IMAGINE archive: collected off of imagine@ATHENA.MIT.EDU ARCHIVE XV Nov. 9 '91 - Nov. 26 '91 If you have questions or problems with this file, email Marvin Landis at marvinl@amber.rc.arizona.edu note: each message seperated by a '##' &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Subject: Re: more 'bout lights Date: Sat, 9 Nov 91 10:29:47 EST From: johnh@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (John J Humpal) > > setting ambient light to high will wash out shadows, you're right. setting > at 100 is a good place to start (I didn't mean that would be where you would I usually go the other direction: start low and boost the ambient up as needed. I've used ambient as low as 5,5,5 and as high as 60,60,60. > it is imposible to say > what the exact setting should be without know the scene or the mood that is > intended and as far as that goes what I see as one mood someone else will see > as a different mood. Absolutely. Ambient would be very different for, say, an interior scene compared to an exterior scene or a surreal scene. > Also a tip for everyone...keep a > notebook and write down the settings you like and you can always refer back > to it when you are doing a similar scene. This is an excellent tip. I've just started doing this in the last few months. -John John J. Humpal -- johnh@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu -- short .sig, std. disclaimer ## Subject: Re: Not enough memory... Date: Sat, 9 Nov 91 12:30:26 MST From: webbs@mozart.cs.colostate.edu (Steven Webb (The mutant squirrel-beater from Mars)) > MOLDFIEL.EA-ME-1@mhs.sp.unisys.com (MOLDFIEL) writes: >> All too often I get the message "Not enough RAM" when attempting to render.. >What you need to buy is more fast ram. Imagine, like most programs, uses fast [most of post deleted.] I just use the option in Imagine's config file that looks like: LOAD F # flag - load all modules (I think that it's the third line in the config file.) This should conserve on memory when loading things for rendering. I have 5 Megs of Ram, and I can render some pretty complicated stuff that I wasn't able to render before. This flag loads the maps and backgroounds only when needed. (This saves on MAJOR ram, but increases the rendering time two or three-fold in a worst-case situation, like having a picture in the background, or something like that.) Other Ram-saving ideas are things like eliminating un-seen faces from the back of objects, and not using 24-bit maps, and so on... If your object seems to be just too big, you might try and simplify your object. Try using the "merge" or "taut" command (It's one of those) from the detail editor, and it will clean up your object a bit. Other ways of cleaning up or simplifying your objects are implemented in the new version of Pixel3D. You could get Pixel3D to simplify your objects to save on ram, but this may be a bit on the extreme side. I was wondering, I had thought about writing a routine to do object simplification, and other sorts of things. If anyone thinks that this would be a worth-while project, please mail me any feed-back. -- Steve -- webbs@mozart.cs.colostate.edu | Packet-saving sig | Have a nice night. ## Subject: yet more lighting Date: Sat, 9 Nov 91 16:46:59 PST From: spi (Paul Howett) o.k heres the situation, I am attempting to create a lightbulb consisting of a glass lighbulb shaped object with a glass stalk inside that is supporting a spiraling filament. The problem is I want the filament to emit light - unfortunately it doesnt appear to glow when I make it a lightsource - I suppose this falls into the category of glowing enterprise engine lights. Does anyone understand what I mean and how to accomlish this? Thanks in advance. ## Subject: A dusty path Date: Sat, 9 Nov 91 17:37:41 PST From: Sam_Mayday_Malone@cup.portal.com Greetings greetings. IMAGINE if you will, a front view of a garage. You want a car to enter from the right hand side of the picture. It will drive BEHIND the garage going from right to left. After it re-emerges on the LEFT HAND side of the garage (still facing left of course), you want it to turn TOWARD you... come past the front wall of the garage...and turn INTO the open garage door. I have created a path that does this. NOW I find that the car does as expected until it has to swing toward you. I have the axis point following the path on the front bumper of the car. But I cannot understand how to get the car to swing around. To make this clearer...the point does follow the path...but the object (the car) stays in it's left facing original orientation. Thus...it enters the garage sideways, still facing to the left. Fortunately, I have not sustained body damage on my Amiga. :-) Do a good deed. Make a simple mind understand what he's doing wrong. Thanks, Sam ## Subject: More More More Neon Lighting Attempts. Date: Sat, 9 Nov 91 21:50:05 PST From: spi@netcom.com (Paul Howett) Yes - the reason I began trying to create a lightbulb - witha glowing filament was that I originally was trying to get a ufo to have a lowing engine tous like bar(tous = torus(argh line wrap)) wrapped around part of it. I couldnt get the effect I wanted - something like a neon tube running around the ufo body. So I decided to try something simpler - like a lightbulb with 8000 pints - yeah real simple, now Im just tryng the filament alone. but to answer your query - yes something like neon. (pint = points(arrgh)) Thanks again - Amigas Forever (for a sentient compurer - drop 1 040 card into 1 stock amiga - yea) :) ## Subject: IFF to 3D object Date: 10 Nov 91 1:03 -0800 From: Andrew Niemann In response to the review of Pixel_3D which also talked of making 3D objects from IFF pictures. You can also make 3d objects from IFF pictures with VistaPro, using either their free utility IFF2Scape or Scapemaker from MegageM. I tried both Vista and Pixel3d to make a 3d object from a topographical map, and Vista, via Scapemaker, seemed to give much better results for the same size of object file (which can get pretty huge if you want). Pixel_3d just averages the height around its points whilst Vista seems to find the edges that define a change in height. -eg. the volcanoes had craters in them with Vista whilst with Pixel_3d they were just mild mounds. Small islands just disappeared whereas Vista still had them poking up. I at first thought that Vista's 258x258 image map size would be a limitting factor, but since each pixel represents a discreet height point you could have an object with 66,564 points. At the second to highest resolution level it already produced an Imagine object some 900K in size. Another benefit from the Vista aproach is that you can render the whole map in low resolution to save on memory and rendering time. Then render just those parts that need more detail in higher resolution and cut them easily into the lower resolutioin object. The landscapes objects are built with 64 sections, which are the same size no matter what resolution you render in. These are grouped together so you can easily drop out one of the group and put in the higher resolution version of that section. These objects I then ungrouped, joined and merged in Imagine. This gives a smaller object file although merging can take quite a while (about an hour). Another problem with Pixel3d was that Imagine would not read large objects made by it. Bad chunk size (tried to phone them but they didn't get back to me). Scapemaker has a color value mode that will render each height according to the value of that color (out of the full 4095) not just by its palette position. This gives much finer control over the height accuracy of your object. One unfortunate side effect of making objects the Vista route is terracing. The object will have a terrace for each band of color in the original IFF. Pixel_3D's advantage here is that it does not have this problem due to its averaging. Fortunately the terracing is easily overcome in Vista by either using 'smoothing' a number of times until it's gone or by using the Vista utility called 'Terraform'. Just smoothing ends up giving you basically the same result as Pixel3D since the whole data set is averaged out. Or you can use Terraform, a great little program which I've gotten to really enjoy despite its sort of weird quirks. It allows you to selectively smooth the areas you want while you watch the result. It also allows you to sculpt the object like clay with its smoothing tool, roughening tool, raise and lower tool, and varying tool size. It's a beauty. andy ## Subject: iff to 3d object contd Date: 10 Nov 91 2:45 -0800 From: Andrew Niemann forgot to mention: VistaPro will directly generate TurboSilver objects for you to save. You can generate them at four different levels of complexity. When you generate and save your Turbo object Vista puts up a grid on the map so that you can specify which sections you want to generate and save. andy ## Subject: Re: A dusty path Date: Sun, 10 Nov 91 12:57:23 PST From: schur@ISI.EDU Quite simply, when you tell the object to follow the path you also click on "align to Y". Then you make sure the Y axes for each axis along the path is facing the correct direction. Voila, the car will turn as it follows the path. ========================================================================= Sean Schur USENET: schur@isi.edu Assistant Director Amiga/Media Lab Compuserve: 70731,1102 Character Animation Department Plink: OSS259 California Institute of the Arts ========================================================================= ## Subject: Filament covers and yet even more Neon type lighting. Date: Sun, 10 Nov 91 17:26:56 PST From: spi@netcom.com (Paul Howett) I had tried having a "diffuser" over the filament to catch the light - nearly the exact opposite of the most recent suggestion to make the cover the light and have the filament catch and reflect the light - sounds like It should work the inside out way around - (I hope) - I did finally have success rendering the bulb w/o a "filament cover" It looked very good except for the fact that the glass is so perfect (ie it has no bubbles in it) that it hardly shows w/o turning up the pics brightness a whole lot. ( my light settings were around 3000 for r g and b - yes 3000 (twasnt a typo)) Maybe ill attempt running the uploading guantlet and send a more successful lightbulb pic to the hubcap later. gimme an A gimme an M gimme an I gimme a G gimme an A !!! I sure hope this is easier in 2.0 Imagineeese. ## Subject: AVID magazine Date: Sun, 10 Nov 91 19:20:02 PST From: worley@updike.sri.com (Steve Worley) A couple of people have asked me about AVID magazine and what it is. It is subtitled "The Amiga Video Journal", and it discusses different aspects of Amiga video and 3D graphics. As a sample, the articles in the lastest AVID: A Comdex report "Lighten up"-- Lightwave 3D information Deluxe Paint IV tips "From the Breadbox" Toaster news First look: Imagine 2.0 Fall Foliage: a Draw 4D-Pro tutorial Review: Charts & Graphs First look: DCTV 1.1 First look: Gold Disk's Video Director Review: Scenery Animator Review: Pixel 3D 2.0 Review: Calligari 2 Format considerations for single frame animations and more. I heartily recommend AVID to anyone interested in 3D graphics. The magazine might be hard to find, but try your local dealer. You can also also subscribe directly from AVID ($36 for 12 issues). AVID Publications 415-112 N. Mary Avenue #207 Sunnyvale CA 94086 You can also call and order over the phone using a credit card: 408-252-0508. ----------------------------------------- -Steve -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Worley spworley@athena.mit.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Subject: Re: AVID magazine Date: Sun, 10 Nov 91 22:38:08 CST From: strat@cis.ksu.edu (Steve W Davis) > It is subtitled "The Amiga Video Journal", and it discusses different > aspects of Amiga video and 3D graphics. As a sample, the articles in the > lastest AVID: > IMHO, this is the best issue of AVID I have yet seen. There is an enormous quantity of useful information. There were a couple places where articles contradicted each other, and the segment about the "IBM Apple Merger" is (to put it politely) innacurate. This kind of magazine should be a WEEKLY. Does the editor have an email address? I enjoy the editor's preference of quoting press releases verbatum. I wish someone would compile Amiga related press releases and publish a newsletter containing ALL of them on a weekly basis. This is, for those of us constantly waiting for upgrades, probably the single largest use of the net.community that I have not seen implemented yet. > A Comdex report A fellow SYSOP in Salina KS went to the Comdex, but didn't mention anything relayed in this article. He was googling about Apple and IBM blazing trails in this new thAng called "multimedia". ARGH. > Deluxe Paint IV tips This article really landed HARD on EA for releasing DP IV chock full of bugs. Unfortunately, I have found this program to be very similar to PageStream -- Until you learn to use it, you have to expect a lot of ... um ... surprises. > First look: Imagine 2.0 Hoo Ray. Nice articles. Is is just me or all of the buttons upside down in the sample image? This article answered most of my Q's about the program, but here are a few more: 1) Will Imagine 2.0 allow use of 8-bit grey scales as texture maps. 2) " " " allow preview of images for texture mapping. 3) " " " have that damned opening screen? 4) " " " preview windows show lines w/o faces, or axis position. TRUE depth of field is still on my wish list. Automated motion blur is still on my wish list. The ability to pick a point from the preview window is on my wish list. Support for some kind of compression on object files would also be nice, as would the ability to load images from a pipeline from another program. (e.g. djpeg infile.jpg | {imagine pipeline}) Why the heck isn't there a backdrop image a la Lightwave? Why no different reflection maps for individual objects? Excuse me for nit picking. The above would be nice features that would save me considerable amounts of time. I can certainly understand if the majority of users have little use for these. > Review: Charts & Graphs I have never seen a more glowing review of any Amiga product. If anyone subscribing to the Imagine mailing list has this product, please e-mail me. I want to share your experiences with it before purchasing it. > Review: Pixel 3D 2.0 I have never seen a more glowing review of any Amiga product. > I heartily recommend AVID to anyone interested in 3D graphics. > I find AVID 10,000 times more useful than the Turbo SIG bulletin. BTW, I stopped getting mine early. Damned if I'll send them any more $. This is not to say that I was disapointed with the group... I believe there are benifits to joining... but it was little use to me considering my geographic position (middle of Kansas), and financial status. Stratocaster ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet: strat@cis.ksu.edu | Steve Davis Fidonet: Steve Davis @ 1:295/3 | BBS: The Boarding House BBS | Video Animator 9600 Baud, v.32/v.42 | (America) 913-827-0744 | Have you hugged your Amiga today? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Subject: Re: A dusty path Date: Mon, 11 Nov 91 10:40:47 EST From: alan@picasso.umbc.edu (Alan Price) Sean Schur stated the solution of using 'align Y to path'. Though you also mentioned that your car object's axis is placed at the front bumber. Well, from my driving Imaginary car days, this would result in a car with _extreme_ rear-wheel steering. Since the pivot point is the objects axis, The tail of your car will swing as the car turns a corner. The best place for the axis would be in the middle of the rear axle. Then have the front wheels turn only as the rear axle approaches the curve in the path. (This complicates things, as the whells must then be seperate objects from the car group - the cycle editor can come into play here, however.) AP. ## Subject: Re: AVID magazine Date: Mon, 11 Nov 91 10:52:46 EST From: Mark Thompson Steve Worley writes: > I heartily recommend AVID to anyone interested in 3D graphics. I second that reccomendation. It is especially useful if you do professional video production using the Amiga. Also, for you Toaster/LightWave owners out there, also check out Breadbox. It is a publication similar to AVid geared specifically to the Video Toaster. Every issue includes invaluable tricks and techniques as well as reviews and news on all the latest Toaster, LightWave, and video related products. And just as you will Steve's articles through out AVid, I will be doing some writing for Bread Box. The editors, Kathy and Lee Stranahan, can be reached at: Bread Box 859 N. Hollywood Way Suite 225 Burbank, CA 91505 (818) 505-1464 Tell them I sent ya :-) |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' Mark Thompson CONCURRENT COMPUTER | | --==* RADIANT *==-- mark@westford.ccur.com Principal Graphics | | ' Image ` ...!uunet!masscomp!mark Hardware Architect | | Productions (508)392-2480 (603)424-1829 & General Nuisance | | | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ## Subject: Re: Filament covers and yet even more Neon type lighting. Date: Mon, 11 Nov 91 15:56:46 CST From: telepro!James_Hastings-Trew@SASK.USask.CA (James Hastings-Trew) One thing to bear in mind when creating lit objects - only the object axis will actually cast any light - not the surface of the object. One other thing to bear in mind - if the light is set to cast shadows, and the axis happens to be INSIDE the object, then no light will be cast at all - the light will be trapped in the interior of the object. If you want to create a convincing looking light filament, I suggest you set it to be a bright object, and position a set of axis near the filament to be the actual light sources. If you want the actual glass of your object to appear more visibly, then do not set the filter settings for the glass all the way to max - let the glass slightly darken environment objects that are seen through it. Make sure you have hardness set to full on, and make sure you have specular settings all at max. Also, create your bulb in such a way that it actually has an exterior AND interior surface - that is to say, the wall you create before spinning out the bulb should have two surfaces and a (slight) thickness. Do not create your bulb as a glass bubble. Once you get the object constructed properly, give it a refraction index similar to glass (around 1.3 to 1.5) For a neon tube effect, you are going to have difficulties simulating the "glow" of the tube, because, again, the surface of the object is not actually the light source - only the axis is. Your options here vary with the amount of rendering time you want to give up. You could set up a large number of axis objects to follow the same path as the tube, and set them to not cast shadows, and to be low intensity light sources. You would then set them inside the tube object, and if you had enough of them, they would cast a reasonably soft glow. This is a time consuming, painstaking way of doing it, but gives reasonably good results. Another way of doing it would involve image processing software such as Image Master from Black Belt systems. You would create your neon tube as a bright object of a very specific colour - a colour not found anywhere else in your rendering. You would then (under Arexx control) get Image Master to copy just that specific colour to a new buffer, recolour the tube to the colour you wish to make the neon, and have that buffer recombine with the original buffer. Then do an explode blur pass on the secondary buffer to cause the "tube" to blur outwards. Then you would additively recombine that buffer back with the original buffer as a "lightening" addition - it will cause a "glow" to appear around the tube object. -- Via DLG Pro v0.985b --- James Hastings-Trew telepro!JAMES_HASTINGS-TREW@access.usask.ca --- -> If everyone in China jumped at the same time <- subliminalmessagewith -> would they bring back TWIN PEAKS? <- subtlebutdeviousplan. ## Subject: JPEG to DCTV Convertor on Hubcap Date: Tue, 12 Nov 91 14:00 PST From: Ivan I Hopefully, I've placed JPEG2DCTV5.LZH & .TXT correctly on Hubcap in the Incoming/Uploads directory. I've only tested it on the test image, but it worked fast & fine there. The following is a portion of the Text file, w/o all the updates enumerated. Ivan <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> JPEG2DCTV Version 0.5 >> This is a quick and dirty program to decompress JPEG compressed images into a DCTV display buffer. It takes about one minute to decompress a 730 x 482 x 24 bit image to a full DCTV screen on an Amiga 3000 with 'jpeg2dctv', and about 40 sec with 'jpeg2dctv.030'. >> After the program is finished decoding, you may save the DCTV image by typing in a filename; 'jpeg2dctv' will save the image and exit. If you do not want to save the image, just hit return when prompted to exit 'jpeg2dctv'. You _must_ install 'dctv.library' and 'ilbm.library' in your LIBS: directory to use 'jpeg2dctv'. 'dctv.library' and 'ilbm.library' are included in this archive, along with a test image named 'testimg.jpg'. 'dctv.library' is copyrighted (c) 1991 by Digital Creations, Inc. 'ilbm.library' is copyrighted (c) 1990 by Jeff Glatt and Dissidents. The JPEG source code used in 'jpeg2dctv' is copyrighted (c) 1991 by Thomas G. Lane, and is part of the Independent JPEG Group's software. 'jpeg2dctv'and 'jpeg2dctv.030' are copyrighted (c) 1991 by Benjamin Rich. This software is provided AS IS. ## Subject: AmigaVision question Date: Wed, 13 Nov 91 17:37:09 EST From: alan@picasso.umbc.edu (Alan Price) I know, I know, what does this have to do with Imagine? Nothing. Well, actually I'm using some Imagine-generated animations and pics in a Amigavision application I'm working on. Can anyone please give me a lead for a FTP site where there are Amigavision applications to download? I'd like to check out a few to compare "standards". I've heard there's a nice one floating around somewhere that is about Eadward Muybridge. I'm working on one that informs on the use of 16mm movie cameras, etc. If it comes out decent, Id like to know a good place to post it. Sorry for the departure from Imagine, but this is presently the only list I am on. If anyone has suggestions concerning other lists, I would be grateful. Thanks! AP. ## Subject: Another Imagine Date: Wed, 13 Nov 91 17:06:04 CST From: Wayne Haufler 283-4160 I was reading a borrowed copy of the Nov. issue of SunWorld journal (The Independent Journal of Sun and SPARC Systems) and on page 86 in the new.products section is this notice: ---------------------- Imagine "Imagine is a suite of geoprocessing and image processing tools that include image Viewer, spatial and statistical modeling, advanced image processing, attribute handling and cartographic-quality map composition, and a graphical user interface. It works on Sun workstations running X WIndows. ..." The company is called ERDAS in Atlanta, GA. I probably shouldn't be concerned, but the potential for name confusion is there. I would think the process of naming a product would prevent duplicate naming, but maybe the product realms are far enough apart. Just thought this info may be of some use to somebody. - Wayne Haufler ## Subject: MediaPhile? Date: Thu, 14 Nov 91 00:03 PST From: Ivan I The new AmigaWorld makes mention, in the low-budget video article, of a program called MediaPhile from Interactive Microsystems. It says it can sequentially record animations to tape, which is understandable, but it also says that the program is capable of recording frames of animation as the machine renders them , with limited precision. Would anyone familiar with the system care to explai n this to me and describe the quality of the recording? I've sent for info, but this list is a bit more interactive than the mails. Thanks a bunch! Ivan ## Subject: Color question Date: Thu, 14 Nov 91 13:50:16 PST From: worley@updike.sri.com (Steve Worley) Mike Izario wrote to me asking for a list of color values to use, especially when you are entering textures and don't have sliders to manipulate. Here is the list I use: it's based on a standard color list used in X windows. I thought everyone might want to have a copy... Enjoy! -Steve -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Worley spworley@athena.mit.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- R G B name ----------- ----------- 255 250 250 snow 248 248 255 ghost white 245 245 245 white smoke 220 220 220 gainsboro 255 250 240 floral white 253 245 230 old lace 250 240 230 linen 250 235 215 antique white 255 239 213 papaya whip 255 235 205 blanched almond 255 228 196 bisque 255 218 185 peach puff 255 222 173 navajo white 255 228 181 moccasin 255 248 220 cornsilk 255 255 240 ivory 255 250 205 lemon chiffon 255 245 238 seashell 240 255 240 honeydew 245 255 250 mint cream 240 255 255 azure 240 248 255 alice blue 230 230 250 lavender 255 240 245 lavender blush 255 228 225 misty rose 255 255 255 white 0 0 0 black 47 79 79 dark slate gray 105 105 105 dim gray 112 128 144 slate gray 119 136 153 light slate grey 192 192 192 grey 211 211 211 light grey 25 25 112 midnight blue 0 0 128 navy 0 0 128 navy blue 100 149 237 cornflower blue 72 61 139 dark slate blue 106 90 205 slate blue 123 104 238 medium slate blue 132 112 255 light slate blue 0 0 205 medium blue 65 105 225 royal blue 0 0 255 blue 30 144 255 dodger blue 0 191 255 deep sky blue 135 206 235 sky blue 135 206 250 light sky blue 70 130 180 steel blue 176 196 222 light steel blue 173 216 230 light blue 176 224 230 powder blue 175 238 238 pale turquoise 0 206 209 dark turquoise 72 209 204 medium turquoise 64 224 208 turquoise 0 255 255 cyan 224 255 255 light cyan 95 158 160 cadet blue 102 205 170 medium aquamarine 127 255 212 aquamarine 0 100 0 dark green 85 107 47 dark olive green 143 188 143 dark sea green 46 139 87 sea green 60 179 113 medium sea green 32 178 170 light sea green 152 251 152 pale green 0 255 127 spring green 124 252 0 lawn green 0 255 0 green 127 255 0 chartreuse 0 250 154 medium spring green 173 255 47 green yellow 50 205 50 lime green 154 205 50 yellow green 34 139 34 forest green 107 142 35 olive drab 189 183 107 dark khaki 240 230 140 khaki 238 232 170 pale goldenrod 250 250 210 light goldenrod yellow 255 255 224 light yellow 255 255 0 yellow 255 215 0 gold 238 221 130 light goldenrod 218 165 32 goldenrod 114 83 250 cool worley 184 134 11 dark goldenrod 188 143 143 rosy brown 205 92 92 indian red 139 69 19 saddle brown 160 82 45 sienna 205 133 63 peru 222 184 135 burlywood 245 245 220 beige 245 222 179 wheat 244 164 96 sandy brown 210 180 140 tan 210 105 30 chocolate 178 34 34 firebrick 165 42 42 brown 233 150 122 dark salmon 250 128 114 salmon 255 160 122 light salmon 255 165 0 orange 255 140 0 dark orange 255 127 80 coral 240 128 128 light coral 255 99 71 tomato 255 69 0 orange red 255 0 0 red 255 105 180 hot pink 255 20 147 deep pink 255 192 203 pink 255 182 193 light pink 219 112 147 pale violet red 176 48 96 maroon 199 21 133 medium violet red 208 32 144 violet red 255 0 255 magenta 238 130 238 violet 221 160 221 plum 218 112 214 orchid 186 85 211 medium orchid 153 50 204 dark orchid 148 0 211 dark violet 138 43 226 blue violet 160 32 240 purple 147 112 219 medium purple 216 191 216 thistle Variants: R G B Name ----------- ----- 255 250 250 snow1 238 233 233 snow2 205 201 201 snow3 139 137 137 snow4 255 245 238 seashell1 238 229 222 seashell2 205 197 191 seashell3 139 134 130 seashell4 255 239 219 AntiqueWhite1 238 223 204 AntiqueWhite2 205 192 176 AntiqueWhite3 139 131 120 AntiqueWhite4 255 228 196 bisque1 238 213 183 bisque2 205 183 158 bisque3 139 125 107 bisque4 255 218 185 PeachPuff1 238 203 173 PeachPuff2 205 175 149 PeachPuff3 139 119 101 PeachPuff4 255 222 173 NavajoWhite1 238 207 161 NavajoWhite2 205 179 139 NavajoWhite3 139 121 94 NavajoWhite4 255 250 205 LemonChiffon1 238 233 191 LemonChiffon2 205 201 165 LemonChiffon3 139 137 112 LemonChiffon4 255 248 220 cornsilk1 238 232 205 cornsilk2 205 200 177 cornsilk3 139 136 120 cornsilk4 255 255 240 ivory1 238 238 224 ivory2 205 205 193 ivory3 139 139 131 ivory4 240 255 240 honeydew1 224 238 224 honeydew2 193 205 193 honeydew3 131 139 131 honeydew4 255 240 245 LavenderBlush1 238 224 229 LavenderBlush2 205 193 197 LavenderBlush3 139 131 134 LavenderBlush4 255 228 225 MistyRose1 238 213 210 MistyRose2 205 183 181 MistyRose3 139 125 123 MistyRose4 240 255 255 azure1 224 238 238 azure2 193 205 205 azure3 131 139 139 azure4 131 111 255 SlateBlue1 122 103 238 SlateBlue2 105 89 205 SlateBlue3 71 60 139 SlateBlue4 72 118 255 RoyalBlue1 67 110 238 RoyalBlue2 58 95 205 RoyalBlue3 39 64 139 RoyalBlue4 0 0 255 blue1 0 0 238 blue2 0 0 205 blue3 0 0 139 blue4 30 144 255 DodgerBlue1 28 134 238 DodgerBlue2 24 116 205 DodgerBlue3 16 78 139 DodgerBlue4 99 184 255 SteelBlue1 92 172 238 SteelBlue2 79 148 205 SteelBlue3 54 100 139 SteelBlue4 0 191 255 DeepSkyBlue1 0 178 238 DeepSkyBlue2 0 154 205 DeepSkyBlue3 0 104 139 DeepSkyBlue4 135 206 255 SkyBlue1 126 192 238 SkyBlue2 108 166 205 SkyBlue3 74 112 139 SkyBlue4 176 226 255 LightSkyBlue1 164 211 238 LightSkyBlue2 141 182 205 LightSkyBlue3 96 123 139 LightSkyBlue4 198 226 255 SlateGray1 185 211 238 SlateGray2 159 182 205 SlateGray3 108 123 139 SlateGray4 202 225 255 LightSteelBlue1 188 210 238 LightSteelBlue2 162 181 205 LightSteelBlue3 110 123 139 LightSteelBlue4 191 239 255 LightBlue1 178 223 238 LightBlue2 154 192 205 LightBlue3 104 131 139 LightBlue4 224 255 255 LightCyan1 209 238 238 LightCyan2 180 205 205 LightCyan3 122 139 139 LightCyan4 187 255 255 PaleTurquoise1 174 238 238 PaleTurquoise2 150 205 205 PaleTurquoise3 102 139 139 PaleTurquoise4 152 245 255 CadetBlue1 142 229 238 CadetBlue2 122 197 205 CadetBlue3 83 134 139 CadetBlue4 0 245 255 turquoise1 0 229 238 turquoise2 0 197 205 turquoise3 0 134 139 turquoise4 0 255 255 cyan1 0 238 238 cyan2 0 205 205 cyan3 0 139 139 cyan4 151 255 255 DarkSlateGray1 141 238 238 DarkSlateGray2 121 205 205 DarkSlateGray3 82 139 139 DarkSlateGray4 127 255 212 aquamarine1 118 238 198 aquamarine2 102 205 170 aquamarine3 69 139 116 aquamarine4 193 255 193 DarkSeaGreen1 180 238 180 DarkSeaGreen2 155 205 155 DarkSeaGreen3 105 139 105 DarkSeaGreen4 84 255 159 SeaGreen1 78 238 148 SeaGreen2 67 205 128 SeaGreen3 46 139 87 SeaGreen4 154 255 154 PaleGreen1 144 238 144 PaleGreen2 124 205 124 PaleGreen3 84 139 84 PaleGreen4 0 255 127 SpringGreen1 0 238 118 SpringGreen2 0 205 102 SpringGreen3 0 139 69 SpringGreen4 0 255 0 green1 0 238 0 green2 0 205 0 green3 0 139 0 green4 127 255 0 chartreuse1 118 238 0 chartreuse2 102 205 0 chartreuse3 69 139 0 chartreuse4 192 255 62 OliveDrab1 179 238 58 OliveDrab2 154 205 50 OliveDrab3 105 139 34 OliveDrab4 202 255 112 DarkOliveGreen1 188 238 104 DarkOliveGreen2 162 205 90 DarkOliveGreen3 110 139 61 DarkOliveGreen4 255 246 143 khaki1 238 230 133 khaki2 205 198 115 khaki3 139 134 78 khaki4 255 236 139 LightGoldenrod1 238 220 130 LightGoldenrod2 205 190 112 LightGoldenrod3 139 129 76 LightGoldenrod4 255 255 224 LightYellow1 238 238 209 LightYellow2 205 205 180 LightYellow3 139 139 122 LightYellow4 255 255 0 yellow1 238 238 0 yellow2 205 205 0 yellow3 139 139 0 yellow4 255 215 0 gold1 238 201 0 gold2 205 173 0 gold3 139 117 0 gold4 255 193 37 goldenrod1 238 180 34 goldenrod2 205 155 29 goldenrod3 139 105 20 goldenrod4 255 185 15 DarkGoldenrod1 238 173 14 DarkGoldenrod2 205 149 12 DarkGoldenrod3 139 101 8 DarkGoldenrod4 255 193 193 RosyBrown1 238 180 180 RosyBrown2 205 155 155 RosyBrown3 139 105 105 RosyBrown4 255 106 106 IndianRed1 238 99 99 IndianRed2 205 85 85 IndianRed3 139 58 58 IndianRed4 255 130 71 sienna1 238 121 66 sienna2 205 104 57 sienna3 139 71 38 sienna4 255 211 155 burlywood1 238 197 145 burlywood2 205 170 125 burlywood3 139 115 85 burlywood4 255 231 186 wheat1 238 216 174 wheat2 205 186 150 wheat3 139 126 102 wheat4 255 165 79 tan1 238 154 73 tan2 205 133 63 tan3 139 90 43 tan4 255 127 36 chocolate1 238 118 33 chocolate2 205 102 29 chocolate3 139 69 19 chocolate4 255 48 48 firebrick1 238 44 44 firebrick2 205 38 38 firebrick3 139 26 26 firebrick4 255 64 64 brown1 238 59 59 brown2 205 51 51 brown3 139 35 35 brown4 255 140 105 salmon1 238 130 98 salmon2 205 112 84 salmon3 139 76 57 salmon4 255 160 122 LightSalmon1 238 149 114 LightSalmon2 205 129 98 LightSalmon3 139 87 66 LightSalmon4 255 165 0 orange1 238 154 0 orange2 205 133 0 orange3 139 90 0 orange4 255 127 0 DarkOrange1 238 118 0 DarkOrange2 205 102 0 DarkOrange3 139 69 0 DarkOrange4 255 114 86 coral1 238 106 80 coral2 205 91 69 coral3 139 62 47 coral4 255 99 71 tomato1 238 92 66 tomato2 205 79 57 tomato3 139 54 38 tomato4 255 69 0 OrangeRed1 238 64 0 OrangeRed2 205 55 0 OrangeRed3 139 37 0 OrangeRed4 255 0 0 red1 238 0 0 red2 205 0 0 red3 139 0 0 red4 255 20 147 DeepPink1 238 18 137 DeepPink2 205 16 118 DeepPink3 139 10 80 DeepPink4 255 110 180 HotPink1 238 106 167 HotPink2 205 96 144 HotPink3 139 58 98 HotPink4 255 181 197 pink1 238 169 184 pink2 205 145 158 pink3 139 99 108 pink4 255 174 185 LightPink1 238 162 173 LightPink2 205 140 149 LightPink3 139 95 101 LightPink4 255 130 171 PaleVioletRed1 238 121 159 PaleVioletRed2 205 104 137 PaleVioletRed3 139 71 93 PaleVioletRed4 255 52 179 maroon1 238 48 167 maroon2 205 41 144 maroon3 139 28 98 maroon4 255 62 150 VioletRed1 238 58 140 VioletRed2 205 50 120 VioletRed3 139 34 82 VioletRed4 255 0 255 magenta1 238 0 238 magenta2 205 0 205 magenta3 139 0 139 magenta4 255 131 250 orchid1 238 122 233 orchid2 205 105 201 orchid3 139 71 137 orchid4 255 187 255 plum1 238 174 238 plum2 205 150 205 plum3 139 102 139 plum4 224 102 255 MediumOrchid1 209 95 238 MediumOrchid2 180 82 205 MediumOrchid3 122 55 139 MediumOrchid4 191 62 255 DarkOrchid1 178 58 238 DarkOrchid2 154 50 205 DarkOrchid3 104 34 139 DarkOrchid4 155 48 255 purple1 145 44 238 purple2 125 38 205 purple3 85 26 139 purple4 171 130 255 MediumPurple1 159 121 238 MediumPurple2 137 104 205 MediumPurple3 93 71 139 MediumPurple4 255 225 255 thistle1 238 210 238 thistle2 205 181 205 thistle3 139 123 139 thistle4 0 0 0 grey0 3 3 3 grey1 5 5 5 grey2 10 10 10 gray4 13 13 13 gray5 15 15 15 gray6 18 18 18 gray7 20 20 20 gray8 23 23 23 gray9 26 26 26 gray10 28 28 28 gray11 31 31 31 gray12 33 33 33 gray13 36 36 36 gray14 38 38 38 gray15 41 41 41 gray16 43 43 43 gray17 46 46 46 gray18 48 48 48 gray19 51 51 51 gray20 54 54 54 gray21 56 56 56 gray22 59 59 59 gray23 61 61 61 gray24 64 64 64 gray25 66 66 66 gray26 69 69 69 gray27 71 71 71 gray28 74 74 74 gray29 77 77 77 gray30 79 79 79 gray31 82 82 82 gray32 84 84 84 gray33 87 87 87 gray34 89 89 89 gray35 92 92 92 gray36 94 94 94 gray37 97 97 97 gray38 99 99 99 gray39 102 102 102 gray40 105 105 105 gray41 107 107 107 gray42 110 110 110 gray43 112 112 112 gray44 115 115 115 gray45 117 117 117 gray46 120 120 120 gray47 122 122 122 gray48 125 125 125 gray49 127 127 127 gray50 130 130 130 gray51 133 133 133 gray52 135 135 135 gray53 138 138 138 gray54 140 140 140 gray55 143 143 143 gray56 145 145 145 gray57 148 148 148 gray58 150 150 150 gray59 153 153 153 gray60 156 156 156 gray61 158 158 158 gray62 161 161 161 gray63 163 163 163 gray64 166 166 166 gray65 168 168 168 gray66 171 171 171 gray67 173 173 173 gray68 176 176 176 gray69 179 179 179 gray70 181 181 181 gray71 184 184 184 gray72 186 186 186 gray73 189 189 189 gray74 191 191 191 gray75 194 194 194 gray76 196 196 196 gray77 199 199 199 gray78 201 201 201 gray79 204 204 204 gray80 207 207 207 gray81 209 209 209 gray82 212 212 212 gray83 214 214 214 gray84 217 217 217 gray85 219 219 219 gray86 222 222 222 gray87 224 224 224 gray88 227 227 227 gray89 229 229 229 gray90 232 232 232 gray91 235 235 235 gray92 237 237 237 gray93 240 240 240 gray94 242 242 242 gray95 245 245 245 gray96 247 247 247 gray97 250 250 250 gray98 252 252 252 gray99 255 255 255 gray100 ## Subject: Monitor Object! Date: Thu, 14 Nov 91 18:00:36 CST From: strat@cis.ksu.edu (Steve W Davis) I'm working on a ray-tracing project that requires a computer monitor. I have too left mouse buttons in the Detail editor, so I need a pointer to an object. I need a Commodore 1950 or other generic VGA style monitor. It *** MUST *** have a curved front. I *** WANT *** curvature distortion on this monitor! :) Can someone help me out? Thanks in advance. Stratocaster ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet: strat@cis.ksu.edu | Steve Davis Fidonet: Steve Davis @ 1:295/3 | BBS: The Boarding House BBS | Video Animator 9600 Baud, v.32/v.42 | (America) 913-827-0744 | Have you hugged your Amiga today? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Subject: Re: MediaPhile Date: Thu, 14 Nov 91 19:18:08 EST From: pawn@wpi.WPI.EDU (Kevin Goroway) I wrote that software... I worked with that company a while back...the idea of using their hardware to do "almost" single frame recording was my idea...I wrote some crude software, and they bought it. It has been refined, but this is the basic idea... Their hardware can put your tape deck into, and out of "pause"...so, you set it up to be in a record state, with pause on, then, when you want to record a "few" frames, you send two quick pause messages...the first takes it out of pause, the second re-pauses... I originally wrote the software to work with Video-Scape 3d, which had some info in the manual as to what message ports to set up, etc, so you know when a finished frame is being displayed...they expanded it to work with other software. The hardware does a lot of other things (it knows the counter position, and can control decks via infra-red, or direct now (I think), and it can also "learn" infra-red commands... You results in the "almost" single frame recording will vary depending on your deck....I have a Sony Video 8 deck that gets a consistant 4 frames, each shot...played back at the solid 2x speed, this yields 2 frames...which is pretty damn good, for the price...some decks don't get consistant #s of frames each time (yuck), and others don't get down as low as 4... good luck! -Kevin +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= | Worcester Polytechnic Institute | "It happens sometimes, people just | | Pawn@wpi.wpi.edu | explode, natural causes."-Repo Man | +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= ## Subject: The monitor object... Date: Thu, 14 Nov 91 18:32:57 CST From: strat@cis.ksu.edu (Steve W Davis) Reading my earlier post, it's clear that I didn't make myself clear. I was hoping that someone would have a monitor object that they could send to me (and in return get my "gratitude" :])... Although I will probably wind up designing one myself as soon as the new Imagine shows up. Stratocaster ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet: strat@cis.ksu.edu | Steve Davis Fidonet: Steve Davis @ 1:295/3 | BBS: The Boarding House BBS | Video Animator 9600 Baud, v.32/v.42 | (America) 913-827-0744 | Have you hugged your Amiga today? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Subject: Re: Monitor Object! Date: Fri, 15 Nov 91 14:04:48 -0500 From: Udo K Schuermann From: strat@cis.ksu.edu (Steve W Davis) > I'm working on a ray-tracing project that requires a computer monitor. > I have too left mouse buttons in the Detail editor, so I need a pointer > to an object. > > I need a Commodore 1950 or other generic VGA style monitor. > It *** MUST *** have a curved front. I *** WANT *** curvature distortion > on this monitor! :) I have an object made by some French guy a few years ago. It is a complete Amiga 1000, extremely detailed and, I believe, totals something like 900K. The thing consists of dozens, if not hundreds of objects, grouped together, including a monitor. The monitor is a 1080 (as opposed to the 1950 Multisync), which includes the bottom flap, the light, the bevels, CURVED SCREEN, the Amiga logo, etc. There also is a mouse, the A1000 keyboard (with every single key, the complete indentations on the keyboard, etc), and an ancient 1020 external floppy drive. All cables included :-) I think I originally got this object off ab20.larc.nasa.gov, years ago, but I suspect it is no longer there. I could upload it to hubcap if anyone wants me to. Email me. Oh, all the objects and subdirectories are in French. It's not too difficult to figure them out, though. ._. Udo Schuermann "They cut all the tall trees down/and poisoned the sky ( ) walrus@wam.umd.edu and the sea/They've taken what's good from the ground Seeking virtual memory /and left precious little for me." -- Midnight Oil ## Subject: Re: MediaPhile Date: Fri, 15 Nov 91 13:11:33 MST From: Steve Koren > Their hardware can put your tape deck into, and out of "pause"...so, > you set it up to be in a record state, with pause on, then, when you > want to record a "few" frames, you send two quick pause messages...the > first takes it out of pause, the second re-pauses... I've been thinking about a technique somewhat similar to that. If one has a good 4 head VCR, one can cleanly splice video segments together with no noise between them. An Ami with enough memory can play some smooth short segments of animation. My idea is to generate an Imagine (or VistaPro or whatever) animation segment, play it in real time and record it to tape. Now, that just gets you a short (10 to 20 second) segment. But you can cleanly splice the next segment in which you can also play from memory. So basically you generate a video tape animation 10 to 20 seconds at a time. The more memory you have on the Ami, the longer the segments you can record. (RTAP might be another solution if you have a fast enough disk to get a reasonably smooth frame rate). The only trouble I see with this technique is possible synchronizatoin problems. For example, what happens if the Ami frame changes when the VCR is in the middle of its own frame? I don't know whether this will be a problem. I haven't tried this yet, but I will as soon as I get enough hardware to do it. (I need an A520 or something similar so I can record to tape). - steve (koren@hpmoria.fc.hp.com) ## Subject: Problems! Date: Sat, 16 Nov 91 2:42:28 MET From: Michael Franke This is posted for a friend of mine: Problem in Imagine (old version): I made a sort of a complex group (something like a human figure) out of some objects in the detail editor, loaded the entire group in the cycle ed, animated it and saved it again. I still had to manipulate the attributes for rendering and therefore I reloaded the (now cycle-)object into the detail editor (as a group), changed the att- ributes and saved every single object again with its new attributes. I also saved the entire group. When I tried to reload that object again into the cycle ed, Imagine claimed that it can not load it, because it's not a (proper) animated object. Who can give me a hint how I can get rid of the cycle stuff in the object files? It would be quiet a lot of work to reconstruct all of it! Please give help, thanks, Nikolai Luckow of bildo academy berlin _____________________________________________________________________ / / / We're here to give you a computer, not a religion. / / -- attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga / / ------------------------------------ / / Michael Franke (franke@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de) / (____________________________________________________________________/ ## Subject: color list program Date: Sat, 16 Nov 91 17:44:33 EST From: Sandy Antunes Hi! Re: the color list recently reposted, I wrote a program a while ago which basically is that list as an executable-- it opens a windows (a lot like less), asks which color and which shade you want ("color" = your basic red,blue,orange, etc) then displays all the entries on the list that fall near that range, i.e. if you want several things similar to "light orange" you will find them. Trivial, yes, but also it saves having to remember where you put the color list, since executables can be anywhere on the path. So, I'd like to know if it's worth putting on an ftp site or is it just too useless? Please send EMAIL (save our net! reduce clutter!) if you'd like a copy... sandy ---------------------------- antunes@astrod.astro.psu.edu Sandy Antunes "Lights! Camera! Action! Timber!" ## Subject: ColorBurst vs. other stuff Date: Sun, 17 Nov 91 14:09:36 PST From: Harv@cup.portal.com Rick Tillery drove up to my place in L.A. from his place in Sandy Eggo yesterday and brought with him his ColorBurst and Syquest drive. I own a DCTV and a HAM-E (with the extra "blur" switch :-) and I am what I'd consider to be an expert user of both of them (this is not to say that I prentend to have used all the functions of BB's IP software.. in fact I hardly ever use it at all, preferring ADPro Version 2). I've also been playing with the DCTV 1.1 software which Digital Creations gave to me some weeks ago (and which they promise is almost ready to release.. but I digress...) Well, we hooked up Rick's CB Box, taking both DCTV and HAM-E out of the RGB food chain and we got a very purple display on my new 1084SD-1 monitor. After much farting around with connections, we determined that Rick's special CB RGB cable has a short in it, and the Green RGB gun was not being displayed at some times. Wiggling the cable and cursing at it, we finally found a position in which we got a clean display. Oh.. we also had to diddle with two adjustment screws on the CB box itself. Apprently, in this respect, it's not all that different from HAM-E, requiring adjustments to get rid of flashing pixels when its moved from its "home" Amiga to someone else's. Anyway, after more diddling and futzing, we got a very solid and clean display. Then on to his syquest drive, for which it took us about an hour to concoct a mountlist entry since I have a 2090a controller. After a few phone calls to other Syquest/Amiga users, we made a mountlist entry that worked just fine. Probably not optimum, but I'll post it if anyone wants it. Hardware and software problems out of the way, we started to load pictures into the CB. Here is where my jaw started slapping against the floor. I have seen probably hundreds upon hundres of DCTV and HAM-E (both REG and HAME mode) pictures, and I've made many hundreds of them myself. I've used Imagine, Scenery Animator, Vista Pro, my Epson ES300-C 24 bit flatbed color scanner, ADPro, and many other 24-bit-capable software packages. I am familiar with all this stuff. I have learned to adjust my vision to DCTV's and HAM-E's inherent weaknesses (and believe me, BOTH of them have SERIOUS weaknesses). Well, to put it simply, the ColorBurst's display simply blew me away. Neither DCTV nor HAM-E can hold a candle to it. Period. I wish you all could have been here to see the pictures we displayed off Rick's drive and the ones I created, with him sitting here, off my Scanner. It was simply brilliant. The detail is razor sharp. The colors are vibrant, and well-saturated. There's no artifacting, no false rainbows, no smearing, no fringing, no color banding. Despite all the problems of hooking it up and getting it adjusted and dicking around with the syquest mountlist... the end result of seeing this little box display these incredible pictures on my 1084SD-1 was worth every minute of it. Rick was sitting at my side the whole time. He will confirm my statements. I am not overstating my high impression of this thing. Now... the CB has major problems and those are mostly with its software. The paint program is crap. The thing loads IFF24 files VERY slowly, even from RAM. They can be converted into its own proprietary "fast load" format with a bit of software that comes with it but those files all grow to be about 1 Meg each, and then storage becomes problematic. ADPro doesn't support it, as it supports FC24, DCTV, HAM-E, and such, so yyou're left to deal with CB's own software which leaves a LOT to be desired. Further, M.A.S.T. is now kaput, so future support for this box is in limbo. Gary Raynor, its Australian Developer, is now hard at work on his own CB replacement, using similar technology and all-new software (hopefully) tentatively to be called "OpalVision" which will most likely be marketed in the USA by Centaur Software. When, and how much, I do not know. Creative Computers in L.A. (whose owner also owns Centaur) still has a small pile of ColorBursts in stock and they will surely be happy to sell you one. But good luck ever getting better software for it than what comes with it. However, I will make the following statement, as silly as it may sound.. in spite of its shortcomings, I would gladly, right now, this minute, trade both my DCTV and HAM-E together for a ColorBurst as it exists right now. Its display simply outclasses either of them by leaps and bounds. When I scanned a pinup girl on my ES300-C, resolved it using ADPro into 768x480, saved it as IFF24, and displayed it on the CBurst, I said to rick... "this display is incredible!" Rick said to me "This scanner is incredible." :-) He had come to take his CB for granted. I had come to take my scanner for granted. It was, as they say, one of those "magic moments" for both of us. Regards, Harv ## Subject: Y-Axis and Maps Date: Sun, 17 Nov 91 16:56:46 CST From: rcarris@shumun.weeg.uiowa.edu (Randy Carris) I was under the impression that the Y-Axis had no effect on wrap X and or Z brushmaps. After some frustrating moments trying to get decent results out of the altitude(bump) map, I discovered that this axis does indeed have an effect. It would seem that the size of the Y value loosely conrolls bump height/depth. If too small, you get small bumps or none. If too large you get a pixilated color map. I found the best results for my particular project had a Y axis approx 1/4 the radius of the sphere. Can anyone explain this to me? I didn't have time to exoperiment with other kkinds of maps, but does this apply to wrap x flat z or visa versa? I doubt it would work the same for flat xy maps as it is nesessary to use Y to control the depth of the map on the object NOT the bump depth. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Also, I'm having trouble with filter maps too. It would seem there is a relationship between the Y axis of the map (again wrap xz) and the value for filter in the attributes req. I thought that a filter map would override the filter setting in attributes. I'm having the asme problem someone had earlier when they couldn't get a filter map to be completely transparent for white values of 255. I'm using Imag. 1.1 by the way. I am useing a grayscale image with white areas that are 255 on all guns. I would expect these to become completely transparent and the darker areas to be translucent or opaque. instead I get some clear areas with lots of "milky" areas. There are no solid areas, and not nearly as much contrast. Does the Y axis have some control here too? If it does could someone explain the relationship for me so I can expect somewhat consistent results from the rendering? (I know I'm probably asking the impossible of a program like this, but For any kind of efficient work, I do need to be able to predict me results.) Whew... Thanks! Randy Carris ## Subject: testors paint Date: Sun, 17 Nov 91 18:58:44 GMT-0500 From: Scott Matthew Krehbiel I've been having some fun creating models in imagine, rather than with glue and paint. That is, I've been buying models of ships and such, and measuring them and creating them in Imagine. I only have one problem. Exactly what is Gull Grey? Or any of the other strange colors that Testors paint uses? Are these the same colors that were posted earlier? I looked through the list, and didn't see some of the strange names that Testors uses, and I was wondering if anyone has some values for those. I've been thinking about buying the colors I need as I go, then playing with color values until I get it to look right, but wanted to see if this information is already available somewhere. Thanks Scott scottk@hoggar.eng.umd.edu ## Subject: Monitor Date: Sun, 17 Nov 91 16:28:40 PST From: jake@melmac.umd.edu (Rob Borsari) I just uploded my 1950 object (monitor not year) to hubcap in OBJECTS. I just slapped it together by eyeballing my 1950 so it is not very true to scale. Let me know what you think of it if you use it. -R- jake@melmac.umd.edu Rob Borsari "Bourne to be wild" ## Subject: Colors? Date: Sun, 17 Nov 91 19:59:13 MST From: bscott@isis.cs.du.edu (Ben Scott) (hopefully this is the right way to submit messages to the list, here) I'm a relative beginner in Imagine and am of course having troubles, I think mainly because I tried to read the manual. Anyhow, part of my problem is that I'm having a real hard time getting predictable colors out of the raytracer. Today I managed to make some progress, in that I can get a few colors out that I ask for, but not all. I'm trying to get the border of a 3-D Logo to be red or reddish, but it keeps coming out blue or black even. If I try to make it green, it comes ou;t green OK. Other parts of the logo can be red, and show up as red, so that throws out the theory that there's no red light in the picture (what with my blue sky and green ground, it was an idea anyway), and even so I have plenty of white lights, a medium gray ambient light, and even a bright red light shining directly on it. I've tried setting colors in various combinations, setting the reflection to coincide with the colors, even setting reflect to the opposite, and finally turning it off again, no help. (I'm having many other problems but this one is the current important one) . <<<>>> -- .---------------------------------------------------------------------------. |Ben Scott, professional goof-off and consultant at The Raster Image, Denver| |Internet bscott@isis.cs.du.edu, or call the Arvada 68K BBS at (303)424-6208| |--------------------------------------..-----------------------------------| |"My brothers and sisters all hated me,||The Raster Image IS responsible for| |'cause I was an only child!"--Weird Al||everything I say! ** Amiga Power**| `--------------------------------------'`-----------------------------------' ## Subject: filter Date: Sun, 17 Nov 91 20:18:24 PST From: kevink@ced.berkeley.edu (Kevin Kodama) well, i finally had a minor breakthru with filter maps-i was trying to make a chain link fence with a filter map, and kept "seeing" the holes, instead of their being completely clear. Also, i could see the edges of the plane i had mapped my filter map onto, even though it was supposed to disappear. i had specular off, filter set to 255, etc...to no avail. also, i had the full value set to 255. still, i could see a distinct difference between what was supposed to be clear and what was actually just sky... i had been using dpaint for my 2 color filtermap. on a lark, i loaded the image into black belts ip program, and refilled the white areas with a true 255,255, 255 white, and resaved the image. Voila, the transparent parts of the map were completely transparent ! so, is dpaints white 16,16,16 not the same as a 24 bit 255,255,255 white ? or does imagine not convert it properly when it converts the image into 24 bits? curious kevin ## Subject: mem fragmentation and Imagine Date: Mon, 18 Nov 91 8:00:16 MST From: Steve Koren Has anyone else noticed memory fragmentation problems in Imagine? Here's my situation: I have a 5 mb system, and I'm building a world composed of various types of buildings. I have an object which is a "building-block" for buildings - I can stack them up, etc, to form larger structures in the stage editor. Each one is fairly small (about 5K on disk). My current world is composed of about 30 of these things, and also a few other small objects. If I load this world after a reboot, I have about 1.8 mb of free memory. However, if I load the stage editor and simply move objects around without loading any new ones, the system gets slower and slower, and I have less and less free memory. The end result is that it takes me 30 to 45 seconds to move an object (on an '030), and I have less than 500K of memory free. If I keep going my machine eventually crashes due to a lack of memory. I can work around this particular problem by rebooting the machine every 15 minutes or so. However, there is another effect of this which isn't so easy to get around. I'm trying to make a 500 frame animation of this world. I start the system making the animation. On the first frame, it loads in all the objects, and I have the 1.8 mb free. Then the world is "freed" and the process is repeated for the second frame. However, for each frame I have less and less memory, and my system runs completely out on the 16th frame and won't process any more frames, requiring me to reboot and start again. This is annoying because I can't just let the system sit unattended and make frames like I want to do. (Oh, and each frame gets slower and slower to generate: the 1st frame takes about 15 minutes, and the 15th takes over 1.5 hours. After I reboot, the 16th is down to 15 minutes again). Anyone have any clever ideas for getting around this? My world isn't all _that_ big. After I quit Imagine, I am down to 2.5 mb of free ram (versus 4.3 before I started), and my memory is fragmented into ~ 10K non-contiguous pieces!! It seems like I have enough memory (since I have 1.8 mb free the first time around), but I still can't make the animation I'd like to due to these fragmentation problems. - steve PS - I'm curious about whether this message will appear on the mailing list - I'm not sure that the address I'm using is working properly. ## Subject: ColorBurst vs. other stuff Date: Mon, 18 Nov 91 08:50:12 EST From: bobl@graphics.rent.com (Bob Lindabury, SysAdm) rutgers!cup.portal.com!Harv writes: > Well, to put it simply, the ColorBurst's display simply blew me away. > Neither DCTV nor HAM-E can hold a candle to it. Period. I wish you all > could have been here to see the pictures we displayed off Rick's drive > and the ones I created, with him sitting here, off my Scanner. It was > simply brilliant. The detail is razor sharp. The colors are vibrant, > and well-saturated. There's no artifacting, no false rainbows, no > smearing, no fringing, no color banding. Despite all the problems > of hooking it up and getting it adjusted and dicking around with the > syquest mountlist... the end result of seeing this little box display > these incredible pictures on my 1084SD-1 was worth every minute of it. Ok ok. To be expected. Have you seen and used the Firecracker? I think this would be more of an Apples & Apples type of comparison since both boast 24-bit RGB displays. If you converted that CB display to NTSC, do you think it would be equal to DCTV or better or worse? > Rick was sitting at my side the whole time. He will confirm my > statements. I am not overstating my high impression of this thing. I'm sure. I felt the same way when I first used the DCTV and when I first used the Ham-E and when I first used the Toaster. Of course, I had been spoiled previously because I own a TARGA. > Now... the CB has major problems and those are mostly with its > software. The paint program is crap. The thing loads IFF24 files > VERY slowly, even from RAM. They can be converted into its own > proprietary "fast load" format with a bit of software that comes with > it but those files all grow to be about 1 Meg each, and then storage > becomes problematic. > > ADPro doesn't support it, as it supports FC24, DCTV, HAM-E, and such, > so yyou're left to deal with CB's own software which leaves a LOT > to be desired. > > Further, M.A.S.T. is now kaput, so future support for this box is > in limbo. Gary Raynor, its Australian Developer, is now hard at work > on his own CB replacement, using similar technology and all-new > software (hopefully) tentatively to be called "OpalVision" which will > most likely be marketed in the USA by Centaur Software. When, and > how much, I do not know. Creative Computers in L.A. (whose owner also > owns Centaur) still has a small pile of ColorBursts in stock > and they will surely be happy to sell you one. But good luck ever > getting better software for it than what comes with it. I must say the above is an overwhelming list that surely tells me *not* to consider this device as an addition to my assortment of graphics tools. Unless, of course, the price dropped to rock-bottom. > However, I will make the following statement, as silly as it may sound.. > in spite of its shortcomings, I would gladly, right now, this minute, > trade both my DCTV and HAM-E together for a ColorBurst as it exists > right now. Its display simply outclasses either of them by leaps and > bounds. When I scanned a pinup girl on my ES300-C, resolved it using > ADPro into 768x480, saved it as IFF24, and displayed it on the CBurst, > I said to rick... "this display is incredible!" Rick said to me "This > scanner is incredible." :-) > > He had come to take his CB for granted. I had come to take my scanner > for granted. It was, as they say, one of those "magic moments" for > both of us. Yep. I'm sure the display is incredible. But no more incredible than any true 24-bit RGB board, eh? At this point in time there only seems to be a single choice for a true 24-bit board with realtime paint capabilities and RGB output. That board seems to be the Firecracker from Impulse. I've used the GVP Impactvision and it does *NOT* have realtime paint. In fact, most of the software that is available for it is buggy betaware. If and when it ever comes to fruition, it may be a usable tool, but as it stands now it's just so much expensive junk. It just seems so odd to me that you can obtain great 24-bit display boards for the Mac for around $700 and that the TARGA boards have been capturing and displaying RGB 24-bit and 16-bit images as well as NTSC for the past 6 years and we *STILL* can't obtain a solution for the Amiga that isn't a kludge or doesn't have some *serious* limitations and bugs. What is the problem folks?? I wish for the day when I can obtain a board that is as simple to use and works as well as my TARGA 16 board has for the past 6 years that plugs into my Amiga. Maybe it's time to write TrueVision a letter. > Regards, Harv -- Bob The Graphics BBS 908/469-0049 "It's better than a sharp stick in the eye!" ============================================================================ InterNet: bobl@graphics.rent.com | Raven Enterprises UUCP: ...rutgers!bobsbox!graphics!bobl | 25 Raven Avenue BitNet: bobl%graphics.rent.com@pucc | Piscataway, NJ 08854 Home #: 908/560-7353 | 908/271-8878 ## Subject: Re: testors paint Date: Mon, 18 Nov 91 13:32:25 EST From: reynolds@fsg.com (Brian Reynolds) Scott, Gull Grey is the common name for one of a series of grays that the USAF uses on its fighter aircraft. All of the colors used by the US military are specified in a document called the Federal Standard 595 a (FS595a for short). If you look at the instructions for your model, bottles of Polly S (and other brands) paint, documentation (the ... In Action series from Squadron Signal, and the Detail & Scale series from TAB (I think) are good starts) you will see a 5 or 6 digit number that correctly specifies the color. The numbers are set up with different series for gloss, semi-gloss, and flat (the columns in the book), for different colors (the sections of the book), and different shades (the rows). I believe 36xxx is flat gray. The government will sell you a book with a full set paint chips and the International Plastic Modeler's Society sells a book that cross references FS595a with paints from various manufacturers. The IPMS normally has an advertisement in Fine Scale Modeler for their book (it's not the same ad for membership). If you are interested in getting these books I can probably look up more detailed information. Fine Scale Modeler and the IPMS publications are very good sources for detailed information on model building. Brian Reynolds "... a drone from sector 7G." Fusion Systems Group reynolds@fsg.com -or- ...!uupsi!fsg!reynolds ## Subject: Filter probs Date: Mon, 18 Nov 91 16:58:30 EST From: spworley@Athena.MIT.EDU Indeed, DPaint's white (15,15,15) is really only 15*16=240, 240, 240 on a 0-255 color scale. The alternative would be to make DPaint black equal 15 on a 255 scale. That's even worse. You can still use DPaint white, though! Use "Full scale value" to change the "transparency level" to 240 instead of 255. Good luck! -Steve --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Worley spworley@athena.mit.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Subject: Re: Filter probs Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 01:56:09 -0500 From: Udo K Schuermann spworley@Athena.MIT.EDU writes: > Indeed, DPaint's white (15,15,15) is really only 15*16=240, 240, 240 on > a 0-255 color scale. The alternative would be to make DPaint black > equal 15 on a 255 scale. That's even worse. If Imagine used a scaling factor of 17 (16+1) for mapping 0-15 onto 0-255 the problem would have been eliminated entirely. Of course, using a transparency level of 240 (15*16) will take care of the problem, too, as Steve said. ._. Udo Schuermann "So you cut all the tall trees down/and poisoned the ( ) walrus@wam.umd.edu sky and the sea/You've taken what's good from the Seeking virtual memory ground/and left precious little for me." Midnight Oil ## Subject: Re: Stage editor is confused. Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 7:21:08 MST From: Steve Koren A few days ago I wrote: > Either the stage editor or myself is confused. I believe it is the > stage editor, but I'm willing to listen to the possiblity of the > alternative. I've since figured out one of the problems I was having. (Well, two actually). I thought I'd reply to myself in case any other new users were having similar difficulties. > 2. I have a single object in the stage editor, called, "BLDG". I > manually place this object at 125,500,125. I go into the "Action" > sub-editor and modify the position bar for this object. I set a 100 > frame count, and I have the object start and end at 125,500,125. > Just for grins, I also create a 101st frame at the same position. In > my mind, the object should occupy 125,500,125 for all 100 frames. > However, when I quit out to the stage editor, the object is now at > some random location such as 87.34,129.25,191.30. What is it doing My problem there was that if you set a frame count of 100 on the first "position" bar, the object's position gets "tweened" between the position you set, and some other unknown spot. The workaround is to set "1" as the last frame. Then the object seems to stay put OK. Hope this helps somebody. It had me confused for a bit! - steve ## Subject: Re: Colors? Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 10:05:09 EST From: johnh@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (John J Humpal) > I'm having a real hard time getting predictable colors out of the > raytracer. Today I managed to make some progress, in that I can get a few > colors out that I ask for, but not all. I'm trying to get the border of a > 3-D Logo to be red or reddish, but it keeps coming out blue or black even. > If I try to make it green, it comes ou;t green OK. I'm not sure I understand what's going on here. Let's take a look at a single letter (or whatever), in your logo. Is the body of the letter a separate object from the edge? If it is, you shouldn't have a problem using different colors. If the body and edge are part of a single object, you would need to enter Pick Faces, select all of the faces that make up the edges of your object, then enter Attributes and change the color. Remember to resave the entire object when you've finished. Hope that helps some. -John John J. Humpal -- johnh@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu -- short .sig, std. disclaimer ## Subject: Stage editor is confused. Date: Sun, 17 Nov 91 11:00:42 MST From: Steve Koren Either the stage editor or myself is confused. I believe it is the stage editor, but I'm willing to listen to the possiblity of the alternative. I have not end of problems with this thing. Here are four. 1. I load a bunch of objects into the stage editor, move them around, and save the changes. At this point I can go out of the editor, come back in, load the stage, and everything is fine. However, if I go into the detail editor and modify *any* of the objects used in that stage, when I re-enter the stage editor, the scene is destroyed. By "destoyed", I mean that objects are missing, some are the wrong size, most have polygons missing, etc. This is annoying, because every time I change an object in the scene, I have to enter the stage editor and completely recreate the scene, which takes a long time. 2. I have a single object in the stage editor, called, "BLDG". I manually place this object at 125,500,125. I go into the "Action" sub-editor and modify the position bar for this object. I set a 100 frame count, and I have the object start and end at 125,500,125. Just for grins, I also create a 101st frame at the same position. In my mind, the object should occupy 125,500,125 for all 100 frames. However, when I quit out to the stage editor, the object is now at some random location such as 87.34,129.25,191.30. What is it doing there? It stays there for all 100 frames. I can manually put it back where it should be, but of course the next time I quit the stage editor it goes back to the odd place. I'm confused. 3. A similar effect to the above occurs with the "size" bar. I can set it to the default of, say, 32x32x32 for my object for 100 frames. When I exit to the stage editor, the size of my object has now become something odd like 52x191x41. Why? 4. I set "align to path" for the alignment bar of the camera. It sort of aligns to my path, but it pays no obvious attention to the "Keep Y Horizontal" box that I have set. The Y axis is tilted about 45 degrees when I go back to the stage editor. I can level it horizontally through the transformation menu, but I can't get it to stay that way. I'd rather not have all my animations tilted 45 degrees! What's up? The "size" and "position" problems don't seem to happen with the orientation of the object even if I do the same thing with that bar. Help!?! I got this software to do animations, but all these things are effectively preventing me from doing so. - steve (koren@hpmoria.fc.hp.com) ## Subject: Re: mem fragmentation and Imagine Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 13:41:01 EST From: alan@picasso.umbc.edu (Alan Price) I have an A3000/25/50 with 2MB chip and 4MB fast ram. I always have a problem similar to the one you mention about fragmentation during repeated use of the stage editor and moving back and forth between it and the detail editor. Once I have finished arranging and testing, I usually reboot before the final 'run'. However, I have never run into the problem you mention about having memory reduced as the renderer moves on to the next consecutive frames. This includes scenes which bring my RAM to down below 1MB for each image, but I always get it back before the start of the next. This has worked on sequences 100 frames long. The only thing I can think of, is in the case of an animation involving a moving camera. Frame 1 may render quickly, but as the camera has moved further into the 'set', with a variety of possible changes (a reflective or refracting object filling a larger area of the image, for example) may cause a drastic change in the time it takes to render. I had one animation of the camera swinging around a figure seated at a table and was surprised to find that the render time varied dramatically soley due to the angle at which the camera was looking at things. I know that probably does'nt help much. I just thought I'd make an observation. I'm curious to know if anyone else has this problem. AP. ## Subject: Mem Fragmentation Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 14:36 EST From: "Marc Rifkin" With respect to memory, I have noticed (for what it's worth) that Imagine seems to dynamically allocate memory each frame depending on its world size and then actually starts to give back memory towards the end of each frame. Marc Rifkin Integrative Technologies Lab, Penn State University 5F Mitchell Building, University Park, PA 16802 814-863-8062 or for you normal people, r38@psuvm.psu.edu "Say, that's a nice bike!" ## Subject: Camo Causing Crashes? Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 16:32:01 PST From: Daryl T. Bartley Just a quick question about the camo texture. It keeps crashing my machine! And while many many things I do in Imagine do this, I didn't expect it from a texture! Is there some odd thing about camo that causes this? Every time I have tried to use it, no matter how simple the object, it bought the farm. Anyone have ideas as to why? I'm running on a (insane laughter, straightjacket being tightened) 1 meg 2000. Any help is appreciated. Daryl Bartley dmon@cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu ## Subject: Camo bug on 68000 Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 18:37:42 -0800 From: mcinnis@lll-crg.llnl.gov ( James McInnis) Daryl Bartley asks... >Just a quick question about the camo texture. It keeps crashing my machine! I had this problem with camo on my stock 68000 Amiga 1000. It seems that the first version of camo crashed on the 68000, I ran it succesfully on a 68030 A 2000. I sent the disk back to Impulse, explaining the problem, and they quickly sent a replacement that fixed the problem. Of course, now I have a 3000, so it doesn't matter! So see about getting the camo texture upgraded or wait for 2.0 (which, one hopes, will have the fix.) Jim ## Subject: Just wondering Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 21:48:22 CST From: mikel@sys6626.bison.mb.ca (Michael Linton) How can I put Imagine animations to a frame accurate VCR. What I mean is so that I don't have to load the entire anim into ram first, then play it back while recording. What kinds of software/hardware is required to control the playback etc. Is it required that I render an animation in ANIM format, or can it be done in Imagine format. Just curious. Michael. --- (Michael Linton) a user of sys6626, running waffle 1.64 E-mail: mikel@sys6626.bison.mb.ca system 6626: 63 point west drive, winnipeg manitoba canada R3T 5G8 ## Subject: Re: Camo bug on 68000 Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 22:25:54 PST From: Daryl T. Bartley Aha! Thanks for the help. It was driving me crazy! I think I'll try and wait for 2.0, and perhaps some hardware upgrades! :) Thanks again. Also, while I'm posting to the list, I might as well ask another question. Is there any way to get a pseudo-acceptable water effect using disturb? I know the best way is to use a brushmap, but with my teeny weenie system, that's not very easy. So, is there any way to get CLOSE to a watery surface? Daryl Bartley dmon@cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu ## Subject: Cylinder Bending Date: Wed, 20 Nov 91 09:42:51 CST From: Wayne Haufler 283-4160 Hello, Its been awhile since I tried this, so I can't describe what I did in detail, but I had problems trying to bend a basically cylindrical object in an arch about 30 degrees by conforming it to a sphere or a cylinder. I was trying to 'arch the back' of a space shuttle object. I tried a few different locations of the object's axis, but got really strange results. Has anybody tried to do anything similar, or has some experience with the 'Conform to Cylinder' feature? I may try some more tests and get back with more detailed info. Thank you in advance. __ Wayne A. Haufler [Christian/SW Engineer/XLib'er/Amigan] \\ /\\ /\\ //_ haufler@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov MDSSC - Houston \/--\// \//__ Hobby:"Exploring the Use of Computer Graphics and // Animations To Support Christian Endeavors" ## Subject: Single frame control Animation Date: Wed, 20 Nov 91 12:26:10 -0500 From: mbc@po.CWRU.Edu (Michael B. Comet) In regards to the message about single frame control animation: It sounds like you want to merely append many small animations into one long one. If this is the case, then all you need is really a frame accurate VCR ($$$) and some sort of 'genlock' to get the video signal out of your amiga. You may be able to obtain a cable to take the 23 pin video out from the amiga, and into something which takes RGB. I currently, have a firecracker, and the break out cable which takes a DB23 pin connector on one end, and then has 4 BNC's on the other, seperate RED, GREEN and BLUE plus SYNC. The point is, the cable also attaches to the back of my A3000, so I can get video directly out of it. One problem: not many VCR's take RGB, (i don't have one.) However, I recently heard ofthe commodore A520. This takes the 23 pin, and instead of making it into RGB, makes it into standard composite video, (RCA cable in this case). So, if you want to run animations onto to tape, you could merely put down the first part, then delete it from you Amiga, and then set the vcr to start at the point you want, and cue up the animation. As for triggering it, I am not sure how. I dont't think Imagine takes a GPI trigger. But here is another idea. Use the imagine format, and have it play about 20 frames of any frame over and over. This way when it starts, you can press the spacebar to stop it, before it the real animation starts. Now right after those 20 frames, have it play another frame, ie the first frame of the animation. This will enable you to press spacebar until exactly the first frame is on the screen. Now set your VCR rolling, and when you want, press F1 or F2 and so on depending on the speed you wish the animation to run at. I have to admit, there is a high chance of error, but with a frame capable VCR, if make a mistake, you should be ablee to only have to slice off a frame to go back to it again at the most, really you should be able to set it to start at the frame you messed up on. If you want to do true single frame recording though (usually done only with 24 bit), you'll need a single frame controller ($$$$). The cheapest I can think of is the Personal Single Frame control. However, the preffered method, (I am wait for price drops) is to use a re-writable optical video disk. (I'll probablbe waiting several years!). Hope this helped. I have yet to do single frame yet (my firecracker took up the last of my funds), but I have been thinking of makeing a long animation also, and using the technique you were asking about. If I ever get around to it, I'll let you know what happens. Mike C. mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: Imagine List now Online on Portal Date: Wed, 20 Nov 91 13:11:17 EST From: spworley@Athena.MIT.EDU For those of you who read this mailing list from Portal, you no longer need to tie up your mailbox any longer; the list is fed directly into its own message base in the Amiga mesages section. I am removing all current Portal Email addresses from the list; I would assume most of you will find it easier to read postings from the message base. If, for some reason, you still want Email piped in, please mail me and I'll reinclude you. This only applies to the people who read the list from the Portal on-line services BBS- the rest of you will be unaffected. -Steve --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Worley spworley@athena.mit.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Subject: Firecracker 24, opinions Date: Wed, 20 Nov 91 18:46:18 -0500 From: mbc@po.CWRU.Edu (Michael B. Comet) The first thing I can say about my impressions of the firecracker are WOW! My dad has a toaster, and there is a SIGNIFICANT difference in the quality of the images i see. Note: part of this may be due to the fact the the toaster outputs composite, while the firecracker seperate RGB which is a much purer and cleaner signal. In fact, I think it's the highest quality signal available. I am using a Panasonic RGB monitor to view the images, and so I keep my C 1950 which doesn't flicker. 2 monitors is a great way to go if you can afford it, but obviously you don't have to, since the firecracker itself always outputs the normal amiga video as a loop through. With my setup, In workbench, I notice alot of flicker on my panasonic, from the firecracker. I would beleive then, that if you were to simply use one monitor, (it couldn't be the 1950, it would have to take the 23 pin cable , 15khz) you would get flicker. My advice, try to obtain a second monitor. As for the basic quality, the images it shows are clean and crisp. Most of the work I do uses the 768x482 size format, though it can take 1024x768. Impulse reccomend the lower resolution image, and in my experience the higher 1024 resolution doesn't really gain any extra quality. Light 24 is a superb program, and the Renderpaint feature alone makes it worth buying the firecracker. It handles gradients smoothly, and easily. I use it often to render an object I am working on to see how it looks in 24 bit, since it will render faster in the paint program alone, than if you were to render it in imagine. The price i beleive is around $1000 still from mail order, but you should be able to get them down a little lower. Note: Unfortunately, the "use firecracker 24" in imagine has yet to be implemented, even as of version 1.1, but 2.0 should support it for direct viewing of rendered images. Right now, you have to go into light 24 to view a picture. One more thing, if you own Vista Pro, you should see the images in 24 bit displayed on the firecracker. I wasn't very impressed when I bought Vista, but the HAM and Hires images don't do it justice. Needless to say, very good looking in 24 bit. All in all, the firecracker is a great card, and I am very happy with it. It should be the second to best quality card out. The only one better than it that I have read about, is a new card called the Rembrant, I think it's by progressive peripherals. But it will cost about 4 times as much I beleive. And as for the GVP 24, I really can't say how good it is, but once again, I think the firecracker is cheaper. If you have any technical questions, I would recommend you call Impulse, I'm sure they would be glad to help you. Mike Comet mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: Single-frame for LESS Date: Wed, 20 Nov 91 19:09:40 EST From: alan@picasso.umbc.edu (Alan Price) Howdy. While there's discussion going on about single-frame recording, I would like to throw in my two cents. I'm going to describe a method which I like to think could be considered as 'beating the system', or the 'analog-hacker rig-it-anyway-you-can' system. I've used this method to create an 8.5 minute animated film which has been doing pretty well at various film/video festivals. Anyway, if you are interested in a way to get your animations out to a broadcast quality medium for a hardware cost of $500 or less, read on. NOTE: This note turned out rather long. I consider it worthwhile information, I hope you do too. I am attempting only to suggest a legitimate alternative to the expensive hardware costs of single-frame recording. Presently, the cheapest video deck that can do true single-frame accurate recording is a S-VHS JVC deck that sells for about $7000 (with TimeCode card). As previously mentioned, the cheapest software controller for this deck would be the Personal SFC for about $500. This is way beyond the range for most of us working as individual artists. A primitive work-around is to compile anims on your Amiga, play them back through an encoder onto a video recorder in lots of chunks, either making your best-bet at pausing the deck on and off to make seamless 'edits' (not very likely), or to rent time on a video editing system some- where, or go to your local school's video media department and haggle for access to one, in order to edit all these 'chunks' together. In this case, you are at the mercy of the quality of your encoder/genlock as well as the quality of the VCR you are recording on. (Same with the latter: if you have a $7K VCR and a $30 A520, what's the use?) This is OK for playing around or testing motion, but for any large scale or serious projects, it's rather futile. So.... my solution? GO TO FILM!!!! Yes, film. 16mm color negative will give you better color saturation, better contrast ratio, better gamma level, better resolution, etc, than ANY video recorder or encoder can provide. The only competition would be if you could use 1" video, and even that would only be in terms of resolution, NOT color saturation or contrast. As you may know, most quality television commercial productions are shot in film for that reason. (35mm AND 16mm.) And what's more, there's nothing quite as exciting as when you get your film back from processing and project it on a 12 FOOT WIDE SCREEN! I am NOT talking about using a 'film recorder'. Those too, are very expensive devices. I'm talking about setting up a 16mm camera with a nice lens in front of your RGB monitor in a darkened room. Next question: Isn't film ridiculously expensive? Answer: NO, 3 minutes of film stock is by far more expensive than 3 minutes of video tape, BUT 16mm film equipment is CHEAP compared to video equipment. You can buy a used 16mm Bolex camera for as low as 250 dollars (Though I have known people to buy Bolex cameras for as little as $25 at yard sales or flea markets. You might even ask your grand-parents if there's one in the attic.) If you buy a Bolex new from a commercial dealer, you'll pay more like $1500. But that's still cheap compared to video equipment. Beside, you can run around and shoot live-action movies with the thing, too! A Bolex can hold a 100' roll of film internally, which is 3 minutes worth. A 100' roll of Kodak color negative film costs about 25 dollars, and about 30 dollars to process AND get a positive print of. Obviously, once you have your animation on film, you can get it transferred to video at various levels of quality. Do it at your local video store for 20 bucks or so, or pay a film/video lab to professionally transfer it to the video format of your choice with a flying-spot laser system such as a Rank-Cintel. Doing it this way will make it look like you mastered on 1" or D2, or better. Another advantage to note is that color negative film has a huge latitude for exposure and color-correction when the lab prints it for you. Also, film has a longer shelf-life than video tape. (Imagine the awful feeling one gets in the gut when you look at the video tape that the computer just spent five days rendering to, and there's a big 'drop-out' right in the middle of it. This will NEVER happen to film.) Here's what I've set up: I have written an ARexx script that runs as a background task while Imagine is busy rendering frames. After waiting an interval estimating the length it takes to render each frame, the ARexx script checks to see if the pic file exists yet, and if so, uses a display program to bring the pic up on screen. It then sends a message to the serial port, which sends one of the pins high, thus triggering a relay I wired up using Radio Shack parts, which in turn triggers the motor drive attached to the Bolex to shoot 1 or 2 frames (or more, depending) (The motor drive is something I also built myself, not requiring much work and only about $40. Motor drives manufactured for the Bolex can be bought commercially.) The Arexx script then systematically deletes the pic file in order to avoid filling up my measly 50MB drive. This method relies on only one thing for 'top' quality, and that's how good your RGB monitor's display is. This obviously would include display boards output too, such as DCTV, HAM-E, FC24, etc. Most Bolex cameras have a nice set of lenses. (If you look for a used package, make sure it has a lens or lenses, if not, you could wind up paying just as much or more than you paid for the camera to buy an individual lens.) A 25mm lens is the 'standard' focal length lens for 16mm. A 50mm is good for shooting your monitor because it will help 'flatten' out the curvature of the screen. Avoid glare and reflections by shrouding the camera/monitor set-up with black-out cloth, or just render during the night and go to sleep happy. Since the camera and film just sits still if you interrupt the process for any reason, you'll be ready to pick right up again at any time. With video, you have to always rely on Time-code accuracy, and the deck has to sit in pause and search, and do pre-rolls, all things that can be troublesome until you've thoroughly sunk your life savings or your boss's budget into it. I have this system _working_. I also just did some rendering with a friend using his DCTV. It looked real nice running at 24 frames per second on a big screen. (Though shooting off an RGB monitoris considerably sharper.) If anyone would like more information on this techinique, send me a note, I'll show you my ARexx script and how to wire the relay to the serial port (with proper disclaimers, ofcourse:) and any other info you might want, like where to start looking for cameras, etc. If anyone has doubts about the quality, send me a SASE envelope and I'll send you a section of 'workprint' of my last film. You could look at it with a slide projector, etc. I've made three prints of the film itself, and have not professionally transferred it to video. Though I do have it on VHS by using an inexpensive 'film-chain'. Send me a blank SASE VHS tape and I'll give you a copy of the film. I hope this helps some of you budding animators who've got the desire but not the 'goods'. ## Subject: (Re) Firecracker 24, opinions Date: Wed, 20 Nov 91 19:13:08 -0800 From: clin@nike.calpoly.edu (Chihtsung Jeffrey Lin) Just wondering. Can Firecracker do animations in 24-bit? Jeff :-) ## Subject: Memory use for brushmaps Date: Wed, 20 Nov 91 20:31:45 MST From: Steve Koren Question for you Imagine gurus: lets say I have an object to which I attach a brushmap. Then I load 10 instances of the object into the stage editor. When I render this scene, does Imagine load the same brushmap 10 times (as it does with the object definition)? If so, that could get to be very memory intensive very quickly. Is there any way to have it use the same brushmap data? I wish one could do that for objects also. I often load an object into the stage editor many times and position each one differently. If Imagine had the ability to load the definition once and just store the positions and orientations for each new instances, that would save a bunch of memory in some cases. - steve ## Subject: Rendering times with an '040? Date: Wed, 20 Nov 91 20:27:10 MST From: Steve Koren Has anyone run Imagine with one of the Progressive 68040 cards? I'd be curious to find out how much it improves rendering times. Imagine is fairly speedy now on my 68030, but supposedly an '040 at 24 mhz has almost 4 times the floating point performance of a 68030 at the same clock speed. Since ImagineFP is, I assume, heavily floating point intensive, the '040 should speed things up nicely. Anyone have any specific numbers for Imagine times? One nice thing about these cards is the price: Go Amiga has the 2000 version for $1595, which is only $200 higher than a 33 mhz '030. It seems like anyone looking at an '030 upgrade might want to consider the '040. - steve ## Subject: Firecracker 24 & Animation :( Date: Thu, 21 Nov 91 09:44:39 -0500 From: mbc@po.CWRU.Edu (Michael B. Comet) The only 24 bit display device that runs on the amiga that can do animations in real time (that i know of) is DCTV. However, I recently read, that one would be better off sticking to the higher quality device (ie firecracker) and upgrading to more equipment later, (and in the meantime useing say,production houses). The firecracker can display 24 bit images, but nowhere near the speed to make an animation. It usually takes several seconds to load up a pic in Light 24. So, to animate with it, you'll need to single frame control, or use the film technique as described above. (interesting solution). Mike C. mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: Re: Firecracker 24 & Animation :( Date: Thu, 21 Nov 91 10:26:48 EST From: Mark Thompson > The only 24 bit display device that runs on the amiga that can > do animations in real time (that i know of) is DCTV. While I have not seen it myself, the Rambrandt board from Progressive Peripherals is supposedly capable of 24bit animation to some degree. I am uncertain how high a resolution can be used and still obtain 30 fps, but I believe 320x200 is no problem. Of course this board is a real graphics board whereas the Firecracker is merely a display device (a dumb frame buffer as we call them in the industry). The Rambrandt uses a 40MHz 34020, an optional 40 MFLOP 34082 FPU, and up to 8MB of RAM. Of course all this power doesn't come cheap....around $4K. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' Mark Thompson CONCURRENT COMPUTER | | --==* RADIANT *==-- mark@westford.ccur.com Principal Graphics | | ' Image ` ...!uunet!masscomp!mark Hardware Architect | | Productions (508)392-2480 (603)424-1829 & General Nuisance | | | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ## Subject: Re: Camo bug on 68000 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 91 22:20:09 CST From: telepro!James_Hastings-Trew@access.usask.ca (James Hastings-Trew) In a message dated Wed 20 Nov 91 01:06, Daryl T. Bartley Aha! Thanks for the help. It was driving me crazy! I think I'll try DTB> and wait DTB> for 2.0, and perhaps some hardware upgrades! :) DTB> Thanks again. DTB> Also, while I'm posting to the list, I might as well ask another DTB> question. Is DTB> there any way to get a pseudo-acceptable water effect using disturb? DTB> I know the DTB> best way is to use a brushmap, but with my teeny weenie system, DTB> that's not very DTB> easy. So, is there any way to get CLOSE to a watery surface? Yes. Put 3 disturb textures on the surface at different wavelengths, amplitudes and orientations (rotations) and you should get acceptable water effects. I have put disturb textures on surfaces and morphed from one object to another. I had the disturb textures in different positions and orientations, and transposed them on the surface by 2X the wavelength on the Y axis (local) on the second object, and got good moving water surfaces that way. -- Via DLG Pro v0.985b --- James Hastings-Trew telepro!JAMES_HASTINGS-TREW@access.usask.ca --- -> If everyone in China jumped at the same time <- subliminalmessagewith -> would they bring back TWIN PEAKS? <- subtlebutdeviousplan. ## Subject: More single-framing to film Date: Thu, 21 Nov 91 17:26:45 EST From: alan@picasso.umbc.edu (Alan Price) Lawrence Kesteloot, President of Virginia Tech SigGraph, (lkestel@csugrad.cs.vt.edu) received the posting I made about single- frame recording to film through channels other than this list. He asked some questions that help clarify a few matters. Others on this list have expressed interest in this, and I am preparing a document that illustrates my set-up. If anyone else wants a copy when it's done, I'll be glad to send it. Meanwhile, here's the response to Lawrence's note: Lawrence, I'll attempt to answer your questions below: > The question I'd like to ask is whether or not you got any problems > with the 30 frames a second/24 frames a second conflict. This, in it's most strict sense, is not a problem. When transferring your finished film to video, a professional service uses a system that 'spreads' the frame information accurately across the difference in video frames. If transferring on a less expensive film-chain, like your local photo-store's, a special five-bladed shutter projector is used to erradicate any apparent 'flicker' caused by phase-shift between the two frame-rates. HOWEVER, if you are creating an animtion that is designed to be frame-accurate with an existing sound-track and you have meticulously counted frames in terms of 30 fps (and using the 'elapsed time' indicator in Imagine's menu bar, which I wish could be user-defined.) then you should shoot the animation to film at the same 30 fps. Most film productions that know they are shooting film for TV shoot at 30 fps for the best possible compatability. This would only apply if your end product is to be on VIDEO only. If you do want the film to work for theatrical screenings, then compose or readjust your soundtrack to 24 SMPTE time code in the case of Midi stuff, or use the traditional method of film sound-work and transfer the sound to 16mm audio stock and make your frame-count on it. >I did a bunch of computer animations (mostly ray-traced) with 8mm >film (running 18 frames a second), and the retrace was so bad I >could hardly see the animations properly. I could actually look >at the film itself and see thick black lines through the picture. The 'retrace' you mention is the scan rate of NTSC video. Video runs at 30fps, (to be exact: 29.97 fps) but the scan rate is actually 60Hz. Each video frame is broken into two 'fields' (ala 'interlace') where every other line of a total of 525 is drawn left-to-right down the screen and the persistence of the phosphours (sp) of the monitor retains the first set of lines while the alternate set is being scanned. When shooting film of a TV set at any speed OTHER than an exact 29.97 frames per second will result in some kind 'phase-shift' allowing the film to record the vertical blanking signal of the video frames, first in one position, then slightly in another, giving the 'rolling bar' look. Or the speed could be so far off that it's just a wild flicker. For people with a camera that is crystal-controlled to run at EXACTLY 24 fps, it is recommended to use a shutter angle of 155 degress for best results. In other words, it's very tough to do. One way I've acheived succesful results with a film camera shooting computer animation as it plays on the screen, is to slow the playback speed of the animation down to 1/4 of the original, then run the camera at 6 fps rather than 24. A shutter speed at 24fps was 1/48 sec., so at 6fps the shutter speed is 1/12 sec. 1/12 sec allows the scanline to go by four times, resulting in film clear of any 'roll bars'. Playing the film back at 24fps ofcourse brings the animation back up to its proper speed. The same formula could be applied to your S8 camera. This confirms your observation: >I also took a bunch of 35mm still photographs, and found that any >shutter opening less than about 1/8th of a second would cause problems >with the retrace. ..Did you set the shutter speed to anything? The optimum shutter speed for shooting an exposure of your monitor would be a full second. This allows the scan to complete a total of 60 times. It would also allow you to use a low ASA film stock which would result in a very fine-grain, high-res image. When doing the single frame approach I outlined, you simply adjust the motor-drive to expose each frame accordingly. I have used 1/5 sec and 1 full second exposures (on different systems) and gotten very good results. >And, out of curiosity, how did you do the motor shutter release? >I built half of one last year to set off my 8mm, but could not find >a motor strong enough to actually push the shutter release cable >(my 8mm camera had no other way of taking a frame). The Bolex has a 1:1 drive shaft on it for the use of animation motors. The film-advance mechanism is tied directly to this shaft. If it is turned slowly, the next frame will be moved into place and then exposed for however long it takes to get the shaft the rest of the way around. You can buy these motors, which usually have a shutter speed of 1/5 or 1/10 sec., or make one. I made one using a DC voltage-controlled gear-head motor cannabalized from one of those goofy miniature satelite dishes. (ok, they have their uses.) There are also surplus catalogs where they can be had for 20 bucks or so. Or you local used electronics store like my local "Vulcan Electronics" (with a poster of Spock on the front window and the guy seems to find the price for everything somewhere on the ceiling.:) The situation you describe is a camera that does not have a drive shaft but a socket for a cable release to trigger the single frame. First of all, a problem is that this means the shutter speed is pre-set when single framing, probably something like 1/60 or 1/40 sec. This will not work to avoid scan-lines. Some cameras like this, however, have a switch that makes the shutter act like the 'bulb' setting on a 35mm still camera: as long as you hold the button down, the shutter will stay open for timed exposures. The Bolex camera can ALSO do this. This trigger mechanism requires a lot more torque than the 1:1 shaft, though. I have a freind who made a device to trigger his this way. He went to a junk yard and pulled the solenoid that drives the power door-lock from a car door, A 12volt power supply and parts for a timer circuit from Radio Shack and viola! He used it to drive across country with the camera pointing out his windshield, taking frames every 30 seconds or so. It was an incredible film. >Our club here has done tons of animations, we just >can't get them onto tape! Ok, put them on film, buy a projector at a flea market or somewhere, and show them on a giant screen at your next meeting! AP. ## Subject: More 3D information for some Date: Thu, 21 Nov 91 15:04:35 PST From: worley@updike.sri.com (Steve Worley) If you have a good noise filter, wading through the posts in alt.models can often turn up some neat ideas that are quite applicable in 3D modelling. In the past, I've seen sources for real-world blueprints, color charts for military vehicles, insignia sources, and various little snippets of information like what color wingtip lights are and how often they should blink. Also, many of you realize how useful plastic model kits can be if you want to hand-digitize them, and this newsgroup is THE place to ask about the availablility of certain models, and questions about which brands are better. You do have to search for the gems in the mud, though, but I find it more than useful enough to spend the time. Just a hint for everyone who can't get enough information. (Like me!) -Steve ## Subject: Re: Camo Causing Crashes? Date: Thu, 21 Nov 91 12:04:06 CST From: mikel@sys6626.bison.mb.ca (Michael Linton) Daryl T. Bartley writes: > Just a quick question about the camo texture. It keeps crashing my machine! > And while many many things I do in Imagine do this, I didn't expect it from a > texture! Is there some odd thing about camo that causes this? Every time I ha > tried to use it, no matter how simple the object, it bought the farm. Anyone > have ideas as to why? I'm running on a (insane laughter, straightjacket being Hmmmm, interesting. I have renderd the camo texture on a 3.5 meg A500 and on a 6 meg A3000, and a 10 meg A3000, and have had no problems at all. There must be someting wrong with the texture. Maybe you should try it on a friends machine, and see if the same thing happens. If it does send your disk back to Impulse, and ask for a new one. Is ir possible that you are running out of ram? Try to render it again, and pull the Imagine screen down and click on the Workbench. Then watch the ram go down. If it crashes when your ram get really low, that could be the problem. Hope this helps. --- (Michael Linton) a user of sys6626, running waffle 1.64 E-mail: mikel@sys6626.bison.mb.ca system 6626: 63 point west drive, winnipeg manitoba canada R3T 5G8 ## Subject: Re: More 3D information for some Date: Thu, 21 Nov 91 21:56:56 EST From: reynolds@fsg.com (Brian Reynolds) There is also rec.models.rockets (flying model rockets) for scale spacecraft and rec.models.rc for the RC crowd. If rec.models.railroad passes (I don't think the vote has started yet) they should be a pretty good source too. There are several "mini-CAD" systems for doing layout and scenery design and for fabricating railroad structures. Model Railroad always has a set of plans each month. They have varied from locomotives, to assorted rolling stock, stations, mines and other industrial sites and buildings. The Plastistrut catalog is also a good source. The last time I got a catalog (which shows dimensioned cross sections of all the structural pieces they sell) they threw in a free set of plans for building a swinging railroad draw bridge (it rotates about a center pivot instead of lifting into the area). Plastistrut's plans are cross referenced with their catalog. (guess where they like you to buy the bits and pieces from? :) You could use a set of plans and the catalog to extrude all the structural members, chop them to fit, and then build a model. Brian Reynolds "... a drone from sector 7G." Fusion Systems Group reynolds@fsg.com -or- ...!uupsi!fsg!reynolds ## Subject: how can I do this easily? Date: Fri, 22 Nov 91 10:40:12 MST From: Steve Koren Has anyone discovered any easy ways to do these things? - I have a staging file which contains perhaps 75 to 100 objects. Each of these references an object in /Im_Objects/*. I want to move the objects to a different location in my filesystem, but since the Stage Editor remembers the path names, I have to edit the objects from the Action editor to change the pathnames. Well, OK, but this is slow and tedious when you have 100 objects to modify. Has anyone figured out a better way to do them all at once? - I want to insert, say, 200 frames in the Action Editor such that my current frames shuffle to the right but otherwise remain the same. Any ideas? Perhaps there is something obvious I'm overlooking here? I'm using 1.0, if that matters. (Yeah, I just the disks to Impulse to get the 1.1 version). - steve ## Date: Fri, 22 Nov 91 11:28:56 -0700 From: HURTT CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL *** An Amiga Art Contest!!! *** Sponsored by CATPAN BBS The Society of Amiga Graphics Artists and the CATPAN BBS are proud to present the Amiga Graphics Art Contest. This competition has several different categories, including IFF pictures, HAM/IFF-24 pictures, and Ray-Trace. The IFF category includes all pictures with 64 colors or less created with programs such as Deluxe Paint. HAM/IFF-24 includes pictures with anywhere from 4,096 colors to 16.7 million, such as those created with Digi-Paint, DCTV, HAM-E, etc. Ray-Traces can be any Amiga resolution, but the final product must be direct, untouched output from such programs as Imagine, Lightwave, or Turbo Silver. The grand prize winner will receive either a $30 gift certificate at Software Etc. or $50 Donator Access on the CATPAN BBS. The rules are as follows: 1) All pictures must consist of completely original work by the artist. If the category being entered is IFF or HAM/IFF-24 the pictures must be completely hand drawn. If the category is Ray-Tracing, all objects, brushmaps, etc. must be the creation of the artist. The pictures must not have appeared in any publications/disk collections. 2) The artist may enter a maximum of one picture into each category. In other words, they may turn in a maximum of 3 pictures (one HAM/IFF-24 picture, one IFF picture, and one Ray-trace). 3) Each picture must be accompanied with some information on what software was used to create the picture, and some techniques the artist used to create that picture. All entries should be uploaded to the CATPAN BBS at (303)494-4825 (USR Dual Standard). 4) All pictures will be judged by local Amiga SysOps in Colorado. One grand prize winner will be chosen from the various categories, and will receive either a $30 gift certificate redeemable at Software Etc., or $50 Donator Access on CATPAN BBS. Second, third and fourth place winners will also be chosen and awarded $20, $10 and $5 Donator Access respectively. 5) All pictures must be turned in by midnight, December 31, 1991. Winners will be announced on the CATPAN BBS by January 5th, and prizes awarded. Everyone is welcome to join in, and if you have any questions, please leave them to either Charles Holt (Grimalkin), or Chris Hurtt (ZeppeLin) on the CATPAN BBS. ## Subject: more model info Date: Fri, 22 Nov 91 11:00:49 PST From: worley@updike.sri.com (Steve Worley) >> and this newsgroup is THE place to ask about the availablility of >> certain models, and questions about which brands are better. You >> > Ok, I'll bite. I recently bought an AT-AT and this should keep me >busy for some time. I figured I'd warm up on it before pursing one of my big >goals- the Millenium Falcon. My question is this: anyone know of a good source >of CAD like plans for Star Wars ships? If your big on Star Trek I know that >theres a couple big resource books that have schematics for EVERYTHING! I'd >sure like this for Star Wars. > Also, how well does the digitising method work? I'm just measuring by >hand right now, but am considering buying a DigiView. Hell, for that matter >what is everyone's opionion on DigiView? Think it'll ever support digitizing >24-bit? > > Thanks! > > Chris > hurtt@tramp.colorado.edu I don't know of any Star Wars schematics, but you could ask on alt.models and rec.movies.sf. Digiview is really passe'-- if you want to slow scan digitize, get a DCTV which has (IMHO) better quality and supports color. As a slight side benefit, you get a wonderful display device... :-) :-) There is an article in the December AVID magazine about building 3D computer models from plastic model kits. It talks about different sources, measurement methods, and overall design planning. In January another article will follow it up to describe complex shape digitizing, like boat hulls and the saucer section of a popular spaceship. Hope this helps. -Steve ## Subject: Re: more model info Date: Fri, 22 Nov 91 16:54:42 EST From: reynolds@fsg.com (Brian Reynolds) Bantam books published a set of Star Wars blueprints. I don't know if they are still in print. You may be able to find a copy at a comic book store. Bantam also published at set of books with design drawings and sketches. The ones I can think of are "The Art of Star Wars" (contains the entire script with various drawings, sketches, photos, and artwork interleaved), "The Star Wars Sketchbook" (contains preliminary sketches of the various ships and droids), and sketchbooks for the other movies. Brian Reynolds "... a drone from sector 7G." Fusion Systems Group reynolds@fsg.com -or- ...!uupsi!fsg!reynolds ## Subject: Satellite models Date: Fri, 22 Nov 91 16:46:52 PST From: worley@updike.sri.com (Steve Worley) This was just posted to alt.models, if you're interested in space vehicles. Ed Chadez and other space-dudes, you might want to look into this. -Steve >>I am looking for persons interested in modeling satellites from the >>U.S. space program, the Soviet space program, and other countries. >> >>Also, does anyone know of any kits that are available dealing with >>this subject. I haven't found any, so I have had to make all of >>my models from scratch. Thanks. >> >You might want to talk to Planetary Society in Pasadena, CA. >I use to work there and saw some paper and plastic models >for Magellen, Galileo, and Voyager probes. My brother is doing >a 3D model of Galileo base on schematics provided by JPL >but, it'd be easier if I get him a real model. > >Planetary Society >65 N. Catalina Ave >Pasadena, California 91106 >(818)793-5100 > >-Viet > vho@gnu.ai.mit.edu ## Subject: Attributes Date: Fri, 22 Nov 91 14:12:55 PST From: worley@updike.sri.com (Steve Worley) A while ago I suggested we try to compile a set of attributes into a library of surfaces we could all use. I put the 20 or so attributes I had built up on Hubcap. Haven't heard anything from anybody since then. Once again, I ask you to either email me your favorate sets of attributes (either the saved files from the attributes requestor, or the raw numbers from the attribute settings), or just upload them to hubcap. I will volunteer to collect and assemble them into a single set we all can use. Wouldn't it be really nice to just load "dirtyglass," "asphalt" or "mirror" instead of figure out all of the parameters every time? When Imagine 2.0 comes out we can extend the library to include common texture and brushmap settings. -Steve -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Worley spworley@athena.mit.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Subject: Re: Satellite models Date: Fri, 22 Nov 91 23:12:54 EST From: reynolds@fsg.com (Brian Reynolds) Here is the address for the company making the paper models of US space probes: Space Craft International 953 East Colorado Blvd., No. 201 Pasadena, CA 91106 They make models of Voyager, Galileo, Magellan, and Hubble. The kits were released in approximately that order, and the newer ones get better and better (e.g., Hubble has metallic coating on the solar collectors and they include a piece of metallic foil for the telescope tube's heat shield). Each kit includes information about the spacecraft and its mission, and suggestions for building science fair style displays. The kits go for about $15, and can be ordered direct, or may be in stock at your local science museum. Although I haven't finished any of them (I'm still trying to figure out how to convert them into 3D computer models), I like them a lot. The print is very good, both sides are registered, and the laser cutting is very clean. There is also a company selling resin models of US space probes. Their address is: Lunar Models 5040 Grisham, #102 Rowlett, TX 75088 Phone: (214) 475-4230 9:00-17:00 CST These kits are expensive. A 1/25 scale Lunar Rover is $57.95. The Voyager is $74.95. Future releases are listed as Hubble in 1/72 to match the Monogram Space Shuttle, and the Viking Mars Lander in 1/25. Lunar Models is primarily a science fiction company. They have a bunch of Lost in Space and Space 2001 models. I have a Klingon Bird of Prey (movie version) that they did, and I was not too impress. The instructions were minimal, and there was a lot of flash and drop outs in the mouldings. IMHO they are over priced, however I have not bought any of their recent kits (the fact based series is a new line), and apparently each production run (and series of models) could wind up being done by a different contractor (which maybe good or bad). I have ordered their H.A.L. 9000 wall plaque kit (January 12, 1992 is Hal's birthday) and if you're interested drop me a line and I let you know what I think of it when I get it. While I'm on the subject of science fiction (and tending to ramble), Star Tech is also a good source for books, plans, and models. Their address is: Star Tech P.O. Box 456 Dunlap, TN 37327 In case anyone needs a disclaimer, I am just a customer of these companies and I receive no compensation for recommending them. Brian Reynolds "... a drone from sector 7G." Fusion Systems Group reynolds@fsg.com -or- ...!uupsi!fsg!reynolds ## Subject: a good chrome Date: Sat, 23 Nov 91 10:45:00 EDT From: dan@cs.pitt.edu (Dan Drake) I'm looking for a good chrome. I have tried the chrome.att that steve uploaded to hubcap, but it comes out dark and doesn't look much like the shiny chrome that I want. I'm rendering in 24 bits if it helps any. I have been fooling around with spheres, just trying different things out, and most of my pics resemble cue balls. I'm playing with the reflectance values, but as this takes quite a while to render, (or am I just too impatient?), any help would be nice. Basically, I want to get a silver mirror surface. But I don't want it to be too reflective, as i want to see the shapes that I'm making. I'm really interested in making a chrome person, though this might be more than I can chew. hope this hasn't rambled too much. dan. ## Subject: more nieve new user questions Date: Sat, 23 Nov 91 10:13:31 MST From: Steve Koren I have some "nieve new user" questions. - What is Imagine doing during the "Initializing" phase of rendering? I've noticed that sometimes this goes by in a few seconds, and sometimes it takes minutes. I'm asking because of a curious thing I noticed. I have two projects which I'm comparing. In one, there are over 100 objects, most simple with less than 50 polygons, but some with up to 300 polygons. Some objects have brushmaps also. When I render this project, I have about 2.5 mb of free ram on my 5 mb system, which feels "about right". Then I compare this to another project I have. This one has only 4 objects, none of them very complex (ie, no brushmaps at all, etc). One of the objects is a glass sphere which encloses the others. The glass sphere (actually 2 concentric ones for a hollow effect) was made from the "Add->Sphere" menu option of the Detail Editor. Since this project has vastly less polygons than the above, I'd expect it to take less memory to render. However, I only have 0.3 mb of mem free when I render it in trace mode. Why should it take so much more memory than the above, when both are rendered using trace? Is it the glass? I want to figure this out because my project requires enclosing a large number of objects in a glass sphere for part of the animation. If I can hardly get 3 objects inside the sphere before running out of memory, I don't see any way to get 50 or more in there. Oh, also I notice that all of the memory is allocated during the "initializing" stage but after the objects have been loaded. (Well, a little is allocated when the objects are read, but not most of it). Any suggestions or ideas? Is there something obvious I'm doing wrong in my 4-object world to make it take over 4 mb to render? - steve PS - this is great software though in spite of the few problem I have with it. I find it is easy to loose track of time when messing with it and discover suddenly that 4 hours have gone by since I at down at the system! ## Subject: Chrome Date: Sat, 23 Nov 91 14:45:30 -0500 From: mbc@po.CWRU.Edu (Michael B. Comet) One reason I can think of that the chrome attribute isn't coming up correctly is that you are rendering it in scanline with a black sky and no ground. Problem: Reflective (ie chrome) objects in scanline will only reflect the skycolor and ground objects. You might try makeing the sky a gradient, such as blue to white, and setting up some sort of a ground below the sphere and rendering it in scanline. If you wish the chrome sphere to reflect other objects that are in the scene, you MUST ray trace (*really a bummer*), which will increase the amount of time to render the scene. I have uploaded the same set of attributes, and have found them to be quite helpful. The chrome should work. If you however, choose to have less reflectance, and more object color,. simply start bringing down all 3 reflectance sliders until you the mixture you like. Mike. C. mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: Initialization period of Imagine Date: Sat, 23 Nov 91 14:51:53 -0500 From: mbc@po.CWRU.Edu (Michael B. Comet) In regards to the init. period imagine goes through, i think it loads up the object and brushmaps. Also, it initializes the world setting, the larger the scene layout, the more memory required, (same thing for burshmaps). As for rendering times, the glass is what is takeing up the memory (i believe). You will see drastic increases in memory and time required to trace a scene when Reflectivity and Filtering are used. The reason is, these are recursive functions, so when its tracing the light beam, it will then have to calculate where it hits, and then on from there. You can actually set how many time is will recurse by changeing some default parameters in the imagine.config file. With 2 glass spheres, there will be alot of light bouncing around over and over, rather than say, bouncing of the glass, and hitting a solid object, ending the recursion. So, tracing with reflect and/or filtering is what I beleive is causing the reuslts you notice. Mike C. mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: objects following paths Date: Sat, 23 Nov 91 13:38:42 MST From: Steve Koren I have a path object which my camera is assigned to follow. The camera does indeed follow this path. However, it follows it at the wrong speed. I have the beginning and ending speed for the camera set to 50 units/frame in the Action Editor. However, even if I change this numbers to 1 unit/frame or 500 units/frame, it has no effect - the camera still follows the path at a speed of its own choosing (which is far too slow - it actually moves about 1 unit per frame). Has anyone seen this behavior? I have tried deleting the position bar for the camera and replacing it with another, and the results are the same. The camera follows the path, but pays no attention to the speed I set. I have also tried deleting the path and replacing it with another of the same name, with the same results. I am sure the camera is following the same path I think it is, because 1) I have only one path, and 2) if I change the shape of the path, the camera follows the right new path. The camera position is the same in both the stage editor, and when I render the frame. Oh, the accel and decel frame counts are both 0. I have also tried making two position bars, one for the first frame only and one for the rest of the frames. No luck there either. I have another project which is much simpler (less than 10 objects) and the camera both follows the path and pays attention to the speed. I can see no obvious difference between the two - the position bars are the same, in fact. The only difference is the number of objects I have loaded in each project. What am I doing wrong? How can I get the camera to pay attention to the speed parameters in the position bar when following a path? - steve ## Subject: Acceleration/Decceleration Date: Sat, 23 Nov 91 20:19:08 -0500 From: mbc@po.CWRU.Edu (Michael B. Comet) With regards to Acc/Dec in the stage editor, good question. This is one thing I wish to ask about too. Does anyone know how this works? If so, could you post a message explaining how it works. Just the fact they call it (De)Acceleration and so on is confusing. Is this De or Acc ??? Thanks, Mike C. mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: Re: a good chrome Date: Sat, 23 Nov 91 19:24:50 CST From: mikel@sys6626.bison.mb.ca (Michael Linton) dan@cs.pitt.edu (Dan Drake) writes: > I'm looking for a good chrome. I have tried the chrome.att that steve uploade > to hubcap, but it comes out dark and doesn't look much like the shiny chrome > that I want. I'm rendering in 24 bits if it helps any. I have been fooling > around with spheres, just trying different things out, and most of my > pics resemble cue balls. I'm playing with the reflectance values, but > as this takes quite a while to render, (or am I just too impatient?), any > help would be nice. > > Basically, I want to get a silver mirror surface. But I don't want it to > be too reflective, as i want to see the shapes that I'm making. I'm really > interested in making a chrome person, though this might be more than I can > chew. > I think your problem is that you don't have enough objects to reflect, or you are rendering in scanline, or you don't have a sky or a ground. For chrome to look good you need a sky, and or a ground. Another thing you might try is in the action editor under globals there is text box that says brush name. Get a picture of a room, or trees or something like that, and put the name of the picture in there. It makes a much more realistic looking chrome in some cases. I'm sure you can get something that looks pretty good if you just play around enough =) Hope this helps. --- (Michael Linton) a user of sys6626, running waffle 1.64 E-mail: mikel@sys6626.bison.mb.ca system 6626: 63 point west drive, winnipeg manitoba canada R3T 5G8 ## Subject: Fun thing to try Date: Mon, 25 Nov 91 00:06:45 MST From: bscott@isis.cs.du.edu (Ben Scott) I was playing around and eventually managed to get this to work - it's a kinda neat effect if you have a few spare hours to raytrace an anim. Make a simple landscape - I used a plane primitive, half the default width and four times the default length (I forget the numbers now, but might be 10 and 40 sections), and play around with the magnetism feature to get some lumps in both directions from the plane. Then, make a simple outline of an airplane (oh, that's right, I used "plain" for the landscape and "plane" for the shape...), 2-D is OK, and put it above the plain. Then, a light source above and slightly behind and off to one side of the airplane. Put the camera above and somewhat in front of the plane, looking at the ground, and send the plane scooting by everything. I set up a simple 15-frame animation that way and after raytracing, the result was you see the shadow of a plane moving along the lumpy ground - well, you've seen shots like that in real life and in computer animations, but it's still neat to do. I did end up putting another stationary light source above the plain (actually, it moved with the plain, since only the plain moved - I did it that way to avoid having to move the other light, the plane and the camera) so that the shadows of the landscape on itself wouldn't interfere too much. Just an idea if you run out as I so often do... . <<<>>> -- .---------------------------------------------------------------------------. |Ben Scott, professional goof-off and consultant at The Raster Image, Denver| |Internet bscott@isis.cs.du.edu, or call the Arvada 68K BBS at (303)424-6208| |--------------------------------------..-----------------------------------| |"My brothers and sisters all hated me,||The Raster Image IS responsible for| |'cause I was an only child!"--Weird Al||everything I say! ** Amiga Power**| `--------------------------------------'`-----------------------------------' ## Subject: Re: Firecracker 24, opinions Date: Mon, 25 Nov 91 09:15:39 -0800 From: kevink@lands.ced.berkeley.edu Michael B. Comet writes: >The first thing I can say about my impressions of the >firecracker are WOW! > My dad has a toaster, and there is a SIGNIFICANT difference in >the quality of the images i see. i have a toaster, and am interested in getting a firecracker to view my imagine 24bit images, because of the hassle of having to crank up the toaster each time to see the image, and because the toasterpaint won't load up the 24IFF images generated from Imagine for some reason.(you have to load and save them in a program like Black Belts IP) Is the image quality over toaster *really* that much of an improvement ? In what ways ? i.e. smooth color transitions, edge detail, etc. ? > Impulse reccomend the lower resolution image, and in >my experience the higher 1024 resolution doesn't really gain any extra >quality. hmmm. this bothers me somewhat. One of the main reasons i would consider the firecracker (besides cost) is that it supports the highest resolution currently available-i would be very disappointed if the extra 256 pixels 768vs 1024 a. did not make any discernable difference in image quality. b. was not a recommended resolution by the makers-Impulse. There is a *very* noticable difference between lightwave's 768x482 images vs. their 1530x980 images, even though the 1530 images are achieved thru sampling and antialiasing. i would love more details on this and other 24 bit boards, especially in regards to the Toaster. ( i'm talking just raw screen image quality, not video vs. rgb,etc...:) ) kevin kodama kevink@nervi.berkeley.edu ## Subject: places for big animations Date: Mon, 25 Nov 91 8:23:42 MST From: Steve Koren Now that I've become at least marginally familiar with Imagine, I am planning to make some fairly large animations. The one I am making now will be around 500 frames of 384x440 overscan. I hope to eventually make some up to 5000 frames for recording to video tape. This brings up an interesting point: what to do with it once I finish it! Since this 500 frame animation may be 10 or 15 megabytes, or say 5 compressed, it seems too large to put on an FTP site unless that site has explicitly said it doesn't mind having very large files there. What do other people do with large animations they make? I bet there are a lot of neat ones out there. It would be nice to have an easy way to share them with other people. - steve ## Subject: Re: Firecracker 24, opinions Date: Mon, 25 Nov 91 13:28:17 EST From: johnh@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (John J Humpal) After having used a friend's Firecracker for the past month or so I can say that its output is simply beautiful. It is far and away the best display device for the Amiga that I have seen. I should add that all I have seen is HAM-E and DCTV, besides the FC. The FC outputs RGB, which of course puts any NTSC display device to shame. The colors are bright and vibrant, detail is crisp, edges straight, etc. The software that comes with the FC is serviceable, and the paint program is very powerful although it needs a decent interface. As for resolution, 768x482 is good enough for most of what you do. The 1024x482 resolution is naturally finer, but unless you look very, very closely, you won't be able to tell the difference. I have used 768x482 for most renderings because the 1024 resolution increases rendering time dramatically. -John John J. Humpal -- johnh@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu -- short .sig, std. disclaimer ## Subject: Re: places for big animations Date: Mon, 25 Nov 91 16:16:42 EST From: Mark Thompson > Now that I've become at least marginally familiar with Imagine, I am > planning to make some fairly large animations. The one I am making now > will be around 500 frames of 384x440 overscan. I hope to eventually make > some up to 5000 frames for recording to video tape. You must have a 68040 card or are sticking to scanline mode only because 5000 frames is a BUTT-LOAD of rendering time. I have done only one animation over 500 frames. It was not ray traced and took 5 weeks to do about a 1000 frames on a 25MHz 68030. Don't let me discourage you, I'm just injecting a little reality here. > This brings up an interesting point: what to do with it once I finish it! > Since this 500 frame animation may be 10 or 15 megabytes, or say 5 > compressed. It is not very likely that an animation would compress much more than 10 to 20% using something like lharc, and the animation size can vary drastically depending on complexity. I have one test animation that spans 17MB for only 150 frames. > What do other people do with large animations they make? Right now I have around 50MB of DCTV test and demo animations that I have done. I don't think there are too many ftp sites that have the luxury of limitless space to accomodate huge anims. I think the best thing to do is to put them onto video tape and show them around to user groups, vendors of the products used to create them, at shows, and also submit them to the various animation contests that pop up. However, uploading a few JPEG'd 24bit sample frames to Hubcap would be interesting also. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' Mark Thompson CONCURRENT COMPUTER | | --==* RADIANT *==-- mark@westford.ccur.com Principal Graphics | | ' Image ` ...!uunet!masscomp!mark Hardware Architect | | Productions (508)392-2480 (603)424-1829 & General Nuisance | | | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ## Subject: Long anims Date: Mon, 25 Nov 91 17:51:57 -0500 From: fbranham@prism.gatech.edu (BRANHAM,JOSEPH FRANKLIN) A demo tape seems to be about the only way to show off our talents. I suppose that it would be really neat to make an Imagine Mailing list demo tape. I could submit about 10Megs worth of stuff to such a tape if anyone felt bold/brave enough to take up the project. The person who ran such a thing would possibly need an ftp site for temp file storage for submissions, and I wouldn't mind if they charged a fair price for their troubles. ($8 to $10 per tape + shipping?) Just a thought. Frank Branham ## Subject: Re: places for big animations Date: Mon, 25 Nov 91 16:23:06 MST From: Steve Koren > You must have a 68040 card or are sticking to scanline mode only because > 5000 frames is a BUTT-LOAD of rendering time. I have done only one My current animation is scanline. It renders about one frame per 8 to 10 minutes on my 33 mhz '030. However, I am probably going to upgrade to an '040 fairly soon. I figure at 1 frame/10 min, it should take well under a week of CPU time for 500 frames. Even the scanline render looks fairly good, since I've tried to design the scene such that shadows are not important. Also I have no glass or mirrors. Even trace mode isn't too bad _unless_ you use reflectance, transparency, or alot of shadow casting light sources. If you stick to one or two light sources which cast shadows, trace times are pretty good with Imagine. Glass kills you though (as expected). - steve ## Subject: Spring Date: Mon, 25 Nov 91 15:36:54 CST From: mikel@sys6626.bison.mb.ca (Michael Linton) Here's my problem. I am making an object that has 4 springs on it. I know how to make springs using torus' and extruding along a path, that's the problem. I made one spring and put it with the object then saved it. The result was 2.15 megs! I didn't have enough ram to do a solid or shaded rendering in the detail editor with 10 megs of ram! So does anyone have any suggestions on how I can make a pseudo spring? I though about using a tube, but that doesn't have enough detail for my tastes. Even if I make the spring have half as many points, I can still only put two on the object, and it will be 2.15 megs again..I am running out of ideas. Any input would be appreciated. One more thing. What is the highest resolution of the Firecracker? According to Imagine it is 1024x482. Is this right? If not, what are the other resolutions? Thanks. --- (Michael Linton) a user of sys6626, running waffle 1.64 E-mail: mikel@sys6626.bison.mb.ca system 6626: 63 point west drive, winnipeg manitoba canada R3T 5G8 ## Subject: Firecracker 24 - Yet More opinions and such.... Date: Mon, 25 Nov 91 22:19:21 -0500 From: mbc@po.CWRU.Edu (Michael B. Comet) Okay in response to all of the questions about the firecracker here is another message. (please excuse all the typos and weird characters, i seem to be getting a ton of line noise lately...) The resolutions it operates in are: Width (X) = 384,512,768 & 1024 Height (Y)= 241 & 482. Not, all combinations are possible, ie you could make a 1024x241 or a 1024x482. (I have never used X=512 or Y=241). As for being better than the toaster, someone elses message really summed that up. Definitley better color saturation and much much sharper edges, (I noticed jaggies in one of the toaster pics). Also, the 1024 is better, but for most rendered pics, you're just not going to sit 3 inches from the monitor, inspecting every pixel (at least i hope not!). So, from the standpoint of rendering time and what your eye can truly see, the 768x482 i usually the prefferd mode. I have to admit, if you really had a lot of detail, such as very very fine text. or perhaps, very thin lines you wanted to show up, the 1024 image is the way to go. I don't remember if I mentioned it, (i actually delete mail I send to myself sometimes!), but since the firecracker genlocks the normal amiga video you can run HAM animation or such over 24 bit. Possible uses : an example is if you have jet or helicopter, now you can render a cool picture in Vista-Pro and make your jet fly over some really great looking backgrounds. Another reason is one i ran into this weekend. I rendered this 240 frame (8 sec at 30fps) of these 3 chrome gears rotating around, while the camera did a 360 around that. I decided to make a morphing ground and background. Needless to say, I didn't have enough ram to play it back (even with a full 18 megs). So, i decided I didn't like{ or need the morphing background, but i still wanted a gradient. Answer : I rendered th whole thing over on a black sky, and set the genlock sky box to on in the stage editor globals. Now, everything but the gears are clear over the firecracker. Then I made a slick 24 bit gradient in Light 24. Used the showiff24 function which comes with light 24 {software, and loaded up (had 3 megs free now since it was on black) and played it. I honestly think it looks better with the one 24 bit gradient behind it, than with the other ham stuff.~r Amyways, i understand where all the questions come from, I had to buy my firecracker sight-unseen, but I have not regreted my desicion, to do so. It is by far the best board out on {the market i think unless you have $4000 to get the rembrant. Also, the firecracker WILL work with a toaster. After seeing toaster paint (and using it for quite a while), I don't know how anyone serious about doing 24 bit grapihcs, retouching, digitizing and such {could get by with it. I couldn't see going into to composite a 24 {bit picture for video, unless it was in 24 bit directly. If you use toaster paint frequently, i highly recommend the firecracker, just for Light 24 and for viewing 24 bit pics alone. If you have the means to obtain one, and are looking seriously for a 24 bit card, look no further, the firecracker is a great deal. Michael Comet mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: One more thing about firecracker.!!!! Date: Mon, 25 Nov 91 22:23:15 -0500 From: mbc@po.CWRU.Edu (Michael B. Comet) I forgot to mention, that even though the firecracker only outputs the resolutions i listed before (up to 1024x482), you can make a picture of any size within the constraints of RAM. Ie you could have a 4x4 picture or a 4000x4000 size. You then can scroll around in Light 24 to alter it. This is really great if you plan on taking your work to a high resolution film recorder. (Also, Light 24 allows for the loading saving and altering of brushes, as well as a spare page). Mike Comet mbc@po.CWRU.edu ## Subject: Re: places for big animations Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 09:57:09 EST From: Mark Thompson > My current animation is scanline. It renders about one frame per 8 to 10 > minutes on my 33 mhz '030. However, I am probably going to upgrade to an > '040 fairly soon. Ah, yes, that sounds reasonably manageable. > If you stick to one or two light > sources which cast shadows, trace times are pretty good with Imagine. Shadow casting really sucks up time in the 1.0 version of LightWave. It is supposed to be much faster in 2.0 and I hear that a 68040 helps shadows dramatically. The image I just finished has 17 shadow casting light sources and takes 6 hours to render. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' Mark Thompson CONCURRENT COMPUTER | | --==* RADIANT *==-- mark@westford.ccur.com Principal Graphics | | ' Image ` ...!uunet!masscomp!mark Hardware Architect | | Productions (508)392-2480 (603)424-1829 & General Nuisance | | | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ## Subject: Re: Long anims Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 10:15:49 EST From: Mark Thompson > I suppose that it would be really neat to make an Imagine Mailing list > demo tape, if anyone felt bold/brave enough to take up the project. I like this idea, and I would gladly do it, but I am afraid I wouldn't have the time to invest. I certainly have more than enough disk space (about 700MB free at the moment). If no one else volunteers and you aren't in a rush, maybe I can swing it. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' Mark Thompson CONCURRENT COMPUTER | | --==* RADIANT *==-- mark@westford.ccur.com Principal Graphics | | ' Image ` ...!uunet!masscomp!mark Hardware Architect | | Productions (508)392-2480 (603)424-1829 & General Nuisance | | | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ## Subject: Re: Spring Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 10:34:33 EST From: Mark Thompson > I am making an object that has 4 springs on it. I know how to make > springs using torus' and extruding along a path, that's the problem. > I made one spring and put it with the object then saved it. The result was > 2.15 megs! I though about using a tube, but that doesn't > have enough detail for my tastes. Unless I misunderstand how Imagine does extrusions, extruding a torus is absolutely wasteful. 90% of the generated polygons will be inside the spring and be totally invisible. A torus does not gain any benefit over a tube or circle other than at the endpoints of the extrusion path where it will appear to be a thick hollow spring. The level of detail your spring will have will be a function of how many points along your path the object is "replicated" and how many points define your extruding circle. Depending on how complex your torus was, using a circle instead should save at least ten times the amount of memory. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' Mark Thompson CONCURRENT COMPUTER | | --==* RADIANT *==-- mark@westford.ccur.com Principal Graphics | | ' Image ` ...!uunet!masscomp!mark Hardware Architect | | Productions (508)392-2480 (603)424-1829 & General Nuisance | | | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ## Subject: Re: Firecracker 24 - Yet More opinions and such.... Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 12:19:25 EST From: Mark Thompson > As for being better than the toaster, someone elses message > really summed that up. Definitley better color saturation and much much > sharper edges, (I noticed jaggies in one of the toaster pics). Yes, the Firecracker should definately have better color saturation and more color crispness, but the jaggies you saw are a function of the software used to create the image and not the Toaster display. > Also, the firecracker WILL work with a toaster. After seeing > toaster paint (and using it for quite a while), I don't know how anyone > serious about doing 24 bit grapihcs, retouching, digitizing and such > {could get by with it. Toaster Paint is truly disturbing to work with and DCTV is too blurry for more detailed work. I can't tell you how much I want a good 24bit paint program. But since I just bought a color scanner and I have a few more purchases to make, it looks like it will be some time till I can afford a third display device. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' Mark Thompson CONCURRENT COMPUTER | | --==* RADIANT *==-- mark@westford.ccur.com Principal Graphics | | ' Image ` ...!uunet!masscomp!mark Hardware Architect | | Productions (508)392-2480 (603)424-1829 & General Nuisance | | | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ## Subject: a cheap source of 3D fonts Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 10:49:03 MST From: Steve Koren I was looking around a few days ago for a source of 3D font objects for Imagine. There is a shareware (?) program which will convert TeX fonts to Imagine format. I looked at a sample of those, and they seemed to be very nice, but to use a whole lot of polygons to render the fonts. You can also buy a font package from Impulse with some 3D fonts for Imagine. Here is another cheap way (cheap in memory, I mean) to get tolerable quality 3D fonts. First, get an AmigaDos font in a large point size. The larger the better. I used a 30 point Chicago font, but even bigger would be better. Load up your favorite paint program and generate a 1 bitplane picture with all the letters in it. Save this. Go into the Detail Editor and use "Import IFF" to convert this into an Imagine 3D object. Imagine does a pretty good job, but you might have to select a grid size of "1" and clean up a few points by snapping them to the grid. When you are done, extrude this as far as you want, assign attributes, and voila, a 3D font converted from an AmigaDos font. The process works best if the original font isn't very "fancy". Chicago font works well. Garnet does not. - steve ## Subject: TTDDD, Imagine, and external objects Date: Mon, 25 Nov 91 23:36:06 EST From: cbmtor!caleb@uunet.UU.NET (Caleb J. Howard (Tech Support)) Hello there to the forum. I am currently developing some software to use the TTDDD engine. The software is a plant editing suite that achieves a large degree of realism through the recursive string replacement techniques described in "The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants" (Prusinkiewicz & Lindenmayer, 1990). When I am done, I will give the executable away to anyone interested (not being a believer that information is subject to ownership). Anyway, the generative functions are complete to an extent, and I have been able to render very plant-like stick drawings on my screen using the most rudimemtary of rendering routines. Having added the code to create a TTDDD file for the program (TTDDD) to use, Imagine barfs up a bogus error - "External objects not supported". This implies that the program is recognizing that I am using the same branch segment repeatedly, and that this is inappropriate. I suspect that referancing external objects in the creation of a more complex object was supported in Turbo Silver, but that this feature has been removed from Imagine. Why else would TTDDD, a program designed for use with Turbo Silver support this form of object definition? Is this so? Do we know? If so, WHY would this feature be disabled? Was it buggy? Will it turn up in a subsequent NEW and IMPROVED version of Imagine? (with the approp- riate upgrade fee, of course) Am I whining? I have this really, REALLY lifelike plant on my screen. Its only a stick plant, and it's nearly photosynthesizing. I want to ray trace it! Anyway, any info appreciated. peace -caleb p.s. If you're at the World of Commodore show in Canada (Toronto) I will be giving a seminar on graphics that will include my stick plant. ## Subject: TTDDD, Imagine, and external objects Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 11:33:42 PST From: glewis@fws204.intel.com (Glenn M. Lewis ~) >>>>> On Mon, 25 Nov 91 23:36:06 EST, cbmtor!caleb@uunet.UU.NET (Caleb J. Howard (Tech Support)) said: Caleb> Having added the code to create a TTDDD file for the program Caleb> (TTDDD) to use, Imagine barfs up a bogus error - "External Caleb> objects not supported". This implies that the program is Caleb> recognizing that I am using the same branch segment repeatedly, Caleb> and that this is inappropriate. I suspect that referancing Caleb> external objects in the creation of a more complex object was Caleb> supported in Turbo Silver, but that this feature has been removed Caleb> from Imagine. That is quite correct. Turbo Silver supported External objects, but Imagine does not... but there is an easy solution... read on... Caleb> Why else would TTDDD, a program designed for use with Turbo Caleb> Silver support this form of object definition? Is this so? Do Caleb> we know? If so, WHY would this feature be disabled? Was it Caleb> buggy? Will it turn up in a subsequent NEW and IMPROVED version Caleb> of Imagine? (with the approp- riate upgrade fee, of course) Am I Caleb> whining? Well, I can not speak for Impulse as to why they removed External objects from Imagine. No problem, though... Caleb> I have this really, REALLY lifelike plant on my screen. Its Caleb> only a stick plant, and it's nearly photosynthesizing. I want to Caleb> ray trace it! Great! Here is the solution: Get TTDDDLIB on hubcap.clemson.edu [130.127.8.1] in the directory: pub/amiga/incoming/imagine/TTDDDLIB (release17.shar is the latest, I believe) and load in your object with the "test" program, and write it out again. Ooops, I removed "test" from release17... It is easy... here it is: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- static char rcs_id[] = "$Id: test.c,v 1.3 1991/10/10 19:30:24 glewis Exp $"; #include #include "ttdddlib.h" WORLD *world; main() { world = read_World(stdin); write_TTDDD(world, stdout); } ---------------------------------------------------------------------- And that will make all "external" objects internal by loading them into the structure, and it will write the object back out again, and Imagine will be happy. You will be happy, and I will be happy because you will send in your TTDDD shareware contribution, right? :-) I hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any problems with this process. It should be a breeze. -- Glenn Lewis glewis%pcocd2.intel.com@Relay.CS.Net | These are my own opinions... not Intel's ## Subject: Re: TTDDD, Imagine, External objects Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 14:50:07 EST From: johnh@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (John J Humpal) I don't know why Imagine would cough on your object with an "External object..." error, but have you tried loading your object into Turbo Silver? This won't really help in the long run, but if TS takes the object, you can try saving it from TS and reloading it into Imagine. -John John J. Humpal -- johnh@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu -- short .sig, std. disclaimer ## Subject: Re: TTDDD, Imagine, External objects Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 12:44:25 PST From: glewis@fws204.intel.com (Glenn M. Lewis ~) >>>>> On Tue, 26 Nov 91 14:50:07 EST, johnh@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (John J Humpal) said: John> I don't know why Imagine would cough on your object with an John> "External object..." error, but have you tried loading your object John> into Turbo Silver? This won't really help in the long run, but if John> TS takes the object, you can try saving it from TS and reloading John> it into Imagine. I'm afraid this won't work, John, because Imagine officially does not support external objects. Loading into Turbo Silver and resaving will save only the current "cell" which still will reference external objects. If a person did not want to use TTDDDLIB (why not?) then they could start in a clean cell, load in all the objects and sub-objects, etc., making sure they are placed correctly, and then save all of it as a single object. But that is a pain. See my previous message to this mailing list... -- Glenn ## Subject: recording long anims on videotape Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 13:33:35 PST From: sv001!chu@UCSD.EDU (Patrick Chu) I've just recently joined this group, so I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to ask this question. However, it seems like there are people who can answer this question on this mailing list. Question: What's an economical way of recording long animations to tape? By "economical", I mean a VCR < $1000 and software < $500. Quality is secondary to money (after all, I'm still at the hobby stage; I don't need broadcast quality-- VHS is fine). The low cost may be a pipe dream, but I was reading in this month's _Amiga World_ that there was a device that will save single frames of animation ("crisply", the article said) with accuracy of a few frames on "compatible" (whatever that means) VHS VCRs. No, it's not single frame accrurate, but that's ok. Anyone know about this? The problem, of course, is that I have enough room to render long animations (over 500M right now) and the time (just let it run overnight and during working hours), but certainly not enough memory. In recent notes, members of this group were considering transferring their animations to tape. Are we talking about using very expensive equipment here, or are there alternatives? (since my Amiga 2000 and jumbo hard drive and 68030 loaded with memory has almost wiped me out financially). Thanks for reading this. Any help is always appreciated. ## Subject: Re: places for big animations Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 17:48:40 EST From: alan@picasso.umbc.edu (Alan Price) I suggest you attempt reaching a wider audience than those of us who own Amigas. Get your animation onto video or film, and send it out to festivals, your local public access cable station, video distrubution companies such as Film Threat Video rentals, etc. As you may have noticed my previous bragging, I recently finished an 8 1/2 minute animated film using Imagine (and Dpaint3 in parts). It has shown at four national festivals and has been awarded prizes that have so far paid for the production of the film. (I'm still paying for my A3000, however :) I continue to get mail asking about distribution and showings due to the previous success. It would be really cool to see a flood of animation using the Amiga in festivals like the International Tournee of Animation. Look out Pixar! AP. ## Subject: Re: objects following paths Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 14:40:52 PST From: "Jim Lange" In-Reply-To: WRPYR:koren@hpmoria.fc.hp.com's message of 11-23-91 13:38 Steve Koren writes: >I have a path object which my camera is assigned to follow. The camera >does indeed follow this path. However, it follows it at the wrong speed. >I have the beginning and ending speed for the camera set to 50 units/frame >in the Action Editor. However, even if I change this numbers to 1 >unit/frame or 500 units/frame, it has no effect - the camera still follows >the path at a speed of its own choosing (which is far too slow - it >actually moves about 1 unit per frame). The speed of an object along a path (ignoring de/acceleration for now) is determined by the length of the path divided by the duration you have set for it to travel along the path. Use the path length menu option (forget where it is right off the top of my head) to determine the length. For example, if the length is 100 units and the time is 20 frames, the object will travel at 5 units per frame. The starting and ending speed values only have an effect when the acceleration/deceleration frames are non-zero. They work like this: If, in the above example, you enter 0 as your starting and ending speeds and 5 frames for acceleration and deceleration, the object will ACCelerate from 0 to it's "cruising" speed in 5 frames, then cruise for 10 frames, then DEcelerate for 5 frames down to and ending speed of 0. frame: 1 . . . 5 . . . . 10. . . . 15. . . . 20 \_______/ \_________/ | | acceleration deceleration frames frames The "cruising" speed is determined by the length of the center section divided by the remaining 10 frames (how far the object gets in the 5 frames is dependent on the formula used for acceleration). I think imagine's acceleration/deceleration is very linear (that is, the rate of change is constant--like gravity), therefore the average speed over the acceleration frames will be the average of the starting and ending (cruising) speed. Using this assumption we can calculate the cruising speed. cruising speed = V ave speed in frames 1 - 5 = V/2 ave speed in frames 15-20 = V/2 Since distance traveled = velocity * time, the distance traveled during acceleration = (V/2)units per frame * 5 frames. Total distance = (V/2) * 5 + V * 10 + (V/2) * 5 Total distance is known to be 100 units so we can solve for V: 100 = (5/2)V + 10V + (5/2)V 100 = V(2.5 + 10 + 2.5) = 15V V = 100/15 V = 6.66666... Therefore the objects accelerates from 0 to 6.666 units/frame in 5 frames (at an average speed of 3.333 it moves 3.333*5 = 16.666 units), then moves at a constant rate of 6.666 units/frame for 10 frames (traveling 66.666 units) then decelerates to 0 in the last 5 frames (16.666 units). The total distance traveled = 16.666 + 66.666 + 16.666 = 100. I have not been able to verify the above hypothesis, but it would be an easy experiment to duplicate and measure. When the the starting speed is greater than the cruising speed, the object will DEcelerate DOWN to the cruising speed over the acceleration frames (hence the ambiguity of de/acceleration). The formula to determine the cruising speed given the total distance, starting speed, ending speed, total frames, acceleration frames, and deceleration frame count can be derived as follows: D = Total Distance F = Total frame count f1 = Acceleration frame count f2 = Deceleration frame count v1 = Initial velocity v2 = Final velocity V = Cruising velocity D = ((v1 + V)/2) * f1 + V * (F - (f1 + f2)) + ((v2 + V)/2) * f2 \\_________/ / \_________________/ \\_________/ / \ ave vel / | \ ave vel / \___________/ | \___________/ acc distance cruise distance dec distance Solve for V (several algebraic transformations later) 2*D - (v1*f1 + v2*f2) V = --------------------- 2*F - (f1 + f2) In the special case when the starting and ending speeds are zero and the the acceleration and deceleration frames are each half the number of total frames (f1 + f2 = F), the formula reduces to: V = 2*D / F In other words, the instantaneous speed between acceleration and deceleration is double what the speed would be if constant. More interesting is the special case when the initial and final velocity are both double the constant speed (v1 = v2 = 2*Vc) and the total frames are split between acceleration and deceleration (f1 + f2 = F): 2*D - (2*Vc*.5*F + 2*Vc*.5*F) 2*D - 2*(Vc*F) V = ----------------------------- = -------------- = 0 2*F - F F Since Vc*F = D, the numerator is 0, therefore V = 0. Thus the object will decelerate to a complete stop then accelerate to its original velocity. I have been using the acceleration features to simulate gravity, but because of the flakiness of the stage editor (I also have experienced bugs where objects on paths do not go where they are supposed to) I have not been able to get reliable results. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Lange jlange@us.oracle.com Oracle Corporation {uunet,apple,hplabs}!oracle!jlange ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Subject: Re: places for big animations Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 15:39 PST From: Ivan I Even if your animations aren't up to Pixar quality, most festivals have special awards for Student Animations, First Work for Public Exhibition, ultrashorts, etc. So don't think you're going head to head with the big guns right off; check them out, and if the category fits, enter it! Ivan ## Subject: 3d fonts Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 22:42:17 est From: David Tiberio Someone recently asked about 3d fonts for Imagine. I have been working on some fontsm which were converted from 100 point bitmap fonts, so they are pretty decent. However, they are not 'fine-tuned' for phong shading yet, since it requires many more polygons. If anyone really wants it to be corrected for phong shading, I may finish working on them. There are two fonts, plus three pics of the fonts in action. Note that the fonts are in groups. Each group contains the upper case, lower case, numerals, and some punctation. Enjoy them, and let me know what you think of them. David Tiberio DDD MEN Also, I would like to recommend a new program to all users. I have been using a disk utility called SID 1.06 for a long time now, but today have decided to no longer use it in favor of Directory Opus. It allows a large number of disk volumes and assigns to be placed in gadgets, as well as about 12 custom gadgets. Gadgets can be placed anywhere on the gadget area (they can be swapped around). It can play soundtracker modules, hear sounds, view pics, etc. It also works with Zoo, Lharc, and Arc. I have created custom gadgets that automatically perform the following: uuencode and uudecode files convert from GIF or IFF24 to HAM pics convert from IFF24 to JPEG, or JPEG to IFF24 switch between Pal and NTSC play Imagine or 'the other kind' of animations Oh, it also can read powerpacked text files, which works great, since I already compressed my entire documentation directory. It has an AREXX port also. Remember, 3000 users might want to double check the color settings in order to get the 3d look of the gadgets. It does require scripts and other commands to perform the above operations, which I will consider uploading. Good luck... David Tiberio David Tiberio