Multimedia Toolkit 2/Multimedia Toolkit 2.iso/imagine/text/arc37

Text File | 1993-09-28 | 193.8 KB | 4,981 lines

IMAGINE archive: collected off of [e-mail]

ARCHIVE XXXVII
May 8 '93 - May 24 '93

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

note: each message seperated by a '##'

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Subject: DMI Personal Animation Controller
Date: Sat, 8 May 1993 09:35:27 -0400
From: [e-mail] (ESTES,JON-PAUL)

Well, I was at NAB and got to take a look at the DPS Personal Animation
Controller (I know, I accidentally typed DMI in the heading, but I did
mean DPS).  It looked very nice.  They had an animation running, in
continuous loop, directly off the hard drive.  It was very clean, looked
like 30fps to me, and there were a number of people taking a look at it.
I was very excited about this, because with DPS's history of producing good
products, and actually shipping them, I could tell that here was a viable
product.  I had just come from DMI (yes, this time I do mean DMI) booth,
and had taken a look at their Digital Broadcaster.  Although it looked good,
everytime I have asked them about shipping, it would ship in "about 2 months."
I would very much like to see it ship, because it is meant to be a non-
linear editing system with sound support through 3rd party boards, but I just
don't see they happening anytime soon.  The DMI guys were even at the DPS
booth, checking out the competition, looking a bit worried.  Anyway, back
to the DPS board.  It was 30fps (60 fields, no line doubling or pixel-
averaging) and has its own dedicated IDE hard drive.  They say you can get
3-5 minutes on a 500MB drive.  The drive can be seen by the Amiga for backups
but anything written to it that is not a graphics file will dissapear into
the bit-bucket.  I don't know what graphic file formats it will accept, but
I would assume either IFF or their own compressed format (you might have to
compress the IFF's first, I don't know.)  Their board is not meant as a
non-linear editing system for video.  It is meant strictly for animation.
Therefore, the software that ships with it will reflect this.  That does
not mean other people won't write software in the future for non-linear
editing, or that DPS themselves won't change their minds, but initially
they are aiming at the market that wants a better way to transfer animations
to tape.

I would say that they are going to have a very nice product in a couple of
weeks.  And with DPS, I do believe that they will ship it in there stated
time frame.

-- Jon-Paul Estes

PS-- I almost forgot.  With the Personal TBC IV, the board can be used to
record video to the hard drive.  Lots of uses for this, and this is the main
reason some people will buy the board probably.


##

Subject: Anim 7 and DCTV
Date: Sat,  8 May 93 09:25:57 PDT
From: [e-mail]

>ViewTek and Anim7 are really wonderfull and all, but I can't seem to get
>overscan animations (are there any other kind??) to run. Perhaps it's the
>animation builder I have, or the Anim7 format, or that I'm trying to use
>DCTV with it. Does anyone know?
>
>                                                  Tom Smith

I don't have a specific answer but I have used ADAM to create an overscan DCTV
Anim and then converted in to Anim7 with MakeAnim7 from the ViewTek
distribution... it all works fine for me!

Don DeCosta
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: EPU
Date: 8 May 93 13:41:00 EST
From: "Andrew Church" <[e-mail]>

Jason Koszarsky writes:
>which machine are you running on?  I'd expect it to be slow but tolerable on
>my 3000.

An Amiga 2000 with a 68030 @ 25 MHz.
  --Andy Church


##

Subject: Re: Altitude mapping problem
Date: Sat, 8 May 93 16:34:42 -0700
From: [e-mail]

I forget exactly what you are trying to make...
but if you have pizel 3D you can use a reverse of the logo
and extrude it so that the letters are punched thru a block...
just a thought.....


##

Subject: New upload to wuarchive!
Date: Sat, 8 May 93 20:50:46 PDT
From: Dr. Demento <[e-mail]>

Here's another batch of objects I have uploaded to WUARCHIVE!

wuarchive.wustl.edu
/pub/amiga/incoming/imagine/objects/

I am in a REALLY generous mood, so here is every object I have accumulated
over the past, oh...year and a half.

25 objects: here they are--

        3D-Font.lzh         - A 3D font for Imagine.
        atakship.lzh        - Some spaceship which I cannot identify.  If
                              you can identify it, please contact me.
        Chessboard.lha      - A chessboard which uses the wood texture for
                              a nice border.
        chevypic.lzh        - An Imagine object of a Chevy pickup.
        choprobj.lzh        - An Imagine object of a helicopter.
        ConsoleTable.lha    - An Imagine object of an interesting table.
        DiningChair.lha     - An Imagine object of a Dining-Room chair.
        DiningTable.lha     - An Imagine object of a Dining-Room table
                              (you have to have a table to slide the chairs
                              under, don't you?)
        f-15.lha            - An Imagine object of an F-15 Fighter Jet.
        flower.lha          - An Imagine object of a beautiful flower.
        galactica.lha       - An Imagine object of the Battlestar Galactica.
        headobj.lha         - An Imagine object of a human head with face.
        imgfonts.lha        - Two more 3D fonts for Imagine.
        keyboard.lzh        - An Imagine object of a musical synthesizer.
        Lamp&Shade.lha      - An Imagine object of a table-lamp with shade.
        lamp.lzh            - An Imagine object of an adjustable table-lamp.
        lpaul.lha           - An Imagine object of a Les Paul guitar.
        mazdapic.lzh        - An Imagine object of a Mazda pickup.
        ngphasers.iobjs.lha - An Imagine object of all the phasers from
                              Star Trek: the Next Generation.
        robotcop.lzh        - An Imagine object of Robocop.
        spacetre.lzh        - A set of Imagine objects of some bizarre
                              trees.
        TableLamp.lha       - Another Imagine object of a table-lamp.
        trees.lzh           - A few Imagine objects of trees.
        treklogo.lzh        - The logos for both Star Trek and Star Trek:
                              the Next Generation.
        Wineglass.lha       - An Imagine object of a wineglass.

I hope you have as much fun with them as I have!

I also encourage anybody who has various Imagine objects lying down to
upload them to the IML location...it will be greatly appreciated.
--
Greg Chance - the man, the myth, the legend.| Imagine: A Truly Amazing Program
Where will he go from here?  What will he do| For a Truly Amazing Guy Like
next?  How should I know?                   | Myself!  Whaaaaaalla bing bang.
**Making Computer Graphics for the Masses***|*[e-mail]*


##

Subject: Re: 30fps
Date: Sat, 8 May 93 23:41:24 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

        Is it possible to get 30 fps in the new HAM modes (or even
        straight modes) on an Amiga 1200?
-------------------
Yes... The old ham modes only used 6 bits, the new
ones use 8 bits, so either way you are still feeding the
processor with the same number of bytes. Just two bits
more which should not slow the system down much. Of course, the
old graphics modes were 320x400 and the new ones can go all the
way to 1280x400.
-------------------

        My reasons for asking is that I'd like to take my Imagine
        animations to tape (broadcast with a good encoder if possible).
        But I also have plans that would need a smaller size unit (thus
        the 1200) for kiosk presentations.  Instead of needing to buy a
        4000 and a 1200, I'd like to just get a 1200.  I already have a
        2500/30 and plan on networking my machines together.  If I can
        play AGA graphics on the 1200 at 30fps no problem and take the
        output to tape with the right gear, that would solve my problem
        in a lost cost matter.  I'll add more memory, of course, to the
        1200.
------------------
I have never used the 1200, but theoretically it should be
as fast as you want if your load all your animations into
memory. I can tel, it would beat the heck out of a Macintosh
system. I like how MAC users stutter when I talk about the 1200,
even the 4000, and the new operating system, and the toaster,
and the price tag, and the speed... It is fun to watch them
shake.. Sorry.. It is just that I did a report on the Amiga recently
and showed the video toaster demo, and one lady tried to put the Amiga
down after my entire presentation, but i could tell by the look in
her eyes and the stutter in her voice that she was afraid of
the new AMiga's and how they would have an affect of the MAC community.

I am a MAC user, but MAC's are so darn slow and overpriced it
is pitiful.
------------------
        Dale


##

Subject: Re: EPU
Date: Sun, 9 May 93 00:04:21 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

      Well, I've tried EPU.  It worked fine (on RAD:) - and, for those of
    you with concerns about being unable to recover from problems, EPU
    compresses each file separately, and it uses library functions, so
    it should not be very difficult to recover files if EPU stops working -
    but it was V-E-R-Y  S-L-O-W.  I tried copying two files to RAD: with and
    without EPU, and here are the times:

    File            | w/o EPU |  w/EPU  | Compressed size
    ----------------+---------+---------+----------------
    140k executable |  0.75 s | 19.75 s | 53k
    140k data file  |  0.75 s | 14.60 s | 18k

      I obviously didn't use it after this - who would want to wait one
    minute for Imagine to load up?  And think of trying to load a large
    animation...

      --Andy Church

------------------------------------------------------------
What someone needs to do is use the LHA library (or whatever)
to do compression and decompression. EPU sucks anyways, I stopped
using it after the first run... I compress all my files with LHA
and the decompression times are amazing from LHA. Here is a test....
(On an AMiga 3000 16mhz/68881, 5 0 meg HD, 6 megs of ram, 4 megs SCRAM ZIPS)

To compress a 1599254 byte animation from my hard drive to memory
with lha using the "-2" option, took about two minutes.
Decompression from my ram drive to my ram
drive takes:
16 seconds...

Now compression of the animation from ram to a LHA file in ram is
about two minutes... Probably is a switch somewhere to turn on a
buffering feature. Anyways, it decompresses faster than
lightning. That animation only compressed about 11% but
music modules compress by about half and they decompress
in less than a few seconds, from my hard drive.


##

Subject: Re: Laser Beams
Date: Sun, 9 May 93 00:20:39 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    Who out there has any good ideas on how to make realistic look laser
    beams?

    I have the color down right...but I'm not sure to make it(the beam) a
    light source or not....hmm...whenever I do...it look wrong...anyone with
    any abilitly on this, PLEASE e-mail me back....


    Thanks in advance...

    Mark Bergem
----------------------
Hmmm... Have you ever tried going into deluxe paint and make a
a narrow box of RED, stencil everything but the red, get a big
brush and smooth the box behind it, to smooth the box without
modifying its edges (I use this on text all the time, to make it look
like it is glowing), then take the glowing red box make it into a
brush, save it.. Load an object into Imagine (shape is your choice),
then map the image to the object to color the object, then make a negative
of the image in some paint program and use that as a transparency on
the same object (I have never tried this, so don't laugh). This might
create a laser beam ... If not, then try to make the object more transparent
and use a illuminate the laser beam somehow... I just have Imagine 1.1,
so I can't talk about the "light emitence features of the new imagine,
like I have heard). I use IMAGINE only with rayshade, and I never have
used the Imagine's renderer to do any of my stuff becuase it
dumps polygons if my images are too complex, whereas rayshade
running on the schools 16 meg ram based MIPS workstation can
take any objects I feed it (like my rendering of 80 soldiers
at about 20000 primitives or soat 1280x1024...) I am working on another
project now that includes a fly-through of a solar system containing
rotating VW bugs ;-)

later


##

Subject: Re: 30fps
Date: Thu, 6 May 93 20:33:50 EST
From: [e-mail] (Yury German)

Hi Dale (Dale R Rogers), in <[e-mail]> on May 6 you wrote:

:     4000 and a 1200, I'd like to just get a 1200.  I already have a
:     2500/30 and plan on networking my machines together.  If I can
:     play AGA graphics on the 1200 at 30fps no problem and take the
:     output to tape with the right gear, that would solve my problem in
:     a lost cost matter.  I'll add more memory, of course, to the 1200.

    Well Dale I am not familiar with playing back of rates on the
1200. But the 4000 definatly does good 60 FPS animation or very close to
it with ANIM7, ANIM8 and ANIM32 (<--- 32 format is the one with
SCALAMM210). I use ANIM 32 because in SCALA you cna set your rate for
playback and that is exactly what I need for the animations. I am sure
that if the 4000 can do 60 FPS a 1200 can do 30 FPS if there are not alot
of Delta Movements.
    _____________________________________________________________________
   |                                                                     |
   | Yury German                  [e-mail]            |
   | Blue-Knight Productions      GENIE: Blue-Knight                     |
   | [phone]            ** Graphic Design and Video Productions ** |
   |_____________________________________________________________________|


##

Subject: Re:  30fps
Date: Sun, 9 May 93 12:31:31 -0500
From: [e-mail] (PJ Foley)

Discussion of AGA non-AGA networked Amigas deleted.
My thoughts follow:

I have a 3000 and a 1200:  the 3000 is my "rendering engine," my
1200 is an "intellegent framebuffer," also to be used for paint
programs IF Commodore ever sends me my DPaint 4.5 OR DC releases
Brillance.
I use ParNet, installed by using ParBench3.1.  It installs flawlessly
and easily, BUT it crashes every so often.  No ryhme or reason,
it just locks up one of the computers while trying to access a file
(usually the 1200).  Yes, it is way too slow to load an animation
off the 3000s HD and play it back, but RAM is cheapish enough to warrent
the results given.

So - This is my $.02.  My question is: is there a newer 3.0-aware
version of ParNet?

And on another totally unrelated note:  Will Commodore's Lowell
board support RTG once available (WAY off the topic here-of
Imagine esp.)

Pj

1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS
 "IF POSSIBLE  STEAL ANY ONE THESE    | [e-mail]|
  DRAWINGS INCLUDING THIS SENTENCE"   | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^|   a
   - Shusaku Arakawa                  | Has renderer, will travel.|  b dXEN


##

Subject: Re: EPU
Date: Sat, 8 May 93 11:49:29 MET
From: [e-mail] (Philippe Berard)

Hello Always (Always a rainbow). On May 6, you have written :

> EPU 1.0 just sent my A3000 to india for a free lesson in meditation
> when following the only example in the doc, i.e.: epu device rad

    I think you should try XFH, distributed with the PD XPK package.

    My Usenet News directory is compressed with XFH & NUKE, and it works
    really fine and fast on my '030 machine.

    Hope this helps

    Sincerely,
                                        -- Philippe


##

Subject: 3d mailing list... (fwd)
Date:     Sun, 9 May 1993 13:59:23 +0200
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

I know that this stuff has nearly nothing to do with imagine, but
to my last request about general 3d newsgroups there were several
requests sent to me asking for forwarding any info about this.
So here we go:

Forwarded message:
> From [e-mail] Wed May  5 23:44:17 1993
> Date:    Wed, 5 May 1993 23:42:24 +0100
> From:    [e-mail] (Joe Kiniry)
> Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
> To:    [e-mail]
> Subject: 3d mailing list...
>
> I run the Amiga3d mailing list...  if you are interested, mail me.
> Here is the introduction:
>
> ------INCLUDED FILE FOLLOWS------
>
> Welcome to the Amiga3D mailing list!
>
> This mailing list was created to facilitate the creation and use of
> graphic libraries for the Amiga that support 2 and 3 dimensional graphical
> paradigms.  Currently, there are a few people who have working pieces
> of code with different functional interfaces and ideas, and a discussion
> is continuing on the design and implementation of a full-featured library
> that will synthesize all of our ideas and experimentation.  The final
> distribution method of this work has not been finalized as of yet and
> is dependent upon a number of issues.  Early revisions will include
> source but will either be under the GNU public license or retain
> copyright.  This is an issue that will be resolved before the first
> release of the actual library.
>
> To post to the mailing list, please send your message to:
>   [e-mail]
> and it will automatically be propagated to our 30+ members.  Discussion
> does _not_ have to be limited to coding and implementation, but can be
> questions about 3d graphics in general or design ideas or issues that
> you think need to be brought to life.  If you've ever said, "wouldn't it
> be neat if I had some code that would...", this is the place to say it!
>
> To add or remove oneself from the list, mail to
>
>   [e-mail]
>
> and for all other administrative messages (problems, private mail,
> flames, or whatever) please send to:
>
>   [e-mail]
>
> There is also an ftp site available for uploads and downloads of related
> code, software, pics, and discussions.  The account is called
>
>   [e-mail]
>
> with a password of "amiga3d".  Please be responsible with this account
> and this information.
>
> Again, welcome and don't be afraid to post!
>
> ---joe
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> ~~ Joseph R. Kiniry: Systems, VR, Graphics, X, UN*X, Amiga       ~~
> ~~ s-nail mail:                   e-mail:                        ~~
> ~~ Department of Computer Science [e-mail]            ~~
> ~~ University of Massachusetts    Amiga3D mailing list moderator ~~
> ~~ Amherst, MA 01003           [e-mail] ~~
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>


##

Subject: Re: EPU
Date: 10 May 93 07:48:00 EST
From: "Andrew Church" <[e-mail]>

>From [e-mail]:
>From [e-mail] Fri May  7 12:48:00 1993
>>
>>File            | w/o EPU |  w/EPU  | Compressed size
>>----------------+---------+---------+----------------
>>140k executable |  0.75 s | 19.75 s | 53k
>>140k data file  |  0.75 s | 14.60 s | 18k
>
>Are these the times for *compression* or *uncompression*.
>There is a big difference between the two for compression
>packages.  For instance, I use the XFH package
>on my A3000 and I get compression rates of 35K per second
>using the xpk.nuke library (35k per second is not very fast,
>right?).  But the uncompression speeds are quite fast,
>around 95% of standard loading speeds.  So writing a
>large animation to disk the first time takes forever (well,
>at least a long time :-) but loading it from disk every time
>after that takes almost "normal" time.

>I have never used EPU but I assume that its uncompression rates
>would be much faster than its compression rates, as well.

  Good point.  These were the compression times.  The decompression
times were each about 4 seconds, I think -- still too slow, at 533%
of the "normal" time.
  I have noticed that PowerPacker is pretty good in terms of
compression/decompression speeds.  I once saw an EPU-type program
using the PowerPacker library that would compress files as they
were written and decompress them when they were read, but I don't
know where I saw it.

>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Brian M. Aljian                                                 // Only Amiga
>[e-mail]                                           // makes it
>"Procrastinators do it tomorrow."                           \\// possible...
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  --Andy Church


##

Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback
Date: Mon, 10 May 93 09:04:21 EDT
From: David Watters <[e-mail]>

> In light of all the discussion about realtime playback of animation on
> the Toaster, I thought I would pass this on. I just got off the phone
> with the good people at DPS after talking to them about their soon to be
> released Personal Animation Recorder. Here is what I know....
>
> The board directly connects to a dedicated IDE drive that acts
> as the record medium for the compressed frames. Depending on the imagery,
> they are achieving 3 to 5 minutes of animation on a 500MB drive. The drive
> is visible to the Amiga operating system as a physical device and may be
> backed up accordingly, but it is limited as to what can be written to it.
> Only supported image files may be written to the drive, all else gets sent
> to the bit bucket. IDE was chosen for it simplicity of interface, steadier
> continuous data bandwidth, and to dramatically reduce the cost burden to
> the user (no costly SCSI-2 controller and drives to buy).

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGG!!!!

When will these people start to think!!!

I work for a company that does many things, one of which is to distribute
all types of storage.  We distribute high quality industrial grade drives
from HP, Segate, Fujitsu, and others.  These are almost all SCSI-II FAST drives
though we do have access to their IDE counterparts when they exist.

THERE IS NO PRICE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCSI-II FAST AND IDE in these drives!!!!!

More importantly... Commodore-Amiga, Inc. is going to start selling machines
with built in SCSI-II FAST controllers...  WHY BE REDUNDANT?!?!?!?

They are not cutting the consumers cost because 99% of Amiga owners do not have
an IDE drive that is big enough and fast enough so they are going to need to
purchase one... myself included.
However, how many of us have SCSI drives that fit the bill?  I know I have
access to HP's 233MB, 422MB, and 1GB SCSI-II FAST drives.  So now I have to
buy an IDE drive that will be stuck as a DPS drive only?  That SUCKS!

Look at it from a marketting point of view...  They simply needed to add some
REALLY cheep IDE controller logic to their board and they are then able to say
that for $1995 and the cost of an IDE drive you have all you need.
BUT, as I have pointed out... the drives cost the same!!! so the only extra
cost is a SCSI-II FAST controller, which will be what? $300? $350?
NOT MUCH EXTRA!!!
In addition... with every machine comming after the 4000T having a SCSI-II FAST
controller built in... THERE WOULD BE NO COST DIFFERENCE!  Allowing people like
myself to use drives they already have, or use a drive for more than one
purpose.

Do people think about the current Amiga owner profile when they design these
products???

David     -__@_
Watters  ~ O---o-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering
"Porsche.  The very name is, to many, the last word in sports cars. Any car
 blessed with these magic seven letters is sure to be the very best. Period!"
                        - Car and Driver, January 1993


##

Subject: Re: VCR Backup
Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 09:44:05 -0500 (CDT)
From: "William J Toninato-1" <[e-mail]>

I know a fellow from our user group who bought it and it works great for
him.  He brags as to how cheap a solution it is.  Tapes for $3.00 and
such.  Most everybody has a vcr.
Bill Toninato


##

Subject: Imagefx
Date: Mon, 10 May 93 10:51:47 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Rich Nollman)

I am trying to decide whether to upgrade my version of Adpro or get
ImageFX.  I need a Tiff converter and a morphing program.  I have
Adpro (the first version of Adpro upgraded from Tadpro) and I use it
alot and like it.  It has one of the best user interfaces around.
Does the latest version include a Tiff converter?

Does ImageFX contain a Tiff converter and/or a morphing utility?  What
is the current street price of ImageFX?

If ImageFX does indeed have a morphing utility, how does the quality
compare to ASDG's morphing program?

Finally, since I have a 486/66 (16 megs memory) and an Amiga 3000
(with 10 megs), does it make ANY sense to buy Adpro for the PC
instead?

Rich Nollman


##

Subject: Imagefx
Date: Mon, 10 May 93 12:05:27 EST
From: Adam Benjamin <[e-mail]>

I have a couple of suggestions...

There is a demo of ImageFX on the aminet FTP sites if you can FTP.

ImageFX comes with cinemorph I have heard it is not quite as good as
morph+ but I don't know first hand.  I also don't know if ImgeFX does
TIFF. (I think it does though)

As for your PC.  There are a couple of shareware Morphing programs out
there.  Sorry I can't recall the names.  For Image Manipulation there
is a windows program called PictureMan that isn't too bad. (written by
a russian no less!)  If you can stand the slowness of windows.  It is
also shareware.

Hope this helps some.


*************************************************************
* Adam Benjamin                     [e-mail] *
* Christian Animator                   [e-mail]    *
* Spokesmen for Club Paradise          Not a spokesman for  *
* Members ONLY (John 3:3)              Zenith Data Systems  *


##

Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback
Date: Mon, 10 May 93 13:20:02 EDT
From: David Watters <[e-mail]>

>In addition... with every machine comming after the 4000T having a SCSI-II FAST
>controller built in... THERE WOULD BE NO COST DIFFERENCE!  Allowing people like
>myself to use drives they already have, or use a drive for more than one
>purpose.

I was, of course, talking about using the drive for more than one purpose at
different times, and not at the same time.

David     -__@_
Watters  ~ O---o-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering
"Porsche.  The very name is, to many, the last word in sports cars. Any car
 blessed with these magic seven letters is sure to be the very best. Period!"
                        - Car and Driver, January 1993


##

Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback
Date: Mon, 10 May 93 13:43:58 EDT
From: David Watters <[e-mail]>

> Someone wrote:
> > >  I just got off the phone
> > > with the good people at DPS after talking to them about their soon to be
> > > released Personal Animation Recorder. Here is what I know....
> > >
> > > The board directly connects to a dedicated IDE drive that acts
>               ^^^^^^^^
> no bus to go across!!!!  ie faster!!!

The fastest SCSI-II drive/controller combos I have seen can achieve transfer
rates of 2.5-3.5MB _sustained_.  This is WELL with in the range of the current
Zorro III implementations (upto a max of 50MB/sec) and I believe is also within
the range of the 2000's Zorro II bus.
C-A, Inc. SCSI-II controller is supposed to be one of, if not thee, fastest
implementations of SCSI-II which doesn't supprise me considering the speed of
the A3000's SCSI-I controller.
As Mark said, the DPS PAR requires a sustained rate close to 2.5MB.  This should
make you see that by no means is the bus the limiting factor.

> Again, I'm sure speed is an issue.  Since most users don't have SCSI-II, this
> probably *is* a cheaper solution for most.  What is the price or projected
> price of the soon to be and currently released SCSI-II controlers? ~$200?

I freely admit that most users don't have SCSI-II FAST drives.  But I will
bet a lot of money that more people have SCSI-II FAST drives on their
current SCSI-I controllers than have a fast enough or big enough IDE drives.

> Don't mean to be flaming you, but I am glad to see any new hardware in this
> area.  Atleast they are building it for the Amiga and not PCs or Macs.

To disagree is not to flame.  I am also glad that the product is Amiga specific.
However... Although it is late as can be, and is from a company that hasn't
been on time in the past, the DMI board (a.k.a. EditMaster) is a better
solution, and more complete solution IMHO due to it's controller independence
and it's full featured recording, playback, and non-linear editor design.

Believe me, I have nothing against DPS.  DMI has been promising us a development
example for a long time.  Each time I call back it is another 4 weeks down the
road... and had the DPS been more versital in its storage requirements... It
would have been the route I would have explored more.

I am assuming that the DPS board will not let you use a dedicated SCSI II FAST
drive should one be available on the bus and more than fast enough.

David     -__@_
Watters  ~ O---o-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering
"Porsche.  The very name is, to many, the last word in sports cars. Any car
 blessed with these magic seven letters is sure to be the very best. Period!"
                        - Car and Driver, January 1993


##

Subject: uvSurf
Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 13:21:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail] (Scot Schneebeli)

    Has anybody tried uvSurf under AmigaDos 2.x? Does it work at all?

    I nabbed it off wuarchive and it will build an object, but if I
    try to rotate the view, reverse sides, etc. it Gurus. I've disabled
    instr. and data caches on my 030 and still get the problem. It looks
    as though it would be a handy tool, but not if you have to reboot after
    each object created.

--
Scot Schneebeli                       <[e-mail]>


##

Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback
Date: Mon, 10 May 93 12:16:02 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Setzer)

Someone wrote:
> >  I just got off the phone
> > with the good people at DPS after talking to them about their soon to be
> > released Personal Animation Recorder. Here is what I know....
> >
> > The board directly connects to a dedicated IDE drive that acts
              ^^^^^^^^
no bus to go across!!!!  ie faster!!!

> > as the record medium for the compressed frames. Depending on the imagery,
> > they are achieving 3 to 5 minutes of animation on a 500MB drive. The drive
> > is visible to the Amiga operating system as a physical device and may be
> > backed up accordingly, but it is limited as to what can be written to it.
> > Only supported image files may be written to the drive, all else gets sent
> > to the bit bucket. IDE was chosen for it simplicity of interface, steadier
> > continuous data bandwidth, and to dramatically reduce the cost burden to
> > the user (no costly SCSI-2 controller and drives to buy).
                               ^^^^^^^^^^
People without SCSI-2 controllers(MOST of the Amiga community) don't need to
buy one to achieve good(60 fields/second) frame rates.

>
> AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGG!!!!
>
> When will these people start to think!!!
>
> I work for a company that does many things, one of which is to distribute
> all types of storage.  We distribute high quality industrial grade drives
> from HP, Segate, Fujitsu, and others.  These are almost all SCSI-II FAST drives
> though we do have access to their IDE counterparts when they exist.
>
> THERE IS NO PRICE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCSI-II FAST AND IDE in these drives!!!!!
>

Is this true for the consumer?  Every mailorder ad I've seen show IDE drives
of equal size more expensive than their SCSI/SCSI-II counterparts.  Where
can I get a SCSI/SCSI-II drive as cheap as an IDE drive?

> More importantly... Commodore-Amiga, Inc. is going to start selling machines
                                            ^^^^^^^^^^^
key words "is going to"

> with built in SCSI-II FAST controllers...  WHY BE REDUNDANT?!?!?!?
>
> They are not cutting the consumers cost because 99% of Amiga owners do not have
> an IDE drive that is big enough and fast enough so they are going to need to
> purchase one... myself included.
> However, how many of us have SCSI drives that fit the bill?  I know I have
> access to HP's 233MB, 422MB, and 1GB SCSI-II FAST drives.  So now I have to
> buy an IDE drive that will be stuck as a DPS drive only?  That SUCKS!
>
> Look at it from a marketting point of view...  They simply needed to add some
> REALLY cheep IDE controller logic to their board and they are then able to say
> that for $1995 and the cost of an IDE drive you have all you need.
> BUT, as I have pointed out... the drives cost the same!!! so the only extra
> cost is a SCSI-II FAST controller, which will be what? $300? $350?
> NOT MUCH EXTRA!!!

Again, I'm sure speed is an issue.  Since most users don't have SCSI-II, this
probably *is* a cheaper solution for most.  What is the price or projected
price of the soon to be and currently released SCSI-II controlers? ~$200?

> In addition... with every machine comming after the 4000T having a SCSI-II FAST
> controller built in... THERE WOULD BE NO COST DIFFERENCE!  Allowing people like
> myself to use drives they already have, or use a drive for more than one
> purpose.
>
> Do people think about the current Amiga owner profile when they design these
> products???

I think this is exactly what they had in mind ;)

Don't mean to be flaming you, but I am glad to see any new hardware in this
area.  Atleast they are building it for the Amiga and not PCs or Macs.

Also, like I said, their solution is much better for me than what you
suggest.  From what I understand you would need SCSI-II in order to
achieve good frame rates from disk.  I don't have a SCSI-II controler so I
would have to purchase the controler plus the drive plus the RT playback board.
That cost money and takes up slots.  Now if they had build in a SCSI
controler on the board....


Tom Setzer
[e-mail]

"And of course, I'm a genius, so people are naturally drawn to my fiery
intellect.  Their admiration overwhelms their envy!" - Calvin


##

Subject: Re: 30fps
Date: Mon, 10 May 93 13:15:58 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dale R Rogers)

|>
|>  YES!
|> From what I have seen all the Image manipulation programs render ON
|> SCREEN, so you can't generate what you can't see.  (This included
|> AdPro, Imagemaster and I believe ImageFX also)
|> Of course you could convert the 24bit frames into an anim on the 1200
|> but that requires moving all those big files across the machines.
|>
|
|   Not true! At least not with AdPro which will let you render the data
| to a HAM-8 whether you can see it or not!  Couple with a frame editing
| script for FRED, ADPro's frame editor, and you will be able to fully
| assemble your HAM-8 animation on the 3000.  Move it and play it!

    That's what I thought.  I knew I could create an Arexx script to
    convert the 24bit files to AGA using ADPro, assemble the animation
    with FRED, move and play.  My only concern is that I would not get
    the 30 FPS I would need for smooth movement.  I want to keep the
    2500/30 as a server.  It would also be used for a toaster if I go
    that route in the future.  I also want to put a sound card in it
    and use it for MIDI processing.  If the AGA chips upgrades come
    out later for the 2500,  I'm set.  I've heard that with an 030, or
    040 accelerator for the 1200, it can approach the performance of
    the 4000.  If, and I repeat, IF this is true, it would be a good
    client machine to play the new resolutions, and use the new DPAINT
    versions; without having to take out another bank loan.  It will
    also allow me the ability to have a portable machine for on-site
    presentations.

    the only question is... is 30 FPS possible?  And I have another
    question?  Is 30 FPS necessary?  If the output will go to tape, is
    it necessary to get 30 FPS for accurate timing and smooth
    movement?  I know 30 is a value that is a result of the video
    medium.  Is 30 a neccessary speed for professional results?


|
|  //
|\X/ -BiL-
|    [e-mail]             (See my 'Imagine'-ary signature below)
|


##

Subject: Explode/Fireworks?
Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 11:15:08 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail]

Explode/Fireworks?
Oops... strang things happen when I hit my up arrow keys.. ;)

Anyway, this may sound like a similar question I asked awhile back..
but, can you use fireworks to explode a solid object?
I can not get a smooth transition between the solid object and the fireworks..
It begins its FX a visible distance from the object... any way around this?

Thanks,
    Don.

[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback
Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 16:35:33 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail] (Peter Mancini)

IMHO the DPS board is much much better than the DMI board.  Why?  It
exists.  DMI has been saying their Vivid 24 will be shipping in a couple
of weeks since October of 1992.  I certainly don't trust them at all.
Did they even have anything to show at NAB?  No, of course not.  They
are following up NewTek as the vapor hucksters of the 90's.  Maybe their
products will ship, and maybe they will be as revolutionary as the
Toaster, but so far I've seen squat.  The DPS board was the best kept
secret I've ever encounterd.  The board is presented humbly because DPS
doesn't want to lead you on with promises for non-liniear editing.

As for Impulse's thingy, I bet they will support it as well as the FC24.

--Pete


##

Subject: Merging Imagine and VistaPro
Date: Mon, 10 May 93 14:14:32 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Thomas E. Smith)

Hey there, I'm trying to do a Fly-by over a Lunarbase animation, and I have
a good moon-like landscape, and some lunar base objects. The landscape looks
really good in VistaPro 3.0, but not no great after it's imported to Imagine,
also I don't really have enough memory after importing to use detailed objects.

So, what I wanted to do is render the objects in imagine, and use them as a
forground over vistapro. And I've scaled things in Imagine so that it matches
up exactly with the vistapro landscape. After that I did my flyby in imagine
and just generated 5 frames for testing. Then I took the camera positions and
target positions, and generated 5 vistapro scenes with lunarbase foregrounds.
The stills looked fine, but when I animated it the ground was moving underneath
the objects.

I'm pretty sure this has to do with different focal lengths in the two programs
VistaPro let's you set the focal length. But in Imagine it doesn't work the
same. You're supposed to muck with the ratio between the camera x and y size,
and this changes the focal length, but it still does not tell you what the
actuall focal length is.

Does anyone know how to compute focal length from the camera x&y sizes?

                                                        Tom Smith


##

Subject: difficulty with EPU 1.4 and ProgDir: interaction
Date: 08 May 1993 19:50:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail]

     I have just installed epu rev 1.4 and by and large, it seems
to be working amazingly well.  I am, however, getting a mount request
for ProgDir: from the following programs whether run from Workbench
or the CLI :
    ProWrite 3.2
    QuarterBack 5.0

     This requester never appeared prior to installing epu.  If I
assign ProgDir: prior to running the above mentioned programs, the
mount request does not appear.  It seems that ProgDir: is an
automatically assigned logical device for the current directory for
the program being run.  Other programs I have tried will detect
ProgDir: when it is keyed into a file requester.  Does anybody
know what may be causing the mount request to appear ?

My system configuration is as follows :
   A2000
    WB2.0
    A2630 card (25Mhz 68030)
    2632 card (32 bit ram card)
    CLtd Chronos controller
   6 meg 32 bit fast ram
   1 meg 16 bit chip ram

With thanks .....
___________________________________________________________________
                  |         Internet: [e-mail]
Joe Hart          |     ///    Plink: OSS542
Niagara Falls, NY | \\\///  Ham call: WA2SND
                  |  \XX/   AMIGA - Computers for REAL MEN
===================================================================


##

Subject: pc imagine not working
Date: Mon, 10 May 93 22:00:21 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Elmer Beachley)

Sorry to bring this up again but I just got the PC imagine and no docs,
being a current Amiga customer.  On a 16M 386 and DOS 5 I've tried
just about every combination of memory management and can't get the
thing to run.  Reads the disk, pauses, reads a little more and hangs.

Can someone post a recommended memory configuration for this software?

Thanks,

Elmer Beachley [e-mail]


##

Date: Mon, 10 May 93 22:12 EDT
From: [e-mail]

>From heifetz!cranel.com!watters Mon May 10 15:29:54 1993 remote from ilium
Date: Mon, 10 May 93 13:43:58 EDT
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
From: David Watters <[e-mail]> (Ronald Kushner)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback

> Someone wrote:
> > >  I just got off the phone
> > > with the good people at DPS after talking to them about their soon to be
> > > released Personal Animation Recorder. Here is what I know....
> > >
> > > The board directly connects to a dedicated IDE drive that acts
>               ^^^^^^^^
> no bus to go across!!!!  ie faster!!!

The fastest SCSI-II drive/controller combos I have seen can achieve transfer
rates of 2.5-3.5MB _sustained_.  This is WELL with in the range of the current
Zorro III implementations (upto a max of 50MB/sec) and I believe is also within
the range of the 2000's Zorro II bus.
C-A, Inc. SCSI-II controller is supposed to be one of, if not thee, fastest
implementations of SCSI-II which doesn't supprise me considering the speed of
the A3000's SCSI-I controller.
As Mark said, the DPS PAR requires a sustained rate close to 2.5MB.  This should
make you see that by no means is the bus the limiting factor.

> Again, I'm sure speed is an issue.  Since most users don't have SCSI-II, this
> probably *is* a cheaper solution for most.  What is the price or projected
> price of the soon to be and currently released SCSI-II controlers? ~$200?

I freely admit that most users don't have SCSI-II FAST drives.  But I will
bet a lot of money that more people have SCSI-II FAST drives on their
current SCSI-I controllers than have a fast enough or big enough IDE drives.

> Don't mean to be flaming you, but I am glad to see any new hardware in this
> area.  Atleast they are building it for the Amiga and not PCs or Macs.

To disagree is not to flame.  I am also glad that the product is Amiga specific.
However... Although it is late as can be, and is from a company that hasn't
been on time in the past, the DMI board (a.k.a. EditMaster) is a better
solution, and more complete solution IMHO due to it's controller independence
and it's full featured recording, playback, and non-linear editor design.

Believe me, I have nothing against DPS.  DMI has been promising us a development
example for a long time.  Each time I call back it is another 4 weeks down the
road... and had the DPS been more versital in its storage requirements... It
would have been the route I would have explored more.

I am assuming that the DPS board will not let you use a dedicated SCSI II FAST
drive should one be available on the bus and more than fast enough.

David     -__@_
Watters  ~ O---o-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering
"Porsche.  The very name is, to many, the last word in sports cars. Any car
 blessed with these magic seven letters is sure to be the very best. Period!"
                        - Car and Driver, January 1993


##

Subject: Re: 30fps
Date: Tue, 11 May 93 1:31:00 CDT
From: Evan Kirchhoff <[e-mail]>

Dale R Rogers writes:
 [stuff deleted]
>
>
>     the only question is... is 30 FPS possible?  And I have another
>     question?  Is 30 FPS necessary?  If the output will go to tape, is
>     it necessary to get 30 FPS for accurate timing and smooth
>     movement?  I know 30 is a value that is a result of the video
>     medium.  Is 30 a neccessary speed for professional results?
>
>
I'm no expert here, but this is something I've been wondering about
for awhile:  Why does anyone not involved in broadcast television care
about whether or not they can play realtime animations at 30 FPS, as
opposed to, say, 25 or 23?  Movies are only 24 FPS, and European
television gets by with 25.

     I thought about this while watching that
"Beyond the Mind's Eye" animation tape a couple of weeks ago, and
I started to experiment with the VCR frame-advance.  I discovered that
many of the animations were actually running slower than 30 FPS.  The
stuff from "Lawnmower Man", for example, was 24 FPS (and not even
at constant intervals, obviously -- every fifth frame was simply
repeated) and it still looked fine.  Another animation (I don't know
what it was called; it was the one with the sun creeping into a
darkened room, over a wastebasket and a typewriter, etc.) seemed to be
running at about 20 FPS.  Some of the sequences with the
"Transformers" robots whizzing around were actually _15 FPS_ (every
frame repeated).  Everything over 15 FPS looked great, and even 15 FPS
didn't look really "bad", just more "computer-ish".  The most
startling thing I noticed was in the animation where the animated
salmon makes a digitized-video splash (which I thought was really,
really good water-modelling, at first :) and an animated bee flies in
front of it:  Bee - 30 FPS, Water - 15 FPS, and even this looks OK
until you play it slowly.

   While I'm on this subject, I have a more technical question.  When
I dump animation to videotape through my A520 adapter, I never end up
with a videotape frame "split" between two animation frames, no matter
what odd frame rate I play the animations at (usually 8 - 12 FPS, but
the A4000 Jr. should fix that).  I assume that this is because the
Amiga in NTSC-Interlace mode puts out 30 FPS, and so any internal
animation rate somehow gets "forced" into complying with this -- so
you get three video-frames of anim frame 1, four of frame 2, three of
frame 3, and so on.  But if this is the case, then what happens to
animations that play faster than 30 FPS?  Do some frames simply never
get shown at all?  If this is not the case, then why do slow
animations dump cleanly to video?

--
Evan Kirchhoff, [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: difficulty with EPU 1.4 and ProgDir: interaction
Date: 11 May 93 07:37:00 EST
From: "Andrew Church" <[e-mail]>

>     I have just installed epu rev 1.4 and by and large, it seems
>to be working amazingly well.

  How well?  I tried EPU 1.0 and was quite dissatisfied with it
(read my earlier messages).  And where can I find 1.4?

>I am, however, getting a mount request
>for ProgDir: from the following programs whether run from Workbench
>or the CLI :
>    ProWrite 3.2
>    QuarterBack 5.0
>
>     This requester never appeared prior to installing epu.  If I
>assign ProgDir: prior to running the above mentioned programs, the
>mount request does not appear.  It seems that ProgDir: is an
>automatically assigned logical device for the current directory for
>the program being run.  Other programs I have tried will detect
>ProgDir: when it is keyed into a file requester.  Does anybody
>know what may be causing the mount request to appear ?

  I would guess that ProgDir: is meant to be the directory that the
program is stored in, not the directory the program is run from.
There's a way to find this out under KS2.0 and above, though I'm not
sure what it is - maybe ProgDir: is automatically assigned when a
program is loaded normally (i.e. NewLoadSeg() or whatever), and EPU
interferes with this (or maybe not).  In any case, I would suggest
creating a script file that automatically assigns ProgDir: to the
program's directory and then runs the program.  If you set the script
bit using PROTECT, you can just run the program the same way you
would normally.  (If you like running programs from Workbench, copy
Shell.info to <scriptname>.info and change the Default Tool to
"c:IconX".)

>My system configuration is as follows :
>   A2000
>    WB2.0
>    A2630 card (25Mhz 68030)
>    2632 card (32 bit ram card)
>    CLtd Chronos controller
>   6 meg 32 bit fast ram
>   1 meg 16 bit chip ram
>
>With thanks .....
>___________________________________________________________________
>                  |         Internet: [e-mail]
>Joe Hart          |     ///    Plink: OSS542
>Niagara Falls, NY | \\\///  Ham call: WA2SND
>                  |  \XX/   AMIGA - Computers for REAL MEN
>===================================================================

  --Andy Church


##

Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback
Date: Tue, 11 May 93 09:15:31 EDT
From: David Watters <[e-mail]>

> From [e-mail] Mon May 10 23:22:24 1993
> From: Brick Eksten <[e-mail]>
> Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback

>   There are other hurdles to think about.  I was mad at them at first
>   (and I am friends with some of the people at DPS), but after thinking
> about it I decided that it wasn't such a bad idea.
>
> Problems
>     Solutions:
>
>  1.  ALL drives suffer from the fact that they are subject to thermal
>      recalibration.  This is what is happening when your drive access's
>      for what appears to be no reason, and at random times.  This happens
>      all the time at 5 - 15 minutes intervals, depending on drive temp,
>      manufacturer paranoia, etc.  This is absolutely deadly to your
>      playback and record rates.  This is uncontrollable.
>
>
>      Solution:  Take over the drive and force thermal recalibration
>      before and after each playback/record session.

>From what I have seen from the HP and Seagate drives we have, thermal
recalibration can be ajusted or forced using the SCSI bus, so I don't see
this as being a strike against using SCSI-II.

>  2.  Multitasking,  yeah its a wonder, but in a real time recording
>      and playback environment, its a killer.
...
>      Solution:  Remove the drive from the environment, dedicate
>      the drive to doing animation/video playback and recording.
>      By dedicating the drive to playback and animation, no
>      other device/software will be able to interfere with the
>      playback/record process.  You can even render while recording
>      or playing back animations.

I have never requested that the system multitask or that the drive NOT
be dedicated.  What I am questioning is the TYPE of drive and not how it
is used.  Dedicated is how it should be, but a dedicated SCSI drive is
how I would rather it be if that was technically possible.

>  3.  Price, SCSI-II controllers are going to cost in the $300.00
>      range for the first few anyways.
>
>      Solution:  If you are going to dedicate the drive anyways,
>      you may as well dedicate it completely and put it on the
>      playback/record board.  That way its a one source solution.
>      Put the extra $300-$400 dollars into getting a bigger
>      drive.

You are ignoring the benefit that a SCSI-II controller would bring to the
rest of your system for the times you are not playing back animation.

All of my arguments are based on the idea that we should only be dealing
with one drive type in the Amiga market.  It seems that all hell broke loose
when the moron at C-A, Inc. decided to put IDE in the 4000.

Look at it this way...
I will only use SCSI type hard disk and controllers.  For obvious reasons
including tape drives (which I have), CDrom players (which I may get),
MagnetoOptical drives (which I have), and more than 2 hard disk (which I have).
Now wouldn't it be nice for me to have a drive that I can use as a
_dedicated_ playback device... and then under any circumstance use that drive
for another purpose?

>  4.  Compatability,  SCSI-II controllers will only work in the
>      Zorro-III equipped machines.  (unless they are part of the
>      accelerator board, and NONE of the accelerators out there
>      now are FAST SCSI-II, none, none, nope not even that one)
>      Even if you had a FAST SCSI-II interface in a 2000, total bus
>      transfer rates (memory to memory limitations) are going to
>      be about 1.75 meg/second (not fast enough)

This is a VERY strong argument.  It makes it very clear why they put a
dedicated drive controller on the board.  And for price reasons, it is
obvious why they chose IDE.
But what is DMI's board going to do?  You are suggesting that it is
unusable in a 2000 system, correct?

However, I will argue that the board should be able to work with a drive
(dedicated of course) that is connected to a SCSI-II FAST controller
in addition to the on board IDE controller.  This would allow future
machine owners/upgraders to use the controller that comes with their machine
or those who have purchased a SCSI II FAST controller for their current
Zorro III systems.

>  6.  Another problem is command latency.  For this to make sense you
>      have to look at why a drive is more efficient at transfering large
>      hunks of data.

I would love to see some figures concerning transfer rates of small <100k files
for both SCSI II FAST and IDE.  Assuming both are being used under the same
conditions (dedicated, thermal calibration delayed, no other bus activity, etc.)

Obviously DPS has good reasons why they chose to require an IDE drive.  I
am sure if I had all the information it would be easy for me to agree with
the decision.  My main problem is that already have some really nice drives
I would have liked to use. :-)

ps. I am still very curious what DMI is going to do if a SCSI II FAST
controller can not transfer more than 1.75MB/sec in a Zorro II machine.

David     -__^@_
Watters  ~ O----o-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering
"Porsche.  The very name is, to many, the last word in sports cars. Any car
 blessed with these magic seven letters is sure to be the very best. Period!"
                        - Car and Driver, January 1993


##

Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback
Date: Tue, 11 May 93 09:19:10 EDT
From: David Watters <[e-mail]>

Brick replied to my message and his reply was very informative and important
to the discussion.  However, he sent it to me only and not the list.
I am forwarding this to the list(s) so that everyone can see how much more
he knows about these two products than I. :)

>
> AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGG!!!!
>
> When will these people start to think!!!
>
> I work for a company that does many things, one of which is to distribute
> all types of storage.  We distribute high quality industrial grade drives
> from HP, Segate, Fujitsu, and others.  These are almost all SCSI-II FAST drives
> though we do have access to their IDE counterparts when they exist.
>
> THERE IS NO PRICE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCSI-II FAST AND IDE in these drives!!!!!

  Sorry, there may not be a difference in IDE pricing for your company,
but for the general public (We deal with all the major PC distributors)
IDE drives tend to be 10 - 20% cheaper than their IDE counterparts.
This must be a product of mass producing the PCboard for the drive in
such incredible quantities.

>
> More importantly... Commodore-Amiga, Inc. is going to start selling machines
> with built in SCSI-II FAST controllers...  WHY BE REDUNDANT?!?!?!?
>
> They are not cutting the consumers cost because 99% of Amiga owners do not have
> an IDE drive that is big enough and fast enough so they are going to need to
> purchase one... myself included.
> However, how many of us have SCSI drives that fit the bill?  I know I have
> access to HP's 233MB, 422MB, and 1GB SCSI-II FAST drives.  So now I have to
> buy an IDE drive that will be stuck as a DPS drive only?  That SUCKS!
>
  Very, VERY few people have drives that fit the bill.  These drives are
just now becoming available.  Your scsi-II drive will have to be able
to deliver a SUSTAINED 4-5 megabytes a second.  Maxtor and HP I think
are the only ones able to do this right now.  I have a maxtor on an
040 3000 and can get about 3 meg/sec (this is a < 8 ms FAST scsi-II
drive).  You have to remember that all drive specs are average, so
your drive will have to average over 4 megs a second for all transfers,
this is easy with large transfers as it takes fewer instructions to copy
a 245 meg file, than it does to transfer 10 24.5 meg files. And we are talking
about files in the 30-60k size range (compressed images).  Next time you
fire up diskspeed look at what you get for the 32k buffer size and thats
about how fast you can get these images off of the drive.  Lets say
the average compressed file is 50k. Thats 50k x 30(fps) x 2 (bus transfer
and command interference) and you get 3 megs a second. Now throw in
seek times, command overhead, dma cycles, etc.  You see that you will
need at least 4 megs a second so that you can get information off
the drive and have enough time left over to do other things (like run
the software).


  There are other hurdles to think about.  I was mad at them at first
  (and I am friends with some of the people at DPS), but after thinking
about it I decided that it wasn't such a bad idea.

Problems
    Solutions:

 1.  ALL drives suffer from the fact that they are subject to thermal
     recalibration.  This is what is happening when your drive access's
     for what appears to be no reason, and at random times.  This happens
     all the time at 5 - 15 minutes intervals, depending on drive temp,
     manufacturer paranoia, etc.  This is absolutely deadly to your
     playback and record rates.  This is uncontrollable.


     Solution:  Take over the drive and force thermal recalibration
     before and after each playback/record session.


 2.  Multitasking,  yeah its a wonder, but in a real time recording
     and playback environment, its a killer.  You're recording 5
     minutes of video that you shot at the last WhizBangAthon' and
     all of a sudden,  you computer decides to take a break and go
     see what else is going on (as it does every 1/50th of a second),
     bloohey, your recording is shot, time to start over. Or your
     fax modem gets an incoming fax and... easy to see where the
     problems arise.

     Solution:  Remove the drive from the environment, dedicate
     the drive to doing animation/video playback and recording.
     By dedicating the drive to playback and animation, no
     other device/software will be able to interfere with the
     playback/record process.  You can even render while recording
     or playing back animations.

 3.  Price, SCSI-II controllers are going to cost in the $300.00
     range for the first few anyways.

     Solution:  If you are going to dedicate the drive anyways,
     you may as well dedicate it completely and put it on the
     playback/record board.  That way its a one source solution.
     Put the extra $300-$400 dollars into getting a bigger
     drive.

 4.  Compatability,  SCSI-II controllers will only work in the
     Zorro-III equipped machines.  (unless they are part of the
     accelerator board, and NONE of the accelerators out there
     now are FAST SCSI-II, none, none, nope not even that one)
     Even if you had a FAST SCSI-II interface in a 2000, total bus
     transfer rates (memory to memory limitations) are going to
     be about 1.75 meg/second (not fast enough) soooo, all the
     people with A2000 toaster machines are going to have to buy
     A3000's or A4000's or A4000 T's to get compatibility with the
     FAST SCSI-II controllers.  Another problem is the fact that
     even if a FAST SCSI-II controller was available today, it
     wouldn't work.  Commodore still hasn't fixed the buster/DMAC
     and RAMSEY problems so everyone will have to get upgraded
     chips.  DMI is trying to use the Fast-Lane controller from
     europe, but it isn't getting very good transfer rates yet.

     Solution:  Don't use SCSI-II,  if you are going to dedicate
     a drive for this purpose... (see above).  The other thing
     to think about is that the DPS board will work in ANY
     Zorro machine, A2000,3000,4000 without any problems.  This
     also address's the marketing issues.  What good is using
     scsi drives if you have to buy a new machine to use them?

5.   General use/abuse.  Drives that are used in a general purpose
     environment tend to get fragmented.  There goes your transfer
     rates again. Lets say you dedicate one partition of your drive
     to animation play/record.  You now only have part of your drive,
     or were you going to dedicate the whole drive?  If so why not
     dedicate an IDE drive?

     Solution: See above.

 6.  Another problem is command latency.  For this to make sense you
     have to look at why a drive is more efficient at transfering large
     hunks of data.  Drives (any drive) can transfer large hunks of data
     faster simply because there will be less command overhead involved,
     the device driver will less to do, the drive will have less commands
     to think about, etc.  The SCSI-II command set is rather large.  We
     already know that we are interested in files that are fairly small in
     size (around 30-60k) so we are going to be running into alot of
     command overhead.  Because there are more, smaller files to transfer,
     the device driver for the board will have to issue more commands to
     the drive, the drive will have to spend more time looking up each
     command, and if the instruction set for that drive is large, this will
     cause the drive to spend more time processing commands and less time
     processing files.

     Solution:  Reduce the the command set of the drive.  This is not possible
     with SCSI-II drives, if you reduce the number of supported commands, the
     drive will no longer be SCSI-II compatible.  IDE drives use a very small
     number of commands, and can therefore respond to a given command faster
     than a SCSI drive can.  Think of it as the RISC versus CISC arguement
     only for drives.  In this case IDE wins.  This doesn't mean that IDE
     is better, in truth its a very primitive design spec, but because it
     is primitive and simple, it will work better for our application.


> Look at it from a marketting point of view...  They simply needed to add some
> REALLY cheep IDE controller logic to their board and they are then able to say
> that for $1995 and the cost of an IDE drive you have all you need.

   And they save you $300.00 (at least).

> BUT, as I have pointed out... the drives cost the same!!! so the only extra
> cost is a SCSI-II FAST controller, which will be what? $300? $350?
> NOT MUCH EXTRA!!!

  And a new machine if you don't have a Zorro III (a3000/a4000) already,
  and you will have to pay premium dollar for the drive itself as it is the
  newest thing on the market.

> In addition... with every machine comming after the 4000T having a SCSI-II FAST
> controller built in... THERE WOULD BE NO COST DIFFERENCE!  Allowing people like
> myself to use drives they already have, or use a drive for more than one
> purpose.

  True, but how many people with toasters (this is the lightwave listserv
 right?)  are going to run out and buy 4000 T's so that they can go buy
 new drives, just to do something they could have done on there A2000's
 for less money anyways...

As a disclaimer:  I am a programmer by choice and a hardware person
by education.  I have no affiliation (yet) with either DMI or DPS.  I am
a developer for both companies. (meaning that I have signed their developer
NDA's and such) But I am not being paid by either.  I have fairly good
knowledge of both boards (DPS/PAC board and DMI/Digital Broadcaster),
thier limitations and their strong points.  My opinions are my own
and in no way reflect the opinions of either company or anyone else.

----- End Included Message -----


David     -__^@_
Watters  ~ O----o-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering
"Porsche.  The very name is, to many, the last word in sports cars. Any car
 blessed with these magic seven letters is sure to be the very best. Period!"
                        - Car and Driver, January 1993


##

Subject: Re: Explode/Fireworks?
Date: Tue, 11 May 93 11:07:43 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

>
>Explode/Fireworks?
>Oops... strang things happen when I hit my up arrow keys.. ;)
>
>Anyway, this may sound like a similar question I asked awhile back..
>but, can you use fireworks to explode a solid object?
>I can not get a smooth transition between the solid object and the fireworks..
>It begins its FX a visible distance from the object... any way around this?
>
>Thanks,
>    Don.
>
>[e-mail]
>
>

    Hmmm... It sounds like either:

    1] You are starting your effect on the 1st frame,  ie: if you
want i to explode from 1-30, start your effect on 2 so your object is
solid on frame 1.

    and or:

    2]  Maybe you have too little frames and to far an explosion
distance.   I think Imagine just interpolates the location over time.
Try cutting down the distance, or increasing the frames.

    If works comes to worst, you could snapshot the exploded object,
and then reload it and just do a morph.



--
+======================================================================+
|  Michael B. Comet -   Software Engineer / Graphics Artist  - CWRU    |
|  [e-mail]  - "Silence those who oppose the freedom of speech" |
+======================================================================+


##

Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback
Date: Tue, 11 May 93 10:40:58 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Setzer)

> From: David Watters <[e-mail]> (Ronald Kushner)
> > Someone wrote:
>
> The fastest SCSI-II drive/controller combos I have seen can achieve transfer
> rates of 2.5-3.5MB _sustained_.  This is WELL with in the range of the current
> Zorro III implementations (upto a max of 50MB/sec) and I believe is also within
> the range of the 2000's Zorro II bus.
> C-A, Inc. SCSI-II controller is supposed to be one of, if not thee, fastest
> implementations of SCSI-II which doesn't supprise me considering the speed of
> the A3000's SCSI-I controller.

Ok ok, I agree, IDE was a bad choice.  But just because I like to discuss
this kinda stuff....

What about bus contention?  Say you wanna lay down audio tracks too.  Now,
I've heard that DMIs board will work in conjunction with the board from
Sunrise to record four tracks while playing an animation.  But as was also
stated, this has yet to be seen.

Does anyone know what slot the DPS board will go in?  Zorro II, III or a PC
slot?  I assume the DMI Digital Broadcaster(was Editmaster) will be in a
Zorro slot.  Anyone know which one?

I saw something like the DMI board on a MAC.  It looked really sweet, and
the vidio looked nice.  There were noticable hiccups when it hit the disk,
which is totally unacceptable.  Also I think it was only 30 fields/s.  No
overscan?  Overpriced.  In otherwords, it was a piece of sh*t.  But, it was
still nice, compared to what is selling on the Amiga!  The other funny thing
about it was that in the demo, they had a scene from Unsolved mysteries or
what ever that show is that used a Toaster to create the UFOs.  You know,
the ones on the Video Toaster adds on the back of Amiga World.  You gotta
love it!


Tom Setzer
[e-mail]

"And of course, I'm a genius, so people are naturally drawn to my fiery
intellect.  Their admiration overwhelms their envy!" - Calvin


##

Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback
Date: Tue, 11 May 93 16:55:12 EDT
From: David Watters <[e-mail]>

Brick forgot to forward this to the list again :), so here is another message
from him, I am including the entire message by his request and my replies.

> From [e-mail] Tue May 11 16:30:57 1993
> From: Brick Eksten <[e-mail]>
> Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback


> >  From what I have seen from the HP and Seagate drives we have, thermal
> > recalibration can be ajusted or forced using the SCSI bus, so I don't see
> > this as being a strike against using SCSI-II.
>
>   From what I understand, SCSI devices don't like to be told to do
>   a thermal recal. (this is what I have been told)

When both Seagate and HP were in to talk to us, both discussed this topic but
did not suggest that it was a problem with SCSI drives to adjust the timming
of the recal or force it.

> > I have never requested that the system multitask or that the drive NOT
> > be dedicated.  What I am questioning is the TYPE of drive and not how it
> > is used.  Dedicated is how it should be, but a dedicated SCSI drive is
> > how I would rather it be if that was technically possible.
> >
>
>    I would rather it was SCSI also,  especially seeing as how I
>  paid 1500.00 for a drive with the express intent of using it with
>  the DMI board.  I also have SCSI-II dat drives, CD-roms, etc. etc.

I am in the same boat just about.

> > You are ignoring the benefit that a SCSI-II controller would bring to the
> > rest of your system for the times you are not playing back animation.
>
>   I'm not ignoring it, only pointing out that if you don't need scsi-ii
>  for anything else, why buy it.  I know, I want it anyways but I don't
>  really need it right now (>3 megs/second is fine for now).

I could stand to have it ASAP, btw. 3MB/sec is awful fast for a SCSI-I
controller, what combo are you getting those numbers with.
With the HP 2247 (1.02GB) SCSI II FAST drive (with synchronous on) I am
getting 1.6MB/sec with the A3000 controller and using the SCSIprefs util.

> >
> > All of my arguments are based on the idea that we should only be dealing
> > with one drive type in the Amiga market.  It seems that all hell broke loose
> > when the moron at C-A, Inc. decided to put IDE in the 4000.
>
>   I agree totally.  But the moron a commodore enabled them to sell a
>  machine for $200.00 less than what it would have sold for, which
>  enabled commodore to have the cheapest REAL 040 machine on the market.

I am of the opinion that a few hundred dollars this way or the other is
meaningless.  Nobody is going to buy an `040 based Amiga just because it
is $200 less than the MAC if they wanted to use Mac software.
CBM should not make Amiga users suffer to try and steal MAC sales they won't
get anyways.

> > Look at it this way...
> > I will only use SCSI type hard disk and controllers.  For obvious reasons
> > including tape drives (which I have), CDrom players (which I may get),
> > MagnetoOptical drives (which I have), and more than 2 hard disk (which I have).
>
>   I'm no happier about IDE as a spec than you are. But in this one instance
>  it makes sense.  Purely from the standpoint that in a machine with a
>  slow bus (a2000, which is 99% of the toaster machines out there) it
>  is the only solution that makes sense.

I agree now, assuming that there was technical limitations with ZorroII and
SCSI-II.  From what Dave Haynie said, Zorro II can maintain 3.5MB/sec.  I
would question if a Zorro II based SCSI-II FAST controller wouldn't allow
the DPS board to hit that figure reading from the drive.

> > Now wouldn't it be nice for me to have a drive that I can use as a
>
> > _dedicated_ playback device... and then under any circumstance use that drive
> > for another purpose?
>
>   Yep.  If we all had Zorro III machines I would be totally on
>  your side (BTW I have ONLY A3000 toaster machines so I'm not arguing
>  on my behalf)

I wonder how many more people are like us and fit this category.

> > This is a VERY strong argument.  It makes it very clear why they put a
> > dedicated drive controller on the board.  And for price reasons, it is
> > obvious why they chose IDE.
> > But what is DMI's board going to do?  You are suggesting that it is
> > unusable in a 2000 system, correct?
>
>   Unusable for broadcast purposes. YES.  They have only managed to show
>   VHS quality output on the board so far.  From a purely hardware persons
>   point of view,  I'm not sure they could ever do any better than that
>   in a 2000.  I would be willing to bet money that they can't.  Its
>   still usable in the sense that it will be better than ham-8 but thats
>   now what we are after is it?  That and the fact that it costs 500.00
>   more than the DPS board and you still have to buy a fast SCSI-II
>   controller.

Do not forget the non-linear edit software and ability that comes with that
without the need of a TBC to grab video onto Hard disk.

> > However, I will argue that the board should be able to work with a drive
> > (dedicated of course) that is connected to a SCSI-II FAST controller
> > in addition to the on board IDE controller.  This would allow future
> > machine owners/upgraders to use the controller that comes with their machine
> > or those who have purchased a SCSI II FAST controller for their current
> > Zorro III systems.
>
>   Yeah that would work, but unfortunately the majority of applicable systems
>  are still 2000's so its kind of a moot point.

>> I would love to see some figures concerning transfer rates of small <100k files
>> for both SCSI II FAST and IDE.  Assuming both are being used under the same
>> conditions (dedicated, thermal calibration delayed, no other bus activity, etc.)
>
>   I believe (this is off the top of my head) that the command latency in
>  IDE drives is <160us and for SCSI is over 240us, anyhow it ends up that
>  IDE drives are about close to twice as fast at command processing, transfer
>  rates are pretty much the same.
>
> >
> > Obviously DPS has good reasons why they chose to require an IDE drive.  I
> > am sure if I had all the information it would be easy for me to agree with
> > the decision.  My main problem is that already have some really nice drives
> > I would have liked to use. :-)
> >
>   DPS's reasons:
>
>    This is what I have gathered from conversations with people at Maxtor
>  and SeaGate and at DPS.
>
>    DPS is using only the outer tracks of the drive for animation.  The
>  inner tracks are reserved for still stores.  If you look at how a drive
>  is normally used, there are the same number of sectors on the outer
>  tracks as there are on the inner tracks, but the sectors get closer
>  together as you get closer to the center (less room around the
>  circumference of the disk).  If you write a custom file system it is
>  possible to put more information per track on the outer tracks than
>  on the inner tracks.  This is one way that DPS gets their great
>  data transfer rates off of the drive.  Drive transfer rates are limited
>  by the amount of information you can get off of the disk in each revolution
>  of the disk.  Thats why multi-spin CDROMS are twice as fast, the disks
>  are rotating twice as fast.  If you want to know what the maximum raw data
>  rate is for any drive, multiply the number of heads times the number of
>  sectors per track, times the number of bytes per sector, times the
>  number of revolutions per second of the drive and you will get the
>  rate.  So, DPS has increased the data per track in their drives which
>  allows them to get higher transfer rates.  This is not really possible
>  on a non-dedicated controller (its possible but complicated).
>  BTW in the tests I have done, the files on the DPS board were getting
>  compressed from an average of around 600k down to about 39k for a
>  compression rate of about 15:1 with great image quality (D2) and
>  no noticeable artifacting.  Lets see that makes it about a
>  (39kx30) 1.176 meg/second data rate for small files, files of over
>  256k would be transfered at around the 4 meg/sec rate, not too bad
>  for 15.00 worth of hardware (the ide host hardware)
>
>   The other neat thing about the DPS board and the fact that it is
>  a dedicated HD/Controller combo is that it takes very few
>  CPU cycles to run it.  I have been able to watch an animation before
>  lightwave is done rendering the next frame, because it doesn't take
>  any processing power to do it.  I can also playback animatoins while
>  ADPRO is converting frames, Lightwave is rendering, I am printing
>  out a 200 page document, etc. etc....
>
>
>
> > ps. I am still very curious what DMI is going to do if a SCSI II FAST
> > controller can not transfer more than 1.75MB/sec in a Zorro II machine.

As I mentioned, Dave Haynie just talked about Zorro II being able to do
3.5MB/sec... This would suggest that a Zorro II SCSI II FAST board (whew, what
a name) would beable to feed the DPS board at it's required 2.5MB/sec rate.

>   Continue to show it in an A3000 and hope that not too many people
>  ask questions. 8^)
>
>   ps. the fastest Zorro II controller I have ever seen was the Kronos
>  controller which got about 1.4 meg/sec on a 9ms 1.8 gig drive.
>
>
> -Brick
>
>
>
>

David     -__@_
Watters  ~ O---o-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering
"Porsche.  The very name is, to many, the last word in sports cars. Any car
 blessed with these magic seven letters is sure to be the very best. Period!"
                        - Car and Driver, January 1993


##

Subject: Imagine Scenes rendered on other renderers ??
Date:     Wed, 12 May 1993 00:40:47 +0200
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

With this post I want to point out two items:

1) Could anyone who has ever rendered COMPLETE imagine scenes on
other scanline/raytracers post his/her opinion/experience to the list or
directly to me .

2) The idea of useing additional render-power on other systems is
not new but I want to pose the question how good could be a
converter of imagine scenes to , say rayshade scripts be ?
A lot of the people on this list seem to be students which most of them
have access to university computer nets which tend to be rather
powerfull. Wouldn't it be great to have a converter of COMPLETE
scenes to a UNIX pd- renderer. I know that there are many object
converters for imagine objects around.
I don't know your opiniions about this point. But if there would
be the interest, how about forming a group of interested people
for developing such a pieve of software ?

Hope I didn't talk your ears off

Hannes


##

Subject: Do you have Imagine or interested in porting Imagine to the PC?
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 11:29:22 +1000
From: [e-mail]

    Is it possible to get Imagine (one of the coolest raytracers I have used) on the PC...

At the moment I am using 3d Studio and Pov.......


##

Subject: ImageFx
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 10:55:31 +0100
From: [e-mail] (Heberle H.)

Hello Rich,
AdPro has no TIFF converter but you can purchase the "Professional
Conversion Pack" that comes with AdPro.
It includes TIFF, TARGA, RENDITION etc. ... converters and they are
working fine. I own AdPro 2.3 with these prof. conversion Pack. Until
today I had no problems to convert these different formats.
Horst Heberle
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re:  30fps
Date: Mon, 10 May 93 10:55:22 MET
From: [e-mail] (Philippe Berard)

Hello PJ (PJ Foley). On May 9, you have written :

> So - This is my $.02.  My question is: is there a newer 3.0-aware
> version of ParNet?

    ParBench3.1 works well on every 3.0 machines I've used (A2000,
    A3000,A1200 & A4000) and even on latest releases of 3.01.

> And on another totally unrelated note:  Will Commodore's Lowell
> board support RTG once available (WAY off the topic here-of
> Imagine esp.)

    As the Lowell's card uses a TI-34010 and because sage.library has
    been made to drive this kind of cards, I'm sure TI-based cards
    will be the first to be useable with RTG. At least, it seems logical
    to me.

    Sincerely,
                                        -- Philippe


##

Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 09:31:34 EDT
From: David Watters <[e-mail]>

> I saw something like the DMI board on a MAC.  It looked really sweet, and
> the vidio looked nice.  There were noticable hiccups when it hit the disk,
> which is totally unacceptable.  Also I think it was only 30 fields/s.  No
> overscan?  Overpriced.  In otherwords, it was a piece of sh*t.

This sounds a lot like SuperMac's DigitalFilm.  All the Mac people I know
think this thing is our newborn savior, but as you noticed it is extremely
lacking.   From what I understand it requires a Quadra level machine (why I
have no idea) and uses the Cirus chipset instead of the LSI chipset.  I
understand this to mean that it samples the video (Records) at a 320x200
resolution and not the full LSI chipset resolution of 768x480.  As you also
noticed it only grabs and plays back 30_fields_/sec which is hardly satisfactory
in my book.  It also cost a good deal more than the DMI board. In addition
I believe it had to use fairly large compression ratios makeing the quality
of the video a little less than optimal.

I have heard there is some really nice software for this board, from Aldus I
believe, for nonlinear editing but I have not seen it myself.

There was a pretty good discussion in comp.graphics.animation about this and
how it compared to DMI's EditMaster.

David     -__^@_
Watters  ~ O----o-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering
"Porsche.  The very name is, to many, the last word in sports cars. Any car
 blessed with these magic seven letters is sure to be the very best. Period!"
                        - Car and Driver, January 1993


##

Subject: multi monitor presentations
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 9:34:17 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dale R Rogers)

    All you animator types,

    How do they produce multiscreen presentations?  You know... where
    there is a grid of monitors and the animations seem to use parts
    of each monitor.  I have seen this used in countless places and it
    is a very effective marketing technique.  Do you need a separate
    computer for each monitor?  Are the separate computers slaves to
    one main processing computer?  Or is there a hardware/software
    combo that enables one computer to do all of that?

    Dale


       _____________________________^_____________________________
                                  __ __
                                ____ ____
       _____________________________ _____________________________
       dale r. rogers
       afme support
       MailStop: LR24A4
       Tel: [phone]
       [e-mail]

                                    .


##

Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 11:29:24 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Setzer)

>
> > I saw something like the DMI board on a MAC.  It looked really sweet, and
> > the vidio looked nice.  There were noticable hiccups when it hit the disk,
> > which is totally unacceptable.  Also I think it was only 30 fields/s.  No
> > overscan?  Overpriced.  In otherwords, it was a piece of sh*t.
>
> This sounds a lot like SuperMac's DigitalFilm.  All the Mac people I know

Yep, thats the one.  I have their spec sheet right here.

> lacking.   From what I understand it requires a Quadra level machine (why I

The sheet says it "recommends" the Quadra 950

> have no idea) and uses the Cirus chipset instead of the LSI chipset.  I
> understand this to mean that it samples the video (Records) at a 320x200
> resolution and not the full LSI chipset resolution of 768x480.  As you also

The key features claim "Full-screen, full-motion recording to disk (30 frames
and fields per second at 640 x 480 resolution)" What? No overscan?!?!

> in my book.  It also cost a good deal more than the DMI board. In addition

No doubt, its an Apple product! :)

> I believe it had to use fairly large compression ratios makeing the quality
> of the video a little less than optimal.

24:1 Jpeg, to get "visually lossless" quality.  Higher compression rates for
storyboarding, up to 50:1

>
> I have heard there is some really nice software for this board, from Aldus I
> believe, for nonlinear editing but I have not seen it myself.
>
Adobe Premiere, and CosA After Effects, the first for editing the second for
"stat-of-the-art compositing and layering capabilities"

It also claims the following:

SMPTE time-code support
Quicktime compatibility (real useful for video production (tee hee))
768x576 PAL and SECAM support
audio capture - stereo input and output, 10-bit res. @ 44.1 kHz and then
  it says (Apple Sound Manager currently limits performance to 8 bits @ 22 kHz)
Built in porfessional quality encoder
output in composite, S-video, and RGB
NTSC and PAL overscan/underscan timings (does this mean they can output
in overscan?????)
Edit decision list output in CMX, Sony, Digital F/X, Grass valley (what ever
that means)
Hardware panning and instant zoom by 200%

to get the highest quality at 640X480 they require drives capible of 4MB/sec
which leads us back to the DPS and DMI discussion.  How can DMI do it without
that kind of transfer rate?  Or faster if you use smaller compression schemes?

If you want more info on SUPERMACs Digital Film Studio: DV2000, you can call
1-800-334-3005.  Maybe someone can get a price for us...


Tom Setzer
[e-mail]

"And of course, I'm a genius, so people are naturally drawn to my fiery
intellect.  Their admiration overwhelms their envy!" - Calvin


##

Subject: Re: multi monitor presentations
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 13:28:48 EDT
From: David Watters <[e-mail]>

>     All you animator types,
>
>     How do they produce multiscreen presentations?  You know... where
>     there is a grid of monitors and the animations seem to use parts
>     of each monitor.

There is a dedicated video processor that takes incoming video and devides it
into an array of pieces, scales the pieces to fit on their respective monitor
and sends out a video signal for each monitor.
Many of these processor can do various effects such as using the array of tubes
to show one big picture or duplicating entire picture on each tube or a any sort
of combination of the two and other video effects.


> Do you need a separate computer for each monitor?

No matter what the setup, I would think that you would have your video or
animation already produced which usually means on video tape or laser disk.
As I mentioned, the normal setup is to have a sigle video source going into
a video processor design to drive an array of monitors.

David     -__^@_
Watters  ~ O----o-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering
"Porsche.  The very name is, to many, the last word in sports cars. Any car
 blessed with these magic seven letters is sure to be the very best. Period!"
                        - Car and Driver, January 1993


##

Subject: Re: Imagine Scenes rendered on other renderers ??
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 9:29:07 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dale R Rogers)

|With this post I want to point out two items:
|
|1) Could anyone who has ever rendered COMPLETE imagine scenes on
|other scanline/raytracers post his/her opinion/experience to the list or
|directly to me .
|
|2) The idea of useing additional render-power on other systems is
|not new but I want to pose the question how good could be a
|converter of imagine scenes to , say rayshade scripts be ?
|A lot of the people on this list seem to be students which most of them
|have access to university computer nets which tend to be rather
|powerfull. Wouldn't it be great to have a converter of COMPLETE
|scenes to a UNIX pd- renderer. I know that there are many object
|converters for imagine objects around.
|I don't know your opiniions about this point. But if there would
|be the interest, how about forming a group of interested people
|for developing such a pieve of software ?

    I have thought of this very idea.  I am not a programmer (yet) and
    am not in a position of realizing this idea.  However, one of the
    more production related drawbacks to producing animations on a desktop
    is that it takes so long to get the results sometimes.  I wonder
    how long it will be before a product comes out that will enable an
    animator to set up a scene on his/her desktop, produce the
    results on a mainframe, and then transfer the results back to the
    desktop for output.

    Dale

|
|Hope I didn't talk your ears off
|
|Hannes
|


##

Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 16:54:02 EDT
From: David Watters <[e-mail]>

> From [e-mail] Wed May 12 15:55:29 1993
> Date: Wed, 12 May 93 11:29:24 CDT

> The key features claim "Full-screen, full-motion recording to disk (30 frames
> and fields per second at 640 x 480 resolution)" What? No overscan?!?!

This may be, but if they are using the Cirrus chip set, as I believe they are
they are sampling at a lower resolution than full NTSC and scaling it up to
fit 640x480.

> > in my book.  It also cost a good deal more than the DMI board. In addition
>
> No doubt, its an Apple product! :)

Let's hope it says that way. :)

> > I believe it had to use fairly large compression ratios makeing the quality
> > of the video a little less than optimal.
>
> 24:1 Jpeg, to get "visually lossless" quality.  Higher compression rates for
> storyboarding, up to 50:1

Ha, ha! Right, 24:! compression is pretty bad.  DMI was claiming as low as
5:1, but maybe 10:1 is more realistic.  But 20:1 is getting pretty fragmentie.

> > I have heard there is some really nice software for this board, from Aldus I
> > believe, for nonlinear editing but I have not seen it myself.
> >
> Adobe Premiere, and CosA After Effects, the first for editing the second for
> "stat-of-the-art compositing and layering capabilities"

Yep, man would it be awsome to get software houses like this developing for
the Amiga and one of the Amiga digital recording boards.

> It also claims the following:
>
> SMPTE time-code support
> Quicktime compatibility (real useful for video production (tee hee))

Quicktime, Quicktime, Quicktime...  What a joke.

> 768x576 PAL and SECAM support
> audio capture - stereo input and output, 10-bit res. @ 44.1 kHz and then
>  it says (Apple Sound Manager currently limits performance to 8 bits @ 22 kHz)
> Built in porfessional quality encoder

Ah! Professional quality.

> output in composite, S-video, and RGB
> NTSC and PAL overscan/underscan timings (does this mean they can output
> in overscan?????)
> Edit decision list output in CMX, Sony, Digital F/X, Grass valley (what ever
> that means)
> Hardware panning and instant zoom by 200%

The instant zoom is probably related to the hardware used to scale the 320x200
sampled images! :-)

> to get the highest quality at 640X480 they require drives capible of 4MB/sec
> which leads us back to the DPS and DMI discussion.  How can DMI do it without
> that kind of transfer rate?  Or faster if you use smaller compression schemes?

Once they have sampled at 320x200 and scaled to 640x400 the image size is the
same as the images captured with the LSI chipset so the require the same
amount of bandwidth to get the image to and from the disk.  This is why I am
not assuming they are actually sampling at 640x480 since they need the higher
transfer rate.  As a matter of fact, last time I hear SuperMac had actually
announce that they are currently only sampling at 320x200, but hinted that it
wasn't their fault.

> If you want more info on SUPERMACs Digital Film Studio: DV2000, you can call
> 1-800-334-3005.  Maybe someone can get a price for us...

Price maybe, board... no thank you.

David     -__^@_
Watters  ~ O----o-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering
"Porsche.  The very name is, to many, the last word in sports cars. Any car
 blessed with these magic seven letters is sure to be the very best. Period!"
                        - Car and Driver, January 1993


##

Subject: Re: multi monitor presentations
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 11:11:19 CDT
From: Wayne Haufler <[e-mail]>

>     All you animator types,
>
>     How do they produce multiscreen presentations?  You know... where
>     there is a grid of monitors and the animations seem to use parts
>     of each monitor.  I have seen this used in countless places and it
>     is a very effective marketing technique.  Do you need a separate
>     computer for each monitor?  Are the separate computers slaves to
>     one main processing computer?  Or is there a hardware/software
>     combo that enables one computer to do all of that?
>
>     Dale
>

I think I heard that it is done with some kind of special video-splitter
hardware that splits an NTSC video signal into several separate signals
to feed each monitor on the "Video Wall".  I don't think it depends on a
computer or network of computers.  But I may be wrong.

         __
\\ /\\ /\\ //_    Wayne A. Haufler   [Christian/SW Engineer/XWindows/Amigan]
 \/--\// \//__    [e-mail]    McDonnell Douglas-Houston
     //           Hobby:  "Computer Animations For Christian Endeavors"


##

Subject: Surface Master.
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 16:55:18 BST
From: [e-mail] (Ian Bale)

I've been reading a copy of Imagine Compendium ( 27:8:91 issue ), and I noticed
a section on some s/w called Surface Master by Louis Markoya.

I am interested in getting a copy of this s/w, but since my copy of IC is so
old, I thought I'd check if it's still available from Loius before sending
money off to the USA.

If it is still available, can someone confirm the price, and Louis' address.
The address I have is :

             Louis Markoya
             Computer Imagery
             49 Walnut Avenue
             Shelton
             CT 06484.

             Price quotes $30

        ( Does he have an e-mail address ? )


If anyone has this s/w, I'd appreciate your comments on it; also If anyone has
any similar package, I'd appreciate details.

Thanks for any help,

-Elfrick.
        ===================================================
            Sent by [e-mail]
        ===================================================


##

Subject: Re: 30fps
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 19:39:01 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

        the only question is... is 30 FPS possible?  And I have another
        question?  Is 30 FPS necessary?  If the output will go to tape, is
        it necessary to get 30 FPS for accurate timing and smooth
        movement?  I know 30 is a value that is a result of the video
        medium.  Is 30 a neccessary speed for professional results?

yes... NTSC is interlaced, it has 2 fields per frame and
the fields are set down 1/60th of a second. 30 frames
per second is as fast as your VCR is capable of recording
and outputing to the TV... There might be SVHS recorders
that are faster, but I learned about this stuff in
my hardware course dealing with vertical/horizontal scan frequencies,
etc.


##

Subject: Re: 30fps
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 20:00:19 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    I'm no expert here, but this is something I've been wondering about
    for awhile:  Why does anyone not involved in broadcast television care
    about whether or not they can play realtime animations at 30 FPS, as
    opposed to, say, 25 or 23?  Movies are only 24 FPS, and European
    television gets by with 25.
-----------------
Everyone just wants the fastest possible.. It is just like
frame sizes... You don't want 500x400 which is all you can
really seen from NTSC... They want 1280x1024 so the resolution
causes everything to anti-alias and creates the illusion
of more color... Some people like myself really don't care...
------------------

         I thought about this while watching that
    "Beyond the Mind's Eye" animation tape a couple of weeks ago, and
    I started to experiment with the VCR frame-advance.  I discovered that
    many of the animations were actually running slower than 30 FPS.  The
    stuff from "Lawnmower Man", for example, was 24 FPS (and not even
    at constant intervals, obviously -- every fifth frame was simply
    repeated) and it still looked fine.  Another animation (I don't know
-----------
that's becuase it was probably film and not video... I mean,
I can just watch TV and can tell you (pretty much) what was
done on film and what was done on video just becuase the
frame rates are slower... We have become so used to watching
film that it doesn't bother us that much... this is my
own experience but I mean stuff like Soap Opera's on daytime TV
look so much more real than something like dynasty becuase the
daytime stuff is done on video and dynasty was done on film..
You can even make video look like film by just cutting the
frame rate down or remove frames and repeat frames from a video signal..

shows like the arsenio hall show now have video techniques where they can
make video look like film... I suspect they use this technique... I'm
not a video professional.
------------
    what it was called; it was the one with the sun creeping into a
    darkened room, over a wastebasket and a typewriter, etc.) seemed to be
    running at about 20 FPS.  Some of the sequences with the
    "Transformers" robots whizzing around were actually _15 FPS_ (every
    frame repeated).  Everything over 15 FPS looked great, and even 15 FPS
    didn't look really "bad", just more "computer-ish".  The most
    startling thing I noticed was in the animation where the animated
    salmon makes a digitized-video splash (which I thought was really,
    really good water-modelling, at first :) and an animated bee flies in
    front of it:  Bee - 30 FPS, Water - 15 FPS, and even this looks OK
    until you play it slowly.
-----------
Video over Film... That's how... Is that the animation clip with the
fly trying to escape the hornet through the jungle???
I got my mother the same video for Xmas...
She has "Beyond the Mind's Eye" and I have "The Mind's Eye"
-----------
       While I'm on this subject, I have a more technical question.  When
    I dump animation to videotape through my A520 adapter, I never end up
    with a videotape frame "split" between two animation frames, no matter
    what odd frame rate I play the animations at (usually 8 - 12 FPS, but
    the A4000 Jr. should fix that).  I assume that this is because the
    Amiga in NTSC-Interlace mode puts out 30 FPS, and so any internal
    animation rate somehow gets "forced" into complying with this -- so
---------
You are talking about two different things here.. You are talking about
frame rate vs. scan rate frequency. I have noticed that if you switch
to PAL mode the TV-set will go into lala land with the V-hold off
about 15%.. This is because the PAL mode throws about 80 more scan
lines at the VCR. The animation frame rates shouldn't have anything
to do with it, it is the video scan rate... Are you using a PAL
VCR with a NTSC output??? Change the Amiga to PAL mode thenm view
your animation.. This might work... If not, I hear that the Amiga
3000 can control its screen refresh frequency, maybe the 4000 too...
Though I have never seen anyone change the scan rate frequency for
an Amiga 3000.
---------

    you get three video-frames of anim frame 1, four of frame 2, three of
    frame 3, and so on.  But if this is the case, then what happens to
    animations that play faster than 30 FPS?  Do some frames simply never
---------
they either get dumped or you get 1 frame per field (since NTSC is
interlaced) and 2 frames per video frame...
---------
    get shown at all?  If this is not the case, then why do slow
    animations dump cleanly to video?

    --
    Evan Kirchhoff, [e-mail]
---------
I don't know... I'm just a computer aide... not a broadcast nut
but i did take a Assembly class where scan rates were discussed.
------


##

Subject: Re: Realtime animation playback
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 20:59:58 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    > I believe it had to use fairly large compression ratios makeing the quality
    > of the video a little less than optimal.

    24:1 Jpeg, to get "visually lossless" quality.  Higher compression rates for
    storyboarding, up to 50:1
---------
Eat your heart out... I have our UNIX system feeding me frame rates
of above 30 fps at 320x200 and I implemented JPEG into the system
(simply) just by comrpessing each frame... It is really pretty
cool but I can't dump it to tape.. Who cares, one of my 100 frame
animations only take up 400K of disk space, but you have a
choice of how many bitplanes you want to dump to an RLE animation...
All you need is jpeg 3.0 and getx11... And we are only using a Vax 5000
through a Mips color workstation..

The actual source code to do it was only 50 lines... It makes a lot
of "system()" calls... but hey, it works... that's all it needs to do...

If anyone wants me to upload my Animation to the nets I will.. It is 106
frames and about 400K ... tarred and each frame is jpeg'd using just
the Jpeg 3.0 public domain version.. It is almost better than MPEG
for what I am doing.

The animation was made using Imagine and Rayshade 4.0 and my
"rayfly" (read simple) program.

Kiernan
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Imagine Scenes rendered on other renderers ??
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 18:40:16 EDT
From: Steve J. Lombardi <[e-mail]>

> |
> |2) The idea of useing additional render-power on other systems is
> |not new but I want to pose the question how good could be a
> |converter of imagine scenes to , say rayshade scripts be ?
> |A lot of the people on this list seem to be students which most of them
> |have access to university computer nets which tend to be rather
> |powerfull. Wouldn't it be great to have a converter of COMPLETE
> |scenes to a UNIX pd- renderer. I know that there are many object
> |converters for imagine objects around.
> |I don't know your opiniions about this point. But if there would
> |be the interest, how about forming a group of interested people
> |for developing such a pieve of software ?
>
>     I have thought of this very idea.  I am not a programmer (yet) and
>     am not in a position of realizing this idea.  However, one of the
>     more production related drawbacks to producing animations on a desktop
>     is that it takes so long to get the results sometimes.  I wonder
>     how long it will be before a product comes out that will enable an
>     animator to set up a scene on his/her desktop, produce the
>     results on a mainframe, and then transfer the results back to the
>     desktop for output.

About a year ago I called Impulse to suggest porting their rendering engine
to unix and VMS. of course they had no interest at the time, but maybe
now that they ARE branching to other platforms... I would think
that porting the project editor would be a trivial process. No GUI
is needed- a command line interface would suffice as your
amiga would function as the front end supporting the graphical editors.
You would simply have a powerful mini or mainframe based rendering engine.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
                    | why would he be such a jerk? i know that he doesn't smoke
steve lombardi      | drugs. and he doesn't do cocaine. and he doesn't shoot
[e-mail] | smack. and he doesn't even drink beer. Why would he be
                    | such a fu*ker to me? --WEEN


##

Subject: Re: 30fps
Date: Thu, 13 May 93 08:25:07 EST
From: Adam Benjamin <[e-mail]>

Previously on "Imagine TNG"
-----------
       While I'm on this subject, I have a more technical question.  When
    I dump animation to videotape through my A520 adapter, I never end up
    with a videotape frame "split" between two animation frames, no matter
    what odd frame rate I play the animations at (usually 8 - 12 FPS, but
    the A4000 Jr. should fix that).  I assume that this is because the
    Amiga in NTSC-Interlace mode puts out 30 FPS, and so any internal
    animation rate somehow gets "forced" into complying with this -- so
---------
>You are talking about two different things here.. You are talking
>about frame rate vs. scan rate frequency.

No I think you miss-understood his question.  This is something I
often wondered about too:
How do odd frame rates (like 12 or 9 or whatever) get "resolved" when
you are using a genlock or other NTSC recording device?? Do pictures
get "split" in the middle of the VCR's frames?
Otherwise frame rate would have to be some even multiple of 30 right?
(like 15 or 5 or 3 or 10 or 6) but NOT 12 or 18 or 28.

And again why shoot for anims that run faster than 30FPS??  Don't you
end up not even showing some of the frames?  I guess the answer to
this is yes, that is why ScalaMM has the ability to remove half the
scan lines from true 60FPS anims. Since you can do fields at 60 and
Frames at 30.


Lead us oh answer man!

Adam B.


##

Subject:  DPS's Personal Anim Control
Date: Thu May 13 08:16:22 1993
From: [e-mail]

With all the talk about this product lately, I'm very interested...  Does
anyone have an address or phone number for DPS?


##

Subject: IF YOU WANT TO UNSUBSCRIBE
Date: Thu, 13 May 93 13:36:51 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dave Wickard)

Lately, because of the large number of readers who
get USENET / Internet / any kinda net
access through school... and since the school year is
drawing to the end...

we have been seeing lots and lots of UNSUBSCRIBE posts.

Naughty naughty naughty!  DO NOT POST THEM HERE.


If you would like to unsubscribe from the Imagine Mailing List,
HERE is how to do it (as per the IML Guide everyone received):


Send mail to the following address with the word "UNSUBSCRIBE" in
the Subject line:

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

It's automatic. Your unsubscription will take place in one day!
Your helpful and courteous observation of this simple request
is most gratefully appreciated.  ;-)


Dave Wickard  [phone]   "It's time I stood up for myself. Put my
[e-mail]        cards on the table. Showed my manhood."
[e-mail]      "Just stick with the cards, please."
                                Cliff and Carla on CHEERS


##

Subject: Imagine and Retina
Date: Thu, 13 May 93 12:44:15 -0700
From: Mark Davis <[e-mail]>

Just another Imagine user praising the Retina.  Using Imagine on a
1024x768x70Hz screen on a 17" monitor is GREAT!  No more squinting to
find a point or see details.  Sorry for the wasted bandwidth but the Retina
is just what the doctor ordered...

mark


##

Subject: Pouring water (was Re: Questions about Real3D 2.0 )
Date: Sat, 15 May 1993 00:40:35 +0800
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> > What is going on here is the "liquid" object is being passed through a
> > deformation path that is defined by the user.
> Is there no way of programming this as a macro/texture and using it
> again (somekind of randomising involved?) - does any software on any
> platform support water type effects?

It occurs to me that what would have to be done is a fluid dynamics simulation
(VERY compute intensive) which would drive a volumetric or blobby particle
model. To my knowledge, outside of research using scientific visualization,
nothing like this exists.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Running Imagine larger than 640x400
Date: 14 May 1993 08:48:37 -1000
From: "Jeff Wahaus, CAPS, ATL, 404-640-3529" <[e-mail]>

  How do you get Imagine to run on a screen larger than 640x400?  I
am using version 1.1 but I thought that even version 2.0 was still
limited to a 640x400 screen.

  I typically run workbench using a 720x480 screen and would love to
be able to run Imagine on a similar size screen.

  Also, how fast is imagine when using a 1024x768 screen on the Retina
Board?  I assume that this is still a 16 color screen?

-Jeff Wahaus-


##

Subject: Caligari
Date: Fri, 14 May 93 13:17:04 PDT
From: Mark Bergem <[e-mail]>

I just got Caligari the other day and all I have to say is, WOW!..it does
everything imagine wishes it could do:)...it is a great prog...on problem
though..it is about twice a s hard to figure out as imagine..I was
wondering of anyone knew  of anywhere that had tip on Caligari..like there
are many tips on Imagine...oh well talk to all of you later (I hope)

Mark Bergem


##

Subject: questions....
Date: Fri, 14 May 93 14:48:14 -0700
From: [e-mail]

just a couple questions....
I heard the new 4000/040 was fully compatible with the Mac IIsi/lc
I need to know if this is true, else I might be forced to break
camp.... all the design industry is going Mac...
also is the bridgeboar 386 make the amiga fully compatible with
IBM....
i know this is off the imagine subject, but I need to know either
how I can run advanced Mac software on Amiga or network with a
mac so I can run mac shit on my amiga... i heard that a Golden Gate...
or a Zorro III could do it...
thanks in advance....


##

Subject: on the lookout for spacecraft objects
Date: 14 May 1993 21:39:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail]

     I am always on the lookout for the following :

          star wars objects
             large imperial walker
              millenium falcon
              star destroyer

          battlestar galactica
              the battlestar itself
              cylon base star
              cylon attack ships

          star trek
              NCC1701
              NCC1701a
              NCC1701d
              any other federation ships available
              any klingon ships

     Any suggestions on these or other science fiction related objects
are always greatly appreciated.

With thanks.....
___________________________________________________________________
                  |         Internet: [e-mail]
Joe Hart          |     ///    Plink: OSS542
Niagara Falls, NY | \\\///  Ham call: WA2SND
                  |  \XX/   AMIGA - Computers for REAL MEN
===================================================================


##

Subject: Re:  on the lookout for spacecraft objects
Date: Fri, 14 May 93 20:17:27 -0700
From: Charles F. Kane <[e-mail]>

I recently uploaded an Imagine object of the Eagle transport from
Space:1999 to the IML archive. Now THERE's some classic sci-fi for ya...

-CFK


##

Subject: Re: questions....
Date: Sat, 15 May 93 13:51:55 BST
From: [e-mail]

>just a couple questions....
>I heard the new 4000/040 was fully compatible with the Mac IIsi/lc
>I need to know if this is true, else I might be forced to break
>camp.... all the design industry is going Mac...
>also is the bridgeboar 386 make the amiga fully compatible with
>IBM....
>i know this is off the imagine subject, but I need to know either
>how I can run advanced Mac software on Amiga or network with a
>mac so I can run mac shit on my amiga... i heard that a Golden Gate...
>or a Zorro III could do it...
>thanks in advance....

Oh dear we do need a bit of help..

The 4000/040 is not compatible with anything other than amigas. UNLESS you put in some
sort of emulation board...

To get Mac emulation use either of the following boards

    1. AMAX-II
    2. Emplant

With one of these boards I beleive you have 100% compatability.

To get IBM compatability the best and most cost effective route is to buy a pc. I say
this as the best bridgeboard ( the one I would go for ) is the VORTEX GoldenGate 486 SLC
which clocks at 25Mhz, costs about 650 UK pounds. For just a couple of hundred more I can
get a 486DX at 33Mhz with 100Mb+ Hard disk VGA card and monitor and software. Ok so it
takes up more space but the spec is loads better.

By the way Zorro III is the name given to the slots in a 3000 and 4000.

Now if cost is no object but space and impressing people is important, an Amiga 4000/40 with
an Amax-II and a Goldengate 486 in it would surely be something!


Jason


##

Subject: Zeus 040
Date: Sun, 16 May 1993 03:48:50 +1000
From: Nikola Vukovljak <[e-mail]>

I'll be buying the Zeus '040 for my 2000 in the near future to speed up my
Imagine+Essence renderings (hours on an '030) and I was wondering if
anyone in the US knows if the price of the board is still the same.

Also, if you own one, can you tell me if the SCSI-2 controller that is on
the board will accept my SCSI HD's (I have a 105 and a 240M Quantum), ie are
the connections the same?

Thanks.

Nik.

[e-mail]


##

Subject: Imagine and Retina
Date: Sun, 16 May 1993 03:41:22 +1000
From: Nikola Vukovljak <[e-mail]>

Someone has mentioned that they're running Imagine on Retina in resolution higher
than that of a normal Hi-res screen. How is this possible? If it can be done
can you let me know how it was done?

Nik.

[e-mail]


##

Subject: SW and ST objects
Date: Sat, 15 May 1993 15:35:30 -0400
From: "Mr. Scott Krehbiel" <[e-mail]>

Joe Hart recently mailed, asking for info on Star Wars (SW),
Battlestar Galactica (BG), and Star Trek (ST) objects.  I'm
also really interested in finding these, but I'd like to get
non-imagine models myself - like the old plastic ones, so I
can measure them and make REALLY detailed models in Imagine.

Does anyone know of a good source for old, DETAILED ship
models from different Sci Fi shows??  I know there's a
Star Wars shop in Florida that might have some good
SW stuff.

Also, what about good pictures, video captures?
Blueprint sets???

Any info would be much appreciated.

BTW: I have some video that I shot of the Star Trek
exhibition at the Air and Space museum in Washington.
I'm currently using it to get the itty-bitty details ships
they had displayed.  All the ships are originals,
used in filming.

Here's what I got:
-original NCC1701 Enterprise
-NCC1701A
-Klingon battle cruiser from old ST
-Klingon battle cruiser from movies and STTNG
- also got lots of shots of props (communicators,
phasers, Scotty's funky engineering tool, etc.)

The lighting wasn't great - in some places, it was
pretty poor - but there's a lot of neat angles on the
stuff that you don't see on the television.  I'm hoping
to capture a bunch of stills from this tape sometime
soon (with DCTV), and if anyone would be interested,
I can upload them somewhere.  Lemme know.

Scott Krehbiel
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Imagine Archive Site
Date: Sat, 15 May 93 23:07:53 BST
From: [e-mail]

Hello all,
    I have a little suggestion for you to ponder on, I have noticed that a nice number of objects have started to appear on wuarchive. This does poss a small problem when actually
going through the list to see what is there.. Would it not be nice if the objects were
stored in some sort of order as in all the space stuff in one directory, fonts in another,
robots in another, etc. This would make it a lot easier to look for something quickly.

How about it good idea or not?

Jason


##

Subject: RE: RE: questions...
Date: Sun, 16 May 93 03:03:53 BST
From: [e-mail]

Stuff deleted

>  I believe that the Emplant (Implant?) will let you add roms for BOTH Mac and
>IBM emulation in one card.  There is even a third rom hole isn't there?  Atari
>perhaps?  Hahahahhahahahhahahahhahaha.  Sorry.  Hope this pans out.

I was under the impression that the Emplant board will either emulate PC OR Mac but not at
the same time.. But any way this really is off the Imagine line.

Jason


##

Subject: mail server at wuarchive?
Date: Sat, 15 May 93 21:04:37 EDT
From: [e-mail] (William V. Swartz)

Can the files being collected at wuarchive on our Imagine-ary behalves be
accessed via mail server?  If so could someone forward information for my
lowly non-ftpable self, it sure would be nice.

  //
\X/ -BiL-
    [e-mail]             (See my 'Imagine'-ary signature below)


##

Subject: Re: mail server at wuarchive?
Date: Sat, 15 May 93 20:57:43 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Christopher Stewart)

>
>Can the files being collected at wuarchive on our Imagine-ary behalves be
>accessed via mail server?  If so could someone forward information for my
>lowly non-ftpable self, it sure would be nice.
>

     I've been trying to find a ftp-mail link to wuarchive or possibly a
mirror site. I'll let you know if I come up with anything.

     "Full Boolean Math Object Creation Tools" is on the back cover of the
2.0 manual. HA!  Does anyone out there know of a modeller that properly
supports these operations? Just a modeller is needed, I can't afford
another full blown package (I just got off a buying spree). I need to take
this "tiny" nick off a corner of an object and am having a hell of a time
doing so. Pixel 3D? Vertex? Others....?

                                               Christopher


--
This Way Lies Madness..........                 [e-mail]
(512k A1000, a TV and one floppy ;-).           Fido: 1:340/43, 1:134/92


##

Subject: retina question
Date: Sat, 15 May 93 22:24:59 -0700
From: Mark Davis <[e-mail]>

To the person that asked me how I got Imagine to open on a 1024x768 screen
using Retina.

I deleted the message and I cannot recall who asked me that question, sorry.
Mark Thomas told me that if you set the "unknown as" cycle gadget in the
RetinaEmu window to Retina, the Retina will attempt to display screens on the
Retina whether they have a name or not(like Pixel 3D v2.03). This works.

My settings in the RetinaEmu window for Imagine:

Unknown as = Retina
Width   = 1024        default off
Height  =  768        default off

Whenever Imagine opens it displays on my main monitor in the resolution set
by the width and height gadgets.

Here is an edited dialog I had with Mark...


"[e-mail]"
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 16:27:22 -0700
"[e-mail]" (Mark A. Thomas  12-May-1993 1627)
Subject: Re: A couple of retina user questions

>
> I read that you are the official question answerer for the Retina.  I just
> installed a 4mb Retina and I am having a problem understanding screenmode
> groups.  What exactly does the group do?  How do I use the group?  I can't
> seem to be able to get the gist of this concept from the manual.

What a group is is a way of specifying a resolution, but the resolution
is actually many resolutions all rolled into one screenmode selection.
Each group will have a different set of resolutions.  To find out
what resolutions each group has, you have to currently use the Retina
Monitor program from a shell.  You type "RetinaMonitor group list"
and you will get a listing of the groups and what the resolutions
that each group contains.

Now that you know a groups contains several resolutions, I need to
explain what that means in terms of screen opening up and such.  What
the groups allow you to do is open screens in any resolution up to
the maximum resolution in that group.  Normal non-group screenmodes
allow you to do this too, but the group will allow you to fill the
screen with the resolution you ask for, as best as possible.

Example:

Say you have a screenmode of 1024x768 set.  If you open a 640x400
screen under this screenmode, you get a monitor viewing area of
1024x768, but the screen is pushed up into the upper lefthand corner
of the monitor and is only 640x400.  If you open a 1024x768 screen,
then the screen will fill the whole monitor viewing area.

Now, if you have a group set that has a max of 1024x768, but also
has another resolution of 640x400 in it, then no matter whether you
open a 1024x768 or a 640x400 screen, the screen will always fill the
whole monitor viewing area.


Mark Thomas

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

Hope this helps...

mark davis
[e-mail]

p.s. I have been unable to get the Retina to "promote"(open screen in the
chosen Retina resolution) on the following programs:

Pixel 3D v 2.03
VistaPro v2.02
ImageMaster v9.51
Scenery Animator v2.02

When I say "unable to promote" I mean that three of the programs will open on
the Retina display but will not open a screen in the resolution I chose.  They
open in their respective default resolutions and, on my 1024x768 screen, occupy
a small portion of the screen(about 1/4).  The fourth, ImageMaster, with which
I have a love/hate relationship, seems to have many problems-even on vanilla
systems-than any commercial program I've used.  I do not want to bad mouth
Black Belt Systems because they do respond to user input, but their ImageMaster
program is the only  program that I own which absolutely refuses to open under
the RetinaEmu program.  What makes up for this(somewhat; a working Imagemaster
that adheres to the RKM would be ideal) is that MacroSystemsUS distributes a
ImageMaster macro that allows Imagemaster to display its output on the Retina
screen.  I am still disappointed with ImageMaster.

a tip:  The Arexx macro for Imagemaster which allows display on the Retina
screen provided with the Retina board attempts to load the run command from
'C:'.  if you are running later versions of the OS the run command is in ROM,
i.e. there is no run command in the C: directory.  Delete the 'C:' reference in
the retinaview.rexx script and all will work well.

I kind of diverged from Imagine related topics but if you can afford it the
Retina will make your experience with Imagine even more enjoyable(productive)
and leave your video slot free for other things(dare I say Newtek?).


##

Subject:  Re: Imagine Scenes rendered on other renderers ??
Date:  Thu, 13 May 1993 16:28:29 +0200
From: [e-mail]

Dale Rogers writes:

>|With this post I want to point out two items:
>|
>

[things about porting Imagine scenes to other raytracers deleted]

>        I have thought of this very idea.  I am not a programmer (yet) and
>        am not in a position of realizing this idea.  However, one of the
>        more production related drawbacks to producing animations on a
>desktop
>        is that it takes so long to get the results sometimes.  I wonder
>        how long it will be before a product comes out that will enable an
>        animator to set up a scene on his/her desktop, produce the
>        results on a mainframe, and then transfer the results back to the
>        desktop for output.

Well, I happen to be a (leisure time) programmer / hacker and have
also thought about this. However, I am fairly new to the rendering
scene (I did more couple of years ago, though!) and am not quite sure,
where the pitfalls are waiting.
However, I did look for some portable (i.e. can be made running on
my Unix box here and at my A4000 at home) raytracers and the like.

So, if some guy can pass along information about how to convert scene
files etc. I would be happy to discuss how to implement such a
two-faced beast.

I am also interested in information about how different programs
(also on different platforms) compare to each other.

>        Dale
>
>|
>|Hope I didn't talk your ears off
>|
>|Hannes
>|

CU,
----
Georg J. Christen,  Deutsche Aerospace AG,  RTX 31,  Munich,  Germany
email:  [e-mail]           | Tel: [phone]
X.400:  C=de;A=dbp;P=dbmail;S=christen;G=georg | Fax: [phone]
===============================================>!new fax no.!^^^^^^^^
"Every clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art."
(Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle)


##

Subject: imagine to pov-ray or rayshade
Date: Sun, 16 May 1993 20:56:14 +1000
From: "TREBILCO, GEOFF" <[e-mail]>

Does anyone know a way to export Imagine objects to pov-ray or
rayshade scripts (and back again maybe?)?

I believe someone else asked a similar question but I never saw
a reply!

Thanks
  Miles


##

Subject: ST Blueprints
Date: Sun, 16 May 1993 07:25:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but anybody who wants to make good
Star Trek objects is probably going to be limited to analysis of videos
and stills from the actual productions.

I know Paul Turner, the aerospace engineer responsible for constructing
the Enterprise model for the first feature film.  He told me that all they
had to work from was a single painting, a rather fanciful 'artist's
conception.' There are NO BLUEPRINTS for that model.  Anything you see on
the market was done after the fact, and the stuff Paramount licenses for
the ST Technical Manuals is grossly incorrect, according to Paul.

I don't know about accurate drawings for other revisions of NCC-1701X.

Paul was also extremely disparaging of the model kits available.  This is
understandable; the cost of producing a really accurate model, limited to
plastic extrusion molding technology, would price it right out of what the
average enthusiast could afford.  They had to cut corners (sometimes
literally), and it shows up in the details.

Fortunately, Imagineers are not limited to what a particular mfg. process
can churn out.  Get all the video clips and still photos you can, and work
from them, if you want the details to be right.

BTW, I just got the Imagine PC upgrade. Kudos to the people at Impulse, I
received the package exactly seven days after my snail-mail order went
out.  What service!  I'd been gimping along on an unaccelerated A500, now
I can do my creative work on the A500 and crank out renderings on the Dell
486P/50 I have at work.  One frame that took 96hr44min on the A500 zipped
out in 16min28sec on the 486.  Wheee!

Now to see if Essence will work...


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Kelly                [e-mail]             [phone]x125

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits"

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


##

Subject: Brushmaps
Date: Sun, 16 May 93 19:53 GMT0BST-1
From: Jacek Artymiak <[e-mail]>

Hi,

I am looking for high quality professional brushmaps of
various minerals, rocks, liquids, fabrics, etc. Where should
I look for them?

Thanks in advance,


Jacek


##

Subject: AGA Promotion of Imagine
Date: Sun, 16 May 93 14:07:05 MDT
From: [e-mail] (Ben Scott)

I've been reading all the talk about using Imagine at a higher resolution on
the Retina lately, and people asking how to do it.  It seemed clear to me that
using a screen promotion utility under WB 3.0 on a 4000/1200 should do the same
job, and in fact it does.  I'm now running Imagine on an 800x600 screen on my
Amiga 4000, and it works just fine.  The Project and Action editors do not open
to the full width of the Super72 screen but they do use extra height, and all
other editors use the full screen (Detail, Stage, etc.).

Before I get deluged with requests for how to do it, I'll point out that I use
Steve Koren's PKludge, and here's the Tooltype I have for Imagine:

PROMOTE=Imagine/-=SUPER72:Super-High Res Laced/-/-/800/600/-

In other words, just tell Imagine it's on an 800x600 screen, and PUT it on an
800x600 screen, and it won't argue...

My monitor (A Mitsubishi Diamondscan 1381a) takes a noticable amount of time
to resync to a new scanrate (not nearly as bad as a friend's NEC Multisync 3a,
but not as nice as a 1960), and since I like an 800x600 Workbench, I wanted to
promote all my software to Super72 whether it liked it or not.  PKludge allows
you to specify screenmode and screensize separately, so that programs such as
JRComm which don't like screens that big can still be shown at the same scan
rate, preventing re-sync flickering.  I'd guess that most, if not all, other
promotion utilities allow similar specifications - check your local listings.

Now if only Diskmaster 1.4 would accept this kind of treatment... I'm getting
so used to not having to watch my monitor resync, that this may finally force
me to use Diskmaster II...

.                            <<<<Infinite K>>>>

--
.---------------------------------------------------------------------------.
|Ben Scott, professional goof-off and consultant at The Raster Image, Denver|
|Internet [e-mail], or call the Arvada 68K BBS at [phone].|
>-------------------------------------------------..------------------------<
|"Only the rays of the sun can destroy the rock of|| Buy a Commodore Amiga: |
|Uranus!" "Oh, you just need more fiber..." MST3k ||It's 100% Windows-Free! |
`-------------------------------------------------'`------------------------'


##

Subject: Re: Imagine and Retina
Date: Sun, 16 May 1993 21:37:15 -0500 (CDT)
From: "William J Toninato-1" <[e-mail]>

On Sun, 16 May 1993, Nikola Vukovljak wrote:

>
> Someone has mentioned that they're running Imagine on Retina in resolution higher
> than that of a normal Hi-res screen. How is this possible? If it can be done
> can you let me know how it was done?
>
> Nik.
>
> [e-mail]
Here if this works is a message from the net saying the same thing and
more can't wait to get mine up and running.

>From [e-mail] (Chien Hong Hsiung) Wed May 12 20:20:00 1993
Path: news1.cis.umn.edu!umn.edu!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!gatech!prism!gt2289e
From: [e-mail] (Chien Hong Hsiung)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.graphics
Subject: Re: Retina
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 11 May 93 22:24:33 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
<[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 59

Here is a bit of info for those of you considering getting a Retina board.

   I just found out (though if I read the manual very carefully I would have
found out sooner) that not only can the workbench emulator show very hires
workbench, and promote applications to other resolutions, it can force
most
programs to actually use the additional screen space.
   Hum.... Let me clarify that.  Here is an example.

   I run Diskmaster 2 or Imagine on a screen of 724x566@76Hz.  That is quite
good since it is REALLY flicker free.  Why don't I do so at higher resolution?
Well, when I tried that, all I got was a small program screen on the upper-
left-hand corner of the big screen.  Think of a 724x482 area on a 1280x1024
screen.  Not very useful, or so I thought.  Now the RetinaEmu program has
these buttons that let you set the 'Default' Width and Height.  Unlike what
I thought they were, they do NOT mean the same things as the Screenmode in
WB_2.x.  If you do not set the Default button, you can force programs to
open screens with the Width and Height that you put it.  So the results are:

    - Imagine 2.0 in  1024x768 NI 70Hz refresh.  (MUCH better than
            overscan, even if they had put it in)
    - DiskMaster in 800x600 NI 76Hz. (or higher if you wish)

    - GPFax  fax viewing at 1280x1024 I @ 87Hz

    - ProCalc in 1024x768.

    - ADPRO visual crop in 1600x1280 I @ 69 Hz !!

    - Many other goodies ! :)

Now, some program will not let you move the mouse pointer beyond what the
program think the screen size that they asked for is, or some will not draw
their screen beyond 724x482 (e.g. ProDraw 2).  But then you can always open
them on WB screen.

   Well, I guess a lot of Retina users already know this, but I'm so happy
that I just found this out (I had it for 2 weeks now).  So, this is not
just a WorkBench emulator as it doesn't just emulate the Workbench, but
also a screen promotion tool.

   Now all you people who worked with Imagine and wished that it supported
overscan (my version didn't) can just sit back and picture Imagine 2 in
1280x1024 on a 20" screen!  Awesome!  :) It also worked on Playmation. :)

   When the 256 color support for non-AGA machine comes out (soon, I think)
and once I get my 040 board, I won't be drooling at the A4000. :)


   ps.  I am not associated with MacroSystem; just a happy user.

-Chien



--
Chien Hong Hsiung
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332uucp:      ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!gt2289e
Internet: [e-mail]


##

Subject: thanks to all for response to request for spacecraft objects
Date: 16 May 1993 22:00:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail]

     Thank you all very much for your generous response to my
request for information on spacecraft objects.  It has
been extremely helpful.  I shall certainly look into your
suggestions, and I greatly appreciate your help.

BTW....I would like to add to the wish list any spaceship objects
from "2001 A Space Oddyssey".  Some of these are quite interesting,
and most challenging to prepare.
___________________________________________________________________
                  |         Internet: [e-mail]
Joe Hart          |     ///    Plink: OSS542
Niagara Falls, NY | \\\///  Ham call: WA2SND
                  |  \XX/   AMIGA - Computers for REAL MEN
===================================================================


##

Subject: refraction in transparent crystals at high refractive indices
Date: 16 May 1993 22:04:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail]

     I have been experimenting with transparent crystals with
high refractive indexes. (i.e. diamonds = 2.42 ).  In some of
these, the surface angles appear to prevent some of the light
from being refracted back out of the object, as I believe one
should expect.  This occurs to a lesser extent in glass objects
as well.

     I have also noticed that when this occurs, a very dark grey
or black color is substituted for the missing light.  I would have
expected the native color of the object to be substituted instead.
In order to get the native color of the object to be included at
all, it is necessary to significantly lower the filter parameter
of the object in question, so as to overcome the darkness produced
by the trace algorithm.  Often the required reduction in the filter
parameter to accomplish this is quite excessive.

Has anyone else noticed this ?
___________________________________________________________________
                  |         Internet: [e-mail]
Joe Hart          |     ///    Plink: OSS542
Niagara Falls, NY | \\\///  Ham call: WA2SND
                  |  \XX/   AMIGA - Computers for REAL MEN
===================================================================


##

Subject: AnyOne has info on Merlin ?
Date: Mon, 17 May 1993 13:26:15 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Johan Andersson <[e-mail]>

  Hello fellow Imagineers !

 I have seen some advertising of the Merlin graphic board fora the Amiga 2000 =>

 It's supposed to be able to support 1600x1024x24 or even 2048x2048x8 with 4 Megs
 of ram to it, it also has a digitizer that accepts S-VHS Y/C and composite video.

 It is also having a hardware support for the mousepointer and a extra fast blitter
 coprocessor that with the included software is supposed to replace the current
 at better speeds.

 It also supports workbench in the above resolutions.

 Has anyone heard anything of this card ?

 If so, is it good ?

 Is the advertising right ?

 What kind of monitor would I need to see thoose avove mentioned resolutions ?
 (especially 2048x2048x8)

 I don't have a computer at the moment, but I'm thinking of buying one again,
 maybe a 040/30 or real 040, is there a need for this card or will the AAA chips
 make the need obsolete ?

*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*
! Address: Johan Andersson              Email: [e-mail]            !
!          Fredriksbergsg. 2               ___ __  __ __   ___  ___           !
!          856 41  Sundsvall              //|| |\\//| ||  // \\ ||\\          !
!          Sweden                        //_|| ||\/|| || || ___ ||_\\         !
! Phone:   [phone]           //  || ||  || ||  \\_// ||  \\        !
*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*


##

Subject: Re: questions....
Date: Sun, 16 May 1993 21:29:26 -0500 (CDT)
From: "William J Toninato-1" <[e-mail]>

On Fri, 14 May 1993 [e-mail] wrote:

>
>
> just a couple questions....
> I heard the new 4000/040 was fully compatible with the Mac IIsi/lc

Well the Emplant board now works so that you can have a 256 color Mac on
the 4000.  All that have this board rave about it.

 > I need to know if this is true, else I might be  forced to break
> camp.... all the design industry is going Mac...
> also is the bridgeboar 386 make the amiga fully compatible with
> IBM....

This is true.

> i know this is off the imagine subject, but I need to know either
> how I can run advanced Mac software on Amiga or network with a
> mac so I can run mac shit on my amiga... i heard that a Golden Gate...
> or a Zorro III could do it...
> thanks in advance....


##

Subject: re: imagine and retina
Date: Mon, 17 May 93 08:42:17 -0700
From: Mark Davis <[e-mail]>

Yes, my Imagine screen is 1024x768. i.e. very large on my 17" monitor.
Pixel 3d v2.0x, Scenery Animator v2.02, and VistaPro v2.03 only open a
640x400 screen in the upper left hand corner of my 1024x768 screen; which
no problem for me since ALL flicker is removed due to the 70Hz vertical sync
rate.

mark


##

Subject: Re: Imagine and Retina
Date: Mon, 17 May 93 10:47:19 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Setzer)

>
> Here is a bit of info for those of you considering getting a Retina board.
> open screens with the Width and Height that you put it.  So the results are:
>
>     - Imagine 2.0 in  1024x768 NI 70Hz refresh.  (MUCH better than
>             overscan, even if they had put it in)
>

This just gives you a much 'crisper' display, right?  Say for example,
you doubled your resolution, ie 640x400 is your standard screen and shows up
on the regular Amiga output, 1280x800 is your promoted output and shows up
on your...Retina output.  What does this look like?  Are the pixels just
doubled up?  Is the letter I in one of the menu bars, for example, the same
size?  Just higher resolution, right?  Doesn't hurt your eyes as much?  I mean
when you are laying down points on the Detail Editor in Imagine, you can't
fit more points on the screen, right?  On the 640x400 screen, an Imagine point
takes up, say, 4 pixels.  On the 1280x800, it takes up more than 4 pixels,
doesn't it?  Ofcourse it does, silly me.

Wow, you mean with Retina I wouldn't have to order a moniter via mailorder in
order to get low scanrates?

BTW, my monitor went out on Thursday.  Any suggestions for a monitor.  I have
an Amiga 3000.


Tom Setzer
[e-mail]

"And of course, I'm a genius, so people are naturally drawn to my fiery
intellect.  Their admiration overwhelms their envy!" - Calvin


##

Subject: RCS Fusion Forty Support BBS
Date: 8 May 1993 10:15:56 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Stephen Menzies)

I know there are many Imagine users using RCS Management's
Fusion Forty:

RCS Managment, developers of the Fusion Forty accelerators, now
have a newly installed BBS offering support, utilities, software
upgrades (ie: plug&go 2.1). The number to call: [phone]


T
--
    ___________________________________________________________________
    Stephen Menzies                            [e-mail]
    TFX Animation Inc,                         [e-mail]
    Taarna System Inc, Montreal.               [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Caligari
Date: 15 May 1993 12:46:22 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Stephen Menzies)

Mark Bergem <[e-mail]> writes:

>I just got Caligari the other day and all I have to say is, WOW!..it does
>everything imagine wishes it could do:)...it is a great prog...on problem
>though..it is about twice a s hard to figure out as imagine..I was
>wondering of anyone knew  of anywhere that had tip on Caligari..like there
>are many tips on Imagine...oh well talk to all of you later (I hope)

>Mark Bergem

One suggestion: they have an official support bbs: 415-390-0585. Michael
Plikins (caligari's interface programmer) is there to answer questions.

--
    ___________________________________________________________________
    Stephen Menzies                            [e-mail]
    TFX Animation Inc,                         [e-mail]
    Taarna System Inc, Montreal.               [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: refraction in transparent crystals at high refractive indic
Date: Mon, 17 May 93 17:44:05 PDT
From: [e-mail]

>     I have been experimenting with transparent crystals with
>high refractive indexes. (i.e. diamonds = 2.42 ).  In some of
>these, the surface angles appear to prevent some of the light
>from being refracted back out of the object, as I believe one
>should expect.  This occurs to a lesser extent in glass objects
>as well.
>     I have also noticed that when this occurs, a very dark grey
>or black color is substituted for the missing light.  I would have
>expected the native color of the object to be substituted instead.
>In order to get the native color of the object to be included at
>all, it is necessary to significantly lower the filter parameter
>of the object in question, so as to overcome the darkness produced
>by the trace algorithm.  Often the required reduction in the filter
>parameter to accomplish this is quite excessive.
>
>Has anyone else noticed this ?

   Sure. The problem is that Imagine doesn't know about critical angle
reflection. This is where the light at an optical interface is reflected
back into the object, rather than going through the interface. This is what
lets you use a prism as a mirror, like in a pair of good binoculars. A
critical angle mirror is a much better reflector than a silvered mirror.
This critical angle reflection is also part of what gives gemstones their
sparkle. The other part is differential refraction, where different
color are bent different amounts (ie, different wavelengths of light have
different indices of refraction). This is what gives a diamond its fire.
Unfortunately, Imagine doesn't know about this, either.

   I have not seen any renderer that does know differential refraction. Some
of the preview pictures from Real3D-2.0 look like it might know critical
angle reflection, but I can't be sure until i get it myself and do some
experimenting.
                                               __   _  _
     <ELF> - Eric J Fleischer,MD - Dr Gandalf  \ \ | () | VIRTUAL
                                                \ \| || |__ IMAGE
     [e-mail]                    \___||____| LABS


##

Subject: Using Imagine on Big Screens
Date: 17 May 1993 17:26:57 -1000
From: "Jeff Wahaus, CAPS, ATL, 404-640-3529" <[e-mail]>

Hi Everyone,

  For those of you wanting to use Imagine at a higher resolution
than 600x400 I have found a solution.  This will work only with
version 1.1 of the FFP version of Imagine.  Fire up your copy of
FileZap or NewZap and modify the following two bytes.

  Change the byte at Sector 85 offset $0A3 from a $C8 to a $F0.
This will change the Vertical resolution from 200 or 400
(interlaced) to  240 or 480 (interlaced).

  Change the byte at Sector 393 offset $0DD from a $80 to a $D0.
This will change the Horizontal resolution from 640 to 720.
Higher values can be used if you would like to get more
horizontal resolution.  I think the limit for a standard ECS
Amiga is 768.

  I have noticed about a 10% slowdown with Imagine due to the
increased screen size.  Very acceptable in my opinion.

  I'm sure a similar modification can be made to Imagine 2.0 but
someone with this program will have to find which "magic bytes"
to modify.  I found these bytes in version 1.1 by searching using
FileZap for a value of $00000280.  This will be the NewScreen
structure used by the program. The last 2 bytes found are the
integer 640 in HEX.  The two bytes after $0280 will be the
vertical resolution for a non-interlaced screen but modifying
them will have no effect.  The bytes which actually effect the
vertical resolution in version 1.1 are the first occurance of
$00C8 which is HEX for 200.  Note that this number is doubled for
interlaced mode by the program.  It is possible and probable that
there will be more than one occurance of $00C8 in version 2.0.
Trial and Error here is your only hope.  In version 1.1 is just
so happened that the first occurance of $00C8 was the right byte!

  I really like using Imagine with the higher resolution.  I only
wish that I had done this a year ago!  Most of the program will
use the extra real estate, the action editor dosen't seem to
notice though.

  Well back to working on my model of a woman.  Now lets see...
how big should I make her...

Later,
-Jeff Wahaus-

[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Imagine Archive Site
Date: Tue, 18 May 93 01:21:50 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

        I have a little suggestion for you to ponder on, I have noticed that a nice number of objects have started to appear on wuarchive. This does poss a small problem when actually
    going through the list to see what is there.. Would it not be nice if the objects were
    stored in some sort of order as in all the space stuff in one directory, fonts in another,
    robots in another, etc. This would make it a lot easier to look for something quickly.

    How about it good idea or not?

    Jason
-------------------------------------------------
Unlike pictures, some objects can't be classified. I know from experience
that some archivers can't even tell the difference between a
photograph, a painting and a ray-tracing. A order could be imposed
on the directory structure but I doubt people would make use of it...
Most stuff ends up in the Misc directory anyway...

I understand your concern, but I think it would require more effort on
the part of the archive managers rather than the actual uploaders.
Some people make thier own directories in order to keep thier files
together.


##

Subject: Re: 30fps
Date: Tue, 18 May 93 00:49:15 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    And again why shoot for anims that run faster than 30FPS??  Don't you
    end up not even showing some of the frames?  I guess the answer to
    this is yes, that is why ScalaMM has the ability to remove half the
    scan lines from true 60FPS anims. Since you can do fields at 60 and
    Frames at 30.

    Lead us oh answer man!

    Adam B.
----------------------
I bet you didn't waste a brain cell thinking about it did you??

Have you ever thought about motion blur??? It is incredibly simple to
implement if you have a lot more frames than you can view. With motion blur
you can create the illusion of speed. In photographs it
gives you much more pseudo-animation than a still-life photo.
A number of special effects could also be created using additional
frames like ghosts of movement. Slo-mo is another.


##

Subject: Re: Imagine Scenes rendered on other renderers ??
Date: Tue, 18 May 93 00:38:25 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    is needed- a command line interface would suffice as your
    amiga would function as the front end supporting the graphical editors.
    You would simply have a powerful mini or mainframe based rendering engine.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Ya... but you have to pay Impulse... Once is enough for me...
I have already written code to make animations in Rayshade
using a combination of C and OFF format (geo) file parsing.
I have yet to simplify my fly-through software, but just take a look
at my code and design your own:


(RAY_FLY2.C) I added a increment feature that lets you
skip frames. To use this program you go through these steps:

1. Create regular objects on Imagine
2. Create a object which is just a orderly series of dots, making
    a path about the objects.
3. Convert the the regular objects to rayshade format and delete
    all lines with "ambient", "diffuse" (whatever) and "translate"
    and put the files aside. (It would also be easy to create a program
    in C doing this using just fscanf's, strcmp's, and printf's.)
4. Convert the path to OFF format and take the ".geom" file and
    put it aside.
5. Compress both files with something that you can decompress on your
    school's computers. (I have a version of ZOO which I use)
6. Compile my Rayfly source code on your system at school, make sure
    rayshade is compiled and in your executable-path.
7. Make any necessary adjustments (read my code, you'll understand what
    it is doing. If you can't figure my code out, you shouldn't be
    programming. Just kidding)
8.    Rayfly accepts 5 arguments (in C the first one doesn't count since
    it is the name of the program itself):
    <animation.ray> <path.geo> <cammera.ray ><framebase> <increment>.

    (the <>'s are used to emphasize that these are not actual arguments,
     just simple remembering tools).

    "Animation.ray" is the rayshade source file which INCLUDEs the
    regular rayshade objects we created in imagine, and contains all
    the surfaces and environment settings for the animation.
    "path.geo" in the ".geom" file we created using Imagine and TDDD2OFF.
    "FrameBase" is the base-name for the animation frames.
    The length of the animation depends upon how many dots are used to
    describe a path in the ".geom" file. (Note: the first line is discarded
    because it isn't used). "Increment" is the path-step increment used, to
    skip frames - making good preview animations.

9. Once everything is in its place, execute rayfly and put it in the
    background. And log out of the system. So while you are home playing
    video games on your Amiga, the computer(s) at school can be churning
    out your animation.

In my code I make a lot of "system()" calls to automate the task
of making the animation. First I call rayshade to render a frame,
I cjpeg it (compress to JPEG format using quality setting 80), then
I delete the original frame, and procede to the next frame until all
frames are gone. My code makes simple animations by having the
observer follow its target (its nose) through the animation, which is
just like connecting dots. The only problem, which I will fix, is that
I have a lot of unecessary code and implementations, specifically
I don't implement loopable animations. This can be implemented
simply by reading the first line of the path file again and using it
as a look-point for the last line in the file. Some of you
may want to use more complex methods of doing a fly-through, but this should
give you some idea how to perform such a complex task as making
animations on rayshade using Imagine.

I uploaded some finished animations to wuarchive.wustl.edu
in systems/amiga/incoming/imagine/anims, use viewanim.c (which I
will supply also) to view the animations. I am trying to make a
program in Arexx to piece animations together using my akward animation
technique. It may seem like a inferrior way to do animations until
you find out that it has benefits that a 6,12 or 24 bit animation
will never give you: compression, lots of frames, high resolutions and a
choice of output formats. Using just my technique you can create simple
programs to port my animations to any platform in existence, even C64's
if you really wanted to. Since I use JPEG, frames can be as large as
640x480 and still take up 40K per frame. This is too large compared
to 640x400 4-bit animations, but still quite a bit smaller than
24-bit animation frames. Actually, the size of the JPEG files
is solely dependant on the data. If you animation is of a fly-through of
a sphere, it should compress very well. But, a fly-through of a turret
attack on the death-star would take at least 40K per frame. This is still
very small compared to the RAW image frame size of at least 700K.
----------------------------------------------------------------
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    int frame = 0, count = 0;
    int viewmode = 0, increment = 0;
    float axisset1[3], axisset2[3];
    FILE *cfptr;
    FILE *wfptr;
    FILE *spfptr;
    char tempstring[256];

    if (argc < 6)
       {
      printf("The syntax is \"%s <animation.ray> %s %s",argv[0],
                "<path.geo> <cammera.ray>\n",
                "<framebase> <increment> \"\n ");
        }
    else
        {
        increment = atoi(argv[5]);

        if ((cfptr = fopen (argv[2],"r")) == NULL)
            printf("File could not be opened \n");
        else
            {
            /* Take off header of the read-in file */
            fscanf(cfptr, "%f%f%f", &axisset1[0],&axisset1[1],&axisset1[2]);
            /* Get the real coordiantes */
            fscanf(cfptr, "%f%f%f", &axisset1[0],&axisset1[1],&axisset1[2]);
            fscanf(cfptr, "%f%f%f", &axisset2[0],&axisset2[1],&axisset2[2]);

            while (!feof(cfptr))
                {

                  if ((wfptr = fopen (argv[3],"w")) == NULL)
                   printf("File could not be created \n");
                  else
                    {
                    fprintf (wfptr, "eyep %f %f %f \n",axisset1[0],axisset1[1],axisset1[2]);
                    fprintf (wfptr, "lookp %f %f %f \n",axisset2[0],axisset2[1],axisset2[2]);
                    fclose  (wfptr);

                    count++;
                    if ((count % increment)==0)
                       {
                        frame++;
                    sprintf(tempstring,"rayshade -V stuff.results %s > %s%d.rle",
                            argv[1],argv[4],frame);
                    system(tempstring);
                sprintf(tempstring,"cjpeg -Q80 %s%d.rle > %s%d.jpg ; rm %s%d.rle",
                              argv[4],frame,argv[4],frame,argv[4],frame);
                    system(tempstring);
                        }
                    }


                axisset1[0] = axisset2[0];
                axisset1[1] = axisset2[1];
                axisset1[2] = axisset2[2];
                fscanf(cfptr, "%f%f%f", &axisset2[0],&axisset2[1],&axisset2[2]);
                }
            fclose(cfptr);
            fclose(wfptr);
            }
        }
}
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(DISPLAY_ANIM.C) - Display a animation created using rayfly on Getx11
on an Xwindows workstation.

(Note: This program can be modified to work with an AMiga, very very
easily. You must provide the ANIM-MAKE utility of your choice. This
code allows you to even view a certain range of frames too.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <string.h>

main (int argc , char *argv[])
{
    char tempstr[256];
    int frame_start,frame_end,count;

    if (argc != 4)
        printf("Syntax : a.out <animbase> <start frame> <end frame> \n");
    else
        {
        frame_start = atoi(argv[2]);
        frame_end = atoi(argv[3]);
        count = frame_start;
        while ( count <= frame_end )
            {
            printf("Decompressing frame %d of %s and making a movie\n",count,argv[1]);
            sprintf(tempstr,"djpeg -R %s%d.jpg >> test.rle",argv[1],count++);
            system(tempstr);
            }
        printf("Viewing movie.");
        system("getx11 -m 10 test.rle");
        printf("Removing the movie, to free up space.");
        system("rm test.rle");
        }
}



##

Subject: Re: imagine to pov-ray or rayshade
Date: Tue, 18 May 93 01:59:44 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    Does anyone know a way to export Imagine objects to pov-ray or
    rayshade scripts (and back again maybe?)?

    I believe someone else asked a similar question but I never saw
    a reply!

    Thanks
      Miles
-------------------------------------------------------------------
You can get the objects to both formats, but the opposite would be
as hard as writing a compiler, almost. It is better to just make your
scripts ahead of time then include your objects (using "INCLUDE", in rayshade)
to the scripts. When you make midifications to an object, you will
want to make them on IMAGINE. If you are looking for precise detail
(like a general text format to convert to rayshade and imagine,
then there is a speciall TDDD language provided by Glenn Lewis (another
Imagine user on this list, as I recall). The new TDDD2LIB.lha that
he made has all this code included in it... Just pickup a copy..
If anyone wants, I can UUENCODE the files and post them, or send
them individually!!


##

Subject: Re: Zeus 040
Date: Tue, 18 May 93 01:15:20 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    I'll be buying the Zeus '040 for my 2000 in the near future to speed up my
    Imagine+Essence renderings (hours on an '030) and I was wondering if
    anyone in the US knows if the price of the board is still the same.

    Also, if you own one, can you tell me if the SCSI-2 controller that is on
    the board will accept my SCSI HD's (I have a 105 and a 240M Quantum), ie are
    the connections the same?

----------------
Creative computers is selling thier Amiga 3000 and 2000 '040 boards
(especially the Zeus's) for about 800 bucks. Is that enough for you?
I am thinking about getting a 35Mhz 68040 upgrade if I have enough
money leftover from buying a car. :-(

I think this is a helluva deal.. While PC users get hyped about a
DX2-66, they must remember that a 68040 has more transistors (used to
make flip-flops, logic gates, etc.) than a 486 and all 68040's
are double clocked. So a 68040-35 is something like saying it is a
68040DX2-70, but who would call it that?? Besides, I have yet to see a
PC program that uses the full capabilities of a 486DX2-66... people
are already writing '040 specific code for the AMiga!!!

I love my Amiga!!


##

Subject: Re: questions....
Date: Tue, 18 May 93 01:08:36 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    just a couple questions....
    I heard the new 4000/040 was fully compatible with the Mac IIsi/lc
    I need to know if this is true, else I might be forced to break
    camp.... all the design industry is going Mac...
--------------
There is a board that allows this compatibility but it doesn't come from CBM.
I can't find the magazine, but it was in the April (may?) edition of
Amiga World (pronounced "amiga whirled"). Something about a
generic multi-platform emulation card. It supports 486/386 and Mac
IIfx emulation in addition to (of all things) Atari 400/800 and
Z80 emulation (beats me why they even mention it, Atari 400/800's can probably
be bought in lots of 10 for 100 dollars thesedays).
--------------
    also is the bridgeboar 386 make the amiga fully compatible with
    IBM....
--------------
You mean Intel-based machines not IBM. IBM thinks they are god,
you mean the PC world... yes... You can even get 486 emulation cards
all the way up to a 486-33.
--------------
    i know this is off the imagine subject, but I need to know either
    how I can run advanced Mac software on Amiga or network with a
    mac so I can run mac shit on my amiga... i heard that a Golden Gate...
    or a Zorro III could do it...
    thanks in advance....
------------
Amax II might be a way to do it... Unless you really need
high-level MAC emulation... If you just need to do stuff that
you could do on a MAC SE/30, AMAX II is a cheap way..
Otherwise you will have to look into that multi-purpose emulation
board. The Company that sells it says that they provide all the MAC IIfx
patches but you have to provide the ROMS. It uses the Amiga's processor
to do the emulation but can run as a sub-process to the Amiga, unlike
AMAX II which uses the entire Amiga to do the emulation.

I don't even know if the multi-pupose solution works, but
I guess it is worth trying. I heard AMAX II is relatively good.
I am planning to get one from a guy which he is selling for 100
dollars. Hopefully he will supply the 128K ROMS. A friend of
mine said that patches for the old ROMS are available and loadable
into memory to remain compatible with newer revisions of the operating system.


##

Subject: Re: refraction in transparent crystals at high refractive indices
Date: Tue, 18 May 93 01:45:47 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

         I have been experimenting with transparent crystals with
    high refractive indexes. (i.e. diamonds = 2.42 ).  In some of
    these, the surface angles appear to prevent some of the light
    from being refracted back out of the object, as I believe one
    should expect.  This occurs to a lesser extent in glass objects
    as well.
------------------------------
Have you ever been under water in a clean pool before???
Have you ever tried to see anyone above the water?? Probably
not, if so not very easily. I had my dad (who is a physicist)
explain this to me. He said that light enters the pool but the refracted
light comes in at an angle that is not the same throughout the pool,
when it reflects on an object in the pool and comes back it reflects
off the surface somehow and can hardly escape... That may not be exactly
what he said, but it explained the reflection of light you get in a
pool.

I think this explains why some right-angle prisms can be used to split
and mix laser beams to create interference patterns... No I am not a
physicist, but dad described this to me too..


##

Subject: Re: AnyOne has info on Merlin ?
Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 15:58:56 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Markus Stipp <[e-mail]>

>  It's supposed to be able to support 1600x1024x24 or even 2048x2048x8 with 4 Megs
>  of ram to it, it also has a digitizer that accepts S-VHS Y/C and composite video.
>
>  It is also having a hardware support for the mousepointer and a extra fast blitter
>  coprocessor that with the included software is supposed to replace the current
>  at better speeds.
>
>  It also supports workbench in the above resolutions.
>
>  Has anyone heard anything of this card ?
>
>  If so, is it good ?
>
>  Is the advertising right ?
>
>  What kind of monitor would I need to see thoose avove mentioned resolutions ?
>  (especially 2048x2048x8)

The Merlin is not available for now. Here in germany X-Pert makes advertisment
for the card since November '92. They expected to release the card in February '93 but
until now no one has seen even a pre-version or prototype of the board.

Other german developers are joking about the card because they say it's impossible to
create it for the announced price.

Don't expect to see a Merlin very soon.

--

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


##

Subject: RenderMan??
Date: Tue, 18 May 93 13:25:00 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Thomas E. Smith)

Does anyone know where and how much RenderMan is? And how can I port Imagine
or some other Amiga modler object to RenderMan .RIB files? I saw it in
Computer Graphics World, and I was very impressed :)

                                                     Tom Smith


##

Subject: Re: ImageFx
Date: Tue, 18 May 93 13:52:45 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

Do you know of any PD utility that I can use to construct animations
from individual frames? I made a fly-through program to make
animations in RLE format and convert to JPEG. I want to download the
animations and piece them together using an Arexx script (which I am
trying to figure out right now) into animations. If you can find
me a utility, I will make the script and put it up here. I
plan to upload my two current animations which are rendering
now to wuarchive. One animation is a preview of the next, but
the next is a animation to show how rayshade 4.0 does with refraction
of light. The animation will be 163 frames at 320x200 in 24-bit color
(actually as much detail as the eye can perceive). I already
uploaded four animations to wuarchive.wustl.edu in
systems/amiga/incoming/imagine/anims that are in ".tar" files.
one of those is longer than 160 frames but all are not in anim
format. That is why I want to find a ANIM maker. I have 500 disks
full of stuff, but it would take me at least a month to sort them
all.

Thanks!!!

Kiernan Holland
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: RenderMan??
Date: Tue, 18 May 93 14:47:20 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    From root Tue May 18 13:56 MDT 1993
    Received: from email.SP.Paramax.COM by chicoma.lanl.gov (5.61/3.3) with SMTP
        id <[e-mail]>; Tue, 18 May 93 13:56:48 -0600
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        id AA10376; Tue, 18 May 93 13:19:37 -0500
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        id AA25895; Tue, 18 May 1993 13:25:16 -0500
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        id AA29714; Tue, 18 May 93 13:25:00 CDT
    Date: Tue, 18 May 93 13:25:00 CDT
    From: [e-mail] (Thomas E. Smith)
    Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
    To: [e-mail]
    Subject: RenderMan??


    Does anyone know where and how much RenderMan is? And how can I port Imagine
    or some other Amiga modler object to RenderMan .RIB files? I saw it in
    Computer Graphics World, and I was very impressed :)

                                                         Tom Smith

---------------------------------------------------------
It costs about 500 dollars, it is very slow and you can only get
it for PC's, MAC's and some high-end workstations. It is available from
a company called "pixar".


##

Subject: AGA Promotion of Imagine
Date: Wed, 19 May 93 12:57:13 +0100
From: [e-mail] (Heberle H.)

Hello,
Ben Scott writes,
>It seemed clear to me that using a screen promotion utility under WB
3.0 on a 4000/1200 should do the same
>job, and in fact it does.

The utility PKludge; where can I get it from and is it running under WB 2.x?
Some time ago I asked the question too, how I can run Imagine editors
with a higher Screenresolution (720x512) in PAL.
Horst Heberle
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: AGA Promotion of Imagine
Date: Wed, 19 May 1993 18:41:56 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Markus Stipp <[e-mail]>

> Ben Scott writes,
> >It seemed clear to me that using a screen promotion utility under WB
> 3.0 on a 4000/1200 should do the same
> >job, and in fact it does.
>
> The utility PKludge; where can I get it from and is it running under WB 2.x?
> Some time ago I asked the question too, how I can run Imagine editors
> with a higher Screenresolution (720x512) in PAL.

At least the PAL-version of imagine has a bug. If it is running on a
horizintal resolution bigger than 640 and you use the F1-Key or Menu to
pick a selected Object, the redraw of the Screen is not correct.
Sometimes Imagine crashes a few minutes after this.

Imagine2.0 seems to be written very poorly. Many functions cause Enforcer-Hits.

--

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


##

Subject: AGA Promotion of Imagine
Date: Wed, 19 May 93 11:03:45 MDT
From: [e-mail] (Ben Scott)

>At least the PAL-version of imagine has a bug. If it is running on a
>horizintal resolution bigger than 640 and you use the F1-Key or Menu to
>pick a selected Object, the redraw of the Screen is not correct.
>Sometimes Imagine crashes a few minutes after this.

I've been noticing this over the past few days, now that I have Imagine
in 800x600 (and I do have the NTSC version).  I haven't done much modeling
lately - I've mostly been reworking old projects and using objects that
didn't need much modification.  It's annoying, though - just as I thought
I had myself an 800x600 Imagine screen, I find out that in fact it's only
semi-usable...

Of course, it's not too difficult to temporarily switch back to normal;
either doubleclick your PKludge icon to turn it off, or just go into
the tooltypes and change the "800" to a "640", therefore instructing it to
open a 640x600 screen with the usual Super72 scanrate.  If you want, you can
add another parameter to shove the screen over a bit so it's more centered;
consult your local man page, since I don't want to get too
PKludge-specific.

.                        <<<<Infinite K>>>>

--
.---------------------------------------------------------------------------.
|Ben Scott, professional goof-off and consultant at The Raster Image, Denver|
|Internet [e-mail], or call the Arvada 68K BBS at [phone].|
|-----------------------------------------..--------------------------------|
|"History is made at night - character is ||The Raster Image IS responsible |
|who you are in the dark." - John Whorfin ||everything I say! * Amiga Power*|
`-----------------------------------------'`--------------------------------'


##

Subject: Re: Using Imagine on Big Screens
Date: Wed, 19 May 93 12:14 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Ray Collett)

Errors-To: [e-mail]

On 17 May 1993 [e-mail] wrote:
>Hi Everyone,
>
>  For those of you wanting to use Imagine at a higher resolution
>than 600x400 I have found a solution.  This will work only with
>version 1.1 of the FFP version of Imagine.  Fire up your copy of
>FileZap or NewZap and modify the following two bytes.
>
>  Change the byte at Sector 85 offset $0A3 from a $C8 to a $F0.
>This will change the Vertical resolution from 200 or 400
>(interlaced) to  240 or 480 (interlaced).
>
>  Change the byte at Sector 393 offset $0DD from a $80 to a $D0.
>This will change the Horizontal resolution from 640 to 720.
>Higher values can be used if you would like to get more
>horizontal resolution.  I think the limit for a standard ECS
>Amiga is 768.
>

I started poking around in Imagine v2.0 and was able to find the
$00C8 and the $0280 values and changed them to $00F0 and $02D0 respectavaly.
I was able to open up imagine in the full 736 X 482 max overscan.
It's sure a lot nicer to be able to see more of each object!  Thanks for
the Idea of changing the hex code.  If anyone needs the bit locations
that need to be changed, I can post them for who ever needs them.

                    -Ray Collett


##

Subject: Problem in cycle object
Date: Thu, 20 May 93 01:32:52 +0300
From: [e-mail]

'ello All IMLs!!

I made this "AWESOME" all-doing object, and as you can see from the
animation (wuarchive: /pub/amiga/incoming/imagine/anims/Bounce.lha) it
worked the first time.

Planning to create an Oscar winning full length feature, I went on to work,
only to find this strange error message:

"Not a (proper) animated object file"

This happened after I loaded the (then fine) cycle object to the cycle
editor, tweaked it a little, animated it ok, saved it as a cycle object,
and loaded it back again immediately. Well, if Imagine can't read it's
own-format-which-I-just-saved-to-disk object, who can??

The object itslef is in the /objects directory as Bouncing.lha

Anyone?

Nir, H.


##

Subject: Re: AnyOne has info on Merlin ?
Date: Wed, 19 May 93 23:25:39 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    From root Wed May 19 10:34 MDT 1993
    Received: from masscomp.westford.ccur.com by chicoma.lanl.gov (5.61/3.3) with SMTP
        id <[e-mail]>; Wed, 19 May 93 10:34:54 -0600
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              id aa24459; 19 May 93 12:31 EDT
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              id aa10926; 19 May 93 12:31 EDT
    To: [e-mail]
    Cc: AIDE Kiernan <[e-mail]>
    Subject: Re: AnyOne has info on Merlin ?
    In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 18 May 93 01:32:32 -0600.
                 <[e-mail]>
    Date: Wed, 19 May 93 12:31:52 EDT
    From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>
    Message-Id:  <[e-mail]>

    > Have you got 4 grand???
    > That is how much you need to get a 2048x2048 monitor. I don't know if there
    > is such a thing... It may be a plasma monitor or a LCD screen with a
    > very large pixel array.

    There are CRT based color monitors that do 2k x 2k. They are VERY expensive.
    Sony makes one for about $25,000. Barco recently introduced a low cost
    2k x 2k monitor. I'm not sure about the price but I believe its around $10K.
    %~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
    %      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
    % --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
    %      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
    %     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
    %                                                                          %
     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-----------------------------------------------------------
I knew it was a lot.. I have heard that Textronix batch-mode
terminals only do 4096x4096 and that was defined as the max in
a book I had back in a low, low level class.


##

Subject: Imagine PC Brushes??
Date: Thu, 20 May 93 06:09:45 PDT
From: [e-mail]

I was interested in the PC version of Imagine. What kind of image file types
does the PC version use and their size requirement? Obviously, they aren't
using IFFs for the brush maps.

Thanks


Don


##

Subject: Re: Using Imagine on Big Screens
Date: Thu, 20 May 93 08:30 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Ray Collett)

Errors-To: [e-mail]

On Wed, 19 May 93, [e-mail] said:
>Would you please post them? It will save some time poking around.
>
>Thanks,
>
>        David
>
>        David M. Ingebretsen
>        Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp.
>        [e-mail]
>
>        Disclaimer: The content of this message in no way reflects the
>                    opinions of my employer, nor are my actions
>                    encouraged, supported, or acknowledged by my
>                    employer.
>

The hex values to open Imagine on a larger screen is:

   Hex position 0000BEFA and 0000BEFB  these two positions contain
    the Hex values of 00 and C8.  00C8 in dec is 200.  Imagine
    auto doubles this value if you've checked interlace in your
    prefs.  To get the full 482 height, just set the 00C8 to
    00F0.  00f0 in dec is 241.

   Hex position 0003E348 and 0003E349  these two positions contain
    the Hex values of 02 and 80.  0280 in dec is 640.  Change
    the 0280 to 02E0.  02E0 in bin is 736.

you can try to plug in your own values to adjust the size of Imagine
for the optimum usage of your monitor.  DO REMEMBER!!!  Make sure that
you have a backup copy before you attempt to `hack' Imagine.  The Hex
positions are for the FP version of Imagine 2.x.  For editing Imagine,
I use HEX.  HEX is a shareware program by Nicola Salmoria.  Another editor
that I have used in the past is DEKSID. (disked spelled backwards)  DESKID
is also shareware writen by Christian Warren.  DEKSID is a bit diffrent
in that it does not display the hex position info.  If you use DEKSID,
the positions 0000BEFA and 0000BEFB are in block 95 in positions 0FA and
0FB and positions 0003E348 and 0003E349 are in block 497 positions 148
and 149.  And finaly, If you've PowerPacked or Imploded ImagineFP, do
uncrunch it!  It's an awfully hard time finding the compressed version
of 0000BEFA!!!!  :^)  I've noticed that Imagine tends to crash a lot more
often with these changes.  It's partly my 040's fault (NEVER BUY AN GVP
GFORCE 040 FOR THE 3000!!!! IT'S ABOUT THE WORST PRODUCT I'VE EVER HAD TO
DEAL WITH!!!!)  I might try changing the stack and see if it helps much,
I dought it...

                    -Ray Collett
              [e-mail]


##

Subject: Imagine PC Attribute Value Shift
Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 09:56:44 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

I've been trying to use the Imagine PC upgrade I just bought (thanks for
the fast delivery, Impulse).  I've been modeling objects and setting up
staging and scripts on my A500 (no accelerator) at home, then bringing the
files in to the Dell 486P/50 I have at work.  Object loading is fine, but
every time I access the Attributes requester, all the RGB values (color,
filter, etc.) have been shifted down one field.  That is, the Red value is
set to zero, the Green value is now what the Red value used to be, and the
Blue value is now what the Green value used to be.

Just to be sure, I recopied all my attributes libraries from the Amiga,
checking each one to confirm correct color values both on the Amiga
diskette AND the CrossDOS formatted DOS diskette.  They all loaded
correctly into the Amiga Attributes requester.  Sure enough, when loading
them into the PC Attributes requester (from a locked floppy), the values
were shifted.

Even the attribute files that were shipped with the PC software have the
same error problem.  This leads me to believe that the error is in the PC
code.  Anybody have any ideas?  You guys at Impulse have any fixes?

I'd really hate to have to manually rekey EVERY RGB value for every
attribute and object I use.  I'm sure this is not going to make the PC
port very popular if it goes unfixed.

On the plus side, I'm having a great time with my faster rendering times
and animation playbacks.  The Convert Image and Slice functions hardly
ever hang now, and run MUCH faster.

Note on Convert Image: Imagine doesn't like TIFF grayscale files, but
seems to prefer either 256-color or 24bit color, according to my
experiments with Corel Photo-Paint.  Anybody know if ADPro is going to
incorporate a decent TIFF Saver?  As it is, I have to convert IFFs to PCX,
then use Corel to convert the PCX to TIFF.

Thanks in advance,

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Kelly               Information Specialist         First Consulting Group
[e-mail]  [phone]x125  P.O.Box 5161, Los Alamitos,CA 90721-5161

   "The difference between genius and stupidity: genius has its limits."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Out In Left Field
Date: Thu, 20 May 93 13:20:25 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dave Wickard)

Ok ok ok.... Here's my confusion.
How much does the BridgeBoard slow down the operation of
the Amiga?
I ordered one of those SX386 BridgeBoards on closeout and
it made me wonder...

Is the additional computation power of the BridgeBoard 386
(as much or little as it may be) worth the trade-off to run
Imagine-PC and Imagine 2.0 (68040 powered) simultaneously on
the same machine?

Does it allow me to accomplish MORE per hour of Amiga rendering or
does the overhead of running the BridgeBoard 386 outweigh the
benefits of the extra microprocessor chugging away on a project?

Inquiring minds want to know.


Dave Wickard  [phone]   "If you only see one giant skating
[e-mail]        dinosaur show this year...make it
[e-mail]       REPTAR ON ICE"   -Rugrats


##

Subject: Re: Imagine PC Brushes??
Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 11:01:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Kelly               Information Specialist         First Consulting Group
[e-mail]  [phone]x125  P.O.Box 5161, Los Alamitos,CA 90721-5161

   "The difference between genius and stupidity: genius has its limits."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


On Thu, 20 May 1993 [e-mail] wrote:

> I was interested in the PC version of Imagine. What kind of image file types
> does the PC version use and their size requirement? Obviously, they aren't
> using IFFs for the brush maps.
>
> Thanks
>
>
> Don

As I noted in another posting, in my limited experience with Imagine PC I
have been able to get it to accept TIFF 5.0 images processed through Corel
Photo-Paint in 256-color and 24bit-color formats.  Grayscale or 2-color
TIFFs were not accepted.  If you are trying to make font objects, I found
that making a 100-pixel tall document in PhotoPaint, and making the text
tall enough to nearly fill it (18 point or so), with black text and white
background, gives fair results.  One odd item: you will bet two points in
the extreme upper corners of your image, with a single line connecting
them.  Delete these before you do anything else with the object.

This approach gave me some nice font objects, with no jaggies and a
minimum of points.  It actually seemed to work better than similar
experiments on the Amiga, but I haven't experimented with enough different
fonts to say for certain.  Hope this helps!


##

Subject: Using Imagine on Big Screens
Date: Thu, 20 May 93 14:19:53 MDT
From: [e-mail] (David Ingebretsen)

Thanks, I'll give it a look tonight. Thanks also for the reminders to
be cautious. I use a hex-mode for GNU Emacs when I need to edit a
binary file. I've found that it works quite well. It displays a
standard hex screen and does display hex position information.

I'm jealous of your 040. I'm holding off to see what kind of deals and
upgrades are going to be coming out before forking over the money. I'd
really like an 040...


Thanks again,


    David

    David M. Ingebretsen
    Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp.
    [e-mail]

    Disclaimer: The content of this message in no way reflects the
                opinions of my employer, nor are my actions
            encouraged, supported, or acknowledged by my
            employer.


##

Subject: Re: Imagine PC Brushes??
Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 15:34:50 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

I just finished an experiment in using TGA format images as brushmaps in
Imagine PC.  Didn't work.  I used Corel Photo-Paint to open a GIF file of
Mars I downloaded from JPL's BBS, converted it to 24-bit color, and saved
it as TGA format.  I repeated the process, saving out in TIFF format.

In the Imagine PC Detail Editor, I added a sphere, and in the Attributes I
added the TGA file as a Brush.  Attempting to Quickrender gave me a file
format error on the TGA brush.  Repeating the process with the TIFF file
gave me a nice globe of Mars.

I dunno what the problem is, them's just the results I got.  Any suggestions?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Kelly               Information Specialist         First Consulting Group
[e-mail]  [phone]x125  P.O.Box 5161, Los Alamitos,CA 90721-5161

   "The difference between genius and stupidity: genius has its limits."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Re: JPL bbs & Planetary Pix
Date: Fri, 21 May 1993 07:04:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

On Thu, 20 May 1993, Scott Lundholm wrote:

> Hi Doug,
>
>      My name is Scott, and I just saw a posting of yours to the IML that
> mentioned the JPL bbs. I am writing to ask if it would be possible for you to
> E-Mail me the number or E-Mail address of the JPL bbs. I would love to take a
> look and see what they have. Thanks in advance for your help.
>
>                                                         Scott
>
>
>    *-----------------------------------------------------------------------*
>    |    Scott Lundholm       |   Email( Unix ) [e-mail]   |
>    |    [phone]        |   HPDESK Scott_LUNDHOLM/HP5300/A0           |
>    *------------------------- HP MicroElectronics -------------------------*
>
>  *----------------------------------------------------------------------------*
>  |                                   |                                        |
>  | Amiga 500/030 at 38Mhz w/68882 at | Email (UNIX)[e-mail] |
>  | 50Mhz, 8Meg of 32-bit RAM, Bodega |              President of              |
>  | Bay w/105 & 450 Meg Hard Drives,  | Redwood Empire Amiga Users Group       |
>  | HP PaintJet, & Mitsubishi multi-  | Imagine 2.0 rendering enthusiast and   |
>  | synch w/Flicker Free Video.       | graphics fanatic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   |
>  |                                   |                                        |
>  *----------------------------------------------------------------------------*
>

In the interests of anybody else who wants to get their tax dollars'
worth, here's the telnet address for the Jet Propulsion Lab's Public
Information Bulletin Board.

TELNET: pubinfo.jpl.nasa.gov

Login as ANONYMOUS.

The BBS includes press releases and other text files relating to JPL
missions, which make for interesting reading, but the real gold mine is
the LIB IMAGES directory, where they put the mission photos.  My personal
favorite is an 800x800 GIF of Mars, which maps almost perfectly onto an
Imagine sphere using the default settings for Xflat Zflat mapping.

If you need background or brushmaps of any of the explored planets, this
is probably your best bet.  All images are GIFs, and since they are
government publications for legal purposes, COMPLETELY COPYRIGHT-FREE!

For anyone in the Southern California area, JPL is having an open house
June 26 and 27.  Lots of interesting freebies, and you get to tour Mission
Control.  Really good show.

Keep on rendering!


##

Subject: Imagine PC Attribute Value Shift
Date: Fri, 21 May 93 11:56:56 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Rich Nollman)

Did you imply that the TIFF conversion module does not work very well?  I am
considering buying it as I have both a PC and a 3000.

Rich Nollman


##

Subject: Retina information
Date: 21 May 1993 09:58:31 U
From: "Scott Pack,SQA" <[e-mail]>

Hi,

Could someone who owns a Retina please answer a few questions?

1. What are the Horz and Vert. frequencies for the following resolutions:
   a.  800x600, NI
   b.  1024x768, NI or I
   (I need to know if my current monitor can support these resolutions given
the frequencies.)

2. What file format(s) do you render images in, and how do you display these on
the Retina?  Is it like the FireCracker which uses it's own file format, or can
you use PD viewers and such?  Can you use ADPro to view images?

I'm not clear on how well the WB environment is emulated in regard to the
Retina's ability to display 24-bit images on a WB screen and the hoops you need
to jump through to do so.  Thanks!

-Scott


##

Subject: Imagine PC Attribute RGB Shift
Date: Fri, 21 May 1993 10:52:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

Just got off the phone with Impulse.  They were not aware of the problem,
got a "Good catch!" kind of response.

Further details: the problem appears to be in the way the Attributes
requester loads the data, because if you go straight to Quickrender
WITHOUT SAVING OR MAKING ANY ATTRIBUTE CHANGES, all the color, etc.,
values are correct.  If you don't make any changes, but save the
attributes out EXACTLY the way they were loaded, the next render will show
the complete loss of red values.  Curiously, loads from PC-created
attributes don't seem to have this problem with the Attributes requester;
once I've repaired the values on an object, it stays repaired.

I'm going to try the reverse next, taking a PC attributes file and opening
it on the Amiga, to see if the shift will go the other way.

For the present, you can avoid this problem if you correct ALL brushmap
and texture paths to PC-DOS standards while still on the Amiga, and then
NEVER saving the object attributes from the PC side.  Kludgey, but it
beats heck out of manually rekeying values for every object you use,
assuming you even have a record of what the values were.

This would all go much faster, of course, if both machines were in the
same room, or at least the same county.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Kelly               Information Specialist         First Consulting Group
[e-mail]  [phone]x125  P.O.Box 5161, Los Alamitos,CA 90721-5161

   "The difference between genius and stupidity: genius has its limits."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Re: Using Imagine on Big Screens
Date: Thu, 20 May 93 12:45:47 MET
From: [e-mail] (Paul Kolenbrander)

Hello Ray Collett,
On 19 MAY 1993 12:14:00 you said regarding Re: Using Imagine on Big Screens:

> I started poking around in Imagine v2.0 and was able to find the
> $00C8 and the $0280 values and changed them to $00F0 and $02D0 respectavaly.
> I was able to open up imagine in the full 736 X 482 max overscan.
> It's sure a lot nicer to be able to see more of each object!  Thanks for
> the Idea of changing the hex code.  If anyone needs the bit locations
> that need to be changed, I can post them for who ever needs them.

Please do. :-)

CYa, Paul
--
Paul Kolenbrander  \ InterNet: [e-mail]
Turfveldenstraat 37 \ Fido: 2:284/112.1 Paul Kolenbrander
NL-5632 XH EINDHOVEN | - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Voice: [phone] | Timezone:GMT+1 | Fax: [phone]


##

Subject: Rendering Rooms
Date: Thu, 20 May 93 17:25:34 CDT
From: Duane Fields <duane%wixer![e-mail]>

I am attempting to render my apt.  I found it necessary to change the camera
aspect ratio down a bit to make it look normal.

The other problem I have found is getting the ceiling to light up.  I am gonna
try making a lamp shade type thing that will reflect the light back up on to
the ceiling.  Has anyone tried this?

Also, whats a good way to make carpet? plaster?

-duane


##

Subject: Re: Imagine PC Attribute Value Shift
Date: Fri, 21 May 1993 10:33:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

On Fri, 21 May 1993, Rich Nollman wrote:

>
> Did you imply that the TIFF conversion module does not work very well?  I am
> considering buying it as I have both a PC and a 3000.
>
> Rich Nollman

Are you referring to Imagine's conversion of TIFF images to objects, or
ADPro's conversion of IFFs to TIFF?

Imagine works fine with 256- and 24bit-color TIFF 5.0 files output from
Corel Photo-Paint.  I haven't tried any other formats, and I understand
there are some quirks in various TIFF subformats.  I dunno.

ADPro has worked OK for me in loading TIFFs, but either my Saver is buggy
or it hasn't been implemented properly in ADPro 2.1.  I had problems with
the 24-bit BMP Saver, and was told it was a bug fix in 2.3.  I had also
read something (it may have been in the IML) about the TIFF Loaders/Savers
being available separately, but I haven't looked into it.

ANybody else out there use ADPro for TIFF conversion?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Kelly               Information Specialist         First Consulting Group
[e-mail]  [phone]x125  P.O.Box 5161, Los Alamitos,CA 90721-5161

   "The difference between genius and stupidity: genius has its limits."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Re: Imagine PC Attribute
Date: Fri, 21 May 93 17:24 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Mark Prenter)

> First Consulting Group writes:
>
> ..... Stuff deleted .....
>
> ADPro has worked OK for me in loading TIFFs, but either my Saver is buggy
> or it hasn't been implemented properly in ADPro 2.1.  I had problems with
> the 24-bit BMP Saver, and was told it was a bug fix in 2.3.  I had also
> read something (it may have been in the IML) about the TIFF Loaders/Savers
> being available separately, but I haven't looked into it.
>
> ANybody else out there use ADPro for TIFF conversion?

Hi, I use AdPro 2.2 with the TIFF loader and I've never had a problem.  I
bring TIFF files home from work that were created on Intergraph Imagestations
and it works great.  It's probably an incompatibility problem between the
loaders and ADPro.  When I got my upgrade to ADPro, they also included
updates for the TIFF loaders.  So when you upgrade ADPro, you also have to
update the special loaders.

                                                                 Mark

--
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re:  Rendering Rooms
Date: Sat, 22 May 93 13:23:38 -0500
From: [e-mail] (PJ Foley)

Duane Fields <duane%wixer![e-mail]> writes:
Also, whats a good way to make carpet? plaster?
----------
I find that a good way to make carpet is to use the dreaded lame-o,
cheapy, "gause-screen," ant-crawling, don't-animate-this, roughness
setting.  I crank it way up.  I also add the Bumps texture from
Essence to give it that "lived-in look."  Here are my settings:

Color: 150,150,150 (arbitary, I suppose)
Specular: 230,230,230 (adjust to your color)
Dithering: 255 (I usually set this to zero since I deal with 24bit exclusively)
Roughness: 100 (more or less depending on how far you view the carpet)
Everything else: 0
And for Essence "Bump"
Initial Scale: 2.0
# of Scales: -1.random (take off the negative if this is too slow for you)
Scale ratio: 0.5
Amp: 0.5
Alt: 0.5

Roughness worked well for me to render a room just above normal eye-level.
I applied this to a ground object.

For plaster, I really haven't thought about it much.  Maybe a flat
white (low specular) with a hint of yellow...

1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS
 "IF POSSIBLE  STEAL ANY ONE THESE    | [e-mail]|
  DRAWINGS INCLUDING THIS SENTENCE"   | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^|   a
   - Shusaku Arakawa                  | Has renderer, will travel.|  b dXEN


##

Subject: 387 emulator functioning with PC Imagine ??
Date:     Sat, 22 May 1993 19:39:05 +0200
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

Hi folks,

my question is simple:
Is there any 387 software emultator which lets me run PC Imagine on
a standard 386 ?

Thanks for your help
Hannes


##

Subject: Re:  387 emulator functioning with PC Imagine ??
Date: Sat, 22 May 1993 18:09:21 -0600
From: Kiernan Holland <[e-mail]>

    Hi folks,

    my question is simple:
    Is there any 387 software emultator which lets me run PC Imagine on
    a standard 386 ?

    Thanks for your help
    Hannes

-----------------------------
Yes, but I don't know if it will work with Imagine. It only works with
some versions of Autocad:

Try FRANKE387, it can be found on just about every MSDOS directory
of those anonymous ftp-sites on the Internet. What you do
is you put its driver in your config.sys file, then you execute
the main program after you have started up. What it does is it
intercepts all 387 calls and emulates them using the 386, ofcourse.
It pretty d*mn fast, for an emulator even. It goes faster than a 20MHz-386sx
with a 387, on a 33MHz 386.

I hope it works for you.. 387's are a pain to install and cost
much more than most full-fledged 386 emulators (ofcourse you
can get Cyrix math-coprocessor emulators.


##

Subject: Re: ADPro TIFF module
Date: Sat, 22 May 93 20:37:21 EDT
From: [e-mail] (William V. Swartz)

  To those questioning the operational abilities of ADPro's TIFF module:

  I have converted quite a few images, ranging from 2 color logos to 24bit
photos, from various formats into TIFF files via ADPro with great results.
TIFFS were loaded into Aldus Persuasion and Word imPerfect on peecees quite
successfully.

  Not a rep, just a satified user,
  //
\X/ -BiL-
    [e-mail]             (See my 'Imagine'-ary signature below)


##

Subject: Re:  Rendering Rooms
Date: Sat, 22 May 1993 12:01:29 -0700 (MST)
From: [e-mail]

Scala has some real good IFFs of paper textures that work real well for
floors and plaster, carpet etc.


##

Subject: Re: Re: JPL bbs & Planetary Pix
Date: Sun, 23 May 93 09:36:19 -0700
From: Always a rainbow <[e-mail]>

**
\/ In the interests of anybody else who wants to get their tax dollars'
-- worth, here's the telnet address for the Jet Propulsion Lab's Public
@@ Information Bulletin Board.
\/
-- TELNET: pubinfo.jpl.nasa.gov
Oo
\/ Login as ANONYMOUS.

I have been trying to log in to such BBS for days but all i have been
getting is 'connection refused'. Any help? :)


##

Subject: JPL site...
Date: Sun, 23 May 93 23:01:36 EDT
From: [e-mail]

For anyone interested, the JPL site (pubinfo.jpl.nasa.com) is an FTP site, not
a telnet address as previously stated. Don't telnet in, FTP there....

                                -Frank


##

Subject: Essence for PC Imagine ??
Date:     Mon, 24 May 1993 12:11:48 +0200
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

Now that I have both Imagine and PC Imagine it would be very nice
to have PC Essence, too. The question I have is very simple:
Are there any plans to convert the original Essence to MSDOS ?

It would be rather simple if they were written in C so only recompilation
with gcc would be necessary (with a few adjustments)

Hannes