Frequently Asked Questions Q. I have installed T3D and it works just fine, but it runs out of memory as soon as I open a new project window. A. You are probably running T3D on an Hi or True color screen with the REFRESH tooltype set to SMART. T3D now ships with the refresh tooltype set to smart as a default since some users reported that they were unfavorably impressed with the SIMPLE refresh method that was the previous default. The Amigatm Operating System provides two basic ways to refresh windows: SIMPLE and SMART. SMART refresh is not smart at all, it simply copies the window's area into an offscreen buffer and for deep screens this may take out a lot of memory. It is also very slow if you use a ZorroII graphic card. SIMPLE refresh requires a lot more work but is both faster and consumes less memory. Here at Eyelight we always run T3D in SIMPLE refresh mode, even on those Amigatms equipped with 64 or 96 MBs of ram. Be sure to read the Redraw command description on the user manual and try SIMPLE as refresh method. Q. Why there is not an Installer script? A. Because it's not needed. Installer was born back in the old days of 880K floppy disks. T3D is shipped on CD-Rom, it can be started from anywhere and does not require any assign or other kind of installation. You can not make its installation any easier with Installer, only slower. Q. I want to open T3D on my pixel-perfect, custom designed, Workbench screen-mode that fits nicely with my monitor. But T3D's screen does not redraw properly anymore. Why? A. Custom screen-modes should be avoided, since they may seriously reduce your GFX-card speed. Anyway, T3D supports any resolution as long as it is multiple of 16 in horizontal and even in vertical. If you plan to use a screenmode smaller than 800x600 you should use autoscrolling, since T3D requires at least an 800x600 to run properly. Q. Some strings come up truncated, some others are complete garbage. However if I redisplay the latter, they are perfectly readable. Hey, this is a bug, isn't it? A. Yes, it is. But it's not our fault. It happens when we optimize the code with SAS/C 6.58, and we have not yet been able to track it down. Compiling without optimization or with older versions of SAS/C optimizer fixes this, but it also makes the code so much slower we think it's not worth to do that to avoid occasional clutter. Truncated strings, on the other hand, are usually due to a font too large. Try reducing the System Font size of your workbench. Q. My Wacom ArtPadtm tablet does not work with Tornado3D! Where's the problem? A. Tornado3D is not yet compatible with gfx-tablets, we are sorry. Q. When I try to extrude along a spline as in the Unicycle tutorial, I only get a flat disk instad of a tube. A. The object must be rotated 90 degree as described in the text, not -90 degree. Try again and it will fix the problem. Q. Undo seems not to work always. A. Not every operation is undoable, and as a general rule those that open a panel with an Accept/Cancel button are not. Q. I just can't find the raytrace button. Hey, this is a raytracer, isn't it? A. Don't call T3D names, please! :-) T3D is not a raytracer, and raytracing is not the be-all, end-all rendering algorithm. Professional computer graphics (and we mean even multi-million dollars one) is rarely, if ever, raytraced. Raytracing is just a toy-tool for the creation of pretty computeresque pictures. Writing a ray-tracer is also way easier that writing a complex renderer such as T3D. A simple proof of this lies in the fact that raytracers are a common assignment to computer-science students. T3D does render images with proprietary algorithms that are very fast and produce that kind of dirty and realistic output that we see in movies and TV adverts, not the ultra-sharp chrome balls amateurs do with raytracers. Besides, there are many PD raytracers, but not even a single FILM/TV-quality renderer such as T3D. Q. But you say T3D does Reflections and Refractions, and those must be ray-traced, everybody knows that! Or not? A. You are right, NOT! As described above, Raytracing makes easy to simulate those effects. But it is not the only nor the best way to produce them. So, yes, T3D does reflections and refractions, but, no, it is not a raytracer. Q. Why shouldn't I use absolute paths? I want to keep my objects and maps organized on a project-basis. A. It would be better to avoid absolute paths because the forthcoming D.E.I. render engine will allow to render over a network of machines and absolute paths would prevent this. As for the separation of data according to the projects, we agree it is useful and will add it in a future release. Q. The colorwheel does not always work. Sometimes I change a color and after accepting the ColorWheel panel the color is reset to black. A. If you choose a color with the colorwheel you should also make sure that the Intensity slider next to the wheel is set accordingly, otherwise the color will have 0 intensity, and any color with 0 intensity looks like black. Q. I run it on an AGA/ECS/OCS screen and the editor is slow, slower than other softwares! BTW, I have a 66Mhz 68060 and Tornado3D screams when rendering or previewing, it's only the line drawing that's slow. A. Even on AGA Tornado3D redraw is faster than other software's one (unless they are hardware-banging). But Tornado3D really works well with a graphic card, it has been designed ground-up for RTG. If you have to choose between a faster processor and a graphic card, choose the graphic card: it will bring the most performance increase. Meanwhile you can try to use some "speed-up patches" available on Aminet. Most notably the "PatchWPA8", that speeds up color preview. Please note that Tornado3D Professional will not run at all on OCS/ECS/AGA, it will require HI or TRUE color graphics cards. This is also the reason why the hardware-banging "Baremetal AGA" driver has been discarded. Q. Sometimes the deformations are shown in realtime and sometimes they are not. Is this a bug? A. The deformations are only shown when at least one point is selected. If you take the short route and do not select any point (remember that no point selected means that the deformation will affect all the points) then the deformation is not shown because T3D assumes you want to speed-up your actions. Simply do an Amiga-A to select all before, and T3D will show you the deformation. Tornado3D is full of shortcuts like this that in the end, when mastered, will provide you with a complete control over the behaviour of the software. Check carefully the manual. Q. I run T3D on an AGA/ECS/OCS screen and the Arcball lines are not erased or the shaded preview is erased. A. This is a bug, it will be fixed as soon as possible. Needless to say, on graphic cards it works ok. A simple workaround is to press F1 twice and then Amiga-R. Q. I run T3D on an AGA/ECS/OCS screen and it seems I can't expand the perspective view. A. Native Amiga drivers can not expand the perspective view, since it depends on CyberGFX routines. On graphic cards it works.