IMAGINE archive: collected off of imagine@ATHENA.MIT.EDU ARCHIVE XXI (PART C) Apr. 10 '92 - May 15 '92 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: Enforcer hits w/Trace in 2.0 Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 02:07:39 -0600 From: HURTT CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL I've been working on a particular animation in Imagine for a week now and have rendered it in both scanline and trace. However on my lastest batc h Imagine has been crashing and crashing HARD. I ran enforcer & just Imagine from a reboot. During the palette pass before hitting 50% Imagine makes Enforcer go nuts. I have had up to this point 0 problems with 2.0, but this problem is very consistent. If I render the same frame in scanline however,it works without a hitch. I remember some time back a few people where having problems rendering anims because Imagine wouldn't give back all the RAM when it finished a frame. I wonder if this a similar problem for I was able to render 14 of 45 before having this happen. But then, I cannot get it to render frame 15 in trace for anything. So perhaps it is a problem just with that frame. A little info on the scene: 3 lightsources, all cast shadows, a global brushmap, a "normal" amount of polygons, & brick texture with fully transparent mortor. (736x482) HAM. A sample from enforcer also follows: Program Counter (approximate)= 11CEB1E Fault address =42000000 User stack pointer = 1168E84 DOS process address = 1168230 Data: 0101C9C0 FFFEC78A 0242E220 00000008 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 Addr: 0102A060 42000000 011B442C 01264C24 011AE8BE 01168F38 011B4444 00002E94 Stck: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 01035FE0 01248428 011B4444 011CE188 WRITE-WORD (---)(-)(-) SR=0004 SSW=0729 Write Data= 42000000 ( ) Process Name: ImagineFP I post this mainly for your own information. I'll also contact Impulse about it once I think I have it narrowed down some more. For now, I guess I'll just change my scene around until it renders without dying again. Perhaps in 24-bit rather than HAM? Chris ## Subject: Re: Flashing anims Date: Fri, 10 Apr 92 10:29:58 -0400 From: "Michael B. Comet" >Hi, I just completed an anim with Imagine in anim format. When I try to >display the animimation I get a really strange flash when the animation >loops. I looked at the individual pictures and I don't have that problem. >Please help. > >Joe Cotellese > > Sounds like you selected "NO" for make a looping anim? If you select no for this, then you will get this wierd palette flash at the end of the loop. Select "YES" for create a looping anim, and everything should be fine. Mike C. mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: Re: Enforcer hits w/Trace in 2.0 Date: Fri, 10 Apr 92 8:34:49 MDT From: Steve Koren > Imagine has been crashing and crashing HARD. > I remember some time back a few people where having problems rendering > anims because Imagine wouldn't give back all the RAM when it finished a frame . I was one of the ones having this problem. It has not, as far as I can tell, been fixed in 2.0. Also, Imagine 2.0 crashes on my system with a frequency which makes it unusable. (About 2 times out of 3, it crashes immediately upon startup, and it crashes during rendering for the few times that it does start up correctly. It does this even if I boot from a "raw" AmigaDos 2.04 disk with nothing else running.) I have become quite disillusioned with the quality of the Imagine software and the unprofessionalism of the documentation and the Impulse newsletters. Imagine has a lot of potential, and it is possible to get good results from it, but there are so many problems that it is not worth my time to do so. The gross grammatical and spelling errors in their newsletters reek of unprofessionalism. It is almost as if they didn't care about the impression this gives of their company. When I read the Impulse newsletters, I am reminded of the quality of writing that I have seen grade school students produce. It's not simply "imformal"; it is bordering on illiterate. - steve ## Subject: Re: Offer for club members/developers Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 15:33:30 GMT From: Stephen Menzies menzies@CAM.ORG (Stephen Menzies) writes: >[stuff regarding the RCS offer deleted] >With regards to whether or not this mailing list qualifies as a User >Group, I don't know, but my *guess* is that it would. This mailing list >does have a list of members (for starts). >The deadline for this offer is May31,1992 I did a call the RCS regarding whether or not the RCS offer applied to mailing lists (ie: imagine, dctv, lightwave..). Their answer is yes, providing that a membership list exists or is maintained, the member can prove his/her membership, and that the member is a US resident (at this time anyway). If you have any concerns or questions regarding the possibility of a similar and future offer being made to those outside the US, please call RCS directly: Tel#(514)871-4924 Fax#(514)871-4926 >-stephen >-- >Stephen Menzies >#Internet: menzies@CAM.ORG >#Fidonet : Stephen Menzies @ 1:167/265 -- Stephen Menzies #Internet: menzies@CAM.ORG #Fidonet : Stephen Menzies @ 1:167/265 ## Subject: Re: Enforcer hits w/Trace in 2.0 Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 11:33:41 -0400 From: Greg Jones =I was one of the ones having this problem. It has not, as far as I can =tell, been fixed in 2.0. Also, Imagine 2.0 crashes on my system with a =frequency which makes it unusable. (About 2 times out of 3, it crashes =immediately upon startup, and it crashes during rendering for the few =times that it does start up correctly. It does this even if I boot =from a "raw" AmigaDos 2.04 disk with nothing else running.) = Perhaps the problem isn't in Imagine. For years my Amiga 2000 system would crash on DPaintIII about 1 of out 5 startups. No other application appeared to have this problem. Finally, I determined that the RAM board in my system was causing the problem. The moral to this story, don't be so quick to blame the software, there may be a hidden hardware problem that the instruction sequence in your application triggers. I'm sure if the software was so broken that it crashed 2 out of 3 times on startup this list would be in a constant uproar. Greg Jones jonesjg@dg-rtp.dg.com ## Subject: Re: Enforcer hits w/Trace in 2.0 Date: Fri, 10 Apr 92 10:10:56 MDT From: Steve Koren > appeared to have this problem. Finally, I determined that the RAM board > in my system was causing the problem. The moral to this story, don't I have run several memory checks, and everything is OK. I do have a 68040, and Imagine seems to have troubles with that. If I turn off the copyback cache, Imagine works OK. With copyback cache on, it crashes a lot. Other software works right in either case. > I'm sure if the software was so broken that it crashed 2 out of 3 times > on startup this list would be in a constant uproar. If it happened on every system, yes. I think it's specific to 68040s, or to some combination of things on my system. At any rate, it's annoying. - steve ## Subject: Fun Geometry Question! Date: Fri, 10 Apr 92 12:55:10 -0500 From: Elizabeth E Sack Okay Imagineers (is that like Mousekateers ?), It's time to strap on your 3D thinking caps and figure this out. (these questions are taken from Arthur C Clarke's 'The Ghost of the Grand Banks') 1) You have two tetrahedrons (4 sided pyramid, all sides are equilateral triangles). If you put these together, face to face, how many faces will the resulting geometric solid have? 2) You have one tetrahedron and one pu pyramid (5 sides, square base, the 4 traingular sides are the same size equilateral triangle as a side on the tetrahedron). If you put these together, triangular face to triangular face, how many sides does the resulting geometric solid have? I'll post the answers on Monday. Jeff Hanna Studio J Video Productions InterNet: sacke@gn.ecn.purdue.edu GEnie: J.HANNA5 ## Subject: Re: Enforcer hits w/Trace in 2.0 Date: Fri, 10 Apr 92 12:28:44 PDT From: "R. L. Zarling" >From jonesjg@dg-rtp.dg.com Fri Apr 10 08:37:13 1992 > >I'm sure if the software was so broken that it crashed 2 out of 3 times >on startup this list would be in a constant uproar. Maybe if it were *that* broke, we would be. But there can be no doubt, to anyone who's followed this list for any length of time, that imagine (and Silver before it) have always been quite buggy; the interface is unnecessarily unintuitive; many things don't work the way one would expect; and of course the manual has always contributed more to the problem than the solution. From a professional standpoint, imagine is poorly programmed. From any standpoint, it is embarassingly poorly documented. Support from Impulse insults (literally) my intelligence. Much of this it seems to me would cost little or nothing to correct: just develop a little more professional attitude and respect for the Users. It's too bad that this is still the best program of its kind on the Amiga. --Ray Zarling Professor of Computer Science Calif. State Univ. Stanislaus rayz@csustan.edu ## Subject: RE: Enforcer hits w/Trace in 2.0 - Impulse flame Date: Fri, 10 Apr 92 14:42:43 PDT From: a-spack@microsoft.com In addition to what Steve Koren and Ray Zarling wrote, I have another consideration. It would appear that Impulse is betting on Imagine for the PC to really make them successful. Unfortunately with the attitude we have all come to expect from Impulse, they will probably fail. I suspect users in PC land won't be so accepting of Imagine's (Impulse's) faults. Seriously, how many apps in PC land (or any other platform) are considered the yardstick, yet are as buggy and poorly documented and supported as Imagine? The implication for us Amiga people, is that such a foundering could eliminate Impulse entirely. Has anyone ever suggested to Mike Halvorson that he should subscribe to this list? Sheesh, if he really wants to make more money, make happy customers. Obviously, he (they) are not doing this. - Scott ## Subject: Anim -> back to pics Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 21:48:35 -0600 From: HURTT CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL Ack! I've recently finished an anim in Overscan HiRes. And of course it 's too s-s-s-slow. Unfortunatly due to my ever diminishing HD space I had Imagine build the animation, rather than just rendering the frames and building it myse lf. Is there anyway I can rip the individual frames back out of the animation besid es using Dpaint? The anim is 2.6megs (90 frames) and I seriouslly doubt if I strip ped my 6meg system to the bone I could load up the whole anim. What would be great is if someone had a CLI util that would rip a speci fied frame out of an animation. Then I could write an Arexx program to rip out the f rames , pop 'em thru ADPro to scale them down, and rebuild the anim. Anyone know of such a life-saver or have any other ideas? Thanks! Chris ## Subject: Re: Anim -> back to pics Date: Mon, 13 Apr 92 12:44:37 MDT From: HURTT CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL Sorry about the horrible formatting on that last message. I spent a few hours scouring the local BBSs and came across and program that will rip out individual frames! It's called ATI (Anim to IFF) and though fairly old, works like a champ under 2.04. It runs on WB and requires you enter input for each frame you want out. So, it didn't really help my case out. What did save me was SplitANIM bundled with ANIMBuild and CombineANIM. I was able to split the 2.6meg into 2 1.3meg anims and load them into Dpaint. Moral(?): buy a bigger HD so you can always render every frame! :) Chris ps- if anyone wants I'll put ATI on hubcap ## Subject: IMPORTANT (forwarded) RCS message Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 01:17:57 GMT From: Stephen Menzies Message#1 is forwarded message direct from RCS to ALL present owners of their Fusion40 board. Message#2 is a forwarded message direct from RCS regarding the US special offer and method of payment. --------------------start of forwarded message#1------------------ Anyone with a Fusion40 who's socket U37 contains a lattice: "GAL22V10-15LP" and is experiencing *any* problems at boot, random crashes and very unstable operation with *6.2* motherboards, please notify RCS immediately at: Voice# 514-871-4924 Fax# 514-871-4926 This problem has been solved. The offending part needs to be changed. RCS will ship the new part immediately! Note that this message concerns all Fusion40 users with 6.2 motherboards *everywhere*. Thankyou for your patience. -RCS Management. -------------------------forwarded message#2-------------------- The following is in regards to the announced RCS Management Special Offer to United States (only) Amiga club members and developers. RCS Management *DOES* accept personal checks as payment. However the the order cannot be shipped until the check has been cleared. This check clearing time will be between 3-4 weeks. RCS is not responsible for this delay. This *is* the time required for a US bank to clear a check. RCS Management does NOT have a policy to deal with credit cards do to fact that RCS is not a dealer and generally does sell directly to the public. In otherwords, RCS is not set up to accept credit card payments. As this is a limited time offer, RCS will not be setting-up to deal with credit card payments at this time. RCS apologizes for any inconvienience this may cause. -RCS Management ----------------------end of all forwarded messages----------------- The 3-4weeks required for a US check to pass is not an exaggeration. Last October I brought back a check from Texas and it took the full 4 weeks to pass. -stephen -- Stephen Menzies #Internet: menzies@CAM.ORG #Fidonet : Stephen Menzies @ 1:167/265 ## Subject: RCS Offer Date: Tue, 14 Apr 92 13:24:59 -0400 From: Brian Bishop I called up RCS to get more info on the Fusion-40 offer. Basically he confirmed that their notion of a usergroup is flexible enough to make our mailing list eligible, as long as we can send them the name & number of the leader of the list. So, Steve, is it OK if you start getting 100 phone calls from Canada? Also, shipping is $50 overnight, $10 by ground. He said they don't have a backlog of orders yet, but they did toward the end of a promotion they did in Canada, hence the 3-5 week worst case figure. They include three math libraries with the package: their original, CBM's, and a third that works "5-20% better" with Lattice-compiled executables. The board can hold up to 32 meg, and you can populate as much of it as you want at $175/4 meg. Can someone who has one of these things comment on them??? Brian ## Subject: Fusion 040 answers Date: Tue, 14 Apr 92 13:28:02 -0400 From: Joe Kiniry >Robert J. Jones says... >The $995 price offer on the Fusion40 card is very appealing. When I told a >friend of mine who had just purchased the Progressive Peripherals 040 card >for $1895 he was a little surprised. But he did have a couple of questions >(based on his knowledge of the Progressive Peripherals product) >about the card that perhaps a Fusion40 owner could answer: > > 1. Does the F40 card use an interleaved memory architecture > for speed? (to support Burst mode) Yes, it has interleaved memory. (Supports burst mode fine.) > 2. Is the memory on the card autoconfigurable? Or is a portion of > it autoconfigured and a portion out of the normal memory space? Memory is _not_ autoconfig, it is outside of 'normal' memory space. > 3. In 68000 mode do you keep the autoconfigured memory or does it > all disappear? It all disappears. > 4. Are Commodore Math libraries supplied with the board? Early > product news indicated that Fusion was using the Motorola libraries > rather than waiting for the Commordore software. (Does this make > a real difference?) I don't know which libraries are in use, but I don't think it really matters. RCS is releasing their own math libraries RSN (for a price) which are reported to _significantly_ increase floating point speed. (That's why it's not free.) > 5. Does the F40 support the copyback mode? (I'm told that 20% of > the 040 speed is in the copyback mode. Early reports had it that > the F40 at first did not support the copyback mode.) Copyback mode is fully supported. Most every program I've tried worked great w ith it on even during loading. >None of these questions are intended to knock the F40 card, but the questions >of interleaved memory and copyback mode goes directly to the heart of >performance (I suspect that a non-interleaved design will be somewhat slower) >and the question of memory autoconfiguration will point to how compatible the >card is with your disk and other DMA device controllers. Losing all of the 32 >bit memory when in 68000 could really hurt, but I don't have any >first hand knowledge about what products would need the 68000 mode to run. Even though the 32 bit memory is outside the normal space it doesn't matter muc h. I have a friend with the AdSCSI board with his Fusion 40 and he gets disk trans fer rates from his Quantum and Maxtor very close to 1MB/sec. Since DMA cannot be supported of course then I guess a CPU/interrupt technique is utilized and sinc e you have an 040 you get great rates. Of course, this is to the detriment of ot her tasks during that 1 or 2 seconds. I don't know what would happen if you had a controller which exclusively supported DMA, probably it would be god-awful slow like in the old MidgetRacers. My friend just received an upgrade recently (fre e software with a 28MHz crystal to put on the board) and it sped things up once a gain. RCS is continually releasing upgrades to the software for the Fusion 40, they seem to really support the board well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- I do not speak for RCS, nor am I even a customer. I have some experience with their board and I have experience with the Amiga/Hardware/CPUs/etc. That's all folks ! ---joe kiniry@gauss.math.fsu.edu PS. You can reach the guy that owns the board at jason@htc.martech.fsu.edu and he'd be happy to field direct, specific questions. ## Subject: UPDATE on RCS offer Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 17:41:01 GMT From: Stephen Menzies This is a forwarded message direct from RCS Management regarding their special offer on the Fusion40 board and the subject of US club membership (clarification): --------------------start of forwarded message (summary)----------- Members (anywhere) of clubs BASED in the United States ARE eligible for the special offer. This includeds clubs such as Victor Osaka's (formerly TurboSig) 3D club etc.., special electronic mailling lists (ie: Imagine, DCTV, Lightwave etc..) or any other "club" whose headquarters, base machine.., are located in the US. The "club" must maintain a membership list and the "member" must be able to prove his/her membership. --------------------------end of forwarded message---------------- The problem became readily apparent when RCS started to receive a lot of calls from "members" outside of the US and in fairness to all, phoned me with this clarification. If there are any questions, please, either phone/fax RCS directly or leave a message in this newsgroup/mailing list if it would appear to be of interest to many. Please do NOT send me e-mail (if possible). RCS : voice# 514-871-4924 fax# 514-871-4926 Thankyou.. -stephen -- Stephen Menzies #Internet: menzies@CAM.ORG #Fidonet : Stephen Menzies @ 1:167/265 ## Subject: mail list VS newsgroup Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 10:08:48 EST From: "Steve J. Lombardi" Howdy- I've been away for a few weeks and come back to findthat this very informative maillist may be moving to a newsgroup. I think this is a great idea with many pros and few cons. I like the idea of keeping my mailbox uncluttered. There seems to be enough discussion here to justify a newsgroup. I think this would open the dialog up to more people from varying software backgrounds. anyway, thats my 2cents on the subject. As an aside. I'm sure a lot of imaginers who use dctv to play their animations will find this useful. When the screen changes in an anim become so large as to bog down the anim or PFX formats,I often flip the frames with the directorII from right answers. on my 9 meg machine I can preload about 130 3bit non laced screens and flip them at about 20fps. (about 6 seconds worth of motion) anyway... a readme file on the director disk reveals that wipes and blits can be performed on two dctv screens as long as you move 4 pixel blocks. I was totally unaware of this. after a bit of trial and error, I was dong all sorts of 2d transitions, simulated a-b rolls etc... A nice post production enhancement for your IMAGINEations. -- steve stlombo@eos.acm.rpi.edu ps - I have a cando deck that I routinely use to convert files to dctv format and simultaneously create Director scripts. Of course you'll still need to own the Director to play them back. If anyone is interested I'll upload it somewhere.... let me know. ## Subject: How does grow work? Date: Fri, 17 Apr 92 15:21:51 EDT From: George Browning I am still using Imagine 1.x. In the addedum pages that come with it it talks about the grow affect. It says to do something like 'make a path in the detail editor using points, not Axis' and to group the resulting path to a flat. object. Well I spent quite a while rereading the manuals, and trying everything I could think of to follow the directions. I usually ended up getting a bunch of error messages about 'non existent path' etc when I added the grow effect to my compound object in the stage editor... How do I do it???? Any hints would be appreciated, George george@aol.com ## Subject: Re: RCS FusionForty for << $$ Date: Fri, 17 Apr 92 19:53:38 CDT From: leair@cae.wisc.edu The decision to move the fusion forty kinda depends on what applications you do normally on your amiga. I am about 80% of the way to completing an installation of a FF40 on my 2000. First there are the configuration issuses. You have GVP combo so I am assuming you use its on board hard drive controller. So moving to the fusion forty will require you to use a differnt hd interface. The 2091 will work but it really requires version 6.9 of the controller roms to wrok well. The hard frame doesn't work as far as I know. Generally dma interfaces arn't optimal with the 040 (mainly due to large inst/data caches). Processor I/O interfaces work pretty good because they avoid most of the cache probs, so IVS trumpcard, old supra, old gvp, old cltd will wokr(currently I have an old cltd because it works under 1.3). Second if you do get the ff40 get a 2.0 rom. No way around it. If you try to use it under 1.3 you will loose a good deal of sleep, and work. Software is just plain flaky under 1.3 with an 040. (I just got mine today). So how fast is it really, or more accuralty how fast does it feel, well I my experience so far has all been under 1.3 and my basis for comparison has been my 1000 with 16MHz lucas/frances). If you can get the board to remap kickstart to 32bit ram and work reliably the general feel of the machine (pointing clicking, moving windows, response to your input, etc.) will really reaally jump. All that other sped increase stuff the advertisments only comes into play when you are cranking away math. The bootleneck is the graphics chips/chip ram and when you interfacting with the machine the rom and chip ram are being used. So now if you use your machine to ray tracing where you arn't actually doing anything the board will do a lot better than the gvp otherwise it will fell about the same. There are still pd utils and similar software that isn't 040 friendly. the easy way around this is to turn off the copyback mode and the data cache. Now these things work but you have given up a good deal of the edge the 040 gives you over the gvp. If you would like to run utils like memmung or enforcer and the like you can't because the 040 has a slightly differnt MMU than the gvp. These programs are generally only useful to developers os this might not be a concern. For the same reason you can't run amax. All these catches will/may change as time goes on. RCS has hinted that they may offer their own hard drive interface that sits on the 040 card like the gvp which will solve problems. They have also hinted that they mayoffer an option where the 040 can talk to the chip ram at 040 speeds. Lastly the memory for the 040 isn't autoconfig. You have to run a bit of software in your startup-sequence to bring up the 32 bit ram and turn on the 040's caches. A couple of months back amiga world did a review of the available 040 boards speed wise they are all pretty close. The ff40 has been out the longest, however the software that allows the board to run under 1.3 has not impressed me(to be fair the board really should be run under 2.0 as all the other 040 boards require it). A good quote from the article was .. this is the cutting edge of technology, though some would say the bleeding edge. ... if you need the computational speed this is the fastest option. have fun Brian Leair leair@cae.wisc.edu ## Subject: Imagine crashes and burns Date: Sun, 19 Apr 92 20:22:07 EDT From: vapspay@prism.gatech.edu This sounds awfully surreal. I'm trying to trace a very large scene, requiring on the order of 12 Megabytes. The trace sets up normally, and when it gets 30% through, my SYS: device VANISHES. The icon even disappears from the workbench. From then on, I get 2-3 second pauses and occasionally other devices vanish, like ram: and cdh0:. Eventually, the machine does a 2.0 not-guru. I've never seen this problem before, and I've since run every virus checker I could find with nothing detected. My Imagine 2.0 binary is 595636 bytes long, and is the same length as one I unarced off my distribution disk. Any ideas what might be up? The machine is an 18meg 3000 running 2.04. Moo Frank Branham ## Subject: Re: RCS FusionForty for << $$ Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 00:58:14 -0400 From: Baird Lynn Has anyone bought the new Zeus card from PP yet? I heard that it's selling in t he range of $10,000 right now. PP either must be trying to offset the price for the SCSI-2 implementation or that card must really fly to cost that much. If anyone seen the card in operation, leave a reply. Those SCSI-2 drives 10Mb/s ec must be excellent for Toaster operation.. It could be just the thing for realtime 24 bit animation. (a little slow but acceptable). ## Subject: Sourceless chrome... Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 2:18:39 PDT From: "Daryl T. Bartley" Just a quick question...is there a quick and easy way (ie attributes/etc.) to get that kind of 'sourceless' chrome effect I keep seeing on TV? You know how it looks chrome-like, without actually reflecting anything...Just wondering. Also, is there some quick&dirty method for making 'classic wireframe' anims? The triangular faces in the imagine-made wireframes just don't look right somehow, and I wanted to get the grid-style wireframe. I was considering a brushmap of a green grid, with a transparency map to make the spaces between the lines see-through...would this work? Is there a way to do it with the Grid texture? Please let me know. A t D h V a A n N k C s E, Daryl Bartley dmon@cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu ## Subject: Re: Sourceless chrome... Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 10:10:58 EDT From: Mark Thompson > Just a quick question...is there a quick and easy way (ie attributes/etc.) to > get that kind of 'sourceless' chrome effect I keep seeing on TV? You know how > it looks chrome-like, without actually reflecting anything...Just wondering. Most all reflection you see in 3D animation on television is done with reflection maps. Just take a digitized picture of a nice outdoor landscape (50% sky, 50% ground) and use it as a reflected image. This will create a very nice looking chrome. Its a good idea to use a picture that doesn't have any real eye catching elements in it as they may show up in your chrome and look goofy. Nearly no one in the production world uses ray-traced reflection. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' 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: Brush mapping help Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 12:31:15 -0400 From: rnollman@osf.org I am using brushmaps for the first time and have had some problems. I read Steve Worley's tutorial on brushmapping, and am still confused about what to do about the Y axis. I mapped an image of face to the side of a square cube. It was a simple color map. I only wanted the face to appear on one side of the cube. The results were quite dramatic, but not what I expected. The face continued through the depth of the cube to the other side (with face reversed on the other side and very grainey). The two other sides of the cube were even more interesting (and maybe too hard to describe). These sides recorded the edges of the face image as it moved from the front of the cube to the back (very colorful -- it looked like a photo of an object at great speed passing in front of fixed camera -- a kind of blurring effect). Anyway, what happened, was that I did not set the Y axis depth correctly. But every time I tried to scale on the Y axis when I was creating the color map, it just stretched out like an elastic band from its origin in the middle of the cube. How do I control the depth of the brush map so that it only appears on one face of the cube? Also, once I figure out how to control the depth, how do I set it so that only the face of the cube and not the adjacent sides get mapped. In its current state, the cube had color from the map on all four sides. Even if I scaled the Y axis so that I was very very small, won't part of the brush map show on the two adjacent sides of the cube? Do you have to enter the numbers for the Y axis manually using the transformation (?) requester vs EDIT BRUSH? Say, for example, I wanted to have face1 on one side of the cube, another face on the side opposite, and the some lettering on the other two sides. What would keep the brushmaps from interferring on the Y axis with each other? Rich Nollman ## Subject: Re: RCS FusionForty for << $$ Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 16:54:24 EDT From: Mark Thompson > Has anyone bought the new Zeus card from PP yet? I heard that it's selling > in the range of $10,000 right now. PP either must be trying to offset the > price for the SCSI-2 implementation or that card must really fly to cost > that much. I think you are confusing this board with some other. I was told that it would list for approximately $2900 with 0K memory and no disk. To fully configure it with say 64MB of RAM and a 500MB fast SCSI-2 drive, you are getting up around $8K. > If anyone seen the card in operation, leave a reply. Those > SCSI-2 drives 10Mb/sec must be excellent for Toaster operation.. It could > be just the thing for realtime 24 bit animation. (a little slow but > acceptable). If you could actually achieve 10MB/s continuous transfer, a 15fps Toaster animation would be possible. In my last conversation with PP however, they said they were only achieving around 8.3MB/s and that the Amiga OS was to blame. But even if you could get 10MB/s transfers, you are still going to be limited by the bus transfers from 32bit RAM to Toaster display memory and I don't believe you can achieve anywhere near 10MB/s there. As for seeing a board in operation, I am told they will not be showing it off at WOC in NYC simply because PP will not be there. However, I am slated to receive the first board that they ship, which should be about a week from now, and I'll let ya know what I think. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' 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: Brush mapping help Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 19:22:41 EDT From: Dan Drake I was doing the same things with brushmaps on a cube, and here is what I did: construct the cube from planes, and put a brushmap on each plane. Set the y axis size of the map to 1. dan. ## Subject: Re: Sourceless chrome... Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 19:28:57 EDT From: Dan Drake Mark, > Most all reflection you see in 3D animation on television is done with > reflection maps. Is this image mapped on an object, or does the object have reflection set way up, so that it reflects the necessary amount of the spectrum so it looks real? . . . > Nearly no one in the production world uses ray-traced > reflection. Again, can you explain what you mean in a litle more detail? thanks, dan. ## Subject: 040 customer support Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 16:50:06 -0700 From: noj@cats.ucsc.edu Hi all. Just wanted to relate a little story I had with PP&S and their Mercury A3000 accelorator board. If any of you out ther are considering an '040 board and customer support is a concern, I can wholeheartedly endorse PP&S. Their tech guy called me back so I wouldn't have to pay the charges, and went through several different possibilities with me. When we finally weren 't able to get it to work, PP&S picked up the tab to send the board out to them vi a fed ex. next day delivery, where they will either fix the board or send me a ne w one within a 24 hour period, and next day fed ex it back. If I had to buy somet hing that didn't work, I couldn't have asked for better service. I am not affiliated with PP&S in any way, and do not gain anything from anyway buying their products. I'll post a review of it when I have a working model. ___________________________________________________________________________ / noj@cats.ucsc.edu | // \ |Oh, you're just gettin weird...and that results in creativ-| //Only Amiga | |ity" -Joel MST3K|Virtual Reality is the future of safe sex.|\\ // makes it | \__________________________________________________________|_\X/___possible_/ ## Subject: Thanks all Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 18:18:26 PDT From: "Daryl T. Bartley" thanks for all the help on the chrome, folks. Been playing around with it a bit and got some really killer chrome effects. (that article by AGW in the video ish of amiga world helped too). As to the 'classic' wireframe thing, I got that working too. As to what I meant, I was talking about the sort of wireframe you see on the computer displays on TV/movies/etc...a square grid rather than triangles. At any rate, I got the look I wanted...pretty keen. On a related note, I was working on a transition where a 'wireframe' object changes into a fully shaded object...I was using a linear texture on both objects, and flying it across the two in opposite directions (ie the linear was set to invisible, so one object faded in while the other faded out). Got so me strange results however, due to the objects overlapping. Is there a way around this without having to take the objects apart section by section? Of course, if I have acheived my usual level of incomprehensibility, let me know and I'll try to clarify. Thanks again for the help. Daryl Bartley dmon@cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu ## Subject: Port of Renderman Date: Tue, 21 Apr 92 01:46:54 -0700 From: George Hepker I recieved an interesting letter from Pixar: Dear George, I recieved your letter today requesting information about the possibility of a port of RenderMan to the Amiga. As you might imagine we have had many requests to undertake this port. With the advent of machines like the 2500 and 3000 and new third party video cards that supported true-color displays, porting RenderMan might finally be feasible. We have Amiga computers in house, and will be doing some testing in the coming months. Please keep in touch and I'll try to keep you informed of progress with the Amiga computer. Sincerely, Ray Davis, Manager Third Party Support ---------------------------------------------------------------- George Hepker georgehh@ocf.berkeley.edu .sig ## Subject: Crash and burn on filter maps Date: Tue, 21 Apr 92 09:17:01 EDT From: vapspay@prism.gatech.edu I tried a VERY simple trace this morning. The scene consisted of a 100x100 plane with a filter map on it, and 2 lights. The trace died at 16%, which is about where it would start hitting the object. The symptoms are the same as yesterday. The map I was using was created with Imagemaster. I was able to trace another map on the same object, and I was able to trace with the Imagemaster-iff set to be a color map instead of a filter. Has anyone else seen any sort of weirdness with the origin of an IFF in imagine? Moo Frank Branham ## Subject: Re: Sourceless chrome... Date: Tue, 21 Apr 92 09:45:56 EDT From: "Bob Lindabury, SysAdm" rutgers!cs.pitt.edu!dan (Dan Drake) writes: > Mark, > > > Most all reflection you see in 3D animation on television is done with > > reflection maps. > Is this image mapped on an object, or does the object have reflection set > way up, so that it reflects the necessary amount of the spectrum so it looks > real? I believe the reflection setting of the object is set by you to be whatever you wish for a reflective percentage (1-100%). The object then reflects the image as if it were a global reflection map. At least this is how it seems to work in Lightwave. If it were a projection I would imagine you would have to pick a type of projection for the map to look right on the object. > . > . > . > > > Nearly no one in the production world uses ray-traced > > reflection. > Again, can you explain what you mean in a litle more detail? > > thanks, > > dan. Most large studios use reflection mapping and solid modeling and not raytracing due to the tremendous overhead and time required to trace high-resolution images. In most cases (if the mapping is done correctly) you can hardly tell the difference. Refraction is another matter however.. -- 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: In Search of Objects Date: Tue, 21 Apr 92 09:13:49 CDT From: Wayne Haufler 283-4160 Does anyone know where I can get an Imagine object of one or a pair of cowboy or western boot(s)? How about a Capitol Dome object? You know, the dome on top of the U.S. Capitol building? I haven't looked very hard yet. Thanks. __ Wayne A. Haufler [Christian/SW Engineer/XWindows/Amigan] \\ /\\ /\\ //_ haufler@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov McDonnell Douglas-Houston \/--\// \//__ Hobby:"Exploring the Use of Computer Graphics and // Animations To Support Christian Endeavors" ## Subject: digitizing tablets Date: Tue, 21 Apr 92 15:04:41 EDT From: Alan Price Howdy, I asked this question a while ago, but there are a lot of new voices on the list so I'll ask again: I'm looking for drivers to run either an HP SketchPro or a Summagraphics SummaSketch Plus drawing tablet on my Amiga 3000. There are stacks of these things lying around at work collecting dust. If anyone can direct me to a source for these or even write one I would be very interested in working out a deal. ($$) AP. ## Subject: What kind of BOZO would ask about extrude to path AGAIN!? Date: Tue, 21 Apr 92 17:57:49 EDT From: Mark Thompson Well I have have been reading and posting to this list since its inception and now I am finally going to ask a question....One of the more frequently asked questions I see here is how to extrude to a path. I have seen it answered countless times but now I need to know if you can load an object as your path. I want to extrude two concentric circles along the closed edge created by Pixel 3D when auto tracing text or other bitmaps. The end goal is to be able to easily create simulated neon signs of scanned silhouettes. The inner extruded tube would be the neon and the outer is the glow (which will be no problem in LightWave). So can extrude to path be used this way? My understanding was that the path had to be created in Imagine which I do not wish to do, I just want to perform the extrusion there. Would you believe this was one of the only reasons I picked up a copy of Imagine? %~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~% % ` ' 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: What kind of BOZO would ask about extrude to path AGAIN!? Date: Wed, 22 Apr 92 09:03:35 -0400 From: "ESTES,JON-PAUL" I do not know if this can be done with an object created from Pixel 3D, but I will try it tonight. However, you might try using Imagine's built-in text to object function (this is in 2.0). When Imagine asks you if you want faces, say no. This will give you just the outline, which should be made up of lines and points. This is the type of "path" that extrude to path uses (not a real spline path). Name this outline PATH (or remember to change the name of the path to be extruded to) and try it. I will also try this tonight. Seems like it will work. The reason I am not sure about Pixel is that it always fills in the faces. If there is someway to get it to just do outlines then it should work as well, but I don't know of a way offhand of making it do this. I will post my results tomorrow. -- Jon-Paul Estes ## Subject: Re: What kind of BOZO would ask about extrude to path AGAIN!? Date: Wed, 22 Apr 92 09:15:10 EDT From: vapspay@prism.gatech.edu In Imagine 2.0, I think you HAVE to use a spline path. but if you still have 1.1--or even Turbo Silver, you can do that, AS LONG as Pixel 3D makes the points linearly numbered. I doubt you'll have much problem. Moo Frank ## Subject: Winners at LA AmiExpo Art and Video contest??? Date: Wed, 22 Apr 92 17:23:30 EDT From: Mark Thompson Anyone know who won in the various categories (1st, 2nd, and 3rd)??? I just received notice from Supra that they are sending me a Syquest drive for winning the Animation category. But the winners were announced at the show and I just found out now. Anybody have a list of who won? Here is the original list of categories: Commercial Video 1st Place - A Video Toaster from NewTek, Inc. 2nd Place - Pixel 3D 2.0 from Axiom Software 3rd Place - A One Year Subscription to AmigaWorld Magazine Commercial Still 1st Place - A Dozen Photographic Print Transfers from ASDG, Inc. 2nd Place - Art Department Professional from ASDG, Inc. 3rd Place - A One Year Subscription to AmigaWorld Magazine Mixed Media Video 1st Place - A ChromaKey from MicroSearch 2nd Place - ShowMaker from Gold Disk, Inc. 3rd Place - A One Year Subscription to AmigaWorld Magazine Two Dimensional Image 1st Place - A Impact Vision 24 from Great Valley Products 2nd Place - DesignWorks from New Horizons 3rd Place - A One Year Subscription to AmigaWorld Magazine Three Dimensional Image 1st Place - An 68040 Accelerator from Great Valley Products 2nd Place - Vista Pro from Virtual Reality Laboratories 3rd Place - A One Year Subscription to AmigaWorld Magazine Mixed Media Image 1st Place - DCTV from Digital Creations, Inc. 2nd Place - RasterLink from Active Circuits, Inc. 3rd Place - A One Year Subscription to AmigaWorld Magazine Animation 1st Place - A SupraDrive Removable Syquest Drive from Supra Corp. 2nd Place - Imagine from Impulse, Inc. 3rd Place - A One Year Subscription to AmigaWorld Magazine %~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~% % ` ' 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: digitizing tablets Date: Wed, 22 Apr 92 16:43:02 CDT From: Dave Wickard Alan Price asks about getting a driver for his SummaSketch tablet. I would like to get this also... as I remember...this thing is an 8bit serial with 1 Stop bit. It would be nice to use this thing alright. :-) Alan, if anyone knows of this driver...or is willing to create it... or even if someone gets a few of them...and is willing to share the cost of creating one for us to use... lemme know. David G. Wickard Coming to you LIVE from UNISYS (612) 456-4725 where our motto is... dave@flip.sp.unisys.com "Fire em if they can't take a joke." Sam_Malone@cup.portal.com ## Subject: Re: digitizing tablets Date: Thu, 23 Apr 92 8:03:52 EDT From: Dan Drake > Alan Price asks about getting a driver for his SummaSketch tablet. > > I would like to get this also... as I remember...this thing is > an 8bit serial with 1 Stop bit. > > It would be nice to use this thing alright. :-) > Alan, if anyone knows of this driver...or is willing to create it... > or even if someone gets a few of them...and is willing to share the > cost of creating one for us to use... lemme know. > > David G. Wickard Coming to you LIVE from UNISYS > (612) 456-4725 where our motto is... > dave@flip.sp.unisys.com "Fire em if they can't take a joke." > Sam_Malone@cup.portal.com > A couple years ago, we were looking at hooking a sketch pad up to a sun. We never did get it completely working, but with a little experimentation the codes sent from the tablet were pretty easy to figure out. If I remember correctly, it sent a signal byte and the X and Y position of the current coordinate. There was a seperate code sent for when the button on the pen was pushed. You could probably write the interface in Amiga Basic in a couple of days. dan. ## Subject: Extruding an object around another (sort of) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 92 09:16:39 -0400 From: "ESTES,JON-PAUL" Well, last night I tried using Imagine 2.0's built in text to object conversion and using this as a path. After a couple of tries, here are the results. You can type in your text, hit the OK button, wait, answer no to the "fill in the object with faces" requestor, and rename the object PATH. This gives you an outline that EXTRUDE uses as a path. Don't use EXTRUDE, however. Use REPLICATE! Pick the object that you want to replicate, select MOLD, then select REPLICATE. In the requestor, select ALONG PATH, and enter a larger enough number in the space for number of times to be replicated (just experiment to get this right). There is only one problem with this method, the PATH object is a double outline. In other words, there is a trace along the inside edge of the font, and along the outside edge. The only way to get rid of this that I know of is to go to PICK POINTS, and delete the ones you don't want. If the PATH object is not too large, this is not a big deal, but it could get out of hand real quick. The reason I said do not use EXTRUDE is because that it does not work! No matter how many sections you tell it to include, you only get 2, one at the first point, and one at the last. REPLICATE works just fine. I don't know if it will give you exactly what you are looking for, but it sure is a neat feature. Real3D has this built in, where it can build an object out of an IFF with another object. Now instead of just mirrored spheres, you can make logos out of mirrored spheres! You just have to go through a little more in Imagine to do the same thing. I dont' know if I helped any, but I hope so. As far as Pixel3D goes, I needed sleep and didn't get to try it. You should get the same results if it will allow you to not put in faces, however. I just don't think it has that option. -- Jon-Paul Estes ## Subject: bad chunk size Date: Thu, 23 Apr 92 11:36:17 EDT From: "John J. Rosner" I used Pixel 3D to convert Mark's head from Lightwave to Imagine but in trying to load into Imagine it gave me a message like bad chunk size. I hadn't seen this since pre 2.0 of Imagine, surely someone else has tried to put Mark back together. Any ideas? Later John Rosner ## Subject: LA Amiga Contest? etc... Date: Thu, 23 Apr 92 13:25:14 -0400 From: "Michael B. Comet" Okay, I am somewhat confused now. I unfortunately don't have the latest AmigaWorld (I think my subscription may have just expired) Is this contest going on now, or is it already over? Either way, does anyone know of any other contests that would take either anims or still frames on S-VHS or VHS or take the amiga disks for anims or art contests? Also, if this LA thingy is still going, how many entries are allowed per person, and is there a fee? Thanks ahead of time! Michael Comet mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: Re: bad chunk size Date: Thu, 23 Apr 92 15:05:25 EDT From: Mark Thompson John J. Rosner writes: > I used Pixel 3D to convert Mark's head from Lightwave to Imagine but in > trying to load into Imagine it gave me a message like bad chunk size. > surely someone else has tried to put Mark back together. Yeah, all the kings horses and all the kings men, but.... I'll give it a try tonight. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' 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: bad chunk size Date: Fri, 24 Apr 92 11:41:36 EDT From: Mark Thompson John J. Rosner writes: > I used Pixel 3D to convert Mark's head from Lightwave to Imagine but in > trying to load into Imagine it gave me a message like bad chunk size. Well I tried it last night and had the same problem. However, I then tried it with a beta copy if InterChange Plus and it worked like a champ. InterChange also created a smaller file than Pixel3D but both where over double the size of the LightWave version. I will upload it to hubcap in the Imagine object directory as MarkHeadIm.lzh but you will still need to get the image map from the original LightWave version archive. %~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~% % ` ' 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: bad chunk size Date: Fri, 24 Apr 92 13:35:04 EDT From: Steve Pietrowicz > Mark, > > Any idea when the new InterChange Plus will be released? > > mark davis > davis@soomee.zso.dec.com > The folks at Syndesis are still working on InterChange Plus...no firm date yet, though. There's gonna be lots of stuff in there, so there has been a lot to test. Steve ## Subject: Re: What kind of BOZO would ask about extrude to path AGAIN!? Date: Fri, 24 Apr 92 17:55:14 CST From: James Hastings-Trew In a message dated Thu 23 Apr 92 22:30, Mark Thompson Well I have have been reading and posting to this list since its MT> inception MT> and now I am finally going to ask a question....One of the more MT> frequently MT> asked questions I see here is how to extrude to a path. I have seen MT> it MT> answered countless times but now I need to know if you can load an MT> object MT> as your path. I want to extrude two concentric circles along the MT> closed Yes. Add an axis, and select MAKE PATH. Then load your object. Select the path axis, and then your object, and JOIN then. You can now extrude on the object path. Normal worries about sorting the path points/edges apply. -- Via DLG Pro v0.992 ## Subject: Re: In Search of Objects Date: Fri, 24 Apr 92 23:55:55 GMT From: Yury German Hi Wayne Haufler 283-4160, in <9204211413.AA28994@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov > on Ap r 21 you wrote: : Does anyone know where I can get an Imagine object of one or a pair of : cowboy or western boot(s)? How about a Capitol Dome object? You know, : the dome on top of the U.S. Capitol building? : I haven't looked very hard yet. Thanks. Why not create the objects yoursef. Its not so hard to create a capital dome building. Besides you can get the most satisfaction out of it when you do it yourself. _____________________________________________________________________ | | | Yury German yury@bknight or yury@bknight.jpr.com | | Blue-Knight Productions GENIE EMAIL: Blue-Knight | | (212)218-1348 (Graphic Design and Video Productions) | | (718)321-0998 P.O. Box 985, Queens, New York, 11354 | |_____________________________________________________________________| ## Subject: Re: digitizing tablets Date: Sat, 25 Apr 92 00:05:55 GMT From: Yury German Hi Alan Price, in <9204211904.AA03334@picasso.umbc.edu> on Apr 21 you wrote: : on the list so I'll ask again: : I'm looking for drivers to run either an HP SketchPro or a Summagraphics : SummaSketch Plus drawing tablet on my Amiga 3000. There are stacks of these : things lying around at work collecting dust. If anyone can direct me to : a source for these or even write one I would be very interested in working : out a deal. ($$) Well for Suma Graphics I would just call the company for a driver. They have the drivers and will probably sell it to you for a modest price! _____________________________________________________________________ | | | Yury German yury@bknight or yury@bknight.jpr.com | | Blue-Knight Productions GENIE EMAIL: Blue-Knight | | (212)218-1348 (Graphic Design and Video Productions) | | (718)321-0998 P.O. Box 985, Queens, New York, 11354 | |_____________________________________________________________________| ## Subject: problems with grow Date: Sat, 25 Apr 92 02:11:05 +0200 From: Hannes Heckner Hi imagine freaks, i have got big problems with the F/X Grow. Everytime I use this effect I get one of these anoying gurus. I grouped an opened path and a plane together. Then I added grow in the action editor. But all I get is a guru and yes I selected first the path and then the plane while grouping together. Help needed !!!!!!! Thanx P.S.: I am writing on a big wishlist for Imagine V3.0 (4.0). Will the people from Impulse get this list when I put this list into this maillist ? ## Subject: Re: Caligari vs. Imagine Date: Sat, 25 Apr 92 00:31:30 GMT From: Yury German Hi Mike Danielsen, in <9204221626.AA18660@pobox.mot.com> on Apr 22 you wrote: : Caligari 2, which is about $250 mail order, produces excellent quality : images on my DCTV. You must be thinking of the old Caligari. Nope thinking of the new Caligary 2. It is a nice program but definately not the PRO version. Even though I know the owner/programer I have to say that Caligary 2 does not compare to Imagine. Not even close! : : Imagine is a pain you learn to live with. (an embarassing unfriendly : program in a world of user friendly software) : : Caligari is a joy to use and this allows you to be more creative. Well Caligary might seem easier to use... but Imagine is just tooo powerful for it. I can run rings around Caligary with Imagine. Producing output and pictures and anims that will rival alot of things. Mike obviously you love Caligary... so I am not going to argue with you on that point! I personaly have tried both... and I definately prefer Imagine. _____________________________________________________________________ | | | Yury German yury@bknight or yury@bknight.jpr.com | | Blue-Knight Productions GENIE EMAIL: Blue-Knight | | (212)218-1348 (Graphic Design and Video Productions) | | (718)321-0998 P.O. Box 985, Queens, New York, 11354 | |_____________________________________________________________________| ## Subject: Re: problems with f/x grow Date: Sat, 25 Apr 92 02:26:54 CST From: Marc Couch I am not sure if anyone at Impulse will read this.. But I tell ya what.. Let's get a list of things together and I can compile em all together and send em off to Impulse! Just finished a 7 meg 100 frame anim.. Nice.. lots of chrome.. Til Next Time.. Marc BTW: Spread this mailing list around.. let's get it rolling ## Subject: what is cyberscanning ? Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1992 19:28 EST From: VISHART@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu Does anyone know anything about "cyberscanning" ? It seems to have something to do with scanning real three dimensional objects, and creating 3d object files from the data gathered thereby. Does such a scanning device exist ? If so, where is it available ? What does it cost ? ___________________________________________________________________ | Internet: vishart@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu Joe Hart | /// Plink: OSS542 Niagara Falls, NY | \\\/// Ham call: WA2SND | \XX/ AMIGA - Computers for REAL MEN =================================================================== ## Subject: Re: what is cyberscanning ? Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 10:57:47 -0400 From: "Michael B. Comet" >Does anyone know anything about "cyberscanning" ? It seems to >have something to do with scanning real three dimensional >objects, and creating 3d object files from the data gathered >thereby. Does such a scanning device exist ? If so, where is >it available ? What does it cost ? > Joe Hart > I beleive this was used for T2 and such by ILM. It involves using a laser to actually scan an object as it rotates 360 degress to get all the info. Besides creating an object it can also give the objectthe proper color. I forget what company makes the device, I beleive one of the amiga magazines I read recently made a note about this. If I recall the price it was somewhere in the $50,000 range. Also, I think someone here on the list was actually scanned by such a device and has a Lightwave Object of his head on ftp. Mike Comet ## Subject: Dr. Strange effects Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 09:50 PDT From: Peter Daniels Hi, For any of you who are/have been comic book afficionados out there, I've been trying to replicate some of the early Steve Ditko Dr. Strange drawings of other dimensions, but I'm having a small problem. The effect that I'm after is that of a hole in space, something which has depth when you look into it's mouth but is entirely transparent when viewed from the side, except for the mouth. For the tests, I've used a thick, hollow tube with a ball in the center for depth effects. The top of the tube, the mouth, is colored as is the inside walls & bottom of the hole, and the faces on the outside of the tube are set to 255/255/255 refelectivity. I've rendered it both with 255/255/255 and 0/0/0 filtering, and with color set to both black & white, and the index of refraction set to 1. In all cases, I get sort of a lightly textured surface on the outside of the tube almost as though roughness has been set (it hasn't). Any ideas on what I may be doing wrong, what I'm setting incorrectly? It's a pretty nifty effect otherwise - if I squint I can make it work! Thanks for the help. This is working with 2.0, by the way. Peter D. PS - Anyone know what kind of speed increase I can expect going from a 25 to a 50 mhz FPU on a 3000? Surely not 2x, right? ## Subject: Re: New demo morph available for ftp Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 17:15:47 EDT From: Mark Thompson This message was intended to go to the list but was bounced and only I received it (I think). ------- Forwarded Message From: Daniel P. Vunck Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 10:46:43 EDT In-Reply-To: <9204241357.aa03062@athena.westford.ccur.com>; from "Mark Thompso n" at Apr 24, 92 2:01 pm >Well with all the hoopla about morphing with Imagemaster, I had to >try it out. So I put together a test morph to see how well the >software would work. The results are on hubcap.clemson.edu and the Did anyone else see the software being shown by the people at the GVP booth? It was called MIRAGE and as well as having a lot of image processing power, 24bit painting, and a great interface, it also did morphs much smoother than anything I've seen done before! ------- End of Forwarded Message My reply.... Sure did. Not too shabby. None of the morphs I saw done with Mirage impressed me as much as the one I did with Imagemaster. What do you mean by smoother? What I noticed about the Mirage morph demo was it looked like the control points were not chosen as well as they could have been. Also, these morphs were done in black and white which tends to hide some of the possible color problems that can arise during a morph. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' 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: New demo morph available for ftp Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 17:25:48 EDT From: Mark Thompson ------- Forwarded Message From: Daniel P. Vunck Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 16:43:23 EDT In-Reply-To: <9204271619.aa03322@athena.westford.ccur.com>; from "Mark Thompso n" at Apr 27, 92 4:24 pm my mailer keeps bouncing everything I send to the list. Feel free to forward the original and your reply if you can. >None of the morphs I saw done with Mirage impressed me as much as >the one I did with Imagemaster. What do you mean by smoother? What >I noticed about the Mirage morph demo was it looked like the control > points were not chosen as well as they could have been. Also, these > morphs were done in black and white which tends to hide some of the > possible color problems that can arise during a morph. I allowed a bit for the morphs not being done with a DCTV display - HAM fringing was evident. As for smooth and the color question, only one morph was done in black and white. I saw several others done in full color and aside from the HAM fringes, they looked much better than anything I've seen available...I'll download and look at yours right away though! I was very impressed by two morphs they did by only moving a few points...I've never been able to get a reasonable looking morph in ImageMaster without using around 50 points or more. The real test will be we we can all try it ourselves tho! ------- End of Forwarded Message They must have had several demos and we saw different ones. Unfortunately none of the ones I saw were in color. As for number of points, the demos I did see looked about like the first test sequence I did with Imagemaster using only 9 points. However, to get something I was really pleased with required around 60. But ofcourse Mirage isn't even ready yet and as you say, you won't really know until we try it ourselves. Note that ADPro is also working toward a morphing solution. %~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~% % ` ' 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: MarkMorph Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 17:56:25 EDT From: Mark Thompson Colin Stuckless writes: > I have your demo morph done with ImageMaster and needless > to say, it's very impressive. I would like to know how long it took you > to get those results. > Maybe you could post a reply to the mailing list, if you think there's > enough interest. It took about 1.5 hours to scan, scale, remove backgound, and place the images in similar positions so the morph would not translate across the screen. A good part of this time was wasted because I had to switch so much between programs (Toaster Paint, ADPro, and Imagemaster). I then spent another 15 - 30 minutes placing roughly 60 control points. Another 50 or so points were used to tack down the image edges. I tested the seqence at 96x60 and then did the final render of 40 frames at 400 x 400 with IFF24 output. This took about 10-12 hours on a 25MHz 030. These were then composited onto a 752 x 480 blue background for single framing out the Toaster. The same frames were also batch converted to DCTV format for uploading to the ftp site. I did do a little bit of touching up of the frames in DCTV, but I have a feeling it could have been avoided if I was more aware of the process involved up front. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' 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: what is cyberscanning ? Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 18:03:05 EDT From: Mark Thompson > >Does anyone know anything about "cyberscanning" ? > I forget what company makes the device, I beleive one of the > amiga magazines I read recently made a note about this. I think someone > here on the list was actually scanned by such a device and has a Lightwave > Object of his head on ftp. That would be me. I was scanned last year at Siggraph by a Cyberware 3D digitizer. Cyberware is located in beautiful Monterey, CA and can be reached at: Cyberware 8 Harris Court Monterey, CA 93940 (408) 373-1441 The devices are very expensive but do a great job. Cyberware will also perform scanning services (ie. you don't have to buy the scanner). |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' 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: Lightning? Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 18:31:55 PDT From: "Daryl T. Bartley" Just a quick question again, I am trying to get a good lightning-style effect. I guess it would be better described as plain electricity. I am trying to get electric sparks that crawl over a metal logo. I have been working with various and sundry tubes extruded on irregular paths, morphing between the two. I have also been playing with the fog and bright attribs for the sparks. Any help on getting a convincing 'crawly spark' effect shall be greatly appreciated. (side note: the 'morphing between the two' up there is wrong. I have been using a veritable truckload of objects for the 'keys' of the spark motions) Daryl Bartley dmon@cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu ## Subject: Understanding Imagine 2.0 Date: Tue, 28 Apr 92 13:32:58 METDST From: Marco Pugliese I've just received Understanding Imagine 230 by Steve Worley: IT'S REALLY GREAT !!! Thankyou Steve. Ciao. Marco -- ***************************************************************************** * It is good to disregard analysis and design phases and to rush into the * * software implementation, in order to gain the time needed to debug the * * failures due to disregarding analysis and design phases. * ***************************************************************************** =============================================================================== Marco Pugliese *| Dipartimento di Scienze |* pugliese@ghost.dsi.unimi.it via Roncaglia 13 *| dell'Informazione |* pugliese@hp1.sm.dsi.unimi.it 20146 MILANO *| --------- |* pugliese@hp2.sm.dsi.unimi.it ITALY *| Universita' di MILANO |* pugliese@hp4.sm.dsi.unimi.it =============================================================================== ## Subject: 1.2MB lzh too big Date: Tue, 28 Apr 92 13:36:47 EDT From: John Rosner I would like to get Mark's morph for DCTV, but I use cross-dos to my Amiga from my Sun and I only have 700k diskettes at home. Is there a Unix utility (SunOs) to break up an lzh file? Thanks in advance, John Rosner ## Subject: Re: 1.2MB lzh too big Date: Tue, 28 Apr 92 14:39:31 EDT From: Mark Thompson > Is there a Unix utility (SunOs) to break up an lzh file? NAME split - split a file into pieces SYNOPSIS split [ -n ] [ file [ name ] ] DESCRIPTION split reads file and writes it in n-line pieces (default 1000 lines) onto a set of output files. The name of the first output file is name with aa appended, and so on lexicographically, up to zz (a maximum of 676 files). Name cannot be longer than 12 characters. If no output name is given, x is default. If no input file is given, or if - is given in its stead, then the standard input file is used. Use cat to put them back together (or join in AmigaDOS). |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' 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: 1.2MB lzh too big Date: Tue, 28 Apr 92 16:59:29 -0400 From: Udo K Schuermann rosner@europa.asd.contel.com (John Rosner) writes: > I would like to get Mark's morph for DCTV, but I use cross-dos to my > Amiga from my Sun and I only have 700k diskettes at home. Is there a > Unix utility (SunOs) to break up an lzh file? Mark Thompson writes: > SYNOPSIS > split [ -n ] [ file [ name ] ] > > DESCRIPTION > split reads file and writes it in n-line pieces (default > 1000 lines) onto a set of output files. The name of the The standard split works with text files only. I've written a variant which can handle binary files, too: SYNOPSIS split [ -n | -bn ] [ file [ name ] ] EXAMPLES split -1000 hugefile.txt hugefile. ; std. split, 1000 lines split -b730112 hugefile.lzh hugefile. ; fill 720K-disk exactly If anyone wants it, I could make uuencoded AmigaBinary & C-Source available. ._. Udo Schuermann "qaStaHvlS wa' ram IoS SaD Hugh SlijlaH qetbogh IoD" ( ) walrus@wam.umd.edu -- Klingon Proverb Seeking virtual memory ## Subject: Fusion Forty Date: Tue, 28 Apr 92 22:42:47 -0400 From: Danny Griffin When announcing the RCS Fusion Forty offer at our user's group meeting this month, a member commented that he had called Impulse about '040 cards, and they told him that the only card that had given them (Imagine) problems was the RCS Fusion Forty. Apparently they didn't give any specifics, therefore I am more than a little suspicious of their comments. I've not noticed anyone here complaining about the Fusion Forty and Imagine. Dan Griffin griffin@egr.msu.edu ## Subject: New Textures for 3.0? Date: Wed, 29 Apr 92 20:10:29 PDT From: "Daryl T. Bartley" Just wondering, were they planning on doing any real exotic textures for 3.0? Like scales, or fur, or linoleum, or stucco, etc... I knoew some of them could be done with brushes, but it just seems it would be easier to have a texture for stuff like that. Also adds nice randomness to it. BTW, did anyone get my previous post? Not to sound paranoid or anything, but I got like a truckload of error messages (ie more than usual), and with the current bizarre nature of the list, I was simply curious. Daryl Bartley dmon@cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu ## Subject: Animations with complex interaction of characters Date: Thu, 30 Apr 92 12:28:43 -0400 From: rnollman@osf.org I am using Cycleman by Tim Wilson. I do not know if people know about this piece of software, but I think I paid $35 for it (well worth it for me). It is a fully-articulated human figure created as an Imagine object. You just load it into the Cycle Editor and you can create an animation of a moving figure. The arms, legs, head, torso, and neck all move at several joints (all the ones you need for complex human movment). In addition, all the segments on the fingers move at the joints (no moving toes though, the toes move as a group). The eyeballs move and so do the lips (you can make him talk). The jaw also moves. Tim has included a walking, jogging, and one other cycle that is ready to go. Or you can use the figure object and create your own cycles. I have been working with the object itself and creating the frames. He also provides some good tips on how to use the Cycle and Stage Editors. Tim has done a great job. My only complaint has nothing do with Cycleman. It has spawned some questions about animation with Imagine.. It was very difficult to find the control points. A walking cycle is relatively easy, but when more complex movement is required (two wrestlers for example), the points seem to get lost. You have to zoom in and zoom out alot. It was often near impossible to figure out how to PIVOT or TWIST an appendage (or group of appendages). I wonder if there is not some method that others are using to deal with this. It just may be that most people do not try to animate objects as complex as the one Tim has created. Up until now, most of my time has been spent in the stage editor. I was originally wowed when I created the tube-man from the tutorial in the manual. But there were very few control points. The other problem, and this may be a real stupid one, is that I could not figure out how to incorporate the second wrestler into the animation. You can only work on one object in the cycle editor at a time (or can you?). I tried making a copy of the figure in the Detail Editor, grouping it facing the other figure, and loading the "twins" into the Cycle Editor. But trying to figure out what was who and who was what became a nightmare. How does one integrate different objects with complex movement into an animation? (As I said before, I may be missing something very simple--I hope). I have been hearing alot about Caligari 2 lately. It has, I been told from several persons who have given up Imagine entirely for C2, a wonderful user interface that makes creating objects very simple and very quick. You model and stage things in real time. No switching between a miriad of editors. They all admit that Caligari 2 is missing alot of features that Imagine offers. But their answer is that it is so much easier to use, that they do not miss the features. They can produce finished works in much less time. Sometimes less is more. Rich Nollman ## Subject: iff light sources Date: Thu, 30 Apr 92 13:41:35 GMT-0500 From: Scott Matthew Krehbiel Has anyone played around with IFF brushes as light sources?? Does it work like a slide projector, or does it put the entire image on all affected objects? Also, how do you control the projection size and ratio, if it is like a slide projector ( where an object can be in only a small part of the image ) I ask because I'm trying to get a fragmenting effect, like an image being projected on half-open venitian blinds. Does this look feasible?? Thanks Scott Krehbiel scottk@hoggar.eng.umd.edu ## Subject: Imagine ANIMS AND RENDERINGS Date: Thu, 30 Apr 92 20:18:25 GMT From: Yury German Hello all of you Imagine Users out there. I am here to ask you for your submision of IMAGINE (only Imagine) Animations for inclusion on a Video Tape that will have a wide distribution throughout the world. The Animation can be on any subject and for the initial copy must be rendered in 1/4 screen HAM for fast playback rate! The animation can be on any Subject exept SEXual related. Only the best anims will be selected.... The rules are... it has to be an IMAGINE Only rendered anim with original objects. I am sorry but part of the creative process must be the object itself. If you are choosen what will you get!! You will get the satisfaction of having your anim on a videotape that will be spread throughout the world. You will have prime billing for the anim which will include your name and telephone number or address in case someone wants to contact you for more work. You will also receive a free copy of the video tape. Another thing you will have is your animation recorded through a high end graphics board onto a Profesional Master stock and sent to you! This will be one of the 3 formats (undecided as to which one yet) Betacam-SP, 1" or 3/4 SP. S-VHS or VHS copies can be done as well. In other words if you work with us we will work with you :-) How to submit your anim.!!! Create it in one -Qarter screen ham. Archive it with LHA or LZ in LHA format! Then you have few options which you can ask more about. To Contact Me Please leave a message-- Through Here : Jimmy German GEnie : Blue-Knight USENET/INTERNET/BITNET : imagine@bknight Or call by phone! (718)321-0998 (212)218-1348 _____________________________________________________________________ | | | Yury German yury@bknight or yury@bknight.jpr.com | | Blue-Knight Productions GENIE EMAIL: Blue-Knight | | (212)218-1348 (Graphic Design and Video Productions) | | (718)321-0998 P.O. Box 985, Queens, New York, 11354 | |_____________________________________________________________________| ## Subject: 1.2 MB too big, thanks Date: Fri, 1 May 92 07:04:41 EDT From: "John J. Rosner" Thanks for all your replies, Split works great, it turns out on SunOs 4.1 (on an IPC) split handles binary. I actually used "split -2000 name" and it made 600KB files. So I saw Mark's wife turn into a leopard and it is stunningly well done. Later, John Rosner ## Subject: RCS Fusion 40 Date: Fri, 1 May 92 15:29:57 -0400 From: Brian Bishop Take it with a grain of salt, but....The local (Amiga) computer store dudes claim that the Fusion 40 uses such slow memory that the wait states severly (and severEly) water down the advantages of the 040. In fact, they claim that the 50Mhz 030 is faster, which shouldn't be. Again, I regard this as possibly valid info, possibly just misinformation. Brian ## Subject: help - raytrace is broken! Date: Fri, 1 May 92 19:01:58 EDT From: "Steve J. Lombardi" I'm having a very strange imagine problem. It has crept up twice yet I can't find a common thread. I'll set up a scene, scanline render it for proofing then try to do a full trace. I get the normal initializing message then the percent rendered counter races from 0 to 100 in about 8 seconds. of course I have only a black screen for my efforts. I never had this problem with V1.1. It has only begun after 2.0 arrived. Is my skull simply numb? Am I missing the obvious or has (gasp!) my ray tracer broken!? I have tried to set a global size bar to 0,0,0 with no luck. also I have a 9 meg machine so I don't think memory is an issue. During object loading and initialization my memory counter bottems out at about 4 megs. that seems adequate. Has anyone else noticed this? Thanks for any input. One last thought just occurred to me. both scenes that would scanline but not trace featured a good number of iff maps. perhaps 10-15. Is there a limit. I know. I'm probably just making desperate stabs in the dark. -- Steve Lombardi stlombo@eos.acm.rpi.edu ## Subject: Re: help - raytrace is broken! Date: Fri, 1 May 92 20:10:24 CST From: James Hastings-Trew In a message dated Fri 1 Jun 92 17:56, Steve J. Lombardi I have tried to set a global size bar to 0,0,0 with no luck. also SJL> I have a 9 meg machine so I don't think memory is an issue. During SJL> object loading and initialization my memory counter bottems out SJL> at about 4 megs. that seems adequate. Has anyone else noticed this? I have not noticed the problem you specifically have, but I do have a possible cure. One of the configurations settings in Imagine is the amount of free-ram available after the octree division of the space. This configuration setting is (unfortunately) not a permanent setting but must be made each time you start Imagine up. I find that with a scene that has a LOT of brushmaps in it that I have to leave more RAM for that, and less for the tracer. So I bump up the OTFL value so that more RAM is left for the brushmaps. You might want to also mess with the OTRL value (max RAM to use for octree) as well. By allowing less ram for the octree division your trace will take longer, but on the other hand, longer is better than not at all... -- Via DLG Pro v0.992 ## Subject: Problems with F/X Grow Date: Sat, 2 May 92 17:54:21 +0200 From: Hannes Heckner Hi Imagineers, I tried to build a simple scene with a grow special effect using Imagine V2.0 but everytime i enter the stage editor i get a guru. What is wrong ? Help needed immediatliy Hannes PS: I posted this before but i got a lot of errors and obviously nobody receive d my message. ## Subject: Re: RCS Fusion 40 Date: Sat, 2 May 92 18:49:24 EDT From: MICHAEL GARLAND Brian Bishop says... > > Take it with a grain of salt, but....The local (Amiga) computer store dudes > claim that the Fusion 40 uses such slow memory that the wait states severly > (and severEly) water down the advantages of the 040. In fact, they claim that > the 50Mhz 030 is faster, which shouldn't be. Make that quite a few grains. The '040 cache hit rate is extremly high. This means that it hardly every has to access the memory which is comparatibly slow. When it does have to access the memory there will be quite a few waits, probably more than an '030. I don't think the dealer understands how often that actully happends. It you add 30 nanosecond memory to the memory for no wait states, you would hardly notice any speedup (maybe 3% or so). I would want slower memory on an '040 board if any at all. All that blatantly fast memory just costs a bunch more. Just had to yell at this, since the "dudes" at the store don't quite see the whole picture. A stripped '040 (no mmu, no fpu) at 25Mhz is really close to a '030 at 50Mhz. > Again, I regard this as possibly valid info, possibly just misinformation. --=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= programming: n. 1. The art of debugging a blank sheet of paper (or, in these days of on-line editing, the art of debugging an empty file). 2. n. A pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward. 3. n. The most fun you can have with your clothes on (although clothes are not mandatory). -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Michael S. Garland, Jr. (Houghton, MI) CS_major @ MTU (906)487-0524 "msgarlan@mtu.edu" ## Subject: 2.0 chip mem Date: Sat, 2 May 92 19:03:48 GMT-0500 From: Scott Matthew Krehbiel Hi all, Does 2.0 Imagine require a meg of Chip?? I only have 512K of chip, and I'm wondering if I'll have to upgrade my hardware as well as my software. Thanks Scott scottk@hoggar.eng.umd.edu ## Subject: Re: Problems with F/X Grow Date: Sat, 2 May 92 21:39:08 -0400 From: "Michael B. Comet" >Hi Imagineers, > >I tried to build a simple scene with a grow special effect using Imagine V2.0 >but everytime i enter the stage editor i get a guru. What is wrong ? > >Help needed immediatliy > >Hannes > >PS: I posted this before but i got a lot of errors and obviously nobody receiv ed my message. > > Make sure you have a path grouped to the object you wish to "GROW" and that you group the path as the PARENT of the group. If you are doing this, and your path is a valid path, then there is no reason to be getting gurus. Hope this helps Michael Comet mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: TTDDD library Date: Sun, 3 May 92 12:05:40 EDT From: "Steve J. Lombardi" help! where can the IXEMUPD-920330.lha file be found. I have heard that it is on ab20.larc.nasa.gov but for whatever reason I can never get in there. Is it anywhere on hubcap?? since that is where I got the TTDDD files from, that would seem like a good place for this library file as well. any help would be appreciated as I am eager to try these TTDDD programs out. thanks a bunch. steve Lombardi stlombo@eos.acm.rpi.edu ## Subject: AB20 Date: Sun, 3 May 92 12:53:12 -0700 From: noj@cats.ucsc.edu This is in response to the TTDDD post by Steve Lombardi, in case anyone else doesn't know. AB20 is deceased. You can find a mirror of it's final state on wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) in the mirrors/ab20.larc.nasa.gov directory . ___________________________________________________________________________ / noj@cats.ucsc.edu | // \ |Oh, you're just gettin weird...and that results in creativ-| //Only Amiga | |ity" -Joel MST3K|Virtual Reality is the future of safe sex.|\\ // makes it | \__________________________________________________________|_\X/___possible_/ ## Subject: TDDD -> DXF Translator available? Date: Sun, 3 May 92 16:50:37 -0400 From: "Frederick E. Brown" Anyone know if a TDDD -> DXF translator and/or code is available? Thanx, rick@wam.umd.edu ## Subject: RIPPLE f/x Date: Mon, 04 May 92 10:24:47 -0400 From: rnollman@osf.org Anyone had success using the RIPPLE f/x? I want to create a pool of water with a sphere that drops into it with the resulting circular waves moving out from the sphere. Is this possible with RIPPLE? Or is it not that fine-tuneable? I can make a disturbed surface or a surface that simulates the effects of splashes from of water from a repeating drip. But that is not the effect I am looking for. I want the smooth movement of concentric circles -- little waves -- moving out from the sides of the sphere after it drops into the water and disappears below the surface. Rich Nollman ## Subject: Re: RIPPLE f/x Date: Mon, 4 May 92 11:18:13 -0400 From: "Michael B. Comet" >Anyone had success using the RIPPLE f/x? I want to create a pool of >water with a sphere that drops into it with the resulting circular >waves moving out from the sphere. Is this possible with RIPPLE? Or >is it not that fine-tuneable? I can make a disturbed surface or a >surface that simulates the effects of splashes from of water from a >repeating drip. But that is not the effect I am looking for. I want >the smooth movement of concentric circles -- little waves -- moving out >from the sides of the sphere after it drops into the water and >disappears below the surface. > >Rich Nollman > > > Yep, This is what this effect is for. (Actually there are two ways to use the effect, one gives the concentric circles you were talking about, and the other causes the object to wave like a flag). Anyways, try this: Add a primitive plane with dimensions 100x100 and maybe 20 or so sections for both directions. (Fairly detailed). Save the object. Then go into the stage or action editor and load up your object for say a 30 frame animation. Add the effect bar in the ACTION editor. I think the defaults are fine. If you want more ripples, change the ripple count. If you want the ripples higher, change the height value, and if you want the ripples farther apart, change the wavelength value. You can also try the linear ripple. This one starts at the axis, (like the spherical ripple), but moves out linearly in a straight path along the objects Y axis. You can do some really neat things. I just made a small HAM anim of this grenade I made. Getting bored with just exploding it, I gave it this ripple. Looks normal, and then all of the sudden it ripples like it as rubber or water. Very weird, but cool looking! hope this helps. mike c. mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: Re: What kind of BOZO would ask about extrude to path AGAIN!? Date: Mon, 04 May 92 14:23:37 EDT From: Mark Thompson Thanks to everyone for the help. This weekend, I actually had some time to try it out. I tried several different approaches but nothing worked as I wanted it to without Huge amounts of manual work. The technique that came the closest was to load an IFF bitmap of my logo into Imagine and then have it auto-trace it without filling in the interior polygons. I then named this object PATH. Finally, I took two concentric disks and used Mold/Extrude and specified PATH as the extrusion path. Works like a champ except for one BIG problem. The object being extruded along the path does not rotate with the path tangent as it travels along it. As far as I'm concerned, any path extrusion is totally useless if the object does not rotate with the path. Why would Impulse even bother with such a tool if they weren't going to rotate the object? Am I missing something? Another sugestion was to use Replicate instead of Extrude with spheres. However, this will not only look bad and waste polygons, but it also will not accomplish what is needed: letters formed from two concentric tubes (the outer tube will be a translucent glow). So I guess what I'm asking is, did anyone succeed in making this work without lots and lots and lots of tedious manual work, or shall I chalk this up as an undoable task for Imagine? |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' 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: RIPPLE f/x Date: Mon, 4 May 92 11:50:32 -0700 From: 66291000 Here's another suggestion for the Ripple F/X: If you want really symmetrical concentric circles, Add a Primitive Disk and then Divide it five or six times (more if you're gonna get very close to the object in your animation. Make sure that the edges of the disk are covered somehow (by land, edges of the screen, etc). Then go ahead and add the Ripple F/X and you'll have a great looking animation. Another nice trick is to make the object metal (chrome and gold work particularly well). Pseudo-T2 effects! Best of luck, Stefon ## Subject: Converting from Imagine to DCTV format Date: Tue, 05 May 92 11:47:29 -0400 From: rnollman@osf.org Thanks to everyone who helped me to get RIPPLE to work. I got it to work last night (I was doing alot of stupid things, and the Impulse documentation did not help). Even the Stage Editor animation blew me away. It did EXACTLY what I thought it would do. Now, I need to know how to convert my Imagine anims (or pics) to DCTV format. I tried to figure out how to use ADAM, but there are some very basic points that I must be missing. There is documentation and a great user interface, (all that is required is someone with some basic intelligence to use it...) but the documentation must be leaving something out. Basically, I want to run my Imagine-created RIPPLE anim through DCTV. How do I do it? I have Showanim, Show, the DCTVtoILBM24 conversion utility, and Makeanim in the directory with ADAM as indicated by the documentation. I tried to get it to work, but the thing just sits there and says: waiting...frame 1. 1. I need to know how to convert an existing Imagine anim file, and 2. how to automatically (I think that is the purpose of ADAM) convert my Imagine anims to DCTV as the frames are being rendered by Imagine (that is, I assume, what ADAM is "waiting" for). 3. I also tried using the convert module in DCTV and was confused about which way the tool converts. Is it from DCTV format to standard Amiga formats, Amiga formats to DCTV, or both? Where does ADAM fit in? I assume once I understand how to convert my Imagine files to DCTV format, all the other conversions (Deluxpaint,etc.) will be simple. Thanks. __ __ /_/\ / /\ _\ \ \ / / \ __ /_/\_\ \/_/ /\ \/_/\ __ \ \ _ \ \ \_\ \ \ \/ /\ \ \ \_\/\ \ \/ /\ \ \/ / +------------------------------------+ \ \ \ \ \ / \ \ / | Rich Nollman | \_\/ \_\/ \_\/ | rnollman@osf.org | /_/\ /_/\ / /\ | (617) 621-8732 | _\_\ \__ \ \ \ / / / +------------------------------------+ /_/\/\/_/\_\_\ \/_/ / \ \ \/\ \ \| _/\ \ \ \ \ \/\ \ \ | \ \ \ \ \ /\ \ | \ \ \ \_\/ \_\/ \_\/ ## Subject: Re: What kind of BOZO would ask about extrude to path AGAIN!? Date: Tue, 05 May 92 11:58:28 EDT From: Mark Thompson Thanks Udo, David, and Chris for pointing to me the 'Align Y to path' gadget which was so painfully obvious in the requestor that I am horrendously embarrassed that I even asked for help. Thanks again, I am now happily extruding glowing neon tubes. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' 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: RCS fusion 40 questions Date: Tue, 5 May 92 11:48:25 CDT From: Toaster Man I will probably be buying a RCS 040 soon.. but i have been hearing stuff about it i dont necessarly like.. For instance someone posted a while ago that it doesnt work with imagine? Does it work with the toaster? Also I have been hearing that its about as fast as a 50mhz 030?? does anyone have the specs on this baby? mimps,ram, etc? steve t. ## Subject: Re: Converting from Imagine to DCTV format Date: Tue, 5 May 92 10:17:51 PDT From: "John T. Grieggs" > 1. I need to know how to convert an existing Imagine anim file, and > You can't. It's an evolutionary dead end, compatible with nothing else in the world. What you want to do is render 24-bit frames, and convert THEM to DCTV. > 2. how to automatically (I think that is the purpose of ADAM) convert > my Imagine anims to DCTV as the frames are being rendered by Imagine > (that is, I assume, what ADAM is "waiting" for). > ADAM will convert the frames to DCTV format as they are rendered, and build an ANIM from them when they have all been rendered and converted. It has options for the rez to convert to and the number and location of frames to wait for, among other things. > 3. I also tried using the convert module in DCTV and was confused > about which way the tool converts. Is it from DCTV format to standard > Amiga formats, Amiga formats to DCTV, or both? Where does ADAM fit > in? > It does both. ADAM is the equivalent of running the standalone program, IFFTODCTV, repeatedly, interspersed with appropriate file manipulation, followed by MAKEANIM. > I assume once I understand how to convert my Imagine files to DCTV > format, all the other conversions (Deluxpaint,etc.) will be simple. > All conversions are simple once you know what you are doing! :-) A key point is to keep the 24-bit versions of your pics lying around, so that you can always create a new version of the highest possible quality. And invest in Art Department Professional, you won't regret it! (Obnoxiously long .signature deleted) ## Subject: Re: What kind of BOZO would ask about extrude to path AGAIN!? Date: Wed, 6 May 92 0:49:40 CDT From: "Scott Jones (Dr. Jones)" I know I am really the bozo now! I didnt bother to follow the thread on this subject and was curious as to how you get the neon tubes to glow? I am doing a project at work that could move me from part time sales to full time video productions, and this would be a thing I would need to do with the project I have in mind... I guess I would be more interested in doing this in Lightwave than Imagine, but I am still very interested in how to do it in Imagine. Thanks... Scott.. ## Subject: Re: RCS fusion 40 questions Date: Wed, 6 May 1992 07:21:11 GMT From: Stephen Menzies set@cis.ksu.edu (Toaster Man) writes: >I will probably be buying a RCS 040 soon.. but i have been hearing stuff about >it i dont necessarly like.. For instance someone posted a while ago that >it doesnt work with imagine? Does it work with the toaster? Also I have >been hearing that its about as fast as a 50mhz 030?? does anyone have the >specs on this baby? mimps,ram, etc? >steve t. >R Imagine: I too read that post and spoke to RCS about it. They told me that while they had some calls regarding Imagine in the past there was nothing that was really reproduceable. Since the last 4 months however (with the release of new versions of the RCS install software), software related calls have dropped to almost nil. Until they (and me too, because I've never had a problem testing Imagine on the RCS board) hear differently they can only assume Imagine and the board are perfectly compatable. Lightwave: Again, any problems between toaster(see below), lw (I don't think there ever was any), toaster paint (I believe there was a problem somewhere), appear to have completely cleared up with more recent upgrades of the RCS software and the use of the C='s newest version of "setpatch". There was one outstanding problem (that I am aware of) with regards to vertical scrolling of generics. I was demonstrated the problem. Apparently, (as of a few days ago), this problem was solved. Amiga: There was a problem with 6.2 rev motherboards and I posted to this effect a few weeks ago. This problem was solved (requires a change in a chip on the RCS board). 030/50mhz: Last summer I tested the board (under 1.3) against the 030/50. At that time the 040 was about twice as fast. I also know that the RCS board is again, atleast twice as fast now over what it was 4 months ago (again with the new RCS software/setpatch. BTW, every F40 user should be using the newest version of the RCS software, 2.021 which includes the new setpatch. But it would be nice to be more precise about this. I have an Imagine file at RCS right now (an old file called , exploded_garden, which is in the neigbourhood of 75,000 polys. I will render it with Im2.0, and then sometime soon, take the file over to the universitie's lab and run it on the GVP030/50 and see what results I can come up with. This isn't something I can do tommorrow though, but when I find time I'll do it and post the results. But off the cuff, I would have to say, given tests that I have already done in the past, and working with the 030/50 at the university, that the RCS040 is *significantly* faster than the 030/50. Test results will be nice, but I can tell you now that I wouldn't want to work Caligari-B on the 030/50 after working with it on the 040. Finally, it's worth mentioning that most(all) of the software that we are presently using has not really been optimized for the 040 yet. We will again see a significant increase when that happens. Also, the 040 seems to like polys, the more you throw at it, the faster it goes. Anyway..see what I can do. -stephen -- Stephen Menzies #Internet: menzies@CAM.ORG #Fidonet : Stephen Menzies @ 1:167/265 ## Subject: Re: What kind of BOZO would ask about extrude to path AGAIN!? Date: Wed, 06 May 92 10:04:55 EDT From: Mark Thompson Scott Jones write: > I know I am really the bozo now! I didnt bother to follow the thread > on this subject and was curious as to how you get the neon tubes to > glow? Actually, this was never discussed becauase I already knew how to do that. I just needed the extrusion method. > I guess I would be more interested in doing this in Lightwave than > Imagine, but I am still very interested in how to do it in Imagine. I am not exactly sure how you would accomplish the glow in Imagine (or even if you can) but it was my intent to do all the rendering in LightWave. To do this, make the outer tube luminous with transparent edges and about 40% transparency (I set the Edge Threshold to around .75 but that will vary depending on the ratio of the tube diameters) and don't forget smoothing. The inner tube is just a standard smooth luminous surface. Then add a couple of point lights set to the color of the neon to make the surrounding objects pick up a nice warm neon glow. Quite simple actually and very nice looking. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' 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: black borders on DCTV images Date: Wed, 06 May 92 12:53:38 -0400 From: rnollman@osf.org When I run an Imagine animation using Imagine's animation program, the images fill the screen. I converted the animation using ADAM and MAKEANIM. The screens were centered but with black borders (used the default screen sizes). Should I be using extreme overscan or something to create frames that fill the screen and eliminate the black borders or is that simple the way DCTV displays its anims? Am I doing something wrong? Is there some reason that the black borders might desireable? I remember vaguely someone telling me that black borders are good for submittals to professional studios because it allows the engineers to be able to manipulate the images exactly when tranferring to a larger format. Thanks. Rich Nollman ## Subject: Essence Date: Wed, 6 May 92 13:32:16 PDT From: Drakon@cup.portal.com Look what I found in the Apex Vendors area on Portal. Apex Software is proud to announce its new software product: ESSENCE Algorithmic Textures for Imagine The 3D software Imagine by Impulse, Inc. allows users to define object attributes with an "algorithmic texture," a surface that can be characterized with a mathematical algorithm as opposed to just "painting on" an image with brushmap. Examples of these algorithmic textures are checkerboards, grids, camouflage, and even wood. THESE TEXTURES ARE NOT BRUSHMAPS OR PICTURES. They are algorithms Imagine uses to color your object. They take very little RAM (about 1-15K each) and have no pixel artifacts. Apex Software Publishing has developed Essence, additional Imagine-compatible algorithmic textures for use with Imagine, which gives users a library of even more surfaces for their objects. These additional textures range from simple textures like Hex, a tiling of colored hexagons, to a complex surface called Fractal Noise, which makes a turbulent, detail-rich natural looking coloring for objects like clouds, fire, planets, landscapes, or even dirt. These textures were designed and written by award winning Amiga artist Steven Worley with the help of Glenn Lewis, author of the powerful Imagine TTDDD utility package. Steve is also the author of the successful book "Understanding Imagine 2.0." Essence should be released in late June of 1992. The library has over 40 (forty!) new textures to the 12 Impulse textures. The retail price of Essence has not yet been set. A description of some of the new textures: Counter: A flat texture that applies the image of an LCD display to an object's surface. The number it displays is defined in the texture parameters. By morphing the object in Imagine (which is clearly described in the Essence manual) the LCD display can form a timer, speedometer, or any other numerical display you wish. Floortile:A bit like Impulse's "Checks" in that squares are added to your object. However, these squares have the classic utilitarian floortile appearance with long, irregular streaks of material running through the tile, and with tiles are oriented at right angles to one another. Fractal Noise: A suite of textures that are difficult to describe. Fractal noise is a turbulent, detailed blend of colors that can be used for naturally detailed surfaces ranging from clouds to dirt. Lightwave 3D has a similar texture, although the Apex version is considerably more versatile. The fractal noise can be animated in time, allowing the surface image to swirl and eddy as the object is animated. There are versions of fractal noise that apply single or multiple colors with sharp or soft boundaries. Reflectivity and transparency can also be controlled though fractal noise. Fractal noise is a workhorse that is nearly indispensable for many realistic surfaces. How else can you make an animated photorealistic, swirling planet atmosphere in three minutes? Granite: A relative of fractal noise, for a variety of rock surfaces with complex detail. Hex: A tiling of hexagons. Simple, but a very pleasant alternative to checkerboards! HueRotate: This changes the color of your object by "rotating" the color shades of your object around the color wheel (blue to magenta to red to yellow to green to cyan to blue). This can make wonderful surface effects, especially when animated. This can also change the color of images added with brushmaps. Mandelbrot: An amazing twist on a classic image! The fractal Mandelbrot set is computed on the fly. This image has an infinite amount of detail, with beautiful spirals and structure. By zooming the camera closer to the object surface, you can magnify the region you are looking at. See the Mandelbrot set with a flight-simulator like perspective! A truly stunning texture. RGBvary: Related to fractal noise, this texture does not ADD color, but it instead varies the color that already exists. Most real world objects have slight color variations due to wear or weather. RGBvary will take (for example) green paint and subtly change the shades of the paint over the surface of your object. This variation adds considerable realism to your object. The amount of variation, of course, is completely user definable. Swirl: A spiral based surface like a spinning hypnotist's disk or a barber pole. Transporter: Star Trek fans can now fade in and out objects in true sci-fi style. Make an animation of your favorate transporter malfunction! Veined Marble: Finally! Layered veins of turbulent photo-realistic marble. ----------- These textures are FULLY compatible with the floating point versions of Imagine 2.0, Imagine 1.1, and even Turbo Silver. You load and use them in an identical fashion to the current Impulse-supplied textures. Currently, there is no support for using the textures in the integer versions of Imagine designed to run only on a 68000 processor, but if demand is high enough this can be implemented in the future. Essence should be available in late June through most Amiga dealers and mail order firms. If you want to get more information or a flyer (when we print one!) you can write to: Essence Info Apex Software Publishing 405 El Camino Real Suite 121 Menlo Park CA 94025 USA ------ Imagine is a trademark of Impulse Inc. Essence is a trademark of Apex Software Publishing. Lincoln is the capitol of Nebraska. ------ Steve has allowed me the honor of beta-testing these textures and all I can say is they will knock your socks off!!! Ben Gibson ## Subject: Re: Essence Date: Thu, 7 May 92 0:52:23 PDT From: Chihtsung Jeffrey Lin Forwarded message: > From Drakon@cup.portal.com Wed May 6 14:01:19 1992 > To: Imagine@Athena.MIT.EDU > From: Drakon@cup.portal.com > Subject: Essence > Lines: 137 > Date: Wed, 6 May 92 13:32:16 PDT > Message-Id: <9205061332.1.27917@cup.portal.com> > X-Origin: The Portal System (TM) > > Look what I found in the Apex Vendors area on Portal. > Apex Software is proud to announce its new software product: > > ESSENCE > Algorithmic Textures for Imagine > [ The description deleted ] > > > > Steve has allowed me the honor of beta-testing these textures and all I can > say is they will knock your socks off!!! > > Ben Gibson > Can you put some pictures generated with these textures on hubcap? Thanks. Jeff:) ## Subject: Re: Essence Date: Thu, 07 May 92 10:02:06 EDT From: Mark Thompson > ESSENCE > Algorithmic Textures for Imagine Well how bout that. Those textures look kind of familiar. Steve was asking me some texture questions back in March and it looks like he put the info to good use. Here is a snipit from the conversation: ---------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Mar 92 18:21:02 EST To: spworley@Athena.MIT.EDU From: Mark Thompson > What kind of algorithmic surfaces are most lacking in > all of the 3D programs, commercial and PD? Various color rainbows for realistically modeling gemstones, laser discs, and other diffraction effects. Animated turbulent noise with a non-linear direction vector allowing the patterns to swirl and twist (with and/or without control). Also allow full spectrum color cycling. Cloth textures. Image maps are great, but complex soft surfaces prevent projective mapping from being viable. Procedurals or 2D texturing is needed. Fuzz/hair. It ain't easy, but it sure would be nice. Doing it effectively would require significant changes to the rendering engine however. Anisotropic surfaces liked brushed aluminum. Better procedural ripples/waves (but ofcourse you knew that). Multi color graduations with different spread functions (could be a subset of the rainbows above). I'll think of some more but that should keep you busy :-) ---------------------------------- The fuzz/hair would be great but current techniques use density functions which would likely require changes in Imagine's rendering code. I have some ideas to get around that but it would not be nearly as easy to implement as the other procedurals I mentioned. |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | ` ' 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: Global reflectance seem? Date: Thu, 7 May 92 15:16:04 PDT From: RayTrace@cup.portal.com Ok, heres the prob. I created a image in VistaPro of clouds (Aimed the camera at the sky). Loaded it into DCTV, smoothed it out a bit. Saved it as a IFF 24. Used it as a BG and global reflectance image. NOW I had a sphere refecting it. And theres a black "seem" that is rather wide running around about 300 degrees of it, you can see it on the top AND bottom! It's not a thin seem either, I rendered it in HI-res DCTV. Looks cool except for the seem. I'm REALLY into Imagine now that I have a 3000. 10 megs/25 MHz! ## Subject: Re: Global reflectance seem? Date: Thu, 7 May 92 19:25:54 CDT From: Wayne Haufler 283-4160 RayTrace@cup.portal.com (whoever that really is) writes: > Ok, heres the prob. I created a image in VistaPro of clouds (Aimed the camer a > at the sky). Loaded it into DCTV, smoothed it out a bit. Saved it as a IFF > 24. Used it as a BG and global reflectance image. NOW I had a sphere > refecting it. And theres a black "seem" that is rather wide running around > about 300 degrees of it, you can see it on the top AND bottom! It's not a > thin seem either, I rendered it in HI-res DCTV. Looks cool except for the > seem. I'm REALLY into Imagine now that I have a 3000. 10 megs/25 MHz! I remember having a answering a similar problem way back in November 91. Here is that question and answer from Nov 6 91. Subject: Re: spherical brushmaps dan@cs.pitt.edu (Dan Drake) writes: > 2.) when My planet is rotating, at one point there is a white line that goes > from the top of the planet to the bottom. North to south pole. The color > of the sphere before I did the mapping is white. Does this mean that the map > did not go all of the way around the planet? I guess I can solve this by > changing to color of the planet to blue instead of white. > I had the same problem quite a while ago. It turns out that I had forgotten to paint underneath the horizontal menu bar and vertical toolbox bar in DPAINT III. It is easy to forget these regions. A Fill with these bars visible does not fill underneath them. Imagine wraps the entire 640x400 image, including those possibly unpainted regions. This may or may not be your problem. That unpainted region on mine appeared more like a 10 degree black wedge at the 'back' of the sphere. BTW, a rendered frame of the camera aimed at the north or south pole of that sphere resulted in a pretty cool and strange 'tree ring'-like image. Probably the results of severe distortions of the brush at those regions. Hope this helps :) __ Wayne A. Haufler [Christian/SW Engineer/XWindows/Amigan] \\ /\\ /\\ //_ haufler@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov McDonnell Douglas-Houston \/--\// \//__ Hobby:"Exploring the Use of Computer Graphics and // Animations To Support Christian Endeavors" ## Subject: Re: Global reflectance seem? Date: Fri, 8 May 92 13:22:43 PDT From: "John T. Grieggs" > Ok, heres the prob. I created a image in VistaPro of clouds (Aimed the camer a > at the sky). Loaded it into DCTV, smoothed it out a bit. Saved it as a IFF > 24. Used it as a BG and global reflectance image. NOW I had a sphere > refecting it. And theres a black "seem" that is rather wide running around > about 300 degrees of it, you can see it on the top AND bottom! It's not a > thin seem either, I rendered it in HI-res DCTV. Looks cool except for the > seem. I'm REALLY into Imagine now that I have a 3000. 10 megs/25 MHz! > I had a problem a while back which may be related. I created a brush map in Light 24, intending to wrap it onto an object in Imagine. It worked ok, except for a large black area on one of the edges. Yuck! Eventually I figured out that Light was padding the right edge of the brush out to some arbitrary spot (probably a word boundary). To fix it, I loaded the brush into ADPro and used the Crop_Visual Operator to trim it. _john ## Subject: See thru maps Date: Fri, 8 May 1992 21:22:03 -0600 From: HURTT CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL Here's a question. Is it possible to make a brushmap where color0 allows the objects attributes to show thru? It seems now if you want to slap a logo on a plane, you are forced into having to map a square onto the plain, rather than just the logo. Ex: a slab with a circle mapped on it would have a black box (or whatever color) around the circle. How can this be avoided? Buy using the full scale value perhaps? Or do I need to make a copy of the object, map the circle on it, then map a transparency map of the area around the circle to the copy, and put it directly over the slab? Or (even worse) cut very carefully the brush out in Dpain rather than using a box? If it can't be done easily (by some stupid error on my part or the full scale value) then I'd like to suggest this as a future mapping feature. Also, a "light" brushmap type would be great to, every where there is color in the map, a light is applied in that color. Be trival to make flashing displays, cities, and spaceships that glow correctly. Chris ## Subject: An Idea for Imagine. Date: Sat, 9 May 92 12:13:49 -0700 From: Steve Galle Does anyone know thae address for someone at Impulse? I had an idea that would be really great for all of us stuck with limited chip ram. It came to me as I was rendering, and hadn't enough chip to use more than 8 colors in dpaint. I decided that it would be REALLY nice if Imaging would do it's rndering out of a window on the workbench instead of a screen. All it would even need is a cancel button and a progress monitor. I think this would be a GREAT thing for Impulse to consider, and I can't see how it would be too hard to accomplish. Anyone like the idea? Also, has ANYONE gotten trans- parancy mapping to work with the integer version of 1.1? It seems to be broken on all the 1.1's I've tried it on. (It works under the fp version..) Just curious about what you all thought. -Steve Galle -uduck@mcl.ucsb.edu ## Subject: Re: See thru maps Date: Sun, 10 May 92 08:25:46 est From: "-s90066729-k.wong-ele-60-" Michael, I have found that if you use the Genlock button when laying down a brush map the areas of black on your map will then become "see-thru". I'm not sure if this actually does interfere when you do genlock (I don't have a genlock :-) but it's a great way of doing Decaling! Kev. ## Subject: bye for now Date: Sun, 10 May 92 20:24:11 PDT From: Kevin Kodama well, for the last couple of weeks there has been alot of strange mail site stuff, and no imagine stuff :( so, i have an IMAGINE question ! Apex is apparently releasing a bunch of procedural textures soon, i have read the press release, etc...and want to know if any of the textures will be "bump" map type textures, or will they all be color manipulation tools- i would love to see some fractal bumps as well as fractal noise...also, are there any other cool type textures people have seen on other (high end) systems that would be appropriate for Imagine ? Btw, i saw a very nice demo of Alias Sketch for the Macintosh-nurbs based modeling, with a very sweet interface, and GRAPHICAL interface for assigning color, specularity, texture, etc.. kevink@ced.berkeley.edu ## Subject: RE: Discount? Date: Mon, 11 May 92 08:18:36 MDT From: Paul Johnston Impulse definitely has copies of Steve Worley's book for Imagine owners. Cost i s $20.00 + $ 5.00 shipping (after seeing the packaging you'll know why). They too k awhile to ship my copy because they had to backorder it (must be selling well). I believe the $24.00 + ?? shipping was from Steve's company Apex Software to readers of the Imagine mailing list (all of whom may not own Imagine and see the offer from Impulse). By the way, note where this post originates, hope it works. ## Subject: Re: See thru maps Date: Mon, 11 May 92 08:24:12 MDT From: Paul Johnston I have not tried the Genlock button when laying down a brush map, but I have a related issue. I am trying to create a wood plank that has the standard wood texture (no problem), but the wood I am modeling is stained. The wood itself is dark, the grain is a lighter color and the stain is reddish. I've tried applying a linear texture to the object. The results are nice but covers over the wood grain. Anyone have ideas as to how to approach this task with Imagine 2.0? I agree with Michael that a way to layer textures, or combine them via user control would be very handy. PAJ ## Subject: Re: See thru maps Date: Mon, 11 May 92 08:24:12 MDT From: Paul Johnston I have not tried the Genlock button when laying down a brush map, but I have a related issue. I am trying to create a wood plank that has the standard wood texture (no problem), but the wood I am modeling is stained. The wood itself is dark, the grain is a lighter color and the stain is reddish. I've tried applying a linear texture to the object. The results are nice but covers over the wood grain. Anyone have ideas as to how to approach this task with Imagine 2.0? I agree with Michael that a way to layer textures, or combine them via user control would be very handy. PAJ ## Subject: Re: Getting the list back to subject Date: Mon, 11 May 92 08:31:51 MDT From: Paul Johnston Kevin makes a nice point in Subject: bye for now. I also have looked at some of the Mac based 3d products. Rendering time seems much slower but I like some of the features in various products. One, I forget which, has a pallete of textures that you can pick from. This allows you to see what you'll get before you render. I have SurfaceMaster and MapMaster by Markoya and these products are similar, but something built into Imagine would be wonderful. What other new features should we ask for? PAJ ## Subject: Re: See thru maps Date: Mon, 11 May 92 12:46:09 EDT From: Dan Drake > I am trying to create a wood plank that has the standard wood texture (no > problem), but the wood I am modeling is stained. The wood itself is dark, the > grain is a lighter color and the stain is reddish. I've tried applying a > linear texture to the object. The results are nice but covers over the wood > grain. Anyone have ideas as to how to approach this task with Imagine 2.0? > Why don't you approximate teh colors of the stained wood and grain when you define the wood colors in the texture. Then you can twiddle with the shininess or dullness in the attributes requester. I find that I have to change the way I think, from asking myself how things are created, to how the person looking at it views it. dan. ## Subject: Re: See thru maps Date: Mon, 11 May 92 14:11:07 -0400 From: "Michael B. Comet" > I have not tried the Genlock button when laying down a brush map, but I have a >related issue. > > I am trying to create a wood plank that has the standard wood texture (no >problem), but the wood I am modeling is stained. The wood itself is dark, the >grain is a lighter color and the stain is reddish. I've tried applying a >linear texture to the object. The results are nice but covers over the wood >grain. Anyone have ideas as to how to approach this task with Imagine 2.0? > > I agree with Michael that a way to layer textures, or combine them via user >control would be very handy. > >PAJ > > Okay, cool. I just tried the Genlock Brush feature and it works this way: The part of the brush map that is color 0, becomes clear so that at that point, the OBJECT color is what is shown. This was a feature I asked for before 2.0 was implemented. After seeing Todd Rundgren's Toaster video, I told Impulse I wanted a way to a pply a brushmap on color 0, so like Lightwave did. Looks like they did it. Anyways, if you are trying to make stained wood, why don't you just set the wood or object color to the stained color you want, rather than the basic brown. That is ADD the red in directly. Also, if the linear texture is working, APPLY IT FIRST, before the wood texture. This will cause the object to first be stained, and to THEN apply the wood pattern. It is a good thing to remember that Imagine applies brushes and textures in the order they are listed in the attributes requestor. Hope this helps. Michael Comet mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: Re: Essence Date: Mon, 11 May 92 14:24:11 CDT From: Wayne Haufler 283-4160 On May 6, Ben Gibson (Drakon@cup.portal.com) writes: > Look what I found in the Apex Vendors area on Portal. > Apex Software is proud to announce its new software product: > > ESSENCE > Algorithmic Textures for Imagine I know this is a late reply, but since nobody else has said it (I think), I am VERY excited about this upcoming product. Steve Worley has done it again. Am looking forward to getting my hands on it. __ Wayne A. Haufler [Christian/SW Engineer/XWindows/Amigan] \\ /\\ /\\ //_ haufler@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov McDonnell Douglas-Houston \/--\// \//__ Hobby:"Exploring the Use of Computer Graphics and // Animations To Support Christian Endeavors" ## Subject: Wishlist for Imagine V3.0 - V4.0 Date: Mon, 11 May 92 22:06:08 +0200 From: Hannes Heckner This is a mail for all people who are interessted in improving Imagine to be the best one on the market. So if anyone has additional ideas to the one mentioned below please add them. First I apologize for my poor descriptions but english is not the best thing i can do. Second I want the people at Impulse reply to me via this mailing list when they get this mail. This a long wishlist for ImagineV3.0 and further versions. I wrote this because I want to get Imagine the best raytracer for the amiga because I don't want to buy any further software like caligari, raydance etc. etc. Lets start: 1) Snap axis to grid. This option (in stage and detail) should place the axis of the current selected objects to the nearest grid cros-section. 2) One-dimensional movement. It would be handy to have an option in moving objects that would alow to move objects with the mouse only along one (!) axis. And what is more in fixed steps say 20 units or so. So if you want to move your object 40 units along the Y axis you only have to choose one-dim movement along Y axis (gadget !) and then do it (perhaps in conjunction with snap axis to grid) 3) Variables in the action editor. It would be great if you could place names instead of numbers in the frame counter string gadgets. For example instead of typing 100 in the frames counter you type "length_of_anim". Then you put a value (in a special editor) to this variable say: length_of_anim=100. Then you use this variable in all actor-requesters: You define the appearence of a sphere in your scene by : Sphe re from 0 to length_of_anim. At this point i must apologize for my poor english. I hope you'll get what i mean. The use of point 3 is that if you want your anim to be a bit smooth er then you only have to change the variable and to all of the actor requestors. Also it should be possible to do some basic calculation with it: You could specify a varible for an important point, say the beginning of a special effect e.g. "explosion=50" means that an explosion takes place at frame 50. Then you could tell imagine to start 5 frames later a movement along a path by: explosion + 5. A third important feature is that all calculation and values should B be displayed (and entered) in frames and time (e.g. seconds) so you will have a better view of your animation. (Oh god, describing technical things in english is sooo difficult) 4) Outlining feature: What about a feature to create an outline of an outline (funny ?). If you want to build a text-object with the edges reflecting the light (a much better picture then without) you could do this (in the detail editor) with outlining an outline of the converted (ILBM convert) picture of the logo. You make several layers of dif ferent size (by outlinng them and then "skin" them together and voila the object is complete (a nice feature isn't it). 5) Gernal morphing. I know it's difficult but it would be nice if imagine could morph (smoothly) between objects of different point number and structure). 6) Scripts and/or Arexx. Many things in 3-d modelling could be done real quick if you could build a small script file and then compile it (or something) and then have imagine execute it. Some suggestions: - fractal mathematics - trees (like in raydance, would be real great !!!!!) - own textures-scripts. These scripts should be a small programming language with strucutre elements like: if then else, for next, procedural subdividing etc. The points of an object should be accessible via Vectors (example: sphere[100].x = x coord). I know that Glenn Lewis has programmed a TDDD-Lib where you can access object data via C programming. But as you see above there should be more than that. 7) Brush-morphing. Another hard thing to do, I know. But it would be a big thing if one could morph between different brushemaps. 8) Acceleration and Deacceleration. I think a more abstract aproach would be better: Very morphable thing (changeable by value) in B imagine should be accerable (deaccerable). For this there should be a new requester independent of all other data in the action editor. There you specify the velocity of change in a X/Y - axis diagramm where the X axis is the timeline (in frames or seconds) and the Y axis is the percentage of the start velocity. Example: You specify a starting value of 50 and then draw a sine-like curve into the requester. If you apply this acc/deacc setting (which should be savable - loadable etc.) to a path then a object should which is applied to the path should start with 50 units/per frame then smoothly accerlerate and then smoothly de- accerlerate. I hope you got the point. This is again very hard to describe for me. This feature should be appendable everywhere where a smooth change takes place. e.g. in morphing objects, B changing colors, changing alignments etc. etc. This would be a real great thing to have. BGy the way. If anyone at Impulse reads this and gets interessted in several points but doesn't understands completely what I mean or needs further description (total descriptions with requesters etc.) then mail me and I try to work out the points again. Perhaps I could to tell you the things in german (this would be more easy for me). B But I'll try to say all in english. So let's finish this first part. If anyone at Impulse gets this mail please inform me that you got it, because it is stupid to write wishlists when you don't get them and I have truck-loads of ideas left to tell you, so please mail me. Hannes ## Subject: FastROM Date: Mon, 11 May 1992 14:29:58 -0600 From: HURTT CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL I don't know if this has ever be brought up but I did alittle test to see if turning off FastROM affected the speed of rendering. With it on an average pic (brushmaps, textures, scanline, etc) took 3:22. Off it took 3:35. My guess the time is from loading everything in. So if you are dipping into chip ram with a pic, you might want to turn off FastROM. And of course if you're running out to begin with. :) Does anyone else have any experience with rendering with FastROM on or off? Also, anyone know of a CPU setter that has a GUI? Chris ## Subject: Re: See thru maps Date: Mon, 11 May 92 20:37:05 -0400 From: "Michael B. Comet" > Okay: but what if you have a brushmap and a texture? I have such a >beast, and the texture obscures the brushmap (camoflauge texture) and there >is no way that I know of to tell the program to put the brushmap OVER the >textured surface. AM I wrong? > >-Bish > > Yea I know. I just ran into this problem myself. There is kind of a way around it, but it pretty much defeats the purpose of the brushmap. You can now (in version 2.0) restrict brushmap, textures and just about everything else to a SUBGROUP of faces. You go into pick faces mode, select the ones you want to name as a SUBGROUP and select MAKE SUBGROUP (from the functions menu I think). Now, in the texture OR Brushmap requestor, you can enter the SUBGROUP name you used to restrict the texture or brushmap to that area. What this means is: If you have say a simple object, like a plane with a lot of segments, you could make a subgroup of everything BUT one segment, and apply the texture to that. And then make ANOTHER SubGroup of those lonely 2 faces (or however many), and apply the brushmap to that. The result would be what you want. Problems obviously occur with complex brushmaps, since what you would need to do would be to essentially create the brushmap out of polygons! It DOES work though for some cases. Actually, you would probably use subgroups where you had a complex object with mode than 1 texture on it. You could make a weird ball, and pick 4 stripes of faces, and then restrict a texture to each one. Poof: Instant striped texture ball, with no overlapping textures. The only other way I think of doing what you want would be to render the texture on a FLAT PLANE as a full screen pic, and to then use the Art Dept. or some other program to composite the Genlocked map you want, over the one you just made with the texture. Then you could save that and wrap that over your object. A bit out of the way, but it would probably work in a pinch. Hope this helps. If anyone else has a solution to this problem and you have actually read this far into the message, post! Michael Comet mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: Re: Essence Date: Mon, 11 May 92 20:39:21 -0400 From: "Michael B. Comet" >On May 6, Ben Gibson (Drakon@cup.portal.com) writes: > >> Look what I found in the Apex Vendors area on Portal. >> Apex Software is proud to announce its new software product: >> >> ESSENCE >> Algorithmic Textures for Imagine > >I know this is a late reply, but since nobody else has said it (I think), >I am VERY excited about this upcoming product. Steve Worley has done it >again. Am looking forward to getting my hands on it. > > > __ Wayne A. Haufler [Christian/SW Engineer/XWindows/Amigan] > YES, YES YES YES YES....I want it! Sounds realy good. The Fractal noise texture alone could be invaluable, as would the one that subtly alters the colors of your object to make it look weathered. If anyone could post some sample texture renderings on hubcap in either HAM or IFF 24, it would be greatly appreciated. Michael Comet mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: Essence Date: Tue, 12 May 92 09:15:49 EDT From: vapspay@prism.gatech.edu Souns absolutely wonderful. Mayhap we can talk Steve into selling us early copies (perhaps without a printed manual, so we could get them sooner.) I've love one to play with and show off to the other Imagine owners at AAI's 3D SIG. Moo Frank Branham ## Subject: Re: See thru maps Date: Tue, 12 May 92 11:43:52 MDT From: Paul Johnson > I am trying to create a wood plank that has the standard wood texture (no >problem), but the wood I am modeling is stained. The wood itself is dark, the >PAJ Embarassing to have to respond to your own message :) As Dan pointed out, when selecting attributes etc. for an object it is importan t to understand how the person views the object, rather than the real world natur e of same. In my example the stained wood is such that one end of the plank shows mostly the stain (a fairly bright, reddish orange), but the wood grain is still visibl e along with some of the original object color (a stain physically overlays the original so you get mixing). The other end reflects mostly the color of the wood and the wood grain, the reddish stain is not really present. I applied a linear texture of a reddish orange color in order to get a transi- tion between the two ends that was not abrupt. This works fine. Also, as Michae l points out, the order of applying the textures is important. So, by applying th e wood texture first and the linear texture second the latter color replaces the original object color _and_ the coloration of the wood. Reversing the order, the linear texture color is overlaid with the color of the wood grain, while the original object color is not visible (where the linear texture takes effect). Both of the above effects are not exactly what I want. I want more of a semi- transparent effect (like a real stain) where the "stain" color is mixed in with the original object color + wood grain color. Sigh, perhaps I'll have to wait for the new Essence package. A few of those textures (HueRotate) may be adequate. Oh, all suggestions for coloring the original object with the color of the stai n were valid if the _entire_ object were to have that color. If my explanation above is not clear I apologize. Hope others learn from my experience. That's what this mailing list is all about (and _not_ about mailing list admin issues! :) :) PAJ ## Subject: RCS Fusion40 <> GVP 030/50mhz test result Date: Tue, 12 May 1992 22:15:49 GMT From: Stephen Menzies Recently there have been a couple of posts questioning the performance of the RCS040/28mhz over the GVP030/50mhz board. It had been suggested that there was not a significant difference in speed. So, as promised, I conducted a test rendering on both boards with a previous Imagine file that I had done (Exploded Garden). This file has *many* objects in it and totals somewhere around 70,000 polys. The rendering software used was Imagine2.0 .All rendering was done on the Amiga2000 and the results are as follows: -------------------------- GVP GFORCE Combo 030/50mhz with 16megs/32bit: File: exploded_garden Render Mode: TRACE, QuarterScreen Hires 320x200,6/7, RGBN24 Anti-Alias=0 Depth=8 Global Size:auto-scale Picture size=83740 bytes Render Time: 30:27 --------------------------- RCS Fusion40/28mhz with 32megs/32bit: File: exploded_garden Render Mode: TRACE, QuarterScreen Hires 320x200,6/7, RGBN24 Anti-Alias=0 Depth=8 Global Size:auto-scale Picture size=83736 bytes Render Time: 9:04 --------------------------- It's appears that the RCS040 board in this case, was nearly 3.5x faster, as I had expected it to be. Oddly enough, I noticed that there is a 4-byte difference in the size of the image file. It's possible that I wrote it down wrong (rounded it off in my head). Other than that I have no explanation (there's no difference in the images themselves). As I mentioned before, the 040 loves polys and the more the faster. Very simple tests with very simple scenes may show a slightly less significant performance. This is the case with ALL the 040's out there. Keep in mind also the the present day Amiga software in most/all cases have NOT been compiled (optimized) for the 040. When this happens we will see even greater preformance from the 040's. I hope this clears up any doubts, premature misgivings, or confusion due to some misinformation (for reasons unknown) that are presently floating around. -stephen -- Stephen Menzies #Internet: menzies@CAM.ORG #Fidonet : Stephen Menzies @ 1:167/265 ## Subject: Lightning again, and a big HUH? Date: Tue, 12 May 92 17:29:54 PDT From: "Daryl T. Bartley" Hope this works...I'm still lost as to where the list is/will be...(should that be 'lists'?) But nonetheless I had a question for anyone who's out there. I asked before, bu t my guess is it didn't get anywhere. I am still trying to get a nice lightning/crawling electricity effect in Imagin e. I have tried various weird ways, but it's just not quite right. Has anyone e lse gotten something similar to work? Also, I might have found a way to do neon in Imagine. I was using two tubes, th e out one glass (colored or not), and the inner one a foggy, bright lightsource. It looks sort of neon-ish. Also, someone else alrady asked this, but I wanted to second it...could we see some example renders of the new textures from Essence? Even the usual 'bunch of spheres' or 'bunch of cubes' would work. I just want to see some of this stuff! Thanks in advance. Daryl Bartley dmon@cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu ## Subject: Re: Wishlist for Imagine V3.0 - V4.0 Date: Tue, 12 May 92 19:49:47 -0700 From: 66291000 First of all, I don't think that anyone at Impulse reads this mailing list (though they should!). But we could send them transcripts maybe? (Wishful thinking, but this is, after all, a wish list.) I haven't given it too much thought, but I thought I'd comment on the first in the series of these. Movement on one axis _is_ already possible. After pressing 'm', hold the shift key and press the letter of the axis you want to move in (i.e. X, Y, or Z), and you're all set. As to a different type of acceleration/deceleration feature, Amen to that! The best method I've seen is used on Animator: Journeyman (I haven't seen Lightwave yet :-(. It calls the thing a "channel" and you describe a spline with as many control point as you want, and the action (movement, rotation, size change, morph, anything) follows that velocity curve. It is absolutely the best method I can think of, so please, Impulse, put it in Imagine. (Or if they think of something better, I _suppose_ it would be alright if they put that in instead:-) I would like to see spline-based modeling, simulated shadows in scan- line mode, and re-integration of the action and stage editors (why should I have to save changes when I'm gonna keep working on the same thing?). And perhaps Impulse would like to spring for an '040 board for me, too (I already said, this is a wish list...) TTFN - Stefon ## Subject: wish list Date: Tue, 12 May 92 21:53:40 GMT-0500 From: Scott Matthew Krehbiel Hi People, I'm not all too familiar with Imagine, 'cause I can't play with it too much ( doesn't school stink?? ) So, I'm not a good person for 3d wish lists, but: I'd like to get together a wish list for the ultimate Paint and Anim program. I'd like to hear what features you like about the different Paint programs that you've worked with, ( all platforms, not just Amiga ) so I can get an idea what would make a top of the line paint program. As an example, I really like the way ColorScheme ( Lumina 16 clone ) on the IBM has a feature called "Emboss" which treats a grey scale as an altitude map, then renders it with light coming from whatever direction you choose. It's tough to describe, but the result is often something that looks like a stone carving. Anyway, please send me your paint comments ( yes, I know this is mailbox suicide ) and I'll start designing this really cool program. By the way, this is not something that I'll be able to code and create, since I'm not a programmer. It's just a thought experiment. Thanks for the Bandwidth scottk@hoggar.eng.umd.edu Scott Krehbiel ## Subject: Grouping Date: Wed, 13 May 92 11:53:51 CST From: Loyd Blankenship Ok, I'm trying a relatively simple grouping. I've got a wood box that is open on one end (imagine a wooden shoebox with no lid). This is 1 object. I also have a mirror that fits in the opening, facing out. This is a 2nd object. I have them grouped together -- but when I use Replicate, it only takes *one* of them along for the ride. I've tried it picked as a group, and picked as two separate object (holding down the "shift" key). I can't Join them (tho' I've tried it) because I end up with the wood grain on the mirrored face (even after I've changed the Picked Faces.). Help would be appreciated! Loyd *************************************************************************** * loydb@fnordbox.UUCP Once you pull the pin, * Loyd Blankenship * * GEnie: SJGAMES Mr. Grenade is no longer * PO Box 18957 * * Compu$erve: [73407,515] your friend! * Austin, TX 78760 * * cs.utexas.edu!dogface!fnordbox!loydb * 512/447-7866 * *************************************************************************** ## Subject: Warp Date: 13 May 92 19:58 -0500 From: "S. Kormilo" Hello, I have been working on making an animation of the USS Enterprise warping, or rather I have been trying to get the Enterprise to warp. So here is my question: What is the best way to get a nice looking warp out of Imagine? Sean. ## Subject: Re: Warp Date: Wed, 13 May 92 22:44:31 EDT From: Dan Drake > I have been working on making an animation of the USS Enterprise warping, > or rather I have been trying to get the Enterprise to warp. So here > is my question: What is the best way to get a nice looking warp out of > Imagine? I'm not totally sure that this will work, but one idea is to go into the cycle editor, make a segment the enterprise. Snapshop it. Then go to frame 80, and move the segment to make it longer. Snapshot it. Since you want the morph to accelerate, snapshot some intermediate frames as needed. Then set up the morph in the action editor. This is not exactly want you want, because it will stretch the whole ship at the same time. One other suggestion is to start with your normal ship, pick the initial points you want to stretch, save it as another object, and repeat the process until you get one weird streched out enterprise. You can accelerate the stretch by allowing the morph a descending amount of frames between objects. Hope this helps, dan. ## Subject: Re: Replicating Grouped Objects Date: Thu, 14 May 92 10:45:34 -0400 From: "Michael B. Comet" With regards to replicating the box and mirror: The answer is really basic, since there is no way around this without actually joining the object. Just replicate each one separately with the same values in the requestor and the result should be what you want. Michael Comet mbc@po.CWRU.Edu ## Subject: Re: Warp Date: Thu, 14 May 92 14:32:07 -0400 From: "ESTES,JON-PAUL" Use the "boing" effect. It allows you to stretch or compress in one axis. So, first stretch, the Enterprise as it accelerates, and very quickly shrink it as it reaches it maximum velocity. -- Jon-Paul Estes ## Subject: More Enterprise Problems Date: 15 May 92 15:14 -0500 From: "S. Kormilo" First, I would like to thank everyone for their help with the Enterprise warping... now I have another question... I scanned the plans of the enterprise out of the STTNG Technical manual in hopes that it would be possible to wrap the scans around the saucer section, so that I could get more detail on the ship. The problem is, that no matter how I wrap the damn thing, it never looks right! If I wrap it onto a flat plane, it works fine, but as soon as I try to put it onto the top of the Enterprise, it becomes very distorted, and does not even come close to lining up properly. HELP!! Thanks. Sean. ## Subject: Re: More Enterprise Problems Date: Fri, 15 May 92 15:52:26 MDT From: Phil Batey >Date: 15 May 92 15:14 -0500 >From: "S. Kormilo" ... > The problem is, that no matter how I wrap the damn thing, it never > looks right! If I wrap it onto a flat plane, it works fine, but > as soon as I try to put it onto the top of the Enterprise, it becomes > very distorted, and does not even come close to lining up properly. ... I read an article in Computer Graphics World a couple of months back that described the way that ILM(I think) did the mapping of a face onto the T2000. I guess they had to write a new mapping system that did "sticky mapping" this would map the bitmap of the face and tack it down to the object facets. Not sure if this really applies to your problem (I don't have Imagine). Sounds like it tho' -- Phil Batey Auto-trol Technology Design and Engineering Applications phibat@auto-trol.com