other attributes are achieved
through a timeline so objects can change reflectivity, color, transparency,
hardness, wave sensitivity, self illumination, etc. during animation.

Textures are accomplished in the most complete and easy to use texturing
system available.  Composite any number of bitmaps and/or procedural
textures on objects, and specify when each should occur along with the
strength, and effect, including normal, bump, opacity, decal, genlock and
more.  Procedurals animate and bitmap sequences are supported in all
texture modes.

Lights are unlimited in number and use attribute lists so they can change
color and strength during the animation as well as being assigned to paths.
They can also be configured to cast shadows and create highlights
independently.

Wave sources are unlimited in number, and have dual radii making it easy to
imitate rings in water, etc.  They can also be animated and moved by the
paths.

Shadows are implemented using ray tracing algorithms and are user
optimizable.  All other rendering is achieved through solid-model
algorithms for greater speed and efficiency.

Gaseous objects are easy to use.  Access is by a container in which the
actual density of space can be modified.  The gas gets its color from the
container, which can use attribute lists and textures.  Turbulence can also
be introduced into the gas.  All gas effects can be animated.

Camera views are implemented.  The camera system can use one or more
targets which control zoom and direction.  Targets are controlled through
a timeline.  Targets can even control the "pan" from one to the other
allowing anything from an abrupt cut to a smooth transition.

Parallel spaces.  An unlimited number of parallel spaces can be used,
allowing work on complex objects to proceed unhampered by other objects in
the same drawing.  Objects may be transferred from one space to the other
and each space can have its own camera and target system.

And much more like loading encapsulated postscript files so work drawn in a
traditional drawing program can be used in Aladdin 4D.  Drawings can even
be saved as Professional Draw Clips for use in illustration.  Backgrounds,
foregrounds and overlays can be either bitmaps or procedurals.  Direct
support of DCTV, Resolver and Firecracker are included, as well as all
standard Amiga modes and 24 bit IFF.

What are timelines?  Timelines are the basis of all animation in Aladdin 4D
and they are sheer genius.  You won't find a limited keyframe system here!
Instead, you can ask for as many levels of action as you want, and then
specify the exact time or specific frame number that you want the action to
begin.  This way you can re-render an existing animation in any number of
frames that you might choose with no changes needed to the drawing!
Timelines are implemented for almost every feature, and are so similar that
once you use one, you can use them all.  In addition to being able to use
any number of levels, each level has separate entry and exit values on each
of its controls giving complete control over complex changes to attributes,
strengths, colors, transparency, hardness and just about everything else!

Composited textures?  While others are still imitating the methods we first
used to apply textures, we have been working on something else to teach
them, and the results are spectacular!  Now you can apply any number of
bitmap or procedural textures simultaneously.  Say you use a rock texture
for a base texture, then overlay an animated sequence of a face as a
bumpmap, then have the rock turn into wood during the animation, next have
the textures fade away and the transparency of the object increase... get
the picture?  And just wait until you see how easy and powerful the new
procedural interface is!  You can even choose an amount of blend for the
procedural to elimate any jaggies.  For that matter, we have implemented a
real "jaggie killer" for bitmap textures.  No matter how close you get to a
bitmapped poly, you can't see any jaggies!  We have also implemented a new
perspective correction system so that textures appear in their correct
positions, regardless of the perspective.

What are gaseous objects?  Just what you are hoping for... and more!
You've seen the gaseous effects on some of the movies, and now you can do
them yourself.  This is the first time this multi-thousand dollar feature
has been brought to the personal computer, and its here for your Amiga!
Look at the planet, sun and the gas "rings" in the space rendering.  They
are 3D objects!  You won't believe how they look in an animation!!  And
this is a full-featured implementation, having features even the "big boys"
don't hve yet.  For instance, you can actually depress and raise the
surface of the gas and control the density of space inside the gas
container using texture lists and attribute lists on the container.  And as
if this isn't enough, the center of turbulence can be moved over time.  The
turbulence can be rotated and translated, and can have a secondary color
and density setting.  Using gases in your 3D animations really adds that
professional flare.

Wave sources?  Instead of just selecting an object and giving it an
attribute of "waves", how about making a wave source with a range and
strength similar to light?  Select your object and tell it just how
sensitive to the wave source it should be.  Now you can assign the wave
source to a path and fly it along the object and watch the surface of the
object react to the waves.  This is also brand new to 3D programs and
really great!  In addition, wave sources have both an inside and an outside
radius of influence making it simple to do those expanding rings that
exist everywhere in nature, like the rings from a stone thrown into the
water, and are all but impossible to do in any other program.  There is
even a "multi" option which can imitate rain falling on a puddle using only
a single wave source.  Wait until you see this one on a chrome object!

EPS?  The new eps load allows you to work in your favorite drawing program
and then save the work as an eps file.  You can load it directly into
Aladdin 4D, then extrude, sweep, texture or whatever else you desire.  This
is particularly useful because it puts all those great postscript fonts in
reach for 3D animation!  Complete control is available over the translation
of the bezier curves so you can get as fine a translation as desired.

Backgrounds/foregrounds/overlays?  You can use any bitmap, or even a
procedural texture as a background or foreground.  You can even use them
as an overlay, which composites the texture over the entire image as a
final stage and at any strength you choose for some outstanding effects.
And the background, foreground and overlays use texture lists, so they can
be timelined and changed during the animation!

Multiple targets?  The new camera system is absolutely the most flexible
and easy to use system in any 3D program, hands down.  Alter the camera and
ask for 3 (you can use any number) targets.  Place each target where you
want and tell the target when it should be active (they're timelined!),
when it should begin to pan to the next target and how quickly.  Now assign
the targets to paths and literally get any camera motion you desire,
accurately and easily, natural to crazy!  Each target has its own entry and
exit zoom and tilt settings as well, and the transition between targets is
super smooth.  The camera is so accurate that you can fly it through the
keyhole in a door and then explore the interior of the house.  Our "no
pixel texture technique" really comes into play here!  This one's sure to
be imitated, but by the time the others catch up, we'll be even farther
ahead, so why wait?  Rub the lamp... Aladdin 4D (Draw4D-Pro Version 2.0)
Own the genie!

Adspec Programming
467 Arch St.
Salem, Ohio 44460
[phone]

No, I didn't type all of this in... I am testing an OCR package on another
platform and this brochure appeared to be a challenge.

mark


   ____ John    ____       Australian Developer   FAX   [phone]
  //      Rowe //               Christian         VOICE [phone]
 // __        //--          Amiga Programmer, Renderer, 3-D Animator
//__//rafix  //__ffects   EMAIL [e-mail]
     OR EMAIL cbmaus!cbmozq!wilson!rowe![e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Making 3D Fonts
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 19:01:20 EDT
From: Jason Andreas <[e-mail]>

I'm working on a program that is an add-on for the upcoming "Image F/X" from
GVP.  If you've ever seen n-Title from Xaos Inc. on an SGI, it is almost the
same thing.  My program takes Adobe Type 1 Fonts and allows you to produce
very cool, complicated titles with a few mouse clicks, with output comparable
to Kara's chroma fonts.  You can add highlights, bevels, shadows, glows,
bubbles, etc. to any typeface.  It does this in 2d, placing the results
in "Image F/X"'s main buffer.  There is also an option to save in 3D.
Currently, I only plan to support Lightwave(unless I get Imagine's object
format.)  Most of the options you set in 2d come out in the 3d ligthwave
object.  So, if you have highlighting set, your LW surface will have reflection
mapping set, with an ILBM image also saved that will give results very similar
to the 2d version.  The program is very beta, so don't expect to see it till at
least December, i'm juggling too many things as it is.  Image F/X should keep
you busy for the time being.


##

Subject: much, much smaller wish list
Date: 13 Oct 1992 16:57:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail]

okay, my previous wish list was perhaps fantasy, but how about this:

What if I could load a project simply by double-clicking on a project icon?

That way I could leave out a project that I am currently working on, rather
than opening Imagine, then opening a project, then going to a screen to start
work. I would much prefer a project icon with Imagine as its default tool,
and another tool to configure which editor I would like to start in(detail,
stage,action or forms).

This would help immensely.

Andrew.


##

Subject: Morphus Deadline?
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 10:35:20 CDT
From: Wayne Haufler 283-4160 <[e-mail]>

I received the Impulse newsletter a few weeks ago.
Does anyone know if the limited time offer of $70 for Morphus
is still on, that was mentioned in the newsletter?
If so, how much longer do we have?
I'd like to get it, but time has slipped by me.

Thanks


         __      Wayne A. Haufler   [Christian/SW Engineer/XWindows/Amigan]
\\ /\\ /\\ //_    [e-mail]    McDonnell Douglas-Houston
 \/--\// \//__    Hobby:"Exploring the Use of Computer Graphics and
     //                  Animations To Support Christian Endeavors"


##

Subject: Re:MORPHUS Deadline
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 12:24:54 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dave Wickard)

Wayne Haufler 283-4160 <[e-mail]>  propels:
>I received the Impulse newsletter a few weeks ago.
>Does anyone know if the limited time offer of $70 for Morphus
>is still on, that was mentioned in the newsletter?

As far as I know it is still good. I will ask Mike Halvorson
at the meeting tomorrow night. (Unless of course someone has
their Impulse newsletter within arms reach and can inform us...
sadly, I am at work now.)

>If so, how much longer do we have?


Dave Wickard  [phone]        And the Shepard said,
[e-mail]             "It only herds when I laugh."
[e-mail]           -I made up the punchline...gimme the joke!


##

Subject: imagine newsletter
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 15:23:58 -0700
From: John Ammes <[e-mail]>

>I received the Impulse newsletter a few weeks ago.

I havent recieved an imagine newsletter in 8 months or so.:(


##

Subject: Imagine Newsletter
Date:     Wed, 14 Oct 1992 20:36:27 -0400
From: "Christopher Stevenson" <[e-mail]>

[e-mail] has a point;

When *is* Impulse going to send newsletters to those who have
bought it's product?  I haven't upgraded to 2.0 yet... could
*this* possibly be it?  (I'm waiting for 3.0)

curious.

-electric monk v4.0


##

Subject: MORE SPEED
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 02:24:17 +0200
From: "Alex. Paterakis-UN. LA VERNE" <[e-mail]>

I don't know if this message came through before but I would
really like to know if there exists any kind of Hardware that can
provide greater speed then the 68040..currently supported by
Imagine 2.0 ?
I know a great deal of Cards have come up lately but nothing makes
it clear...
If anyone can help please do...

** [e-mail] **


##

Subject: Re:  Imagine Newsletter
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 92 00:53:14 -0500
From: [e-mail] (PJ Foley)

Ok, I really hate "me too" letters, but I have NEVER received a newsletter
from them, and am a registered user of 1.1 and 2.0...

What ever shall we do?  Give them a call maybe???

PJ


##

Subject: Accerlerated animation in cycle editor ?
Date:     Thu, 15 Oct 1992 09:36:53 +0100
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

Hi renderfolks

Ever tried to do some accerlerated animation with cycle editor?

I think that nearly all movements including internal animations
of objects are accerlerated and NOT linear. But this is - as
far as I can see - not supported by the cycle editor.
The only way I can see is an extensive use of paths in the stage
editor. But this is a hard job to do ...

Any work-arounds ?

Thanks

Hannes


##

Subject: BUG ??
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 14:02:58 +0200
From: "Alex. Paterakis-UN. LA VERNE" <[e-mail]>

I dont know if this is a BUG or not but I tried to render a FOG object
and have a Backdrop picture also..The result : No object at all !
When I take the backdrop picture off it appears beutifully...
Any ideas ????

************************************
**  [e-mail]  **
**        AMIGA  POWER            **
************************************


##

Subject: Re: Chip RAM & anim speed
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 08:37:04 EST-10
From: [e-mail] (John Rowe)

:
:On page 59 of the Oct. '92 issue of A Meager World magazine there is
:an ad for a company called Black Knight Periferals selling a device
:called  "The Fast Lane Chip RAM accelerator & 2MB chip ram expansion" .
:
:My questions are
:1 Is the basic premise here (.ie faster chip ram=faster anim playback )
:  true?

Over the last year here, there has been quite a bit of talk from a number
of manufacturers about introducing chip ram accelerators.  They all claim
that, in particular, this will speed up anim playback.  Theoretically, the
basic premise seems to be valid, but no-one has yet produced such a device
for it to be practically tested by the masses.

:2 Is ,in theory, such a device possible?

Yes

:3 Does anyone have any knowledge and/or experience with this particular
:  device? ie. Has anyone actually seen and used one? Does it work? Does it
:  mess with other computer functions? Is it reliable or is it flakey?

I've seen it, or rather the prototype.  I also spoke with the hardware
engineer.  It only works with the 2000.  The engineer says it would be too
difficult to implement on the 3000.  Other hardware engineers I have spoken
to say it would actually be EASIER to implement on the 3000.

The prototype was NOT operating, just sitting there in an open 2000 looking
pretty.  The engineer assured me that it increased the speed of the cpu's
access to chip ram by a factor of 3 or 4 and if coupled with their standard
accelerator (also prototype only, on display but not working) it would
increase chip ram access speed by between 8 and 15 times! (I thought these
figures a little hard to believe at the time...I still do...)  He said this
removes the "chip ram bottleneck" and thus anim playback is MUCH faster.
We have only his word to go on...

:4 Does anyone know anything about Black Knight Peripherals? Has anyone had
:  any dealings with them? If so , what is your experience? ie. should one
:  read "FLY BY" instead of "Black"?

Black Knight are an Australian Company and were displaying at the Australian
WOC in July.  I believe they have a number of people from the now defunct
MAST.  They were displaying many prototype devices, all of which were
supposed to be shipping "real soon now".  To my knowledge, none have yet
shipped.  They are still advertising these products however.

:Any other information about getting faster animation playback at higher
:resolutions is good also.

I've heard increasingly good reports about ScalaMM's anim playback speed,
from people who are normally pretty picky about such things.  ScalaMM loads
the anim and converts it into what it calls its "32 bit" format.  This
creates a larger file, but Scala then plays it back real fast and real
smooth :-)

Has anybody had experience with ScalaMM for anim playback???

:                                Harvey Weinman
:                                Berkeley Ca.       [e-mail]

   ____ John    ____       Australian Developer   FAX   [phone]
  //      Rowe //               Christian         VOICE [phone]
 // __        //--          Amiga Programmer, Renderer, 3-D Animator
//__//rafix  //__ffects   EMAIL [e-mail]
     OR EMAIL cbmaus!cbmozq!wilson!rowe![e-mail]


##

Subject: ANOTHER VISIT TO IMPULSE.
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 92 16:40:55 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dave Wickard)

Hi-De-Ho Imagineers!  :-)

As I mentioned the other day, last night was the monthly
A.M.I.G.A Imagine SIG meeting at Impulse headquarters.

As luck would have it, it was also the first snow/ice
storm of the year here in Minnesota as well as the
Minnesota Vikings nationally televised game. Normally,
when there's a Vikings football game on, you'd have to
pry the remote control out of my cold dead hands to get
me out of the house. However, as a service to youse guys  ;-)
I hauled my well padded carcass up to Impulse to
hear what was doing lately. Naturally, Mike Halvorson
was ALSO watching the game, and completely forgot about
the meeting that night....so he was late too.
We Minnesotans take our football seriously, so back off, man. :-)

Got some information that may be of interest to quite a few
of us so grab a chair and pull it up around the campfire
and listen in.


1. Within 30 days, Impulse will begin distributing Visionary.
   This is their product that addresses the continuing Amiga
   interest in 2D morphing. Oh gosh, more morphing.
   Thank goodness. Now I can use CineMorph to morph my
   MorphPlus to modify my Visionary morph to adapt my
   ImageMaster morph.  :-)   NOW I'm finally satisfied.
   Anyway, Mike had some demo tape of Visionary morphs,
   they looked fine n dandy, but I guess as far as morphing
   is concerned, a little goes a long way. Since Mike says that
   the main strength of Visionary is it's speed in rendering
   it's morphs. The list price of Visionary will be $119.95
   so in the morphing arena, it is fairly reasonably priced.
   As far as personal recommendations, I don't have enough
   experience with the contenders to really give a
   thumbs up or down on any of them...so I will reserve
   my personal judgement. As far as any additional
   capabilities, I am unsure of Visionary's list of features,
   but as soon as I get a chance to hammer on a copy of
   it... I will be happy to let you all know everything
   I can. I merely saw the output morphs on tape. These looked
   decent enough. Impulse is merely distributing this
   software though, so it may or may not meet the level of
   quality we expect from Impulse. Hopefully, it will.
   So...Visionary is on the horizon for those of you
   who are morph-struck.

2. Imagine-PC will make it's debut in 2-3 weeks.
   This means the earlier Nov. 1 estimation appears fairly
   accurate. This looks to increase the participation
   on the List pretty dramatically. That's great!
   Some of us can use this to our advantage. This means
   we can have our clones chugging away as what I like
   to call a "rendering engine" and keep lil Amy put
   to work as the modeling/quickrender station.
   And of course, there's the discount on Imagine-PC
   for previous owner's of Imagine. Hmmmm, happy times
   in Renderville.

3. Imagine 3.0. Oh joy! The tenative release date on
   the highly anticipated version of Imagine is set
   sometime before the end of the calendar year.
   Let's consider it a possibility to be either a
   lovely Christmas gift to yourself, or a
   great New Year's Renderlution. Oooooooo.
   Ok, Mike didn't have any really exciting hints
   yet... but he *did* say two things that sounded neat:
   Imagine 3.0 will deal with JPEGs on the fly.
   Also, it will take full advantage of the capabilities
   of the new Amiga 4000. Most excellent.
   One other thing to keep in mind.
   Imagine 3.0 will NOT be available as a retail product!
   It will only be offered as an upgrade to an
   existing copy of Imagine. Your 3.0 upgrade will have
   your name permanently imbedded on your disk.
   Hopefully, this will discourage piracy of the
   software. This upgrade will be the standard $100
   upgrade from Imagine 2.0. Other version upgrade costs
   vary, please call Impulse at [phone] to find out
   more about your specific needs.

4. The IML has had some discussion recently about people
   not receiving their Impulse newletters. I asked Mike
   about this last night as well. If you have purchased
   your copy of Imagine used from someone, or if you are
   uncertain of your current registration status...
   Mike recommends that you mail the original disk to
   Impulse as proof of ownership and to re-register
   the copy. If you have moved recently, or think that
   the address on file at Impulse is wrong or outdated,
   contact them directly to correct your address on
   the files. You can NOT change the name on the
   registration database with a phone call. You must
   do so by returning the original disk. (I would
   recommend sending it registered or insured).

5. The Firecracker software will be getting some more
   image processing in it's upcoming revision.
   Impulse listened to customer concerns and will
   be releasing a new 24 bit Toolbox interface in
   an as-of-yet unannounced revision.
   Not owning a Firecracker leaves me a bit less
   excited than I SHOULD be, but if it makes using
   the software more enjoyable for any of us,
   heck...it's a good deal. I will just put up with
   my Toaster as a display device. More on the
   Firecracker software revision stuff
   at a later date when the lips at Impulse loosen
   up a bit.  :-)

6. Next Imagine SIG meeting, Impulse will be offering
   participants kits to build up some computers.
   No doubt this is to tease us into getting our feet
   wet with the MS-DOS version. Mike says the price will
   be about 30% of the local discount retailer.
   Not sure if he will offer any specials to Imagine
   owners who are not local. If you have a phone, and
   are interested...get on the horn. As always,
   I raise my eyebrow suspiciously
   at every mention of the word "clone", just to
   let apprehension be felt as it's icy fingers grips
   the heart of every person in the room.  Heh heh.
   Gosh... that had the ring of a heavy literary work
   didn't it?  :-)

7. The group project. Several requests from the IML
   to keep everyone updated on the group project.
   This meeting didn't really address it alot.
   Several people brought objects (buildings, shrubbery)
   for inclusion in this project. By next meeting, we
   should be getting underway with actual planning
   in teams and getting the video work underway.
   No doubt this is the part that you are interested
   in, so I will keep my eyes and ears open...and we
   amatuers can learn together. More next time.

8. I heard mention of "The Mind's Eye II". YAY!
   I own a copy of the original, and really enjoy it.
   I just got off the phone the company who makes it
   and thought I would pass this info along to any of
   you who might be interested. "The Mind's Eye"
   is/was a videotape of a widely varied collage of
   computer animations. Some of them border on the
   overly cute, some of them are stories or thematic,
   some of them are hallucinagenic. Most of them are
   quite enjoyable. If you like computer animation,
   you appreciate how truly little of it there is
   available on a commercial basis. This is one real
   nice addition to your collection. The music is
   appropriate, and doesn't overwhelm the animation at
   all. "The Mind's Eye" is also available in a
   variety of formats (including D1, Super VHS, etc).
   "Beyond The Mind's Eye" is now ready to be shipped,
   (in fact, I ordered it when I talked to them).
   Both "The Mind's Eye" and "Beyond The Mind's Eye"
   have seperate compact discs containing their
   scores available from Miramar. If you are interested
   in either of the videos, the compact discs, or
   a catalogue of the range of Miramar products,
   give them a call at 206-284-4700. Or you can write
   to them at the following address:

         Miramar Productions
         200 2nd Ave. West
         Seattle , Washington  98119-4204
         USA

   Here's the price breakdown

   The Mind's Eye         (VHS)  $19.95     ship/handling USA  $3.50
         "       (compact disc)  $14.98
   Beyond The Mind's Eye  (VHS)  $19.95     ship/handling USA  $3.50
         "       (compact disc)  $14.98

   As for "Beyond The Mind's Eye", as soon as I will get it
   in the mail, I will give you a general breakdown on
   it's merits and worthiness of our limited cash.

   Miramar will ship internationally, but couldn't quote any
   generic prices for shipping. Call them for more specifics.


9. Back to Imagine. At the meeting, I drug a camera along
   with me and will do so at the next meeting as well.
   Sometimes, it's just interesting to see what the
   _name_ looks like. I got a couple pictures of Mike,
   and the Imagine SIG and the Impulse headquarters.
   I will upload them to Hubcap sometime in November.
   For those who cannot FTP and would like to see the
   pics, I will UUEncode and mail them out to
   requesters. I will let you know next month when
   they are ready.

10.Another question that has popped up on the IML
   recently is about the length of time for the
   Morphus discount offer. Just to recap, the offer
   is for adding Morphus to your software library
   for $70 if you are a registered Imagine owner.
   I asked Mike how long the offer is good for
   and he responded it was good "until he died."
   When pressed, he wouldn't give that date.  ;-)
   I guess this means that the offer stands.
   If you would like to get a full lowdown on
   Morphus, perhaps an owner can post a review for
   us here? If not, I should have some time in the
   next couple weeks to play with it quite a bit.
   At that time, if nobody else has, I will do
   a small review of it for whoever is interested.



That's it for right now.



Dave Wickard   [phone]    "We took pictures of the native
[e-mail]           girls, but they aren't
[e-mail]         developed yet." -Groucho Marx


##

Subject: Aladdin 4D vs. Imagine
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 92 22:59:24 MET
From: [e-mail] (Paul Kolenbrander)

Hi Mitch,

> I own both Imagine and Draw 4D Pro and have found that-despite 4D's superior
> animation interface-that I rarely use it because I find its rendering
> capabilities inferior to those of Imagine.  The Aladdin 4D (aka Draw 4D Pro
> 2.0) announcements that I have seen claim that rendering has been dramatically
> improved.  Has anyone actually seen Aladdin at work or at least work done with
> Aladdin? Is it a useful 3D graphics tool?  Thanks!

Let's hope it is more A4000/ADos 3.0 compatible than Draw4D-Pro. That one
just gives a recoverable request and refers you to the manual. Which has
already gone back as I was only reviewing it for a magazine. At least it
is not as mean as Caligari2 (V2.1) which won't even go past it's opening
screen. Imagine2.0 works however and it looks like it even tries to use
HAM8 when displaying 24bit pics. It makes 320 out of a 640 pic though...

CYa, Paul

    O
  //\/
 \/\ [e-mail]
.../ Danger: Budding Imaginaire At Work!


##

Subject: A New Bug (?)
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 12:56:11 -0700
From: [e-mail] (Jeff Walkup)

Ok, I'm really posting this to see if I've finally beaten the bounces...

But...

I also found a bug in Imagine2.0, at least in the version I have.
It involves creating multiple SubGroups on an object, then Split-ing
the object, moving the split portion over, then Join-ing the two
pieces back together.  When you hit "Pick SubGroups" and select
one, not only will you notice that the SubGroups are totally messed
up, but you might even see a serious bug that draws random lines all
shooting all over the place; and you *might* (if you're lucky!)
CRASH your Amiga.  In fact, I had just written a longer description
of how to recreate this bug, but was trying it out, and crashed my
machine, losing what I had written and I don't feel like typing it
over!  Lemme know if you can or can't recreate this bug, I'll give
ya some more info...   till then, be careful, your copy of Imagine
just might be a bomb waiting to go off!

-----------                                                       //
Jeff Walkup <[e-mail]> Graphics/Animation Designer \\//
And unwilling betatester for Impulse, Inc.


##

Subject: BIG Problems (perhaps another bug ?)
Date:     Fri, 16 Oct 1992 14:42:43 +0100
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

Hi Worley-Fans :)

this is what I tried to do:

I wanted a soft moving skylight (light 20th centurie fox title). I
decided to do it via a path-trach to object combination for
acceleration in the rotation (better than linear I think). But
doing this needs 1 Path and 1 Axis (the Track) per Skylight. This
means you need 6 additional objects only to rotate softly 3 skylights.
So I decided to use the cycle editor. But how to produce these nice
soft movements via path accerleration in the cycle editor. The only
way I saw was to snapshot every frame of a 40 frame skylight movement
(this was hard work :) ). Then Load Pose it (every single frame, so again 40 frames of hard work) into the Cycle Editor.
Well all went well so far. As Steve Worley suggested in his book I
grouped the skylight object with a axis because animating the father
axis in the cycle editor produces NO animation in the stage editor !

OK and this is what I got :
CONFUSION

As I loaded the new cycle animated skylight into a 40 frame sequence
this studip light source "breakdanced" befor my eyes i.e. moved
in "mystirious ways" (as U2 would state it).
Then I tried to animate with more and less frames but everytime the
same result

Is there something I did wrong?

Every help is very much appreciated

Hannes

PS: Steve your book and your essence textures are just
wonderful, I just received it the other day


##

Subject: making money ;)
Date:     Fri, 16 Oct 1992 23:04:07 +0100
From: Samuel Fischer <[e-mail]>

Hi there.

I just tried to create a coin with Imagine 2.0. The coin itself is composed
of 3 objects (a molded disk), and two sides (two disks,each on a side of the
middlepart). Each Side has a bump brush to make the only look like
some sort of bumps. ('that's why it's called bump map, man!' ;)

The brushs are aprox. 200x200 (16 colors) pixel big, and I tried fonts up to
20 pixel height, but one can't read the inscription :(

Did somebody use a bump map with text and could read it after rendering? (oh
yeah, be 5 hours of the same;) : You best make a
utside, and round on the inside). Now put all
the pixies and text you want inside the circle. Take the circle as a brush,
and do it so, that the edges of the brush-box are exactly on the outside edges
of the circle (the first that is!).

Make the second side, use it as Bump brush on disks, render, and enjoy. :)

bye,
sammy
-----

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                    |
' Every Day is like the last,        |  mails to  :
  Each a Pleasure, when it's past. '    |  [e-mail].
        (Paul Roland)         |  tu-muenchen.de
                    |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Re: anim playback speed
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 92 14:32:54 EDT
From: Steve J. Lombardi <[e-mail]>

> :Any other information about getting faster animation playback at higher
> :resolutions is good also.
>
> I've heard increasingly good reports about ScalaMM's anim playback speed,
> from people who are normally pretty picky about such things.  ScalaMM loads
> the anim and converts it into what it calls its "32 bit" format.  This
> creates a larger file, but Scala then plays it back real fast and real
> smooth :-)
>
> Has anybody had experience with ScalaMM for anim playback???

I've posted this before but It's been awhile and it
seems relevent and worth mentioning. PageFlipper plus/FX (PFX)
from Mindware international can rifle frames at rates generally
30-40% faster than anim. Not only that but the PFX format
supports multiple loops within an anim, speed control within an
anim (accelleration/deceleration), palette effects on the fly,
and a lot more. A lot more. especially in the  area of frame control.
Hey- Here's something really remarkable when you consider that Mindware went
out of business long before DCTV came about. I can render frames from
Imagine in DCTV format and compress them with PFX into an anim!! The
playback is wonderful.

The drawbacks- the file size for a .PFX file VS. a .anim file
is usually about 50% more if you specified the Turbo feature
before compressing the anim. This turbo feature is a must for enhanced speed.
Also compatability is a drawback. For instance you can't play a .PFX anim in
dpaint. However you could save your frames out of dpaint in the
name.0001, name.0002.... format as iffs and quickly load them into PFX
for compression.

How can you get a copy?? scour your local dealers cutout bins perhaps.
call every mailorder house and distributor to see if one is laying
around. Try co contact the folks at mindware. They're long out
of business but maybe they would hook you up. The address as it
appears in the manual is:

Mindware international
230 Bayview drive  Suite 1
Barrie  Ontario    Canada
L4N 4Y8

Andy Thut wrote the program.
Bob Maludzinski wrote the manual.

If you're really interested, try Ontario information for
either of their numbers.

These folks also produced Pagerender 3D, a promising modelling/rendering
system that featured a very cool script/interactive object modeller.
unfortunately it was weak at rendering. Syndesis  offers a converter
module for interchange that will let you model in PR3Dand import
your object into imagine or whatever your renderer of choice. The
scripting language would let you model complex geometric shapes
such as a spiraling, tapering, paper thin ribbon in minutes.
If I get ambitios I'll dig out such an object and put it on hubcap
 in imagine format. Anyway... The point is moot! Mindware is
no more. Hey Here's another address for ypou detective types thirsting
for higher frame rates. This one from teh Pagerender manual.

Mindware
110 Dunlop W. Box 22158
Barrie, Ontario, Canada
L4M 5R3

Last I heard from them was 1988/89. Good luck to anyone who tries
to find them. Post your results if you're successful. Hey after a company
goes out of business, is it piracy to distribute their software.
I would imagine that ist is. Someone educate me on this point. thanks

 /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
 \                            /                                               /
 /                           /       Surviving this way is a crime.           \
 \  Steve Lombardi          /     I will not commit it.                       /
 /  [e-mail]    /           Most of the World lives this way       \
 \                        /     working another slave labour day.             /
 /                       /                              -- Azalia Snail       \
 \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/



##

Subject: Re: MORE SPEED
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 92 15:08:04 EDT
From: Steve J. Lombardi <[e-mail]>

>
>
> I don't know if this message came through before but I would
> really like to know if there exists any kind of Hardware that can
> provide greater speed then the 68040..currently supported by
> Imagine 2.0 ?
> I know a great deal of Cards have come up lately but nothing makes
> it clear...

I have a brochure here from Digital micronics abouttheir
VIVID-24 Card. They make some bold claims. I'm not sure
if their valid or not but I'll share them

CPU              MIPS   MFLOPS   PRiCE    PRICE PER MFLOP
-----------------------------------------------------------
a3000 w/ 040       28      4       4524       1131.00$
a3000 w/040
and VIVID24        28     160     12325         77.03$

Silicon GRaphics
Iris indigo elan   30     4.2     27000       6428.57$

Silicon 4Dcrimson  85     16      42900       2681.25$
Silicon 4D/480 VGX 286    70     194900       2784.29$

Wow it's all spelled out like a late night info-mercial!!
Vivid 24 pricing starts at 2995 for the bas unit. processing
power is added via single (585$) and double (1449$) processor
upgrades. Memory upgrades max at 4 per card at 729$ each.
Broacast quality video encoder is 729$ Add it all up, throw in
a 300 w/040 and I suppose you arrive at theat 12325$ figure in the
chart.

Here's the Tricky part. I'll quote from the brochure in the
included software section:

DMI-RENDER:  Imports models and frames from industry
standard 3D packages and renders images in near real time
using either Gouraud or Phong Shading.

Hmmm.. Seems that the render quality is dependent on their software.
Things are out of imagins hands at that point. I wonder what
Kind of quality these renders are. Hey. DMI. If your out there
How about uploading a "real-time rendered" sample to hubcap.
DMI is at 619-931-8554. I'm not associated with them in any way
but wouldn't mind seeing their editmaster or vivid24 in Person.

 /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
 \                            /                                               /
 /                           /       Surviving this way is a crime.           \
 \  Steve Lombardi          /     I will not commit it.                       /
 /  [e-mail]    /           Most of the World lives this way       \
 \                        /     working another slave labour day.             /
 /                       /                              -- Azalia Snail       \
 \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/


##

Subject: Piracy is killing us. Don't do it.
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 92 16:02:50 EDT
From: Steve J. Lombardi <[e-mail]>

Well, I was able to track down the proprietor or Mindware international
in Ontario. I was checking to see if Pageflipper Plus/FX was
still availible. He told me a rather sad story of how software piracy
more or less shut him down after a few years in the amiga market.
Bob was understandably bitter after spending much time, money and
effort to develop a number of excellent amiga programs only
to see more illegal copies out there than legally purchased
copies.  i could bore you with the details of our phone conversation
but the bottom line is this. Piracy on the amiga platform is still
far ahead of other platforms. Take the smallest potential
market and combine it with the highest piracy rate and you
see a lot of developers die on the vine. So do yourself
and other amiga users a favor and purchase the software you use.
Sorry to preach but I felt like I must.

BTW. Mindware has been updating their software and it is now compatible
with the A4000 and the enhanced chip set! unfortunately however,
they want nothing to do with hte amiga market and have no plans to
to make the software availible. Our Loss.

 /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
 \                            /                                               /
 /                           /       Surviving this way is a crime.           \
 \  Steve Lombardi          /     I will not commit it.                       /
 /  [e-mail]    /           Most of the World lives this way       \
 \                        /     working another slave labour day.             /
 /                       /                              -- Azalia Snail       \
 \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/


##

Subject: Skeleton object
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1992 17:38:24 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Greg Burger)

Does anyone out there have an object of a skeleton that they would
be willing to share? It's for a school project. I would gladdly give
credit to the creator by including him in the credits. Since I am in
school, that's all I can afford to give. Any help would be GREATLY
appreciated. Oh... and if possible, I'd like it cycle compatible.



--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     I raytraced my .signature but I forgot to include a light source...

   - Greg Burger      [e-mail]  or  [e-mail] -


##

Subject: Re:  ANOTHER VISIT TO IMPULSE.
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 92 14:31:08 -0500
From: [e-mail] (PJ Foley)

Very interesting stuffs!  Hope to see 3.0 soon!
But, is Impulse aware of an Amiga software product from Oxxi/Aegis with
the name "Visionary" and its related books and such?  It came out about
this time last year.  It is an adventure construction language.

Just wondering... It seems the "Battle de la noms" is rampant in
Amigaland when it comes to morphing!!

PJ


##

Subject: Imagine PC
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 92 12:53:40 EST
From: Adam Benjamin <[e-mail]>

In a previous post Dave W. wrote about the upcoming Imagine PC and how
nice it might be to use a PC as a rendering engine.
My question is:
Does anyone know how compatible the two platform versions will be?  I
find it doubtfull that the PC version will seamlessly load the
objects/IFF brushmaps/textures/etc.. created with the Amiga version.
And why would the PC version want to render IFF24 frames??

Not trying to be a Marc B. (heavens NO!)  But I would be suprised
(pleasently!) if the PC version is much of a help to us who own both
platforms.
************************************************************
* Adam Benjamin                    [e-mail] *
* Christian Animator                  [e-mail]    *
* Disclaimer:  Nothing I say means anything to anyone that *
*               might take it to mean something I didn't!  *


##

Subject: Memory Gobbler?
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1992 18:00:26 +0000
From: "Rob (R.D.) Hounsell" <[e-mail]>

Folks,

  Have any of you heard of a little memory gobbler in Imagine 2.0? My co-hort
tells me that it seems that the "free RAM" menu item of the stage editor
animation menu doesn't seem to return his memory gauge to quite where it was
before a "make". HW is an A3000 using AmigaDos 2.0x.

Thanks,
Rob
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Rob Hounsell                           BNR WAN:  HOUNSELL@NMERH53           |
| NT Product Performance: OA/M           INTERNET: [e-mail]            |
|                                        PHONE: [phone]                |
|                                        ESN: 395-2904                        |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+


##

Subject: features ?
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 92 12:58:58 PDT
From: [e-mail]

        well, this fall/winter looks to be quite a 3D bonanza-updates seem
to be in the works
for several packages-i have heard talk of the following (if you have
additions please add them !)i am sure there are many more new features than
i mention-these are just ones that caught my eye...

Aladdin - may be already available-some incredible effects using "gas",
also, a big list of textures,
postscript support in the modeler, etc...

Real 3D- rumors are the new real 3d is almost completely different from
what existed before-the
biggest news being "procedural animation" or whatever; put a sphere on top
of a cube-move the cube-
the sphere falls to the ground, etc...

Progressive Peripherals 3D Pro - boolean operations, lots of textures (much
more control than in the
original)

Will Vintons Playmation Studio - Journeyman revisited-should be interesting
to see how the package
does in the PC field. hopefully rendering quality will be improved
drastically from the original..

Lightwave-some very interesting tidbits floating around, including boolean
operations in the modeler and faster rendering, esp.for 040 users. Hastings
mentioned Autodesk's 3D Studio as his competition-
he and Newtek must be planning some pretty major changes..

Imagine - someone (Dave?) posted some info about the new Imagine 3.0-of all
the new packages, the
imagine features interest me the least :( of course, i will reserve
judgement until everything ships,
who knows what might or might not appear..)

I apologize for any mistakes, omissions, etc. in the list above-if you have
more info about any
of the packages above, please post them.

So, what ARE 3d renderers looking for these days ? what features need the
most work for the next generation of 3d software; modeling, rendering, or
animation ?
kevin kodama
[e-mail]


##

Date: Mon, 19 Oct 92 13:01:37 PDT
From: [e-mail]

1. is anyone using the 4000 and the AGA compliant Imagine ? how is image
quality, speed, etc. ?
how fast are the animations compared to say DCTV, or Ham-E ?  Is the 4000
the machine to beat for
3d rendering ? how will the 32 bit custom chips affect the use of Imagine,
if at all ?

2. does anyone have any recommendations re: 040 accelerators for the 2000,
esp. in comparison to the
4000 ? (is it time for more speed tests :) ? ) more importantly, does
anyone recommend *not*
getting a certain brand of 040 accelerators ? why ?

3. does anyone have any recommendations re:hard drive controllers, esp. in
regards to the built
in ones on the 040 boards ? i have been using a Malibu board (from the
defunct Cal. Access)
with absolutely no problems-however, i just purchased an Amax II+ board,
and there is no updated software for this controller. I have been looking
around for a cheap controller...or should i just take the plunge and get
one of those
040/scsiII combo boards ? for those of you who are using the CSA magnum,
GVP g-force 040,
 or PPS Zeus, why did you choose what you chose ? I am interested from a 3d
rendering
perspective-although general comments are also welcome...:-)

thanks,

kevin
p.s. for owners of the trumpcard and hardframe controllers-how are you
connecting external scsi drives to your machine, since they don't have an
external 25(?) pin connector ? is there a 50 pin
ribbon cable-to-25(?)pin connector in existance ? two dealers i have spoken
to have never heard of
such a beast....
kevin kodama
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Imagine PC
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 92 22:51:28 EDT
From: Steve J. Lombardi <[e-mail]>

>
> In a previous post Dave W. wrote about the upcoming Imagine PC and how
> nice it might be to use a PC as a rendering engine.
> My question is:
> Does anyone know how compatible the two platform versions will be?  I
> find it doubtfull that the PC version will seamlessly load the
> objects/IFF brushmaps/textures/etc.. created with the Amiga version.
> And why would the PC version want to render IFF24 frames??
>

I called impulse to assk if the two versions would read/write
the same file format. Yes was the reply. I see this as only logical.
A lot of folks have PeeCees sitting around the office etc.. that sit idle
for many hours overnight and on weekends. Why not let them get rendering!
As for why a Pc would want to render iff24- why not. it may have grown
up on the amiga but it is merely a file format. There's no reason other
platforms can't write and even display an iff. I welcome the day that
I can set up a complex animation at home and let it render on
tthe network of clones theat sit idle at the office where I work.
animations will render in days not weeks!

 /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
 \                            /                                               /
 /                           /       Surviving this way is a crime.           \
 \  Steve Lombardi          /     I will not commit it.                       /
 /  [e-mail]    /           Most of the World lives this way       \
 \                        /     working another slave labour day.             /
 /                       /                              -- Azalia Snail       \
 \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/


##

Subject: Rambrandt
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 92 12:15:42 MET
From: [e-mail] (Tomasz Plonka)

Hello,

I am interested in *very* broadcast image quality, because I work
for the company equipped with BetacamSP recorders ( and cameras, as well ).
I own a DCTV unit, but I use it for digitizing rather than for displaying
images.
Unfortunately, none of the 24bit card for the Amiga seems suitable for
me. Maybe OpalVision ?
But I have heard of Rambrandt card and it sounds good!
I need real time digital video effects and 1024 by 566 resolution (PAL).
TI graphics on-board coprocessor is also very interesting.
Can anyone help me ? I need information - maybe someone owns one ?
                                                           Tom


##

Subject: Geodesic Publications (Air Link)
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 13:57:28 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Toaster Man)

Well i was just looking though the october issue of amiga world
and found something interesting that I havn't heard of before.

its called the Geodesic Publications Air-Link infrared controller.

Which allows you  use a standard comsumer VCR to recored your animations
to tape.  The results are not frame accurate but its nice if u can't
afford a single fram recorder.

most of above was taking from amiga world page 60.  This is not an ad its
mentioned in the Transporter review.

I have never seen anything else about this product.  Does anyone have any info
on this product price,quality of anims etc.  It would really help alot of
us that can't afford a nice panasonic AG7750 or something else that usually
start around $5000.

Now i know its not going to be the quality as a single frame recorder would
but it would be nice for those first time renderings of your anim and then
eventually have someone single frame recorder it.

Any info on this product would be apperciated..

Steve
ViSioNary Graphics


##

Subject: Imagine and A4000
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 92 18:03:20 MET
From: Markus Stipp <[e-mail]>

Hi !

> 1. is anyone using the 4000 and the AGA compliant Imagine ? how is image
> quality, speed, etc. ?

Yes, I'm using an A4000 with Imagine since one week now. Imagine2.0 does not
support AGA directly but I hope 3.0 will do so.

Picture Quality is great if you render in IFF24 and convert it to HAM8. There
is only a small step to true color. Even without any dithering colors on
spheres are very smooth.

Rendering speed is quite nice, too. It's about 2.5 to 5 times as fast as my
old A2000/2630.

> how fast are the animations compared to say DCTV, or Ham-E ?  Is the 4000
> the machine to beat for
> 3d rendering ? how will the 32 bit custom chips affect the use of Imagine,
> if at all ?

Sorry, I don't have any animation software that supports the new ChipSet.
I haven't seen any DCTV or HAME animations so far, too. I can't compare this.

Imagines editors are incredible fast. The problems with this awful slow
menues are simply away.

--

   ...Markus Stipp !!   ([e-mail])


##

Subject: Re: Imagine Newsletter
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 92 08:03:08 EST-10
From: [e-mail] (John Rowe)

:When *is* Impulse going to send newsletters to those who have
:bought it's product?  I haven't upgraded to 2.0 yet... could
:*this* possibly be it?  (I'm waiting for 3.0)
:
:-electric monk v4.0

I've been using Imagine ever since it was released, and have always
updated to the latest version.  I have never received or even seen a
newsletter :-(                         ^^^^^

Impulse told me it's their policy not to send newsletters overseas.
:-((

   ____ John    ____       Australian Developer   FAX   [phone]
  //      Rowe //               Christian         VOICE [phone]
 // __        //--          Amiga Programmer, Renderer, 3-D Animator
//__//rafix  //__ffects   EMAIL [e-mail]
     OR EMAIL cbmaus!cbmozq!wilson!rowe![e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Accerlerated animation in cycle editor ?
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 92 08:32:41 EST-10
From: [e-mail] (John Rowe)

:Ever tried to do some accerlerated animation with cycle editor?
:
:Hannes

Yes, I tried to approximate acceleration/deceleration, where the
movement is relatively brief (e.g. the entire movement occurs over
only 10 frames), by making a key frame 2 frames into the movement,
copying it to a key frame 3 frames into the movement, and then unmaking
the key frame 2 frames into the movement.  Then doing the opposite for
the deceleration.

Perhaps an example:
before:
frame  0 -  movement starts
frame 10 -  movement stops

after:
frame  0 -  movement starts
frame  3 -  what the cycle editor originally interpolated for frame 2
frame  7 -  what the cycle editor originally interpolated for frame 8
frame 10 -  movement stops

The end result is, the object takes slightly longer to get up to speed
& slightly longer to slow down again.

Rudimentary, but it seemed to work ok...

   ____ John    ____       Australian Developer   FAX   [phone]
  //      Rowe //               Christian         VOICE [phone]
 // __        //--          Amiga Programmer, Renderer, 3-D Animator
//__//rafix  //__ffects   EMAIL [e-mail]
     OR EMAIL cbmaus!cbmozq!wilson!rowe![e-mail]


##

Subject: A4000 anim/render speed
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1992 10:35:28 -0700
From: [e-mail] (Jeff Walkup)

> 1. is anyone using the 4000 and the AGA compliant Imagine ? how is image
> quality, speed, etc. ?

Well no not actually... but I used regular Imagine2.0 on a 4000 last nite,
worked fine and rendered perty fast too!


> how fast are the animations compared to say DCTV, or Ham-E ?  Is the 4000
> the machine to beat for
> 3d rendering ? how will the 32 bit custom chips affect the use of Imagine,
> if at all ?

The animations are probably a little faster than an 040-equipped A3000,
but they still bog down during heavy DELTA action... I rendered a quickie
DPaint anim in hires-16colors, it definitely bogged down to 12-15fps at
times.  I suspect that 8bit (256 colors or HAM8) animations would be
_way_ too slow.  Better stick with DCTV for video-quality real-time
animation.  However, certainly the new HAM8 mode with an SFC would
be nice!

The AGA chips won't do a thing for rendering speed, only the CPU can
help here.  You'll notice that Imagine doesn't display the pic as it's
rendered (well, unless you are using a FC), there's a REASON for that!
The AGA-Imagine *could* have a nice HAM8 Quickrender option though.
Or maybe a place where you could view your Textures in the Detail
Editor (hint hint, nudge nudge).

I had the *extreme* pleasure of rendering some 1448x482 24bit pics...
converted to HAM8 (in SuperHires no less!) and displayed... very very
very very very very (did I say "very"?) nice!  I cannot Imagine that
you'd want a better display than THAT!  Absolutely NO difference than
what I've seen on a Firecracker24.

-----------                                                       //
Jeff Walkup <[e-mail]> Graphics/Animation Designer \\//


##

Subject: Re:  Imagine and A4000
Date:     Tue, 20 Oct 1992 16:31:07 -0400
From: Jason B Koszarsky <[e-mail]>

In the November issue of Amiga World, there is an article on the A4000.
Near the end, it mentions that Impulse is offering a free upgrade for
A4000, registered Imagine 2.0 owners to an Imagine that supports AGA.
This is probably just 2.0 plus AGA support.

Jason K.


##

Subject: Re: Rambrandt
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 92 16:50:13 +0100
From: Michael Stuart Alexander Robb (The Bugfinder General) <[e-mail]>

  Hi,
    I read your message about broadcast quality images. Although I do not have
  an Amiga, I have used various TIGA (TI Graphics coprocessor) boards which
  handle true-colour images using MS-DOS systems. I can send you information
  on the TMS34010 and TMS34020 graphics processors if you are interested.

  -- Michael


##

Subject: Frame Accurate software?!
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 92 23:02:17 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Michael Linton)

Hi... I'm looking for some ShareWare software to controll my Frame
Accurate VTR.  Anything out there people can recommend? I'm using the
Video Media V-Lan controller, and was just wondering if there was any
good shareware software to controll the Sony UMatic VO-5850 deck.
Thanks.  TTYAL


P.S.  I mean, Shareware, OR PD. :)



[e-mail]
The Inquiring Mind BBS, Winnipeg, Manitoba  204 488-1607


##

Subject: Re: Newsletter
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 92 10:07:07 +0100
From: [e-mail]

John Rowe writes:

John Rowe writes:

> Impulse told me it's their policy not to send newsletters overseas.
> :-((

That sounds strange to me, because I (a german) received every newsletter since
TurboSilver 3.0.

Oliver

__________________________________________________________________________
     /// Oliver Eichhorn, CS student at FH Darmstadt
    ///  Fraunhofer Institute Of Computer Graphics, Darmstadt (FhG/IGD)
\\\///   eMail:[e-mail],  voice:(06151) 48200 or (06022) 7752
 \XX/    "Things are more like they are now than they ever were before"


##

Subject: Re: Imagine Newsletter
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 92 13:28:50 +0100
From: [e-mail] (Goeran Ehrsson)

John>  I've been using Imagine ever since it was released, and have always
John>  updated to the latest version.  I have never received or even seen a
John>  newsletter :-(                         ^^^^^
John>
John>  Impulse told me it's their policy not to send newsletters overseas.
John>  :-((
John>

I have received every newsletter since I bought 1.1 two years ago.
Although we Swedes are very influenced by the American culture,
Sweden are still far away from Minnesota   :-).   What gives?

- Goran

--
[e-mail]   Goran Ehrsson, Abalon AB, Box 11129, 161 11 BROMMA, SWEDEN.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
:wq ^[ZZ ^X^S ^X^C ^D exit logout quit help Ctrl-Alt-Del Stop-a
Type b (boot), c (continue), or n (new command mode)
>


##

Subject: Re: Re: Imagine Newsletter
Date: 21 Oct 92 10:19:33 EDT
From: "Syndesis Corp/J. Foust" <[e-mail]>

To: [e-mail]

[e-mail] (John Rowe) writes:

> Impulse told me it's their policy not to send newsletters overseas.

That's too bad.  Because of the increased postage, some companies
don't even send to Canada.  At Syndesis, we make a point of sending
our international customers every mailing we do.  It's relatively
expensive, but we've found that it pays off tremendously.  We've got
dozens of letters from international customers who say "I've never
received anything from a US Amiga company before."  They also order
our product at a rate greater than our US customers, in part I'm sure
to this extra attention.

John Foust
Syndesis Corporation


##

Subject: TestPath
Date: 21 Oct 92 09:00:55 MET
From: Nico Post <[e-mail]>

Howdy Imagineers!

Yesterday I saw a videoclip on television (here in Holland), from an
english band called "the Prodigy" with the song "FIRE!".
Seems to me they used Imagine 2.0, 'cause I recognized the Beethoven-
head and the porsche. It looked really cool (They got Beethoven
singing "fire")

Just thought I'd let ya know.

Greetings to Dave W. (Did it work?)


Bye,
                --Nico Post
                  [e-mail]


##

Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1992 18:31:14 EDT
From: [e-mail]

Hi fellow Imagimaniacs,

Have any of you had problems with light objects in TRACE mode?

Here's the situation, I'm reproducing my appartment in Imagine and using
"LIGHT and BRIGHT" objects as the light fixtures on the ceiling.  The problem
I'm having is, even though I have all the light objects set to CAST SHADOWS,
only 2 out of 5 of the lights objects do cast shadows, the rest don't even
emit any LIGHT!.  :(   All the light objects are of the same intensity (but
that shouldn't matter).  The objects are not disappearing, they're being
rendered as bright objects in the scene.

Partially in the dark...

--
"I'm not tense,         Steven Lam
 just terribly          ST:TNG #1 and the only one
 alert!"                [e-mail]

:O :) B) P) |) +) =) -=) *) :-) :p %) :\ :/ #:) (:) :^) %^} :} ;) B:) *:) +:) :]


##

Subject: Re:
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 92 15:47:48 MET
From: [e-mail] (Paul Kolenbrander)

> 1. is anyone using the 4000 and the AGA compliant Imagine ? how is image
> quality, speed, etc. ?

Nope. I've got Imagine2.0 running on an A4000 however. and it's fast. It
takes about 30 minutes to render a 1024x768 24bits piccy with reflection
mapping, a number of brushes and stuff. Look for Lysette.gif on your local
BBS. It;s the 256color version...

> 2. does anyone have any recommendations re: 040 accelerators for the 2000,
> esp. in comparison to the
> 4000 ? (is it time for more speed tests :) ? ) more importantly, does
> anyone recommend *not*
> getting a certain brand of 040 accelerators ? why ?

I've had a CSA Magnum 40/4 in my A2000 for a while, reviewing it for a
magazine. It had about the same renedering time as the A4000. (Magnum is
a 28MHz '040 with 4MB mem and on-board SCSI controller) I started comparing
prices and for only US $600 more I could get a 6MB /120MB HD A4000. Giving
me 256K colors. And enabling me to sell my A2000 at a still decent price.
Upgrading from an A2000/A2630-4MB/GVPSeries-II-4MB+LPS 105/FlickerFixer
only cost me about US$ 1250.- Which is far less than I had to pay for
a Magnum. Add another $100.- to that figure to buy a 4MB SIMM for the
A4000 and He Presto. Same config, but only more colors and a much faster
processor... :-)

CYa, Paul

--
-I'd rather be pissed off than pissed on.

----
Paul Kolenbrander  \ InterNet: [e-mail]
Turfveldenstraat 37 \ Fido: 2:284/114.3 Paul Kolenbrander
NL-5632 XH EINDHOVEN | - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Voice: [phone] | Timezone:GMT+1 | Fax: [phone]


##

Subject: Re: TestPath
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1992 12:02:13 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Stephen Menzies)

Nico Post <[e-mail]> writes:


>Howdy Imagineers!

>Yesterday I saw a videoclip on television (here in Holland), from an
>english band called "the Prodigy" with the song "FIRE!".
>Seems to me they used Imagine 2.0, 'cause I recognized the Beethoven-
>head and the porsche. It looked really cool (They got Beethoven
>singing "fire")

>Just thought I'd let ya know.

>Greetings to Dave W. (Did it work?)

The Beethoven head and porsche were not likely not created by Impulse,
but rather were bought from a company that digitizes objects. The name
of the company slips my mind at the moment but I've seen the catalouge,
and I've seen the head, the porshe, the cow etc in it. These appear to be
the low-res versions. Versions come in low, med, and high res and are
on a variety of subjects. The prices seem to range from $50 to $1000+
depending on the object and the resolution and are availible in various
formats. They're commonly used in the industries. The objects are
resonably well made (digitized) and can be modified. So maybe it was
an Amiga...maybe not..

-stephen


>Bye,
>                --Nico Post
>                  [e-mail]
--
Stephen Menzies
#Internet: [e-mail]
#Fidonet : Stephen Menzies @ 1:167/265


##

Subject: bad brushmaps - bad Imagine version??
Date:    Thu, 22 Oct 1992 10:45:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail]

Howdy

I'm getting some really strange results from Imagine, and I think my
version is quite buggy.

All my brushmaps get converted to colormaps, no matter what trace mode
   I'm in.  I've tried Altitude, Filter, and Reflect maps, but they all
   just transform into color maps.  It's pretty frustrating.
   Alan Price rendered a test scene I created with a filter map, and he
   said that his editor ( 1.0, FP I think ) didn't even show a map
   assigned to the object.  When he re-assigned the map, it rendered
   beautifully.  Then I tried re-rendering the scene, and it was back
   to the same old colormap.

Also, my snapshow command doesn't seem to work - it always saves the
   LAST frame of a morph.  I tried stepping through a morph, saving
   each step of a morph in turn, but when I loaded the objects, they
   were all just the last object in the morph, no in-betweens.

These problems have made me pretty apprehensive about spending more
money on an upgrade until I can get this version working.  I called
Impulse, and they said I was running out of memory, but when I watched
my memory during a render, I was fine, with 2 megs to spare.  Does
Imagine possibly use CHIP???  I can't imagine why it would, but hey.

My executable file size for Imagine is 488500, and I'm thinking of
trying different "versions" of 1.1.  So, if anyone is using 1.1 integer,
please mail me, and let me know if you've had any luck with these
brushmaps.

Thanks much
Scott Krehbiel
[e-mail]

just in case access messed up that sig like it did on my screen,
that address is
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Imagine Newsletter
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 92 08:03:51 MDT
From: [e-mail] (Brian S.  Ridout)

    Errors-To: [e-mail]

    John>  I've been using Imagine ever since it was released, and have always
    John>  updated to the latest version.  I have never received or even seen a
    John>  newsletter :-(                         ^^^^^
    John>
    John>  Impulse told me it's their policy not to send newsletters overseas.
    John>  :-((
    John>

    I have received every newsletter since I bought 1.1 two years ago.
    Although we Swedes are very influenced by the American culture,
    Sweden are still far away from Minnesota   :-).   What gives?

    - Goran

    --
    [e-mail]   Goran Ehrsson, Abalon AB, Box 11129, 161 11 BROMMA, SWEDEN.
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    :wq ^[ZZ ^X^S ^X^C ^D exit logout quit help Ctrl-Alt-Del Stop-a
    Type b (boot), c (continue), or n (new command mode)
    >
I havent received a news letter since about 1.1.   Perhaps they do not know
That New Mexico is part of the US. :-)

Brian ridout


##

Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1992 14:01:14 EDT
From: [e-mail]

I'm still having that LIGHTING problem... here's the situation

I have made short cylinders and changed their attributes to BRIGHT and LIGHT.

The LIGHT attributes for these light objects have been changed to DIMINISH
WITH DISTANCE and CAST SHADOWS.

The problem is... only 2 out of the 5 lights emit any light!  The other 3
cylinders (as lights) are just BRIGHT objects, but emit no light even though
the LIGHT attribute for the OBJECTS have been set.

I've tried changing the Y and Z axis sizes, but that doesn't seem to do
anything...  AHHHHHHHHHh!

Partially in the dark...

--
"I'm not tense,         Steven Lam
 just terribly          ST:TNG #1 and the only one
 alert!"                [e-mail]

:O :) B) P) |) +) =) -=) *) :-) :p %) :\ :/ #:) (:) :^) %^} :} ;) B:) *:) +:) :]


##

Subject: Re: Lights and Bright objects in trace
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 92 13:20:13 EDT
From: "Paul Joseph Furio" <[e-mail]>

Your problem arises from the fact that when you set an object equal to
a light, only the axis of an object is emitting the light.  Imagine
runs on only point light systems (as opposed to surface systems, which is
why a neon bulb or florescant light is hard to do) and thus emits light
originating from the axis of an object.  When you use trace with Shadow
Cast on, Imagine sees a light axis surrounded by solid facets, and thus
the light stops inside the facets.  The objects will still render as
Bright (if it is set as such) because Bright objects glow on their own.

    There are two solutions.  One, place the object axis outside the object,
on the side you want the light to originate from.  If you are doing a
light panel (like the ones commonly found in industrial celings), you can
make a plane with the axis below it.  Set the plane to bright and the
object to Light.  This works well, I've used it im my Amiga World Video
III entry.

    The other solution is to use scanline, but here of course, you don't get
neato shadows or refratcion, refletcion, etc...

    The first method takes some care in rendering setup.  If you are
making Light Bulbs, you probably want to place the axis just outside
the tip of the bulb.  Be careful, though, that you don't get too close to
the bulb, or it will be apparant that the light is being generated from
outside the bulb, rather than within it, by the odd shadows that are cast
very close to the source.

    An alternate solution is to model your bulbs transparently, but put a
BIG white specular spot on them.  The filament would still be inside, and
you would still get bright lights...  Sorta.

    -Paul J. Furio

    [e-mail]

    Shadowmar Grafix


##

Subject: animated brushmaps? - 1.1
Date:    Sat, 24 Oct 1992 0:06:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail]

Hi Everybody
OK, so I can't altitude/filter/reflect map.  Bummer...

Oh well, I CAN create some really cool movie projectorish
effects, maybe.  If I'm using 1.1, can I animate a brushmap???

If I want a part of an object to show an animation, do you think
I should use an animated iff-projecting conical light source???

( Is there such a thing?  :-)  )

Thank you Muchly
Scott Krehbiel
[e-mail]


##

Subject: File and Display format Questions
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1992 18:15:45 +0000
From: "Rob (R.D.) Hounsell" <[e-mail]>

Howdy!

  I'm confused over what exactly happens when using different file formats and
display modes in Imagine (w.r.t rendered images).

Q1: If I select ILBM24 (or whatever the standard 24-bit filename is called..)
    to save my renderings in, does changing the display format in the project
    modify requestor change what data goes in the file? I would guess that
    the size of the picture would change the size of the file, but does
    selecting HAM or LACE affect it as well? I was under the impression that
    the file format is somewhat fixed, and that the requestor just changed how
    the Amiga interpreted the data.

Q2: If I want to render the best final image I can (short of using 24-bit
    display hardware like DCTV) should I be selecting HAM, LACE, OVERSCAN,
    a combination of these, or what????


Blitzkrieg (Tanks in advance),
Rob
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Rob Hounsell                           BNR WAN:  HOUNSELL@NMERH53           |
| NT Product Performance: OA/M           INTERNET: [e-mail]            |
|                                        PHONE: [phone]                |
|                                        ESN: 395-2904                        |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+


##

Subject: Re: File and Display format Questions
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 92 11:14:51 EDT
From: Steve J. Lombardi <[e-mail]>

> Q1: If I select ILBM24 (or whatever the standard 24-bit filename is called..)
>     to save my renderings in, does changing the display format in the project
>     modify requestor change what data goes in the file? I would guess that
>     the size of the picture would change the size of the file, but does
>     selecting HAM or LACE affect it as well? I was under the impression that
>     the file format is somewhat fixed, and that the requestor just changed how
>     the Amiga interpreted the data.

I'm kind of confused about Q1. Maybe you could elaborate.

>
> Q2: If I want to render the best final image I can (short of using 24-bit
>     display hardware like DCTV) should I be selecting HAM, LACE, OVERSCAN,
>     a combination of these, or what????
>
If you have Art Department or Imagemaster what you may want to do is
render a 24 bit iff with a high resolution (choose a firecracker preset).
Then load the 24 bit file into Adpro or Imagemaster to scale it to ham
resolution and color. I find that this yields slightly better results than
having imagine render in the ham resolution. Of course your render time
will go up considerably...

If you don't have a program that can convert the 24 bit file to ham
simply select HAM, LACE, OVERSCAN, and 12BIT ILBM. THis should deliver
a very respectable image.

 /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
 \                            /                                               /
 /                           /       Surviving this way is a crime.           \
 \  Steve Lombardi          /     I will not commit it.                       /
 /  [e-mail]    /           Most of the World lives this way       \
 \                        /     working another slave labour day.             /
 /                       /                              -- Azalia Snail       \
 \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/


##

Subject: Re: Lights and Bright objects in trace
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 92 17:57:13 PDT
From: [e-mail]

Another hint on using light objects:

If you set the Fog length of the object to 1 (or some other small value)
your light source will always shine throuogh the object even if you have
set your light to cast shadows.


##

Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1992 21:40:34 EDT
From: [e-mail]

>    to save my renderings in, does changing the display format in the project
>    modify requestor change what data goes in the file? I would guess that
>    the size of the picture would change the size of the file, but does
>    selecting HAM or LACE affect it as well? I was under the impression that
>    the file format is somewhat fixed, and that the requestor just changed how
>    the Amiga interpreted the data.

Nope, the HAM or LACE requesters have no effect on the final image that
is rendered.  The only effect they have is in the displaying of the image
on the AMIGA in IMAGINE... that's it...  When you select the file type (ILBM
RGBN, or DCTV, etc.) it basically tells imagine what file format to write the
data in.


>Q2: If I want to render the best final image I can (short of using 24-bit
>    display hardware like DCTV) should I be selecting HAM, LACE, OVERSCAN,
>    a combination of these, or what????

Forget about HAM, LACE, OVERSCAN... those do not affect the final product.
I always render my FINAL pics in 24-bit IFF, and use ART Department PRO
to convert and scale down the picture in either HIRES or HAM (Art Department
non-profesional can do this).  Rendering your pics in 12-bit I THINK (stress
_THINK_) renders your pictures a bit faster, but I'm not sure.  Also realize
that rendering pictures in 24-bit turns off all DITHERING in the render.

--
"I'm not tense,         Steven Lam
 just terribly          ST:TNG #1 and the only one
 alert!"                [e-mail]

:O :) B) P) |) +) =) -=) *) :-) :p %) :\ :/ #:) (:) :^) %^} :} ;) B:) *:) +:) :]


##

Subject: Lighting woes...
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 92 23:18:47 EDT
From: Paul Miller <[e-mail]>

I'm having some trouble with LIGHTING. I know this is a common subject,
and this is really simple but... I've got just a flat plain with a cube
sitting on it - I want to play around with textures and brushmaps and
such, and want to be able to do all this in the detail editor with
quick render. Unfortunately the lighting is giving me trouble - only
a corner of my white cube is lit (brightly, the rest is BLACK). How can
I approximate something in terms of ambient lighting so I can best see
the effects of my texture tests on the cube, without these dramatic
lighting problems?

I figured I'd ask, just in case there is a simple solution - the manual
doesn't help much... :(

--
* Paul Miller                         |Nobody cares about my opinion anyway*
* INTERNET: [e-mail] |    - Have a JOLT and a smile! -    *
* "What IS it, man?"                                "Happy Happy, Joy Joy" *


##

Subject: creating galaxies
Date: Sun, 25 Oct 92 1:45:46 CST
From: Sean Craig Kormilo <[e-mail]>

    I am having quite a bit of trouble creating a galaxy.
If anybody out there has any suggestions, it would be most appreciated. I
have already tried making a object into a fog one. Also hand drew a
picture of a galaxy and there turned it into a an object. But these didn't
work out to well.
    I am using Imagine 2.0. I don't have Steve Worleys book as of yet,
and the original manuel told me didily squat. Most of the animations that
I have created have to do with StarTrek, and was looking to make a galaxy
like  the one on STTNG opening.


##

Subject: Modeling Real Scenes
Date: Sun, 25 Oct 92 15:36:16 CST
From: Daniel Jr Murrell <[e-mail]>

Hey Guys,
    I've done very little 'real' work in Imagine of my own-mostly I've just
rendered other people's objects.  I'd really like to do my own work, though,
and something I've been thinking about it attempting to medel a real-life
scene and events in that scene.  What is the best way to go about that?
There are several buildings that I would have to use...should I attempt to
model their architecture, or just make a brushmap and place it on a cube as
a color map and a bump map?  Also, are there any already digitized
databases of pictures of buildings somewhere on internet that I can use?
The scene I have in mind is Dealy Plaza- I've always wanted to model it and
view it from several different viewpoints, based on the various theories.
Thanks a lot for any help.

Sincerely,
Dan


##

Subject: New (better) PopUpMenu program.
Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1992 13:53:38 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Jeff Walkup)

Awhile ago I was bitching about how I hated the "Silicon Menus"
program... and my general dislike of ALL of the popup menu systems
I've seen... I think I said if I found one I liked I'd gladly
use it...  well... I found one.  Its called "Magic Menu" and I've
got version 1.06 and it's not bad.  Doesn't display garbage like
the others, doesn't *crash* my machine like Sillycon Menus!
It's got a '030 version... works fast, you can choose "newstyle 3D"
look or standard.  It'll even make the usual pulldown menu in "3D".
The standard versions are very nearly as fast as Intuition's own
menus.  The 3D versions can be simplified or "toned-down" a bit so
they aren't quite as pretty but much faster!
Has all the other options we've seen, plus an option to enable
keyboard nagivation of the menu.

Only thing is it doesn't make Imagine2.0's menus any more readable...

Now if I could just get the "Doks" in English!  And there's a bug in
the save-options, and I don't like the radio-button that replaces
the "checkmark".  [Email sent to author]  Otherwise it's good.

Just thought I'd counter my prior negativism with this quick post...
now back to the Ilist!

Oh yeah I nabbed it off of Aminet (os20/cdity/MagicMenu_V1.06.lha).


##

Subject: 12-bit vs. 24-bi
Date: Sun, 25 Oct 92 17:13:36 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Stefon Bertrand Podell)

Just a quick comment: Selecting 12-bit or 24-bit does absolutely nothing to
the rendering time.  If anything happens, 12-bit might take a microsecond
longer.  The reason is because Imagine does all its internal work in 24-bit
for maximum quality.  Then if you've selected 12-bit output, it scales it
down.

     - Stefan
       [e-mail]


##

Subject: Forms editor - modeling a car
Date: Sun, 25 Oct 92 21:45:34 EST
From: Paul Miller <[e-mail]>

I'm trying to model a car (a Miata, actually, without wheel-wells), and I'm
starting with the Forms editor. I don't have much, if any, experience with
the Forms editor, and I need some hints on how to lay out the initial object
parameters. As we know the sides of car are symmetrical, and I know I need
slices going from the front to the back. I'd like to build up the slices
looking at it in the Front view, but that isn't available, so I'm a bit
at a loss as to where exactly to start.

There's a groove which goes down the sides of the car, so should I build
the groove into the sides of each slice, or model the car in two pieces,
top and bottom, and connect them later and add the groove with the detail
editor?

To add the parking light insets and air scoop in the front, do I need to
perform a boolean operation to cut it out or is there another way?


Any help would be appreciated!

--
* Paul Miller                         |Nobody cares about my opinion anyway*
* INTERNET: [e-mail] |    - Have a JOLT and a smile! -    *
* "What IS it, man?"                                "Happy Happy, Joy Joy" *


##

Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1992 10:39:47 EDT
From: [e-mail]

>  So I should use ADPro or AD to do this conversion from 24-bit to HAM/etc.
YES

>Why? Does it have a better algorithm than Imagine?
AD and ADPro have different dithering algorithms (about 6 to be exact) that
you can play with to make your picture as pleasing as possible.  I'm not
sure about the other parts of AD or ADPro like scaling or picture displaying
but there are a plethora or OPERATORS that you can do to your picture to
improve it's looks.

The one main difference between AD and ADPro is ADPro can save in a number
of different file formats.  I use ADPro so I can display my pics on my
PC (YEECH!) in 15bit graphics 640x480.

>Could I use some version of DPaint (like II or III, or IV?).
I you can't use Dpain(t) ;) II or III to load up 24 bit iff's.  I'm not sure
if Dpaint 4 can load up 24 bit IFF's.

--
"I'm not tense,         Steven Lam
 just terribly          ST:TNG #1 and the only one
 alert!"                [e-mail]

:O :) B) P) |) +) =) -=) *) :-) :p %) :\ :/ #:) (:) :^) %^} :} ;) B:) *:) +:) :]


##

Subject: Higher resolution rendering
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 92 04:06:02 PST
From: [e-mail] (don hirschfeld)

I noticed that some people render at very high resolutions (1200x1200 or
higher). Will this give a finer image when viewed at a lower resolution
or is it used for reproduction purposes on file recorders?

--
[e-mail] (don hirschfeld)


##

Subject: object dataset catalog
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1992 15:33:03 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Stephen Menzies)

In a recent message I mentioned that objects (like those provided
by Impulse ie: cow, head, car etc) could be purchased from a US
company that specializes in digitizing. Though, these objects are
quite expensive, the cataloge is nevertheless of interest for it
has pictures of all the availible objects in wireframe , polygon mesh.
This can be quite helpful for those who wish to see how particular
objects are constructed (as well as of interest to those who work
in production and could figure the price of purchasing these objects
into their contract.
At the time though, I couldn't remember the name of the company.
However, I just bought the recent issue of Computer Graphics World
and I saw the ad on pp97. Here it is:

Viewpoint,
870 West Center,
Orem, Utah 84057
ph# 801-224-2222
fax# [phone]
1-800-DATASET

You can ask for Viewpoint's _free_ 100 page catalog full of ready to
ship datasets from categories such as cars, anatomy, aircraft,sports,
boats, trains, animals and others.

-stephen
--
Stephen Menzies
#Internet: [e-mail]
#Fidonet : Stephen Menzies @ 1:167/265


##

Subject: Problems with spiral ...
Date:     Mon, 26 Oct 1992 20:09:23 +0100
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

Hi render-folks ,

I have a big problem with spirals. The problem is that I can't model
them. I want to build them with spline paths. But I just can't produce
any spiral. Has anyone yet performed this ?

Could anyone post me some alignment infos of the different knots ?

Any help greatly appreciated

Hannes


##

Subject: Re: Modeling Real Scenes
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 92 21:40:12 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

>
>Hey Guys,
>    I've done very little 'real' work in Imagine of my own-mostly I've just
>rendered other people's objects.  I'd really like to do my own work, though,
>and something I've been thinking about it attempting to medel a real-life
>scene and events in that scene.  What is the best way to go about that?
>There are several buildings that I would have to use...should I attempt to
>model their architecture, or just make a brushmap and place it on a cube as
>a color map and a bump map?  Also, are there any already digitized
>databases of pictures of buildings somewhere on internet that I can use?
>The scene I have in mind is Dealy Plaza- I've always wanted to model it and
>view it from several different viewpoints, based on the various theories.
>Thanks a lot for any help.
>
>Sincerely,
>Dan
>
>
>

    This all depeneds on how you want your render to look and how
you want to be able to have the camera move for different pics or
animations.

    If you want to be able to fly around it and really have it look
3D, you better model as much as you can as 3D, and then set up textures
and colors for the different parts of the buildings with both standard
textures and brush wraps.  a simple cube probably won't look real unless
the building is really just a flat cube.

    If you are going to be rendering a scene in the distance, or
don't need to really move the camera too close, more brush wrapping and
less object would be okay.  Basically i would guess modeling the big 3d
structures and then wrapping the details would work best for a mix of
memory requirements and realistic output.

               Michael Comet
               [e-mail]


##

Subject: 3D software
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 92 14:36:56 PST
From: [e-mail]

Someone recently posted a list of features for the new Real3D 2.0 on
Usenet...
I didn't capture it :( but the list of features looked pretty cool...

I also saw a demo of a couple of Mac based 3d modelers/renderers-Form-Z and
Raydream Designer..

Form-z, by a company called Autodessys, is a very impressive solid
modeler-the boolean operations
were very complete and very easy to use-for example-to cut a corner off off
a cube, you just draw
3 lines in 3d where you want to cut, and the corner disappears..none of
this slicing,etc. leaving you
with lots of unwanted faces and points. The interface was also very CAD
like-so precision was
possible....

Raydream designer is a raytracing program. The texture mapping for this
program was quite impressive
you get a 3d representation of your object in a window, and as you change
textures, etc. you can
see the changes take place interactively-this was very useful in placing
image maps-you have the
pict image on screen-and as you crop/size the image, you see it change on
the object in (almost)
realtime. You can also rotate the object 360 degrees by just clicking on it
and moving the mouse-
sort of like a 3d trackball...Also, all of the texture changes were
graphical in nature-you could see
the textures change in size, color, etc. as you moved the sliders-no more
blindly guessing with
numeric sliders like Imagine and Lightwave !

The stage editor was quite weak-less powerful and interactive than either
Imagine or Lightwave-
you cannot work directly on the 3d stage-you move around the projections of
the objects on 2d x,y,z
planes-tracking views,etc. are also not too well handled...

I would like to see the graphical interactivity of textures added to
Imagine and Lightwave-it
really would speed things up..I also think both programs need to address
both the precision issue
(by adding more CAD-like features) and the ease and power inherent in
boolean operations.

That said, the rendering quality of the mac programs was still inferior to
what I have seen done
with Amiga renderers-in terms of those elusive qualities such as "lifelike"
and "deep"....

kevin kodama
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Problems with spiral ...
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 92 22:07:24 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

>
>Hi render-folks ,
>
>I have a big problem with spirals. The problem is that I can't model
>them. I want to build them with spline paths. But I just can't produce
>any spiral. Has anyone yet performed this ?
>
>Could anyone post me some alignment infos of the different knots ?
>
>Any help greatly appreciated
>
>Hannes
>
>
>

    I successfully modeled a spiral a while back and have used it
for springs and coiled wire and such by joing copies of the one spiral
to itself.  Here's what i did :

    ( i did this with points and edges but if you can bring up the
transformation requestor for points in a spline path, ....i'm not sure
about this.....i assume it will work for splines too )

    Basically, i added a primitive disk.  For simplicities sake say
with 12 points.....

    Delete the center point.

    Now i find the STARTING point by going to pick points and doing
Right Amiga-N key.  This is very important (see next paragraph).

    Now delete the EDGE connecting the FIRST point to the LAST
point!  This will leave you with a almost perfect circle minus the one
line segment.  (Order of points is important here since when you extrude
it goes from point 1 to point 2 and so on.)


    Now with this point and going IN the order the points are for te
he disk, move each point say 10 units away plus the distance of the
previous point.  Ie:  point 1 = 0, point 2=10, point 3=20 and so on.
Now you have a spiral since the disk was a perfect circle and now each
point is uniformally scaled away on the distance axis.


    You can use this to extrude.  (at least in 1.1 when i did this
you could).

    For the spline path, add the disk, then add an OPEN spline path
and add enough segments as there are point in teh circumference of the
sphere ....or enough to make it match.

    Use the disk as a guide to create a perfect circle in 2D with
the spline path.

    Now for each point in the spline path segment once again move
them progressivly away ie point 1=0, 2=10, 3=20, etc...  You should now
have a perfect spiral.

    This all makes a perfectly good spiral without too much of a
headache.  I tried to keep this post down in size for the sake of
readability....so if you need clarification just post a reply!


               Michael Comet
               [e-mail]


##

Subject: Professional Fonts
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 78 12:41:58 MED
From: [e-mail] (Christian Wirth)

Hello on the list,

In some german amiga-magazines you can find ads from different vendors
offering some broadcast-fonts for Imagine.
Pictures show real nice looking characters with beveled edges.

My question is how to most easily achieve this beveling. Are there any
tools doing this ?

I've read Pixel 3D could do this, any other possibilities ?


My second question is concernig marble-surfaces. I know this must have
been asked really often, but what is the best way to get a marble-look
without assigning brushes to the object ?

Many thanks,
         Chris


---
Christian Wirth, FRG | [e-mail] | Heartland?


##

Subject: Re: Problems with spiral ...
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1992 13:47:00 -0800
From: [e-mail] (Jeff Walkup)

There's a much easier way to make spirals, using Y Rotation
with Extrude.  Just create a disk, delete the center point,
rotate JUST the axis X=90 degrees, move the axis off-center
(to the right/left), then extrude.  Use something like
Y Rotation=720, Length=1000, Sections=64.  Bingo!  Spirals!


##

Subject: Re: Professional Fonts
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 92 03:39:00 EST
From: [e-mail] (Alex Deburie)

On <Sun, 1 Jan 78 12:41:58 MED>, [e-mail] (Christian
Wirth) writes:
> My question is how to most easily achieve this beveling. Are there any
> tools doing this ?
>
> I've read Pixel 3D could do this, any other possibilities ?

For beveling, your best bet may be my program Vertex. It will easily
bevel fonts - just tell it the inset and depth of the bevel and you're
all set.

If you're interested, send E-mail, or check out the latest demo on Fred
Fish disk #727.

     -- Alex Deburie
        [e-mail]


##

Subject: PD 24bit converters
Date:     Wed, 28 Oct 1992 14:52:20 -0500
From: "Christopher Stevenson" <[e-mail]>

Greetings, all-

My question is brief; what would someone out there recommend
as a reasonable/good public domain 24-bit ILBM - to - IFF
converter?  I'm just beginning to dabble in 24-bit under Imagine
1.1 instead of always rendering in 12-bit, and have had no
luck with a utility called "wasp" reading Imagine's 24-bit ILBM's!
It *seems* that Imagine writes non-standard image headers, as judged
from the errors that "wasp" kept generating when it tried to read
the various files I fed it.

-converted 24-bit looks far better than native 12-bit (HAM), I'm
led to believe.

Here's something which requires a converter that can load separate
eight-bit R, G, and B files (again, as can be generated in Imagine 1.1)
and combine them into a 24-bit IFF.  It's a bit labour-intensive,
so is best used for stills; to simulate differential refraction
effects ("prismatic coloring"), say when looking through a glass sphere
at a pencil lying on a checker-mapped table, render the scene three
times to separate rgb files, changing the index of refraction of the
sphere slightly each time and deleting two of the three files each
time. For example, for the first rendering, use an index similar to that
for red light (say 1.55) and delete the blue and green bitplane files -
rename the red file so it won't get over-written. Increase the index by
.01 to 1.56 for green light, render again, delete the blue and red files,
rename (to match your original red's name, with some distinguisher) and
finally increase the index a third time to 1.57 for blue, render and
keep only the blue file.  For example, you might end up with
pic01_r
pic01_g
pic01_b
You'll then have to recombine these with something... I understand ADPro
does this nicely.  Gotta get this program sometime, but in the meantime
does anyone know of PD routines out there?

Thanks in advance-
the electric monk


##

Subject: Ordering PC Imagine from Germany
Date:     Wed, 28 Oct 1992 09:40:02 +0100
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

Hi Impulse,

this message is actually addressed to Impulse (I hope you'll get it)

I want to know if it is possible to order the PC version of Imagine
from Germany. I am a registered user (I bought it from Memphis Computer)
The only problem is that these people from Memphis do not respond
to my questions if they can provide the PC Version. Therefore I plan
to order it directly from Impulse

Here my definit questions:

Is it possible to order it FROM GERMANY
How much is transport fee
Is it possible to order it via a credit card ?

How much is the PC Version for a REGISTERED IMAGINE User
How much is Morphous
How much is the new Imagine V3.0 for a REGISTERED User

When will it actually be availible (PC Version first of November ?)

I hope this will reach Impulse, because it is too expensive to
call them from Germany

Hannes


##

Subject: Re: Problems with spiral ...
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 92 20:19:56 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

>
>There's a much easier way to make spirals, using Y Rotation
>with Extrude.  Just create a disk, delete the center point,
>rotate JUST the axis X=90 degrees, move the axis off-center
>(to the right/left), then extrude.  Use something like
>Y Rotation=720, Length=1000, Sections=64.  Bingo!  Spirals!
>
>

    Cool, i didn't think of that!  Too bad you can't extrude a
SPLINE path though.  Maybe in a future version of imagine?
Anyways....great idea!

               Michael Comet
               [e-mail]


##

Subject: What the hell is wrong with grow ?????
Date:     Wed, 28 Oct 1992 09:34:14 +0100
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

Hi imagining people,

wbat the hell is wrong with this special effect grow.
I want to have spiral growing over 40 frames along a spline path
(which IS the father of the object).

BUT when I render frame 40 I only get a very dark pictures with
a very dazed picture of my spiral. When I extrude the spiral
in the detail editor all is OK. But in the Stage Editor the spiral
just ALMOST disappears.

Any idea

Hannes

Any help greatly appreciated


##

Subject: Thanks to all for helping me with spirals ...
Date:     Wed, 28 Oct 1992 09:18:32 +0100
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

Hey ray-men

this was real great help to me! The best solution was to put 4
axis in a circle with there y-alignment pointing clockwise.
Then MakePath. This produces what I deserved !

Thanks again

Hannes