Multimedia Toolkit 2/Multimedia Toolkit 2.iso/imagine/text/arc38

Text File | 1993-09-28 | 131.2 KB | 3,551 lines

IMAGINE archive: collected off of [e-mail]

ARCHIVE XXXVIII
May 24 '93 - Jun. 10 '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: Re: Essence for PC Imagine
Date: Mon, 24 May 93 09:15:23 -0700
From: [e-mail] (Steve Worley)

Hannes Heckner writes:

> Are there any plans for porting the Essence textures to PC Imagine?

The answer is yes. It isn't quite as simple as a recompile, but from a
quick survey of the PC code it is certainly possible. We're right in
the middle of getting Volume II ready to go, but we'll work on the
port as soon as Essence Vol II is shipping next month.

Feel free to send any Essence questions to me at [e-mail], or
call Apex at 415-322-7532 if you have any more questions.

-Steve


##

Subject: Ooops! Sorry! JPL bbs & Planetary Pix
Date: Mon, 24 May 1993 08:41:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

I was mistaken about the JPL site procedures, it IS an anonymous FTP site,
sorry I told everybody it was telnet...

Here's partial text of the 'welcome' file from JPL, including a
direct-dial number for those of you who can use it or pass it along.

ACCESSING THE SITE

Public users of this site currently may connect to it by the
following methods:

     -- By modem over commercial telephone lines to
        [phone].  Set parameters to no parity, 8 data
        bits, 1 stop bit.  This line supports speeds up to 9600
        bps with the v32/v42bis/MNP5 error correction and
        compression protocols, and supports up to two callers
        simultaneously.

        When first logging on, you are asked for your name
        as well as your city and state (city and country if
        other than USA).  This information helps us track
        usage of the system to justify offering the service.

     -- Users with Internet access can use anonymous ftp to
        pubinfo.jpl.nasa.gov (128.149.6.2).  Log on as user
        ANONYMOUS, then send your city and state (city and
        country if other than USA) as the password (commas
        and spaces are ok, up to a total of 15 characters).
        Internet access is available through many educational
        institutions, companies and commercial services.  For
        Internet access in your area, contact a local computer
        club or the computing department of a local college or
        university.

JPL employees may also connect to this site through additional
methods over the institutional on-site network.  For more
information on on-Lab access, call JPL extension 4-7170.

For general questions about this site, please write to Public
Information Office, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove
Drive, Pasadena CA 91109, USA, or call [phone].
Also, BBS users may leave a message for the system operator,
while Internet users may send electronic mail to
[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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Re: Essence for PC Imagine
Date: Mon, 24 May 93 16:59:14 EDT
From: [e-mail] (William V. Swartz)

Steve:

Glad to hear that you will be porting Essence to peecees and even gladder to
hear the Volume II is almost done.  This ofcourse leads to the stock questions:

1) Will there be a discount to Essence Amiga users for Essence PC?

2) Can you give us any spoilers as to the new textures in Vol. II?

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


##

Subject: Re: Rendering Rooms
Date: Mon, 24 May 93 20:57:14 PDT
From: [e-mail]

>The other problem I have found is getting the ceiling to light up.

Stick a conical light in the middle of the room and point it towards
the ceiling, you won't see the light but you will see the effect of it.

Don DeCosta
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Essence II
Date: Tue, 25 May 1993 13:39:03 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Markus Stipp <[e-mail]>

> Hannes Heckner writes:
>
> > Are there any plans for porting the Essence textures to PC Imagine?
>
> The answer is yes. It isn't quite as simple as a recompile, but from a
> quick survey of the PC code it is certainly possible. We're right in
> the middle of getting Volume II ready to go, but we'll work on the
> port as soon as Essence Vol II is shipping next month.
>
> Feel free to send any Essence questions to me at [e-mail], or
> call Apex at 415-322-7532 if you have any more questions.

Are there already some pictures available with Essence II textures ?

--

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


##

Subject: Conical lights
Date: Tue, 25 May 93 09:23:37 -0700
From: Joe C Solinsky <[e-mail]>

Something just occured to me: I don't know how to aim a conical light, I just
know how they are supposed to look.  Do you use the y-axis (like everything else)?
Would someone mind enlightening me on this little thing?
-Joe Solinsky (I'm just a spherical illuminator)


##

Subject: DPS Animboard where is it ?
Date:     Tue, 25 May 1993 23:48:34 +0200
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

Hi rendering-folks,

If I am not mistaken there was an announcement for the DPS animation
board which could play in realtime animations from the harddisk.

I think it was announced for May the 15th.

So ....

Is there anyone with information about this product ???
Is there anyone who already has got one such board (ok that was a joke :-)
Thanks for all information
Hannes


##

Subject: Re:  RCS Fusion Forty Support BBS
Date: Tue, 25 May 1993 18:18:22 -0700
From: George Hepker <[e-mail]>

Stephen,
  Do you know if RCS has worked out the bugs in the Colorful Thinge 24 bit
board and the 33mhz 040 card?  Love their work but never hear anything from
them.

     Thanks,
     George Hepker
     [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Conical lights
Date: Tue, 25 May 1993 21:11:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: Naked Man <[e-mail]>

 Howdy, Joe:  Conical light sources will have a 'SIZE' setting in the
 transformation requestor, like axes and their associated objects.
 The cone of influence will have a radius width determined by the X size
 setting and a length determined by the Y size setting. (pp 98-99 in the
 delightful manual provided by those loveable guys up north).  Worley sez
 it might be fun to try a visible conical light source using a cone object
 and the FOG attribute.  Give it a go, and tell me how it turns out, eh?
 wes~


##

Subject: Re: Re: Re: JPL bbs & Planetary Pix
Date: Tue, 25 May 93 20:17:53 -0700
From: Always a rainbow <[e-mail]>

** That means they no longer exist.. they cut their line...

Some nice folks pointed out that I should try ftping instead of
telnetting to it and I got thru :)
Thanks!


##

Subject: Answer about cone lights
Date: Tue, 25 May 93 15:16:34 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Daniel T. Edwards)

ok.. Cone lights work like this...
      * The Y axis IS the length of the cone of light.
        The light will NOT extend past the end of the Y axis.
      * The X axis is the width of the cone at the end of the Y axis.
      * Just point the Y axis at the object you want to illuminate.

I made that as short as possible.  I learned it from
"Understanding Imagine 2.0"  Those who don't have this book are
either "kinda stupid" or "really very smart."

--James R. Walker
[e-mail]
.sig under construction...


##

Subject: Imagine Pc And Taperecorders
Date: Fri, 21 May 93 15:18:01 CEST
From: Santi Lo Monaco <[e-mail]>

HELP!
I have just bouhgt the PC version  of imagine, never had an amiga in my
life even if have been considering buying one for a while, but no PAL
Toaster so....i'llstick to IBM world for now.
MY question is: what do i need to record on tape (single frame recorders,
no 30 fps) animations made with IMAGINE pc, obviously a controller,but...
which wil   do the job, I have been told from people at Impulse the product
does not support Diaquest.......HELP HELP HELP .
Thanks to all the amigos IML's and to those sparse IBMers and IMAGINErs
Ciao Santi Lo Monaco [e-mail]


##

Subject: Longer Movies
Date: Mon, 24 May 1993 14:20:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail]

My first question is: "How to link short animations, say, 5-7 seconds, into
a longer movie - even there are some black gaps?"   - Young


##

Subject: Re: Imagine 486 <-> Imagine Amiga comparison
Date: Thu, 27 May 93 09:23:00 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Devon Miller)

|     Hello all !
|
|     Briefly, I would like to know how well does the PC version of Imagine
|     compare to the Amiga version ? I've heard that Imagine PC is 3 times
|     faster on a 486 DX 66Mhz than on a 28Mhz 68040, is this true ?

Never having used I-PC, I can't comment on this.

|     If so, does anyone know any reason for this, beside the fact that the
|     clock runs at twice the speed ?

The double clocking is nothing new, Motorola's CPUs have been doing that
all along.  A 28MHz '040 runs at an internal speed of 56MHz.  So the clock
speed is probably not the issue.  The '040 instructions generally take less
clock ticks than 486 instructions, so it is probably safe to consider the
two machines equivalent for *integer* instructions.  If the Amiga has to
switch to 68040.library to handle an intrinsic, you're hosed.  Major
performance hit there.  AIBB reports FP performance at ~17 (I don't recall
what units it was) for the '040 using '030 code.  Using '040 code, which
eliminates calls to 68040.library, it reports ~220.

So, if Impulse released an '040 specific version of Imagine for the Amiga,
I expect the Amiga would approximate the speed of the PC.

An interesting question would be:  how does a machine with a 50MHz '030
and a 60MHz FPU compare to a 486DX2/66.

Devon


##

Subject: Imagine Pc And Vtr
Date: Mon, 24 May 93 15:55:18 CEST
From: Santi Lo Monaco <[e-mail]>

have already asked this, maybe it did not make it to the list so:
is there a way to put on tape IMAGINE PC generated animations?

BTW: is essence textures available in IBM-PC format?

thanks Santi Lo Monaco [e-mail]


##

Subject: Prisms with Imagine
Date: 27 May 1993 05:19:34 -1000
From: "Jeff Wahaus, CAPS, ATL, 404-640-3529" <[e-mail]>

Has anyone been able to produce a working prism using Imagine?  It
seems from my experiments that white light passing through a prism
shaped object will not disperse at all.  Different Index of Refraction
settings will not change this either.

I guess in order for this to work Imagine would have to trace each
wavelength of light separately.

-Jeff-


##

Subject: Thanks Ray Collett
Date: Fri, 21 May 93 14:15:20 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Daniel T. Edwards)

A few weeks (months?) ago I called Impulse to ask how to get Imagine to use my overscan
Imagine to use my overscan screen.  I just happened to talk to
one of the big wigs there.  He INSISTED that this size increase
was impossible.  He even told me that HE USES IMAGINE at 640 x 400.
Yeah right!  I wonder how much Caligari 24 costs these days 8).

-- James R. Walker
[e-mail]

***Using Imagine on 700x462 screen with no special video hardware!***


##

Subject: Re: A few questions
Date: Thu, 27 May 93 15:48:55 EDT
From: scott a king <[e-mail]>

David,

> 2)  From the same company, what about the Merlin board.  The literature says
>     it is supposed to ship May 20th.

In comp.sys.amiga.[graphics,hardware] everyone is claiming its vapourware.  I
have no idea.

> 4)  Would anyone be interested in BSD4.3 for the Amiga.  I am working on a
>     kernel now.  I should have a working kernel by the end of the summer.

Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes.  Of course X would be great as well.  Will this run under
2.0x or independently?

>     So far the only tough parts will be the virtual memory stuff, I know
>     nothing about the 030's MMU or the 68851 PMMU, yet.

I hope that all you have problems with!  ;-)

--
Scott
[e-mail]


##

Subject: A few questions
Date: Thu, 27 May 1993 13:07:25 -0500
From: [e-mail] (David Greene)

Hey all,

I have a few questions, really not Imagine related, but I have no access
to any info-amiga lists:

1)  Has anyone used or seen the Eagle (Spectronics) Shuttle 2000 case for
    A500 owners.  I have the literature that Spec. sent me but I want to
    know from someone who has seen it.  Specifically, will it work with
    the Derringer.  The literature says some turbo boards might not work
    because of the Denise plug-in board.  I have specs if anyone wants them
    posted.

2)  From the same company, what about the Merlin board.  The literature says
    it is supposed to ship May 20th.

3)  Is there a way to upgrade the Derringer 25Mhz to 50Mhz, or is there a
    trade in policy?

4)  Would anyone be interested in BSD4.3 for the Amiga.  I am working on a
    kernel now.  I should have a working kernel by the end of the summer.
    So far the only tough parts will be the virtual memory stuff, I know
    nothing about the 030's MMU or the 68851 PMMU, yet.

David.


##

Subject: 040 ESSENCE??
Date: Wed, 02 Jun 93 09:54:24 EST
From: Adam Benjamin <[e-mail]>

If the list is screwy this is probably a bad time to ask this but...

Now that I have an 040, I really notice the Essence textures slow down
the rendering and I got to thinking...
It must be using the old math functions through the OS.
Is it feesible for Glen and Steve to re-compile the textures and
optimise them for us 040 users???

Would it even make that big of a difference?

*************************************************************
* 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: Need help with 'sand' effect.
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 16:15:37 BST
From: [e-mail] (Ian Bale)

I've done a few pictures of lettering with a sandstone type texture.

What I'd like to do is change it to look more like sand than sandstone, then
animate it. I'd like the picture to 'blow' away, revealing more sand letter
below.

Or maybe, the picture blows around, destroying the lettering, and reforming
new lettering. As long as it looks like the grains are being blown, and not
just being shifted into new positions.

Can anyone offer any suggestions as to how I can accomplish this effect. I
don't necessarily want to use Imagine to do the anims, but I suppose if I
can, then it will be better becasue of the shadows cast by the moving sand.

As one picture blows away, maybe some grains could catch on the raised
lettering below. Basically I have a good idea of what I'd like to achieve,
but no real idea of where to start, other than creating the basic images.


By the way, can anyone tell me where I can get Understanding Imagine 2.0 in
the U.K.

Thanks,

Elfrick.

        ==========================================================
            Sent by Elfrick:  [e-mail]
        ==========================================================
Note: Despite my e-mail address, I live/work in the UK, and have no connection
      with Sweden, other than working for a Swedish company. Please send
      replies in English, not Swedish. Thanks.


##

Subject: Imagine PC Questions
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 10:56:53 -0400
From: Mark Marino <[e-mail]>

Hmmm, [e-mail] seems to be not accepting incoming
mail.  Hopefully this will work.


Thought I'd spark the conversation here a little...

I have a few misc questions about Imagine 2.0 for the PC platform:

Q> From what I've read in the manual (man, I hope this gets a major re-write
   for 3.0) you can import Brush maps in ilbm/iff format, the only program I
   have to convert from the more PC-friendly formats (GIF, PCX, BMP) to LBM
   is CSHOW for Windows.  Are there any other programs to do this conversion
   (hopefully Non-Windows DOS programs)?

Q> I've gleaned from discussions on this list lately that Imagine will also
   import TIFF 5.0 files.  I didn't see this mentioned in the PC (non)release
   notes.  Same question as above applies;  what DOS programs can convert from
   GIF, etc. to TIFF 5.0?

Q> Provided that one doesn't have access to Corel Draw, is there any other
   way to import fonts (hopefully of the True Type species) into Imagine 2.0?
   I sort of got this to work by using Photostyler to save out TrueType text
   in a 1-plane PCX file and then converted PCX to LBM with CSHOW.  My main
   gripe was that Pstyler won't let you do just font outlines, they're filled,
   so after importing, Imagine throws in lot's of misc. line segments in what
   would be the font faces.  There's also that annoying bug with the line
   segment created near the top of the screen that someone mentioned recently.
   Is this what screws up the import if you answer yes when Imagine asks if you
   want to convert the image to faces.

Q> Does Imagine 2.0 really support DXF imports?  I haven't tried it but it
   could become a necessary evil for me in the near future.

Q> Is there a better explanation of the Cycle Setup/Transform commands work in
   the Detail Editor and the Cycle Editor than in the manual?  This particular
   part of the manual makes my head spin.

   On a related note, is the little trick in that part of the manual
   about moving and scaling the axis independent of the object mentioned
   elsewhere?  I don't remember reading it anywhere else and it was confusing
   to me at first because there seems to be no pull down menu equivalent to the
   hotkey combo.

Q) I'm curious as to how one might transfer finished animations to a single
   frame vcr or laserdisc recorder from the PC (sorry, no Amiga here) ?

Q) Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the release notes mention that the
   animations were not Autodesk FLI/FLC compatible?  This isn't good.  Will
   this be fixed before 3.0 is released or will we have to upgrade again to
   get something was apparently intended to be a standard feature in 2.0).

Q) What new features can we expect with Imagine 3.0 and when will it ship (the
   1Q93 projected date is history)? Does anyone on the list have any concrete
   information on this?


See ya,
Mark


 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                                                             |
| Mark Marino              | [e-mail]           |  uunet!osf!omar         |
| Open Software Foundation | 11 Cambridge Center    |  Cambridge, MA 02142    |
|_____________________________________________________________________________|


##

Subject: Imagine PC Attribute RGB Shift
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 08:09:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

Yup, the Attributes requester for the Amiga loads PC-created attribute
color values the exact opposite way, that is, the RED values are lost,
and the green and blue values are shifted up one field.

If I'm diagnosing this correctly, the PC code that loads AND saves the
attribute RGB values is one field off.  I don't know of any way around
this MAJOR BUG, short of manually documenting all twelve RGB values for
every object you want to port to the "other machine."

I can't say for sure, but it would seem reasonable to suppose this
bug would also cause problems for anyone writing software to manipulate
these values.  Steve Worley is aware of the bug; hope it doesn't impede
the porting of Essence.

For those of you planning to port objects, I advise modifying attributes
on ONE platform ONLY.  Play with object editing on either, but DON'T TOUCH
THE ATTRIBUTES REQUESTER unless you have all the original values
documented and don't mind rekeying them.

Hope Impulse fixes this soon.  If anybody figures a more elegant
workaround, PLEASE post it!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 Questions
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 09:51:17 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

On Wed, 2 Jun 1993, Mark Marino wrote:

> Q> From what I've read in the manual (man, I hope this gets a major re-write
>    for 3.0) you can import Brush maps in ilbm/iff format, the only program I
>    have to convert from the more PC-friendly formats (GIF, PCX, BMP) to LBM
>    is CSHOW for Windows.  Are there any other programs to do this conversion
>    (hopefully Non-Windows DOS programs)?

I may be wrong on this, but since I've had the software it has only
accepted TIFF files, and even those have to be either 24bit or 256 color.
TGA doesn't work, and my documentation says IFF24 or 12bit ILBM won't
either.  Have to try everything once, I suppose.

> Q> Provided that one doesn't have access to Corel Draw, is there any other
>    way to import fonts (hopefully of the True Type species) into Imagine 2.0?
>    I sort of got this to work by using Photostyler to save out TrueType text
>    in a 1-plane PCX file and then converted PCX to LBM with CSHOW.  My main
>    gripe was that Pstyler won't let you do just font outlines, they're filled,
>    so after importing, Imagine throws in lot's of misc. line segments in what
>    would be the font faces.  There's also that annoying bug with the line
>    segment created near the top of the screen that someone mentioned recently.
>    Is this what screws up the import if you answer yes when Imagine asks if you
>    want to convert the image to faces.

Any BITMAP paint package, or vector-drawing package that can save one of
the bitmap formats, should allow you to use TrueType fonts.  Just watch
your image size, the bigger the font, the worse the jaggies.  Odd reversal
there.  Re the extraneous faces and lines: I NEVER use the "add faces"
option when importing text, partly because of that single overhead line
artifact.  Just bring in the outline, make a big triangular face that will
encompass the entire text block, extrude the text block, and slice it with
the triangle.  Now you've got outline AND solid text objects to play with.

> Q> Is there a better explanation of the Cycle Setup/Transform commands work in
>    the Detail Editor and the Cycle Editor than in the manual?  This particular
>    part of the manual makes my head spin.

Try the explanations in the Cycleman manual.  BTW, Cycleman works great on
the PC.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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: DPS Animboard where is it ?
Date: Wed, 02 Jun 93 11:19:46 EDT
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

Greg Burger writes:
> Will it use any hard drive? SCSI-I or SCSI-II? Do you mount the drive on
> the DPS board or just on your SCSI controller?

It uses a dedicated highspeed IDE drive (the IDE controller is integrated into
the DPS board). So far, the only drive qualified to be fast enough for the
device is the 500MB Seagate 3600A (street price around $800). I'm not sure
about the drive mounting but considering the 3600A is a 1" drive, it very well
may mount to the board. The dedicated IDE drive allows the unit to be used on
any Zorro 2/3 bus based Amiga without penalty for only 16bit datapath (ie.
an Amiga 2000).
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: 040 codeed Imagine & eEssence
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 18:58:06 BST
From: [e-mail]

With regard to Adam Benjamins' post...

There is a very big need for Both Imagine and Essence to be recompiled and
optimised for the 040 chip, ie so that they dont use the 040 library as this
really puts a drain on performance.

Not sure if this has been on the list, but I received from some where a message
that indicated that some sort of test had been done on code that used the
040 library and the same code recompiled 040 specific. The results were that
the code that used the library rated 17 (not sure of the scale but it is not realy important), and the 040 specific rated 220 !!!
( Sorry if this is wrong but I am going from mail sent and memory )

With this sort of performance gain render times could be cut quite a bit.

Jason


##

Subject: Re: Imagine PC Questions
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 10:59:12 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jeffrey Walkup)

> would be the font faces.  There's also that annoying bug with the line
> segment created near the top of the screen that someone mentioned recently.
> Is this what screws up the import if you answer yes when Imagine asks if you
> want to convert the image to faces.
>

The bitmap importer (in the Amiga version at least) is incredibly
buggy... don't use it.  Don't know what's available for PC but I use
Pixel3D for that.



> What new features can we expect with Imagine 3.0 and when will it ship (the
> 1Q93 projected date is history)? Does anyone on the list have any concrete
> information on this?


Don't know 'bout the PC version, but promised for Amiga 3.0, at least,
is:

   Bones  "Moving contiguous objects without the need for joints"...
           [typical Impulse grammar...]

   Realtime 3D movements in the Stage  [but not in the Detail???]

   Brush & Texture tacking  [real texture 'mapping' ala "makesticky"]

   Pop-up Action bar in Stage  [no need to goto Action editor]

   Twist, taper, etc.... deformations

   Better antialiasing, shadows in Scanline rendering, JPEG, HAM8
    support.

   and a new Terrain editor (happy happy joy joy!)

--
Jeff Walkup - [e-mail]  | Energy is matter is spacetime.
   Digital Animator / Videographer       |          ERLEICHDA!


##

Subject: RE:Imagine PC Questions
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 19:06:02 BST
From: [e-mail]

Sorry can't answer on most of the questions....

As far as Imagine 3.0 the way I've read it is that the PC will be a release
behind the amiga. So the release dates for 3.0 are in relation to the Amiga
version not the PC version... Am I right here??

Anyway it doesn't matter really, as there doesn't seem to be any sign
of a release 3.0 for anyone!

Jason


##

Subject: Re: 040 codeed Imagine & eEssence
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 18:12:13 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Glenn M. Lewis - ICD ~)

    I replied to Adam directly, assuring him that Essence and its
successors all use inline math coprocessor code, and no external
libraries.  I told Adam that I would have Steve Worley make an official
Apex Software Publishing reply to the IML... he is extremely busy right
now with Essence II.

    But for now, rest assured that all math is performed with inline
math coprocessor opcodes, and since the textures are all math-intensive,
a special compile for '040's only would most likely not buy any time.
The fractal noise algorithms Steve developed are extremely complex, thus
justifying the time needed to compute these.  Note that all math has
been hand optimized for Essence II, and this, combined with a switch in
compilers, has gained us a great deal of speed.  For details, I will let
Steve post to the list.

                            -- Glenn


##

Subject: Re: Imagine PC Questions
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 11:34:48 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jeffrey Walkup)

> The detail about Brush and Texture 'tacking', is this what I think it is?
> Is it MIP-mapping?  Will it behave as if the pattern was mapped constantly
> across the surface of the entire object, no matter the dimensions or
> elaboration?

Here's the full descript. from the Impulse newsletter:

"Brush and Texture tacking.  Make the brushes and textures stick to the
traingles of an object so that as it moves and scales or what ever you
do to it, the image sticks to the triangles not just the brush axis."

I take that to mean that if you warp, distort, etc... your object, the
texturemap will distort accordingly.  That is, the pixels will stick to
particular polygons.


--
Jeff Walkup, Digital Animator / Videographer | Energy = Matter = Spacetime
 [e-mail] - San Francisco   |         ERLEICHDA!


##

Subject: Re: Imagine PC Questions
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 11:31:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

On Wed, 2 Jun 1993, Jeffrey Walkup wrote:

> The bitmap importer (in the Amiga version at least) is incredibly
> buggy... don't use it.  Don't know what's available for PC but I use
> Pixel3D for that.
>
> --
> Jeff Walkup - [e-mail]  | Energy is matter is spacetime.
>    Digital Animator / Videographer       |          ERLEICHDA!

Afraid I have to disagree with you on the functionality of the IFF
bitmap converter in Imagine 2.0.  I use it extensively to make objects for
D&D dungeons, culling graphics from sources like the Book of Kells and
miscelllaneous fantasy art.  I also used it as the basis for an article in
the current issue of Video Toaster User, converting scanlines from a 3D
digitizing process into object slices in Imagine. (The article was
translated into Lightwave procedures using PixPro, but it DOES also work
in Imagine.)

You need to remember that each boundary between colors is seen by Imagine
as an edge.  If you attempt to import an image with lots of stray pixels,
each pixel will be converted to a tiny square, with four points and four
edges.  The best images for conversion are black and white, solid, with a
minimum of curves.  The jaggies inherent in the bitmap format will come
out in the converted object wherever you have curves, but smoothing them
out with the Select Points-Join function isn't that bad.  If you're
getting so many jaggies that the point count goes beyond what your machine
can handle (the most common cause of import 'hangs'), try scaling the IFF
down in DPaint or another graphics package before importing it.

I've used both the Amiga and PC convert functions, and found them one of
the most useful tools for object creation within Imagine.

I don't recommend using the 'Add Faces' function for complex objects,
preferring instead to slice the object after extrusion.  Imagine isn't
terribly bright about recognizing 'noise,' and will cheerfully knit faces
between completely unrelated parts of the object.

With those caveats in mind, why not give it another chance?  This is
supposed to be about experimenting; don't throw tools away, especially
ones you've paid major bucks for! ;)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 Questions
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 15:00:15 -0400
From: Mark Marino <[e-mail]>

> > The detail about Brush and Texture 'tacking', is this what I think it is?
> Here's the full descript. from the Impulse newsletter:
>
> "Brush and Texture tacking.  Make the brushes and textures stick to the
> traingles of an object so that as it moves and scales or what ever you
> do to it, the image sticks to the triangles not just the brush axis."
>
> I take that to mean that if you warp, distort, etc... your object, the
> texturemap will distort accordingly.  That is, the pixels will stick to
> particular polygons.
>

  I was dissapointed to discover that this was not implemented in 2.0.
I think that the shareware renderer POV-Ray implements fully tacking
texture mapping.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                                                             |
| Mark Marino              | [e-mail]           |  uunet!osf!omar         |
| Open Software Foundation | 11 Cambridge Center    |  Cambridge, MA 02142    |
|_____________________________________________________________________________|


##

Subject: Re: Imagine PC Questions
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 14:30:49 PDT
From: [e-mail] (John T. Grieggs)

> Here's the full descript. from the Impulse newsletter:
>
> "Brush and Texture tacking.  Make the brushes and textures stick to the
> traingles of an object so that as it moves and scales or what ever you
> do to it, the image sticks to the triangles not just the brush axis."
>
> I take that to mean that if you warp, distort, etc... your object, the
> texturemap will distort accordingly.  That is, the pixels will stick to
> particular polygons.
>
I would assume that your map would also adhere to the individual polys
when using an Explode effect...
>
> --
> Jeff Walkup, Digital Animator / Videographer | Energy = Matter = Spacetime
>  [e-mail] - San Francisco   |         ERLEICHDA!
>
_john


##

Subject: T3D For Pc
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 93 2:38:08 CEST
From: Santi Lo Monaco <[e-mail]>

BTW since imagine came to PcWORLD, will the T3D library follow the
same path, i.e. does it exists a Intel compiled version of it
thanks
Santi Lo MoNaco
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: DPS Animboard where is it ?
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 93 01:27:44 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

I have been thinking about getting an Amiga 1200 in addition to my Amiga.
I was wondering if the AGA is non-interlaced (provides VGA output)
and I was wondering what the bus frequency and width to the AGA
chipset is... I would like to get animation speeds as fast or
faster than my 16MHz Amiga 3000. I have been making some really
long animations using my Hybrid combination of ray-tracing
animation software (Imagine, Rayshade 4.0, JPEG 3.0) and am on the verge
of creating a more complex animation scripting system and would like
to dump the animations to HAM8 and view them on a AGA capable machine.

Does anyone know if CBM is working on a AGA chipset for the Amiga 3000s???
They should, who knows, my animations may give their systems a lttlle
more attention the mainstream market. So far I have a 120 frame
24-bit 320x200 animation of a simple fly-through of 13,000 primitives (trian
-gles) ray-traced using a Decstation (VAX 5000) and Rayshade 4.0.
If you want to see what one of my animations look like download
"flying.tar" from /systems/amiga/incoming/imagine/anims directory
on wuarchive.wustl.edu and untar it (using GNUtar for the Amiga)
and use REND24 to assemble the animation. I will upload a 30
frame 160x100 4-bit (grey) animation on wuarchive to give
you a thumb-nail of what the animation looks like. A fully
decompressed version takes up 3.5 megs in regular 320x200 6-bit HAM mode,
and even more in HAM8 (which REND24 also supports). All my frames
are in JPEG/JFIF format (which REND24 supports, luckily) and I
arranged the frames to work with REND24 so to make the assembly
easier. The "flying.tar" file is about 1.3 megs in size and as
I said it is 120 frames at (close to) 24-bit color. I promise you will
like it (though how simple it was to implement). I will soon have a
version that will interpolate between points to help simplify path
creation. When I get finished with all that I will simplify my
code and put a copy of it (with a small manual) in the IMAGINE directory
on wustl.

I have an Idea, which may or may not get written in code this summer,
to make a program that can control any number of objects at once
during the creation of the animation, as background processes,
so more complex moving  (like asteroids, flying ships, planets,
vehicles, etc. ) object will be easier to implement and describe.
One part of the idea is to make each object controllable by a seperate
program with similar of differing movements/effects...

I really hope some others here try doing some of this stuff too because
it requires little effort and is more fulfilling than creating
animations on Imagine. I don't know how to create animations
on Imagine so I guess I can't really say that, but I don't have 40
megs of ram, a 200 meg hard drive and a 68040... It is cheaper, simpler,
faster to utilize a workstation(s) at school which is hardly ever used
than burden my Amiga with the task (not to mention, myself). Even though
the Amiga multi-tasks, you do run a chance of crashing the system and
you cannot work as productively because you must allow enough RAM for
Imagine to work with in case it should start rendering a more complex
object.

The advantages of a UNIX system is that everything is multi-tasking/multi-user,
you have less of a chance of crashing, MMU's are used most often,
most networks are left on 24hours a day, no one ever fully utilizes
these workstations and UNIX supports virtual memory which means (depending
on the capacity of your account [I don't have a disk quota] you
can create some very large, complex pictures without having to
worry about memory limitations. Who cares if an animation is
made 'entirely' on an Amiga... to someone viewing your animation
that would hardly raise an eyebrow... What will is saying that
it helped a lot more (than any other computer) in making an animation
and utilized existing machines. For me, I don't care, if it uses 100% Amiga
or 5%, it still uses an Amiga and there is no way I could do without it, if
I could, I would not be using an Amiga, would I?? if it is concievable
and feasible, I will try to go for it. I'm not the worlds most
active or super programmer, but I am doing what I wanted to, thats
what counts!!!

I'm interested to see what others have accomplished through Hybrid
Amiga integration of animations. I have so many ideas that were
not feasible before that I want to try out on this simple
integration of software that I have created... It will take some intense
math, but if it works who cares how complex it is... It can only get
better.. That is what revision and optimization and simpler user
interfaces are all about..

Later

Kiernan Holland

PS- I got off the subject sorry... Is the Amiga 1200 as good as it seems???
All I need is super output... I would probably get the Retinabut
it seemslike it doesn'thave quite the animation capabilities
that AGA has. It looks like a AGA based machine would have faster
more colorful animations than the Retina would be capable of. I might get
the Retina for my Amiga 3000 later, but for now I don't have the
money to blow on both a 1200 and a Retina. ;-)


##

Subject: Re: Need help with 'sand' effect.
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 93 01:50:21 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

Simulating sand in a ray-tracing is like extracting MIDI sequences
from digitized sound, it is very near to impossible if you expect
perfection. I would suggest something like taking a video
animation dump from real sand blowing away then take the animation
into a paint program, edit it so only the sand appears. Put one
plane in your animation with a animation of the sand blowing away
superimposed on the plane, then use a mask to all that is not sand
in the animation transparent, then place the plane about 1 or 2 units
(real close) from the ground (or text) then make an animation of
an animation in this way... It might fool the people if you don't
make the illusion too obvious by placing the sand-plane close enough to
the ground to make it hard to determine if it is real 3D objects
or a @D object... You don't want any specular light otherwise
there will be a specular spot on the sand-plane. Just try to
avoid making the illusion to obvious... The alternative (making
sand objects) is nearly impossible to implement and unecessary.

Having a few grains of the sand catch on the letters would be harder
to implement because Imagine sees all objects as intersectable...
at least I have never seen anything in Imagine that checks for
collisions between objects. I wouldn't know... But I imagine it would
be hard to simulate...


##

Subject: Imagine questions :
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 93 09:47:04 +0100
From: (Vincent FARGET) <[e-mail]>

    Hi everybody,


      1.) How do I do to make a nice gold texture ???
         (Color=?, Shininess=?, Roughness=?, ECT...)

      2.) I am making a restaurant's menu. What are the different way to
         make it open and close (Animation) ???

Thanks.

FARGET Vincent.


##

Subject: Re: T3D For Pc
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 93 02:09:03 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    BTW since imagine came to PcWORLD, will the T3D library follow the
    same path, i.e. does it exists a Intel compiled version of it
    thanks
    Santi Lo MoNaco
    [e-mail]

------------------------
Do you mean Glenn Lewis's TDDD2xxx commands??? The source code is on some
places... I think you can compile it on your machine if you have a
C ompiler.

Use ARCHIE (telnet archie.unl.edu, login:archie) to find
places that contain the code.


##

Subject: Spline-based modelling
Date: 3 Jun 1993 12:54:04 U
From: "Oxley David" <[e-mail]>

Here's a technique I use to model smoothly curved shapes, such as the vertical
cross section of a wine bottle, which I can then sweep (or spin, I can never
remember which :). It's debatable as to whether you should use the forms
editor, or this method: choose whichever suits your need. If someone has
already published this technique, please forgive me re-inventing the wheel.

What you do is add a 2 point line in the side view of the detail editor (add an
axis first ;), create the path of your choice in the front view, extrude the
line along it and delete half the extrusion from the side view.

What you are left with is a curve which follows the spline (path), and whose
smoothness is dictated by the number of sections you specify in the Extrude
requester.  You can then sweep this curve to form your curvaceous object :)
Notice that if you're not satisfied with the result, you can undo the extrude
and then edit the spline's shape before re-extruding.

Hope this comes in useful for someone.

Regards,
David Oxley


##

Subject: MORE re: SAND-EFFECT
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 93 13:21:29 +0200
From: "( Carsten Berggreen-Denmark )" <[e-mail]>

"[e-mail]" wrote:

> Simulating sand in a ray-tracing is like extracting MIDI sequences
> from digitized sound, it is very near to impossible if you expect
> perfection. I would suggest something like taking a video
> animation dump from real sand blowing away then take the animation
> into a paint program, edit it so only the sand appears. Put one
> plane in your animation with a animation of the sand blowing away
> superimposed on the plane, then use a mask to all that is not sand
> in the animation transparent, then place the plane about 1 or 2 units
> (real close) from the ground (or text) then make an animation of
> an animation in this way... It might fool the people if you don't
> make the illusion too obvious by placing the sand-plane close enough to
> the ground to make it hard to determine if it is real 3D objects
> or a @D object... You don't want any specular light otherwise
> there will be a specular spot on the sand-plane. Just try to
> avoid making the illusion to obvious... The alternative (making
> sand objects) is nearly impossible to implement and unecessary.

(I agree &:-) )


> Having a few grains of the sand catch on the letters would be harder
> to implement because Imagine sees all objects as intersectable...
> at least I have never seen anything in Imagine that checks for
> collisions between objects. I wouldn't know... But I imagine it would
> be hard to simulate...

Well as he metioned above, the idea of using an animated sequence of brushes
is a pretty useable solution to this problem too.

My idea (which I think might work) is to wrap another brush around the object
you want to make the sand appear onto.

Ex.

First frame the brush should be clean. (If you want to make a logo disapear)
and the last frame should be a brush of 'sand'.
Then the actual sequence should morph from blank to filled( or partly filled..)
and with the idea from 'kholland's letter combined with this might be the
solution... (note: I haven't tried this, but let me know if it works, okay? )

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another similar effect I've thought of long time ago, was to let a logo
disapear under water, by move the logo through a ground of water
(or you could raise the 'water' plane/ground).
Perhaps this idea could be used with a plane of sand to cover the logo?

Hope this might be of any help...

and as I wrote above, I ALWAYS like to hear from people who have made a nice
'new' effect by using the old ideas... so here is my address:

Signed
---------------------------------------------------------------------
- Address: Carsten Berggreen         E-mail: [e-mail] -
-          Hirsevaenget 16A                                         -
-          8464  Galten          "It isn't the equipment alone, it  -
-          Denmark                is also what YOU can do with it!" -
---------------------------------------------------------------------
- A true fan of Amiga, Coca-Cola, Imagine and good looking females! -
---------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Re: T3D For Pc
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 93 16:39:21 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Glenn M. Lewis - ICD ~)

>>>>> On Thu, 3 Jun 93 2:38:08 CEST, Santi Lo Monaco <[e-mail]> said:

Santi> BTW since imagine came to PcWORLD, will the T3D library follow
Santi> the same path, i.e. does it exists a Intel compiled version of it

>>>>> On Wed, 2 Jun 93 16:32:43 PDT, Patrick Chu 3605 <[e-mail]> said:

Patrick> Is T3DLIB compiled to run on PCs?  If so, I'd be interested in
Patrick> knowing how to get a copy.


    Looks like there is some interest in this.  Two people in the
previous 4 years had asked for a PC version, and I told them where to
find the source, but never found out if they ported it successfully.

    Now that there is Imagine PC, it sounds like T3DLIB might be
handy to have on PCs.  Therefore, if anyone has already compiled it for
PCs, please let me know.  Otherwise, I'll look into compiling it for
PCs after Essence II, Essence Pro, Essence PC, Essence II PC, and
Essence Pro PC have all been released.

                            -- Glenn


##

Subject: Imagine Objects
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 93 16:17:15 +0200
From: "( Carsten Berggreen-Denmark )" <[e-mail]>

Hi there,

I haven't access to FTP... But a friend of mine has, and he has downloaded
a lot of the imagine objects for me...

I must say, that some of the objects(I think) are of great quality...

But I've noticed that some objects can't be loaded since they aren't Imagine
objects.
Could we please make some sort of order like some nice/cool guys already has.
ex.
    Imagine objects =.iob or .img
    Turbo silver    =.silver or ?
    Real 3D        =.R3D ?

It is pretty anoying to receive 4 disks with objects and then find out that
you can only use two of the disks (spread over 4 disks) &:-(

Secondly:
is there anyway that I can receive the objects by sending a requierment
to a Email-base(like some sort of command language(or what ever?))

Third:
Is UUDECODE and UUENCODE a know program to you guys(/girls?)?

reason: well, I thought it would be smart if I had the option to E-mail my
contribution to the objects, if possible and the way my friend sends me the
objects (over E-mail) is by UUENCODEing them.

I know you probarbly would say it's a stupid way to do it, but DO I CARE?
Nope, coz it f**king works! (Sorry!)
And it's obviously the only way for me to do it! Or is it, please tell me...

Okay, that's it

Signed

---------------------------------------------------------------------
- Address: Carsten Berggreen         E-mail: [e-mail] -
-          Hirsevaenget 16A                                         -
-          8464  Galten          "It isn't the equipment alone, it  -
-          Denmark                is also what YOU can do with it!" -
---------------------------------------------------------------------
- A true fan of Amiga, Coca-Cola, Imagine and good looking females! -
---------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Re: Imagine 486 <-> Imagine Amiga comparison
Date: Sat, 29 May 93 09:08:21 MET
From: [e-mail] (Philippe Berard)

    Well, thanks to AIDE, Devon and David for their comments, but it was
    something I was aware of :-) (the double-clocked cpu)

    Now, I still need an answer from an Imagine PC & Amiga user, to know
    which difference in speed there is between the 2 (and with which cpu/
    clock/memory configuration).

Hello watters (watters). On May 27, you have written :

> >     Briefly, I would like to know how well does the PC version of Imagine
> >     compare to the Amiga version ? I've heard that Imagine PC is 3 times
> >     faster on a 486 DX 66Mhz than on a 28Mhz 68040, is this true ?
>
> I would seriously doubt if this is true.

    Yes, I also doubt, that's why I need a real answer.

    Regards,
                                   -- Philippe

.----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
|  Philippe Berard  (French Amiga User)       | UseNet : [e-mail] |
|  "They hold a cup of wisdom,                | -> Please don't send mails   |
|   But there is nothing within" (Kate Bush). |           >50 Ko !           |
`----------------------------------------------------------------------------'


##

Subject: Animating a snake
Date: 3 Jun 1993 14:01:23 U
From: "Shalini Govil" <[e-mail]>

Hi ..
I was trying o animate a snake, what would be the best way to make the
object move in a snake like fashion?
Also is there any where I can get a snake skin type texture map?
Thanks in advance
Shalini


##

Subject: Stars
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 93 13:23:33 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jeffrey Walkup)

Know of a good way to make a starfield in Imagine?

I don't want to use the builtin stars exclusively - for several
reasons - although I might use them in small amounts, makes kind
of a nice parallax effect.

I'm thinking about some sort of random cube-thrower - hopefully
one that will give me a spherical map of stars, with varying
sizes and colors (within a certain range so as not to make them
too big/small or be too off-white).

Either cubes or perfect-spheres, whichever uses less memory and
renders faster.  The shape doesn't matter very much because they
are going to be "bright".

My first attempt was to Explode (f/x) a sphere and Snapshot it.
That didn't look good because  1) the dispersal and size of the
polys were too non-random, and  2) the polys were too .... flat
- they flickered badly when the camera was moved, and  3) they
were all the same color... "randomize colors" is TOO random.

Dragging objects out into space by hand is WAY too tedious...
even God wouldn't want to create a universe that way.

I'd prefer if all the stars were seperate objects [see 'color'
above].

There must be something that could generate some usable random data
that could be imported (via T3D most likely).

--
Jeff Walkup, Digital Animator / Videographer | Energy = Matter = Spacetime
 [e-mail] - San Francisco   |         ERLEICHDA!


##

Date: Thu, 3 Jun 93 18:13:47 MST
From: [e-mail]

>
> Know of a good way to make a starfield in Imagine?
>
> I don't want to use the builtin stars exclusively - for several
> reasons - although I might use them in small amounts, makes kind
> of a nice parallax effect.
>
> I'm thinking about some sort of random cube-thrower - hopefully
> one that will give me a spherical map of stars, with varying
> sizes and colors (within a certain range so as not to make them
> too big/small or be too off-white).
>
> Either cubes or perfect-spheres, whichever uses less memory and
> renders faster.  The shape doesn't matter very much because they
> are going to be "bright".
>
I've done some experimentation with this - if you need large numbers of
small objects, perfect spheres are a big winner if you raytrace.  They
render quickly and use little memory.

> My first attempt was to Explode (f/x) a sphere and Snapshot it.
> That didn't look good because  1) the dispersal and size of the
> polys were too non-random, and  2) the polys were too .... flat
> - they flickered badly when the camera was moved, and  3) they
> were all the same color... "randomize colors" is TOO random.
>
> Dragging objects out into space by hand is WAY too tedious...
> even God wouldn't want to create a universe that way.
>
Actually, this is a great use for ISL.  Just write a algorithm which
generates the coordinates, randomized to taste, and generate the
OBJECT entries for each.  Piece of cake.  :-)

> I'd prefer if all the stars were seperate objects [see 'color'
> above].
>
Create one star of each color/size, select them randomly or perhaps
according to a weighted algorithm in your ISL generator.

> There must be something that could generate some usable random data
> that could be imported (via T3D most likely).
>
I'd just use a restricted random function in a loop - something like this:

    X = random() % starfield_width;
    Y = random() % starfield_height;
    Z = random() % starfield_depth;
    generate_isl_entry_for_a_star();

> --
> Jeff Walkup, Digital Animator / Videographer | Energy = Matter = Spacetime
>  [e-mail] - San Francisco   |         ERLEICHDA!
>
_john


##

Subject: Re: Stars
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 93 22:00:52 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

Makea Arexx program that utilitizes the built-in Randomize function...
Then have the Arexx program make the data required for TDDD and
convert it to an imagine object... Imagine may have an Arexx
port, if so, you can probably have it draw polygons
automatically from a Arexx program. I know some editors do have
Arexx interfaces with this capability, maybe there is some that support
Imagine object format. I think your last guess would be the best
way... I am doing animations with Rayshade 4.0 and Imagine using
programs like TDDD2RAY and TDDD2OFF to transfer objects and
paths.


##

Subject: Re: Stars
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 93 23:06:08 PDT
From: [e-mail] (John T. Grieggs)

>
> Makea Arexx program that utilitizes the built-in Randomize function...
> Then have the Arexx program make the data required for TDDD and
> convert it to an imagine object... Imagine may have an Arexx
> port, if so, you can probably have it draw polygons
> automatically from a Arexx program. I know some editors do have
> Arexx interfaces with this capability, maybe there is some that support
> Imagine object format. I think your last guess would be the best
> way... I am doing animations with Rayshade 4.0 and Imagine using
> programs like TDDD2RAY and TDDD2OFF to transfer objects and
> paths.
>
Imagine has no ARexx capability.  ARexx is a decent way to generate ISL
stages, however.  See my other response to this for a skeleton on how
to do this...

_john


##

Subject: RE: Animating snakes
Date: 4 Jun 1993 08:36:24 U
From: "Oxley David" <[e-mail]>

In message <[e-mail]>, Shivani Govil wrote:

>I was trying to animte a snake in motion,

In the last Imagine Newsletter, they describe how to animate a swimming fish
using the Conform to Path function morphed over a number of frames.  I think
this is probably what you need.  If you can't find the article or didn't
receive the newsletter, I'll try to dig out the details for you.

As I recall, what you do is to add a path that describes the curve of the
snake's body in one position, move the axes for the snake and the path to the
tip of the snake, and conform the snake to the path.  Save this and repeat with
the path in a different layout and then morph between the shapes in the Action
editor.  I think you have to rotate the path axis through 90 degrees or the
conformance doesn't work, but that might just have been me not using the proper
view in the first place :)  I'm sure there's some subtelty I've completely
overlooked, so I should probably find that newsletter :)

>Alos, is there any place I can get the testure of a snake skin from?

Sorry, I don't know where you could look.  In a video by Apple's Technology
Group some years ago, one of the pieces 'Her Majesty's Secret Serpent' had a
behaviourally-animated snake called Frank.  Only thing is that Apple probably
designed the snake-skin themselves rather than map it from a picture.

One thing that worries me though, is that I'm not sure whether Imagine's
flat/wrap mapping (which I presume you'll be using to wrap the snake) will
follow the contours of your snake as it slithers along.  I don't think Imagine
is capable of deforming the map so that it follows the object when the object
is not a cylinder.

Hopefully, I'm wrong :>  Good luck!

Regards,
David Oxley,
Logica UK Ltd.


##

Date: Fri, 04 Jun 93 08:25:38 +0200
From: "( Carsten Berggreen-Denmark )" <[e-mail]>

"[e-mail]" wrote:

> Simulating sand in a ray-tracing is like extracting MIDI sequences
> from digitized sound, it is very near to impossible if you expect
> perfection. I would suggest something like taking a video
> animation dump from real sand blowing away then take the animation
> into a paint program, edit it so only the sand appears. Put one
> plane in your animation with a animation of the sand blowing away
> superimposed on the plane, then use a mask to all that is not sand
> in the animation transparent, then place the plane about 1 or 2 units
> (real close) from the ground (or text) then make an animation of
> an animation in this way... It might fool the people if you don't
> make the illusion too obvious by placing the sand-plane close enough to
> the ground to make it hard to determine if it is real 3D objects
> or a @D object... You don't want any specular light otherwise
> there will be a specular spot on the sand-plane. Just try to
> avoid making the illusion to obvious... The alternative (making
> sand objects) is nearly impossible to implement and unecessary.

(I agree &:-) )


> Having a few grains of the sand catch on the letters would be harder
> to implement because Imagine sees all objects as intersectable...
> at least I have never seen anything in Imagine that checks for
> collisions between objects. I wouldn't know... But I imagine it would
> be hard to simulate...

Well as he metioned above, the idea of using an animated sequence of brushes
is a pretty useable solution to this problem too.

My idea (which I think might work) is to wrap another brush around the object
you want to make the sand appear onto.

Ex.

First frame the brush should be clean. (If you want to make a logo disapear)
and the last frame should be a brush of 'sand'.
Then the actual sequence should morph from blank to filled( or partly filled..)
and with the idea from 'kholland's letter combined with this might be the
solution... (note: I haven't tried this, but let me know if it works, okay? )

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another similar effect I've thought of long time ago, was to let a logo
disapear under water, by move the logo through a ground of water
(or you could raise the 'water' plane/ground).
Perhaps this idea could be used with a plane of sand to cover the logo?

Hope this might be of any help...

and as I wrote above, I ALWAYS like to hear from people who have made a nice
'new' effect by using the old ideas... so here is my address:

Signed
---------------------------------------------------------------------
- Address: Carsten Berggreen         E-mail: [e-mail] -
-          Hirsevaenget 16A                                         -
-          8464  Galten          "It isn't the equipment alone, it  -
-          Denmark                is also what YOU can do with it!" -
---------------------------------------------------------------------
- A true fan of Amiga, Coca-Cola, Imagine and good looking females! -
---------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Realtime animation playback
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 93 08:50:16 -0400
From: [e-mail]

>Date: Mon, 10 May 93 09:04:21 EDT
>From: David Watters <[e-mail]>
>
>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!
>
>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.

David:

   The problem with what you suggest is that they need a dedicated drive
   (and probably controller) anyway in order to assure 30fps playback.
   Since, as you point out, the price difference is small (and slightly
   favors the IDE solution), it's really irrelevant what kind of separate
   disk and controller they make you buy.  You wouldn't be able to use
   your existing stuff anyway.

- Andrew


##

Subject: Re: Animating snakes
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 93 09:22:12 EDT
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> In message <[e-mail]>, Shivani Govil wrote:
> >I was trying to animte a snake in motion,

David Oxley replied:
> In the last Imagine Newsletter, they describe how to animate a swimming fish
> using the Conform to Path function morphed over a number of frames.

For those interested in how this could be accomplished in LightWave.....
The new displacement mapping handles this task quite easily. In fact, in
the new release, there is a demo scene of mine in which I have a school of
sharks swimming by the camera using the same sort of motion. It is simply
accomplised by using a black-white-black gradient image map for the displacement
map. This image is moved across the shark or snake and the pixel values in
the image tell how much to displace the object at any given point. The
difference between shark and snake motion is two parameters: texture size
and displacement amplitude. And texture maps have always followed object
deformations in LightWave.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: DPS and other stuff...
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 93 21:59 GMT0BST-1
From: Jacek Artymiak <[e-mail]>

Hi everybody,

I just did some research on DPS. According to DPS Inc.
its shipping now. The bad news for PAL users is that
its NTSC only ("... give us a call in a month, we may
be able to tell you more...").

DMI Editmaster is going to ship middle of July according to
people there and it comes in both NTSC and PAL. Nice one.

While we are at it, there is a technique called "field rendering"
if my memory serves me well. My question is if I could take
advantage of it using DSP or DMI Editmaster. I would think that
JPEG would destroy the effect but what about DSP format?

TIA,

Jacek


##

Subject: Pictures Uploaded!!!  (Imagine/Essence/Imagine PC)
Date: 5 Jun 1993   00:37:33 GMT
From: RenderStud! <[e-mail]>

    Hey!  You....stop rendering and read this now!

    Okay...now that I have your attention:

    I have just uploaded 3 pictures to wuarchive.wustl.edu into the
/pub/amiga/incoming/imagine/art directory.

    They are all 1024x768 24 bit JPEG images.
    They are:

    1. TEMPLE1.JPG / TEMPLE1.DOC
    2. TEMPLE2.JPG / TEMPLE2.DOC
    3. TRUCK1.JPG  / TRUCK1.DOC

    Temple1/2 were originally going to be called dungeon1/2 but the
first file got aborted....so there is a small dungeon1.jpg.  Please
Igonore this.  I have tried to delete it...  :(

    Anyway, Temple1/Temple2 Jpeg's are nice renderings of a pic you
might like if you are into Dungeons and Dragons or fantasy.  It shows
alot of Essence.  Practically every objects has a texture.

    Truck1.jpg is a picture of a yellow truck taken after one in the
back of this months Video Toaster Magazine.  It was modeled entirely
on Imagine PC.

    I suggest you get the respective .DOC files, as they explain more
how the pictures were made etc....

    Enjoy and let me know what you think!

    Thanks!

        Mike C.


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


##

Subject: Hey! Even more pics uploaded
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 93 22:47:20 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

    I have just re-ftp'd some old pics that were on hubcap before.
1 ended up getting cut short...so it's corrupt.  Anyhow:

    ChimeClk.JPG
    Computer.jpg  <---this one got cut short...don't get it.
    cwru.jpg
    metablob.jpg
    nightair.jpg
    shrine.jpg
    vase.jpg.

    Thats it.  Get the .doc files if you want to know what they are
first.

    Enjoy.



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


##

Subject: Re: Imagine PC Questions
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 93 10:33:31 EST
From: [e-mail] (Yury German)

Hi Mark (Mark Marino), in <[e-mail]> on Jun 2 you wrote:

: Q> From what I've read in the manual (man, I hope this gets a major re-write
:    for 3.0) you can import Brush maps in ilbm/iff format, the only program I
:    have to convert from the more PC-friendly formats (GIF, PCX, BMP) to LBM
:    is CSHOW for Windows.  Are there any other programs to do this conversion
:    (hopefully Non-Windows DOS programs)?

    I think it uses other formats as well. My suggestion is to try and
give every one you have to see if it loads and then find out exactly which
one it does.

: Q) I'm curious as to how one might transfer finished animations to a single
:    frame vcr or laserdisc recorder from the PC (sorry, no Amiga here) ?

    What you would need is one of the NTSC Cards or an encoder. There
are plenty available. Just make sure that the cards go up to a resolution
of 768 x 482 which is roughly NTSC standard with overscan.


##

Subject: Superman never made any money
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 93 2:46:25 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jeffrey Walkup)

There are major problems with the IML right now everyone -- ERLEICHDA
(lighten up!).  I've mailed Dave at both his addresses - gotten no reply
(Ok, so it's only been 8 hours....)

But anyways - here's a real Imagine ML post - my apoligies if you've seen it twice, but I have no control over that...  [DAVE!!  HELLO??]

Know of a good way to make a starfield in Imagine?

I don't want to use the builtin stars exclusively - for several
reasons - although I might use them in small amounts, makes kind
of a nice parallax effect.

I'm thinking about some sort of random cube-thrower - hopefully
one that will give me a spherical map of stars, with varying
sizes and colors (within a certain range so as not to make them
too big/small or be too off-white).

Either cubes or perfect-spheres, whichever uses less memory and
renders faster.  The shape doesn't matter very much because they
are going to be "bright".

My first attempt was to Explode (f/x) a sphere and Snapshot it.
That didn't look good because  1) the dispersal and size of the
polys were too non-random, and  2) the polys were too .... flat
- they flickered badly when the camera was moved, and  3) they
were all the same color... "randomize colors" is TOO random.

Dragging objects out into space by hand is WAY too tedious...
even God wouldn't want to create a universe that way.

I'd prefer if all the stars were seperate objects [see 'color'
above].

There must be something that could generate some usable random data
that could be imported (via T3D most likely).
------------------

So yeah - this is driving me nuts - holding up my current project - HELP!
So [e-mail] seems to be working - reply-to set there -
GOOD LUCK ALL INTREPID IML POSTERS!

--
Jeff Walkup, Digital Animator / Videographer | Energy = Matter = Spacetime
 [e-mail] - San Francisco   |         ERLEICHDA!


##

Subject: Some of my brushes will not appear in imagine.
Date: 05 Jun 1993 12:21:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail]

     I have been trying to set up a scene in a cubical room.
The scene requires that a different brush be applied to each
wall as well as the floor and ceiling.  Each wall is a seperate
object, as is the ceiling and floor.  The room was made by
adding a plane primitive and extruding it.  The resulting
cube was then repeatedly broken up using the split facility to
get the seperate wall, floor, and ceiling objects.  None of
the resulting object axes have been moved from the original
positions.  Several of the brushes appear properly, and the others
do not appear at all.  A brush was added to each seperate
object (panel) of the cube, then repositioned using the edit
brush axis facility.  Each brush was oriented so that it should
have been visible to a camera inside the cube.  Care was taken
that the proper quadrant of the brush axis was over its
corresponding wall panel, and that the brush was on the proper
side (inside) of the panel.  I have seven megs of ram available,
so that does not appear to be a problem.  Each brush is a
85 x 121 ham image.  Even when a single such brush is placed alone
on the floor, and all the other brushes are dropped, nothing will
appear.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I may be overlooking ?
If someone could make me up a real quick cube like this with
brushes inside it, I could compare it with what I have to see
where I may be slipping up......

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


##

Subject: Re: Some of my brushes will not appear in imagine.
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 93 13:18:52 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

[previous post deleted]

    My suggestions would be to :

    a) Make the walls out of simple planes.  That way you KNOW the
        brushmaps will be set properly since 2.0 automagically
        places them for you.  Then just rotate the planes.
    b) also do a quick render of each one to make sure you've got it
right.
    c) Are you ray Tracing?  It could be your world size is set to
small.  This is in the FAQ by the way.



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


##

Subject: Understanding Imagine 2.0 question
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 93 18:58:49 -0400
From: Mark Marino <[e-mail]>

Hi all,

  I just got Steve Worly's Understanding Imagine 2.0 book and it looks
great.  I'd highly recommend it to anyone who's tried to drag their way
through the Imagine manual.  Great work, Steve!

Anyway, I'm wondering about the disk that comes with the book.  I'm
using the PC version of Imagine, and don't have access to an Amiga, so
I was hoping someone could tell me what goodies are on the disk.  I was
also hoping that anything that isn't Amiga specific could be put on an
ftp site (I could allow someone to ftp to me).  All this, is of course,
if Steve has released this stuff into the public domain.

Finally, can someone let me know if there is an archive site containing
Imagine objects, textures, etc.  I'd also like to make a request that
these objects be converted to a format readable on an IBM PC (is there
a utility to extract lha files on a PC???) for those of us unfortunate
enough to not have an Amiga.

tanks,
mark



 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                                                             |
| Mark Marino              | [e-mail]           |  uunet!osf!omar         |
| Open Software Foundation | 11 Cambridge Center    |  Cambridge, MA 02142    |
|_____________________________________________________________________________|


##

Subject: Re: Understanding Imagine 2.0 question
Date: 5 Jun 1993   23:30:59 GMT
From: RenderStud! <[e-mail]>

> Finally, can someone let me know if there is an archive site containing
> Imagine objects, textures, etc.  I'd also like to make a request that
> these objects be converted to a format readable on an IBM PC (is there
> a utility to extract lha files on a PC???) for those of us unfortunate
> enough to not have an Amiga.
>
> tanks,
> mark
>

    Yes, I have LHA for dos.  Works great on lzh and lha files from the
amiga and back and forth.  Maybe I'll put it on wuarchive....



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


##

Subject: Re: Some of my brushes will not appear in imagine.
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 08:34:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

Have you checked your brushes' Y-axis placement?  If you think of the
brush as a thumbtack, with the Y-axis as the spike, the brush has to be
'tacked' into the face of the object where you want it to appear, but NOT
pushed flush with or through the surface.  If your Y-axis is pointing the
wrong way, or the origin of the axes is not above the surface by at least some
small fraction of a unit, the brush won't appear.  I've had this problem
with lots of walls, doing stone dungeon & castle walls, octagonal rooms, etc.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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: Understanding Imagine 2.0 question
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 93 13:26:42 -0400
From: Mark Marino <[e-mail]>

>
>     Yes, I have LHA for dos.  Works great on lzh and lha files from the
> amiga and back and forth.  Maybe I'll put it on wuarchive....
>
>

  I was poking around wuarchive.wustl.edu and found what I was looking
for.  For the benefit of other PC-only people out there here's the
info.

There is an LHA/LZH extractor for the PC on wuarchive in directory
/mirrors/msdos/archivers (or close to that).  The utility is called
"lha213.exe".

Works great for me!


 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                                                             |
| Mark Marino              | [e-mail]           |  uunet!osf!omar         |
| Open Software Foundation | 11 Cambridge Center    |  Cambridge, MA 02142    |
|_____________________________________________________________________________|


##

Subject: Questions on PC Imagine
Date:     Mon, 7 Jun 1993 12:06:51 +0200
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

Hi folks,

PC Imagine claims to offer all the functionality that Imagine on the
Amiga offers. But there seems to be no implementation of Add Font
Object in the Detail Editor.

Then I want to know which picture formats Imagine can use as
Brushmaps, Backdrops and Global Brushmaps.

And last but not least. Are there any people who have experience
in converting complete projects from the amiga to the pc.

There are several obstacles.

First: projects:test.imp/objects -> projects\test.imp\objects

then there are no logical drives on the pc.

Then Imagine PC seems NOT to accept ILBM-24. This seems stuipd to me
as Imagine PC can PRODUCE ILBM-24

Thanks for your help

Hannes

PS: Anyone who has a porting tool from Amiga to Imagine PC please
email me


##

Subject: Re: Questions on PC Imagine
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1993 05:36:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: Edward d Nobles <[e-mail]>

On Mon, 7 Jun 1993, Hannes Heckner wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> Then I want to know which picture formats Imagine can use as
> Brushmaps, Backdrops and Global Brushmaps.
>
> Thanks for your help
>
> Hannes

Hello Hannes:

I called Impulse two Saturdays ago to ask the same question.   The fellow
told me that I could use a TGA or an uncompressed TIFF for a brushmap.   I
had experimented with Deluxe Paint Enhanced (PC version) and found that I
could use a LBM from there as long as it had been saved in the "Old"
format and as long as I didn't mind that all red values would be lost.

He recommended that I get a paint program that saves in uncompressed TIFF
format or that I get Hijacker or some other conversion utility that will
convert to TIFF or TGA.   I am still looking for one I can afford.

Regards,

Jim Nobles


##

Subject: Re: Superman never made any money
Date:     Mon, 7 Jun 1993 16:04:09 +0200
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

>
> There are major problems with the IML right now everyone -- ERLEICHDA
> (lighten up!).  I've mailed Dave at both his addresses - gotten no reply
> (Ok, so it's only been 8 hours....)
>
> But anyways - here's a real Imagine ML post - my apoligies if you've seen it twice, but I have no control over that...  [DAVE!!  HELLO??]
>
> Know of a good way to make a starfield in Imagine?
>
> I don't want to use the builtin stars exclusively - for several
> reasons - although I might use them in small amounts, makes kind
> of a nice parallax effect.
>
> I'm thinking about some sort of random cube-thrower - hopefully
> one that will give me a spherical map of stars, with varying
> sizes and colors (within a certain range so as not to make them
> too big/small or be too off-white).
>
> Either cubes or perfect-spheres, whichever uses less memory and
> renders faster.  The shape doesn't matter very much because they
> are going to be "bright".
>
> My first attempt was to Explode (f/x) a sphere and Snapshot it.
> That didn't look good because  1) the dispersal and size of the
> polys were too non-random, and  2) the polys were too .... flat
> - they flickered badly when the camera was moved, and  3) they
> were all the same color... "randomize colors" is TOO random.
>
> Dragging objects out into space by hand is WAY too tedious...
> even God wouldn't want to create a universe that way.
>
> I'd prefer if all the stars were seperate objects [see 'color'
> above].
>
> There must be something that could generate some usable random data
> that could be imported (via T3D most likely).
> ------------------
>
> So yeah - this is driving me nuts - holding up my current project - HELP!
> So [e-mail] seems to be working - reply-to set there -
> GOOD LUCK ALL INTREPID IML POSTERS!
>
> --
> Jeff Walkup, Digital Animator / Videographer | Energy = Matter = Spacetime
>  [e-mail] - San Francisco   |         ERLEICHDA!
>
There might be a method which will suite your requirements.

First create a normal sphere (F5). Then add a axis. Then make path
on the axis. Then Join Axis with sphere. Then add a simple star
object (try cone with few points). Then Replicate this star object
along the path zou created. And la viola one space layer. To get
a deep space effect you can combine several star layers with different
sized sphere-paths. Also try tubes instead of spheres.

If you have any success in using this method please email me

Thanks
Hannes


##

Subject: Prism
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1993 16:02:38 +0200
From: [e-mail] (Stephen J.Gowdy)

Hi,
   I've been trying with little success to render a prism with a cylindrical
light source entering one face. I've read Steven Worleys book and it suggests
that light sources aren't affected by transparent objects. Can anyone confirm
this? I was trying to see if it would refract light as diffenent wavelengths of
just as one beam.

                    regards,

                    Stephen.


##

Subject: Re: Questions on PC Imagine
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 93 10:15:55 EDT
From: watters <[e-mail]>

> PC Imagine claims to offer all the functionality that Imagine on the
> Amiga offers. But there seems to be no implementation of Add Font
> Object in the Detail Editor.

I think this is an issue of how a pc works with bitmap fonts.
Is there various system fonts or optional bitmap fonts under DOS?  I only
know of the text mode fonts, and there is no way for imagine to load those
except rendering them to a screen and then clipping them out.

> And last but not least. Are there any people who have experience
> in converting complete projects from the amiga to the pc.
>
> There are several obstacles.
>
> First: projects:test.imp/objects -> projects\test.imp\objects
>
> then there are no logical drives on the pc.

On the Amiga side you could set up an assign that points to projects: or if
projects is a assign to a directory on a device (as it should be) then I
would assing C: to the device the projects directory resides on and do all
your amiga work using the path C:projects/
As for the slash, you could edit that (I can't remember if imagine's project
files are ascii - as they should be) or there are some DOS shells that support
the / instead of \ if I am not mistaken.

> Then Imagine PC seems NOT to accept ILBM-24. This seems stuipd to me
> as Imagine PC can PRODUCE ILBM-24

Not as stupid as using a DOS box for graphics work.
(Sorry! Sorry, I couldn't help myself)

           .__    __
David    ~   \_--'  |@,__
Watters   ~   ( )-______-()`-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering

          Congradulations Emerson Fittipaldi, Chevrolet, and Penske!!!
                    -=+ 1993 Indianapolis 500 Winners +=-


##

Subject: Re: Questions on PC Imagine
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1993 08:04:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

On Mon, 7 Jun 1993, Hannes Heckner wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> PC Imagine claims to offer all the functionality that Imagine on the
> Amiga offers. But there seems to be no implementation of Add Font
> Object in the Detail Editor.
>
> Then I want to know which picture formats Imagine can use as
> Brushmaps, Backdrops and Global Brushmaps.

As far as I've been able to figure out, the only way to get font objects
from the PC side into Imagine is to type the text you want into a paint
program that will output in TIFF format, then convert that TIFF file using
Imagine PC.  PCs just don't handle fonts the way Amigas do.

I still haven't had any luck using TGA format, but TIFF 5.0 has been
working fine.

> And last but not least. Are there any people who have experience
> in converting complete projects from the amiga to the pc.
>
> There are several obstacles.
>
> First: projects:test.imp/objects -> projects\test.imp\objects
>
> then there are no logical drives on the pc.
>

There are a number of problems: logical drives, directory structures,
naming conventions, the Attributes RGB misloading, to name a few.  If you
REALLY HAVE TO use every function on both platforms for the same project
(why? I play with objects on both, but serious rendering is only done on
the faster machine...), you might try the messy but functional approach of
putting EVERYTHING in the root directory:objects, staging, stills, anims,
textures, brushes... That way you don't have to convert the paths from PC
to Amiga syntax.  I don't advise it unless you like spending a lot of time
tracking down and cleaning up after each project; I recommend leaving full
project work on one platform, and only doing bits and pieces on the other
platform.  It's just too much of a headache to convert everything at once.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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: Stars
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 93 09:32:54 MDT
From: [e-mail] (Brian Ridout)


    Know of a good way to make a starfield in Imagine?

    I'm thinking about some sort of random cube-thrower - hopefully
    one that will give me a spherical map of stars, with varying
    sizes and colors (within a certain range so as not to make them
    too big/small or be too off-white).

I tried to do this once and was never satisfied.  Way too slow and you
need so many objects.

I had better luck with the dots texture on a large sphere. This looked
good and the colors were good.  However;  It would not pan.  The stars
would blink on and off but not like a twinkle.  Looked pretty bad.
Still images looked great.

    I'd prefer if all the stars were seperate objects [see 'color'
    above].

    --
    Jeff Walkup, Digital Animator / Videographer | Energy = Matter = Spacetime
     [e-mail] - San Francisco   |         ERLEICHDA!

If any one has a better idea I would love to here it.

Brian Ridout
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Prism
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 93 13:10:05 EDT
From: watters <[e-mail]>

> Hi,
>    I've been trying with little success to render a prism with a cylindrical
> light source entering one face. I've read Steven Worleys book and it suggests
> that light sources aren't affected by transparent objects. Can anyone confirm
> this? I was trying to see if it would refract light as diffenent wavelengths
> of just as one beam.

Steves book is correct, imagine does not take into effect the different wave-
lengths of light.  Putting 2 seconds of thought into it, I would trace three
rays per pixel, R, G, & B and have the index of refraction represent green and
then have the red and blue be offset from that based on their relative
difference in wavelength.
There is probably an easier way to do this.  One that probably works even. :)

           .__    __
David    ~   \_--'  |@,__
Watters   ~   ( )-______-()`-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering

          Congradulations Emerson Fittipaldi, Chevrolet, and Penske!!!
                    -=+ 1993 Indianapolis 500 Winners +=-


##

Subject: Re: Questions on PC Imagine
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 93 13:09:18 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

    Well as for fonts, as someone pointed out, there is now DOS
equivalent.  Therefore, the function isn't implemented.

>>
>> then there are no logical drives on the pc.
>

    Actually here is a nice dos trick assuming you have 5.0 or up.

    ASSIGN:  assigns a logical name or driver letter to a real drive
or directoryt.


    Thus, assign f: c:\public
    would make it so if you hit F:, you are really at c:\public.

    maybe this would help.


    This is useful for install things over floppies since you can
assign over real drivesm you could even assign a, as b, and b: as a:.
Thus, you could copy all your floppies to a hard drive, and then install
from that much quicker.

    However, i think the assign statment tends to slow things down
ab bit sometimes.



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


##

Subject: Re: DPS and other stuff...
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 93 13:17:57 EDT
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> The bad news for PAL users is that its NTSC only

They are already working on PAL. It will follow the NTSC release very shortly.

> DMI Editmaster is going to ship middle of July according to
> people there and it comes in both NTSC and PAL.

They said 2 months last september and every other time they have been asked
for a release date. An actual release date doesn't seem to mean much to DMI.

> While we are at it, there is a technique called "field rendering"
> if my memory serves me well. My question is if I could take
> advantage of it using DSP or DMI Editmaster.

The DPS board most certainly takes advantage of field rendering. It can both
input and output either seperate fields or interlaced frames. In the case of
LightWave, it outputs a single interlaced IFF24 frame composed of two fields
seperated by 1/60th second. This file is directly written to the board which
is converted internally to its own format for storage on the dedicated IDE
drive. Most likely, the fields are internally seperated before compression,
which by the way is not JPEG (but somewhat similar to JPEG).
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Re: Prism
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 93 14:44:30 EDT
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

Stephen J.Gowdy writes:
>  I've been trying with little success to render a prism with a cylindrical
>light source entering one face. I've read Steven Worleys book and it suggests
>that light sources aren't affected by transparent objects. Can anyone confirm
>this?I was trying to see if it would refract light as diffenent wavelengths of
>just as one beam.

Contrary to what many people believe, ray-tracers are a far cry from modeling
real world light interaction/properties and no commercial tracer I am
aware of deals with light as a continuous or multi-wavelength phenomina.
So no, you can't model prismatic diffraction with Imagine.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Bill Clinton's Email Path
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 93 14:00:39 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dale R Rogers)

    This was sent to me so I thought I'd pass it on.



|   June 7, 1993
|
|   Nukers:
|
|    On CNN this weekend they broadcast the email paths of both the
|   President and Vice-President. The mail will be screened just like
|   paper mail. Here they are:
|
|   [e-mail]
|
|   [e-mail]
|
|   Happy email-ing!


    I hope they've got a big disk drive.


##

Subject: Re: Bill Clinton's Email Path (fwd)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 93 14:15:10 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dale R Rogers)

> June 7, 1993
>
>     On CNN this weekend they broadcast the email paths of both the
>   President and Vice-President. The mail will be screened just like
>   paper mail. Here they are:
>
>     [e-mail]
>
>     [e-mail]



    I think you'll get better response if you use

        [e-mail]
    &&/||    [e-mail]




>     Happy email-ing!


##

Subject: Re: Prism
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 93 15:11:32 EDT
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

David Watters writes:
>Putting 2 seconds of thought into it, I would trace three
>rays per pixel, R, G, & B and have the index of refraction represent green and
>then have the red and blue be offset from that based on their relative
>difference in wavelength.

However, this will merely yield 3 discreet points rather than the continuous
spectrum that would result in real life. For a more visually accurate
representation using a dicreet wavelength model (ie. digital), one would have
to trace possibly hundreds of wavelengths to emulate light's continuous nature.
This hardly seems practical so I imagine some sort of analog model is probably
preferable. I think you needed an extra 2 seconds of thought there Dave :-)
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Re: DPS and other stuff...
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 93 16:41:29 EDT
From: watters <[e-mail]>

> From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> > DMI Editmaster is going to ship middle of July according to
> > people there and it comes in both NTSC and PAL.
>
> They said 2 months last september and every other time they have been asked
> for a release date. An actual release date doesn't seem to mean much to DMI.

I was in contact with DMI about using their board as a digital recording
solution in a product we were working on.  In March they told me we would
be able to get one no later than the first of April.

It is my understanding that DMI's problems are related to C-A, Inc.'s problem
with getting the A4091/A4000T SCSI-II FAST controller out.  C-A, Inc.'s
problem has to do with a bug found in the Buster chip.

I don't see DMI's board being an option until C-A, Inc. irons out their
SCSI-II situation if the information I recieved is correct.

           .__    __
David    ~   \_--'  |@,__
Watters   ~   ( )-______-()`-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering

          Congradulations Emerson Fittipaldi, Chevrolet, and Penske!!!
                    -=+ 1993 Indianapolis 500 Winners +=-


##

Subject: Re(2): DPS and other stuff...
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 93 22:09 GMT0BST-1
From: Jacek Artymiak <[e-mail]>

In-Reply-To:  <[e-mail]>
>> The bad news for PAL users is that its NTSC only
>They are already working on PAL. It will follow the NTSC release very shortly.

The people at DPS told me to call them in a month of so... That ain't shortly
to me.. On the other hand it may be considering the time we had to wait for
any info about OpalVision modules.

>They said 2 months last september and every other time they have been asked
>for a release date. An actual release date doesn't seem to mean much to DMI.

Thats a pity. I'd like to know more about their products.

>The DPS board most certainly takes advantage of field rendering. It can both

Thanks! I've heard its possible to simulate field rendering by interlacing two
images. Is that so? I use Imagine and have no hopes of using LightWave.

I expect to have a look at the IVS MovieMaker setup soon. I know its not the
broadcast quality but it looks like a dream for pre-production, editing jobs.

 ___________________________________________________
|                                                   |
| Jacek Artymiak:                                   |
| e-mail to: [e-mail]          |
|                                                   |
| Sender: Space Station ME - 93001                  |
`---------------------------------------------------'

Jacek


##

Subject: Re: Prism
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 93 21:08:44 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Thomas E. Smith)

I have an idea that I think will work. Though it laborious to do (sigh):

Do 7 renders of the same scene with the light source being the 7 colors
of the rainbow in each of the renders. Then for the blue end of the spectrum
give the transparent objects a slightly lower index of refraction, and the
reddish colors will get a higher index of refraction.

Then combine the pictures using DCTV or something. It should work. If you
try it let me know how it goes.

                                                            Tom Smith


##

Subject: Prism
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1993 22:51:19 -0500
From: [e-mail] (William E. Costello)

   Date: Mon, 7 Jun 93 21:08:44 CDT
   From: [e-mail] (Thomas E. Smith)


>   I have an idea that I think will work. Though it laborious to do (sigh):
>
>   Do 7 renders of the same scene with the light source being the 7 colors
>   of the rainbow in each of the renders. Then for the blue end of the spectrum
>   give the transparent objects a slightly lower index of refraction, and the
>   reddish colors will get a higher index of refraction.
>
>   Then combine the pictures using DCTV or something. It should work. If you
>   try it let me know how it goes.

Along the same lines, you could make use the stage editor to create all the frames.
start with the angle of refraction low, and the color of the light blue in the
first frame. Then set the angle of refraction high, and the color red in the last.
The more frames in the middle the more smooth the color transition will be.  Of course
you will still have to use a paint program to combine all the frames into one picture.
I think this will work, but he you never know until you try.

Bill Costello


##

Subject: Miscellaneous
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 93 07:35:25 +0300
From: [e-mail]

'ello
     -)
    o

**quote**
From: "( Carsten Berggreen-Denmark )" <[e-mail]>
> Project-Forms-Detail-Cycle-Action-Stage-Action-Stage-Project-View Imagine.
                          ^^^^^
I saw you "complain" ....  hmmm you'r over reacting in the line above...
it's only:
Project-Forms-Detail-Cycle-Action-Stage-Action-Project-View Imagine
and that's nothing to complain about... &:-)  &:-)
**End of quote**

I'm in no way complaining. I actually wanted to show the relative ease of
working with Imagine. From what I figured out till now, Real 2.0 is MUCH
more complicated.

**quote**
Still Real-3D sounds cool, but again, is it the same fun if EVERYBODY can make
the same effects?  I doubt it...
**end of quote***

to quote you once again,
-          8464  Galten          "It isn't the equipment alone, it  -
-          Denmark                is also what YOU can do with it!" -

When you get a lot more options, you may create more and develop that wisdom
of techniques.

**quote**
Subject sez it all, I'd like to volunteer my services to do an object
for the restaurant project, can someone forward me the details?
**end of quote**

Yes! Yes! I read in the old compendium, (brought to me by Ronen Borshack -
Thanks, Ronen) that you were discussing building a virtual 'community'.
Everyone gives his room object, and you render it and put it in one
animation. Did it make it to 'A CINEMA NEAR YOU' yet? tell me more about
the restaurant project, I'd love to get involved!

**off the topic**
I'm in the closing stages of a SCALA presentation which involves two
adjacent screens. It's for a gala evening, with competition and prizes. The
two screens present ONE wide picture, the category, then the left one
displays the same picture on the whole screen, and the right one the
winners. Very exciting.
Well, I like it, anyway.

HermoNir, Nir Hermoni

(give me some time, I'll get to a proper signature...)


##

Subject: Re: Stars
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 93 22:52:44 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jeffrey Walkup)

> First create a normal sphere (F5). Then add a axis. Then make path
> on the axis. Then Join Axis with sphere. Then add a simple star
> object (try cone with few points). Then Replicate this star object
> along the path zou created. And la viola one space layer. To get
> a deep space effect you can combine several star layers with different
> sized sphere-paths. Also try tubes instead of spheres.

Yes!  This works like a charm!  You don't even have to do the "make axis
make path, join" step - you can just Replicate your object along *ANY*
other object - simply type the name of the object into the "Path" box.
I didn't know you could do this!  It's quite interesting actually, if
you've not tried it, you should.  I think there are a lot of
possibilities - sure makes some nice stars anyway!

--
Jeff Walkup, Digital Animator / Videographer | Energy = Matter = Spacetime
 [e-mail] - San Francisco   |         ERLEICHDA!


##

Subject: Re: Re(2): DPS and other stuff...
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 93 13:38:49 EDT
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> I've heard its possible to simulate field rendering by interlacing two
> images. Is that so?

It is possible. If you render 60 frames per second of action, and then toss
out the even numbered scan lines for the odd frames and the odd lines for
the even frames, and finally interlace the odd and even pairs together, you
will achieve the desired effect. There are perhaps a couple ways of doing
this with the current crop of image processing packages. Ofcourse your
render time will double due to the extra rendering of the eventually
discarded scan lines. And no, you can't simply render at 752 x 240 for each
field and then combine because the image will then jitter vertically.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: StarFields
Date: Tue,  8 Jun 93 18:26:45 PDT
From: [e-mail]

In regards to the discussion on star-fields....

Have you tried making a star-field animation in DPaint or whatever
and then mapping it on a simple plane? Renders quickly, looks pretty
good. I did a rotating planet in a star-field that way for an end title
and it worked great.

**********************************************************************
*"I do not see any mention of God in your description of the workings*
* of the Universe"  (Napoleon)                                       *
*"Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis." (Laplace)                *
**********************************************************************
[e-mail]
(Bill Carey)


##

Subject: Starfield
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 93 10:45:51 +0300
From: [e-mail]

CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCAAAAAAAA

'ello aLL

Concerning stars - what I know is a Steve Worley's technique, from
Understanding Imagine 2.0 or from the IML compendium. Here goes:

Create a 4-sided pyramid. That's the simpllest object you can see from every
direction. Modify it's attributes to whatever you like. Copy-paste the
pyramid, place it near the first one, rotate the clone some x degrees on
all axes to distort symetry. Join the objects.
Copy the object, paste it, rotate it, join. Repeat that process until you
have many pyramids, scattered randomly all over.
Now you can add, for example, a random pattern of gray-white tones, by
applying a brushmap to the object.

I think this is the simplest way to go. Just make sure you don't get too
close to the stars- clear an area in the middle of the starfield where the
action should take place. Pyramid stars can be interesting, but not very
realistic.

Nir Hermoni, signing OF--


##

Subject: grass
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 93 13:47:36 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Shayne White -- BA/ITAS - Boston )

Hi,
        I'm starting a project that will require a pasture, as in
a grassy field.  Has anyone done this type of simulation in the
past?  Any info would be appreciated.

SHayne


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+  SHAYNE WHITE - STANDARD DISCLAIMER ....                   +
+  AMIGA 2000, RCS FUSION FORTY, 7 MEGS RAM, 213MB MAXTOR    +
+  [e-mail]                                        +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


##

Subject: grass
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 93 16:08:23 EST
From: Adam Benjamin <[e-mail]>

In a previous post [e-mail] wrote:

>I'm starting a project that will require a pasture, as in a grassy
>field.  Has anyone done this type of simulation in the past?  Any
>info would be appreciated.

Well, depending on what you are doing, a simple green plane with a
roughness value in the attributes can work for simple grass.  In fact
I made a short animation of a truck wizzing down the road and I didn't
even have to move the ground thanks to the "feature" built into the
roughness attribute.
The "feature" I'm refering to is that roughness doesn't remain the
same between frames, I.E. you can't use it on non moving anims.

Of course I'm posting this from work, so I could be all wet.  But
that's the way I remember it.

*************************************************************
* 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: grass
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 93 15:03:46 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jeffrey Walkup)

>         I'm starting a project that will require a pasture, as in
> a grassy field.  Has anyone done this type of simulation in the
> past?  Any info would be appreciated.

The way I did this was to draw a grass texture, using green as the
'grass' and red/brown for the 'dirt'.  Then I extracted the brown parts
(with a stencil), converted them to grays, and used that as an altitude
map, complementing the grass color map.  This gave me raised grass with
brown dirt below.  Looks fine if you don't get *too* close.

--
Jeff Walkup, Digital Animator / Videographer | Energy = Matter = Spacetime
 [e-mail] - San Francisco   |         ERLEICHDA!


##

Subject: DPS-AR questions, anyone got the answers?
Date: 9 Jun 1993   23:43:35 GMT
From: RenderStud! <[e-mail]>

    Hi all in renderland!

    I have beem trying to contact DPS with some questions about their
Personal Animation Recorder.  However, as they are in the same time
zone, and I am working over the summer almost all day, it is a bit
hard to get in touch.

    Anyhow, I have a couple of questions , and since they haven't
replied to my FAX yet, I figured I'd ask the list here in case someone
else knows.

    Well here they are,  I'll break them in to 2 groups, hardware and
software.  There's a couple in each.

HARDWARE:

1.  Is it shipping yet, or what is it's planned release date?
2.  What other IDE (smaller) would be reccommend or is ANY IDE drive
    really ok?
3.  For the above drive in 2, about how much info would it hold?
4.  Does the system have a BlackBurst/Sync INPUT? to all allow it to be
    synced to other devices.
5.  Does it have a sync output with RGB?
6.  Is there any type of Demo tape available esp. on SVHS?

SOFTWARE:
1.  How does the software convert images?  i.e.:  If you drag/drop or
    save an IFF to the drive, will some type of program intercept it
    and convert it on the fly?  Or is there some utility needed?
2.  Is there a needed utility to re-read the data from the drive in IFF?
3.  MOST IMPORTANT...for animation, can it
        a) pause on 1 frame for any length of time
        b) be told to play loops of frames
        c) better yet, have a script file or something similar to have
            a scene where a and b can be done over and over in any order
            etc...
4.  Related to 3, how or can you even insert a frame?  i.e.: are frames
    numbered?  And if so does it have to be played in order?  And if so
    is there a utility to re-number frames for insertions?  How about
    deleting a segment?

    Of all of these questions, 3 and 4 are the most critical.  I cannot
see having this type of device without the ability to pick and choose
what gets played and at what frame rate for different portions etc...
Imagine making some anims, Playing them back later, and then realizing you
need to lengthen the middle part, or need to insert something.

    I really hope this is available.  I can't believe this info isn't on
the literature i got.  Oh well.  If anyone has ANY answers to ANY of these
questions, please please please please post here or send e-mail to me!

            Thanks alot!

                Mike C.
                aka RenderStud
                [e-mail]


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


##

Subject: grass
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 93 15:56:23 -0500
From: [e-mail]

One of the Amiga magazines (Amazing Computing - I think) had a nice article
about creating tall grass for Imagine rendering a few months ago.  The
author used altitude maps as I recall.  Maybe someone out there  (who
actually has that issue - I just peeked at the article) could help you out!
   __
  /  \                        \                /            |      |
 |                             \              /     o       |    --+--
 |       _                      \            /          _   | _    |
 |      / \  | _  |    |         \    /\    /  | _  |  / \  |/ \   |
 |     (   ) |/ \ |    |          \  /  \  /   |/ \ | (   ) |   |  |
  \__/  \_/| |     \__/|           \/    \/    |    |  \_/| |   |  |
-----------------------+----------------------------------+-----------
                       |                                  |
CL Wright              |                                  |
[e-mail]     \_/                                \_/
Pecten International Company (a wholly owned subsidiary of Shell Oil Co)


##

Subject: 3D-ROM, InterChange v3.0
Date: 09 Jun 93 22:36:49 EDT
From: John Foust / Syndesis Corporation <[e-mail]>

To: >internet: [e-mail]

We're in the midst of cleaning up the Syndesis mailing list in
preparation for the newsletter that announces the release of the
"Syndesis 3D-ROM", our CDROM collection of more than 500 freely
distributable 3D models.

The 3D-ROM is a demonstration of the translation abilities of
InterChange Plus, our system for converting between 3D file formats.
All objects are present as LightWave objects and scenes, Imagine
PC/Amiga, 3D Studio .3DS, AutoCAD DXF (3DFACEs) and Wavefront .obj.
It's also got more than 400 tileable, wrappable texture maps, plus
the message archives of the Imagine and LightWave mailing lists.

The next Syndesis newsletter will also announce InterChange Plus v3.0.
We've added a full ARexx interface, added 49 more InterFonts, among
other enhancements.

If you'd like to find out about these products, we'd be glad to add
you to our mailing list.  Please send me your name, address and phone
via private e-mail.  (Remember, don't reply to the mailing list.)


##

Subject: Re: grass
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 93 20:46:47 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    Hi,
            I'm starting a project that will require a pasture, as in
    a grassy field.  Has anyone done this type of simulation in the
    past?  Any info would be appreciated.

    SHayne
------------------------
There was an example in a early (say about a year or two ago)
Amazing Computing magazine about doing grassy fields in Imagine, in fact.
If you can't find this issue, I will try to track it down in my
collection... It is the best magazine for the Amiga in existence
and I suggest everyone get a 3 year subscription. Actually you get
Amiga WHirled because of the advertisements and Amazing computing
for the articles... Amiga Whirled probably doesn't have a clue
why they still exist, I just said why.

Anyways, I will look for the article... I'm not at home right now,
but I loaned my monitor out to a friend who just got a Amiga 3000T
from Creative Computing for 1200 bucks... Makes me sick,
I have an Amiga 3000 16/50 that I bought for 2300 dollars about 1.5 years
agoi on student discount, and my friend gets a 50 pound
tower case complete with a speaker and SCSI
terminator, 200 Meg Quantum, 5 megs of ram and a 25MHz 68030/68882 for
1200 bucks... Just makes me sick ( ;-) ).

Kiernan

(Now, I don't believe half the Amiga users when they say something
like "CBM is not able to do that", that's pure BS... "CBM won't".
They are business people. Took me 6 years to arrive at that conclusion.)


##

Subject: RE: grass
Date: 10 Jun 1993 14:14:13 U
From: "Oxley David" <[e-mail]>

In article <[e-mail]> Shayne White wrote:
>
>        I'm starting a project that will require a pasture, as in
>a grassy field.  Has anyone done this type of simulation in the
>past?  Any info would be appreciated.

I have a suggestion, which involves Essence and a digitised picture of a field
of grass.  Not that I've used it yet, but one of the Essence textures causes a
mapping to ignore the alignment of the object it is mapped on to.  So, if you
could get an image of a field (or maybe a short sequence of images of grass
swaying in a breeze, if the grass is long) and texture-map it onto a simple
plane using the appropriate Essence texture (I can't remember its name), you
might be able to convey the impression that your scene actually contains a
field of grass!

Just a thought :)

Regards,
David Oxley,
Logica UK Ltd.


##

Subject: Re: 3D-ROM, InterChange v3.0
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1993 08:03:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

The 3D-ROM sounds great.  One suggestion/question: Is there a conversion
program for the IBM PC to convert IFF files to TIFF, PCX, GIF, BMP or
any other common bitmap format?  If there is such a beast, I think
including it on the 3D-ROM would be a good idea.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Date: Thu, 10 Jun 93 11:52:26 MST
From: [e-mail]

To: >internet: [e-mail]

There seems to be some confusion: the "mailing list" in question is a
snail mail, US Postal Service, on-paper newsletter.  It is not an
electronic mail mailing list.  Send your mailing address to receive
the next issue of the Syndesis newsletter.

To answer the other most popular questions, yes, this disc can be
used on any computer that reads ISO-9660 CDROMs: Mac, PC, Amiga,
Atari, NeXT, SGI, etc.  (You can use it with Imagine PC, barring
whatever lurking bugs that Impulse still has when reading
Amiga-format objects in Imagine PC.)


##

Subject: Re: grass
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1993 03:22:17 +1000 (EST)
From: Nikola Vukovljak <[e-mail]>

On Wed, 9 Jun 1993, Shayne White -- BA/ITAS - Boston wrote:

>
>
>
> Hi,
>         I'm starting a project that will require a pasture, as in
> a grassy field.  Has anyone done this type of simulation in the
> past?  Any info would be appreciated.
>
> SHayne
>
>
A friend of mine used Essence textures to get the look of grass. I think
that he used the bump texture

Nik.

[e-mail]


##

Date: Thu, 10 Jun 93 13:08:30 MST
From: [e-mail]

Okay,
for some reason, I thought having ten letters in my mailbox about grass was
hilarious, so I laughed, and now everyone in the lab is staring at me.
Here's my contribution:
if you want really really detailed grass, like every blade, here is an idea:
create a flat outline of grass clumps (kind of like a stage flat) and scatter
them around whatever kind of flat grass you want.  See, you said 'pasture', not
neatly mown southern California lawn.  Pasture makes me think of cows and
people chewing on weed tips and talking with a funny habit of extended
syllables.  Lots of spit, cowshit, and bugs the size of hamburgers.  I would
also suggest you give the 'flat element' to your grass some rises and dips,
and you can use the altitude concept with the magnetism on a flat plane.
To make it look better, raise LARGE areas to a certain height, then smooth
the level transitions so that you don't have gourad cliffs (only, what are
gourad cliffs?).  See, pastures are at least 3-4 feet deep.  if you sit down in
them, you cannot be seen.  It's like nature's shag carpet.  If you want to
really spiff up your panel thickets, try something like this:

front view:

  /\ /| /\ |\ ||
 /  V |/  \| \||
|              |
|              |
|______________|

side view:

    ||
   /||\
  | || |
  | || |
  |_||_|

top view:

      |
  |   |    |
==============
  |   |    |
      |

the use of flat side panels makes the object look thick from all sides.
I omitted the planes on the top.  I figured you wouldn't be flying a
helicopter camera.

If I am totally off-base with this, sorry.  I thought you were doing something
low to the ground, like a cow-interview or a documentary on burger bugs or
something.

    If you are just doing something flat, yeah, use a texture.  Make the
texture with close shades of yellow, off-white, and blue green.  I doubt you
can find grass that is purely one color, and I really doubt you can find
a pasture that is one color.  If you want to go crazy, you could make some
stalk weeds, out of a bent tube extrusion and something zig-zaggish at
the base for a clump.  When making the ground map, if you want it to seem
alive and inviting and you are not imitating the topography of Sarasota, FL
(max height in the county is 2 feet!!!!), build some raises and dips with
irregular patterning, but with about the same height of raise or dip.  ANy
more than that will make the variety in scale suggest a larger scene or
environment.

-Joe Solinsky
"What are you lauging at?"
"People are mailing me about grass."
"It could be worse-- it could be sod."


##

Subject: IDE vs. SCSI
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 93 13:04:49 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dale R Rogers)

    What does IDE stand for?

    I know SCSI is Small Computer Systems Interface and that is a
    standard peripheral configuration.  I am assuming IDE is a similar
    concept.  Can both exist on the same system?  I ask because I
    already have a SCSI controller in my 2500/30.  I am interested in
    the DPS harddrive animation system and realize it needs an IDE
    interface.  I need to know what that entails so I can plan accordingly.

    Thanks,

    Dale





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


##

Subject: Re: DPS-AR questions, anyone got the answers?
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 93 15:54:56 EDT
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> 1.  Is it shipping yet, or what is it's planned release date?

It is shipping now since last week.

> 2.  What other IDE (smaller) would be reccommend or is ANY IDE drive
>     really ok?

Only VERY fast IDE drives will work with it and the only one that has been
qualified thus far is the Seagate 3600A 500MB at about $780 street price.
I'm hoping that the Micropolis 2112A 1.2GB is approved since I would like
greater animation capacity.

> 3.  For the above drive in 2, about how much info would it hold?

500MB hold 3-5 minutes.

> 5.  Does it have a sync output with RGB?

There is no RGB output. Any video output must obviously provide a sync signal.

> 6.  Is there any type of Demo tape available esp. on SVHS?

There is a demo tape that is being shipped with the product. In fact a couple
of my test animations are on it (a scene cut from Fred Floaty and the Furnace
animation test). You may be able to get DPS to ship you a copy.

> SOFTWARE:
> 1.  How does the software convert images?  i.e.:  If you drag/drop or
>     save an IFF to the drive, will some type of program intercept it
>     and convert it on the fly?  Or is there some utility needed?

You write images to it as though it were a standard hard drive. It does the
conversion for you on the fly (ie no additional utility is needed).

> 2.  Is there a needed utility to re-read the data from the drive in IFF?

As above, you read from it like an HD device as well.

> 3.  MOST IMPORTANT...for animation, can it
>     a) pause on 1 frame for any length of time

My understanding is that this is not a problem.

>     b) be told to play loops of frames

Because animation frames must be located sequentially on the disk, loop
operation (which is possible) can cause a glitch when jumping to a non-
contiguous location. Apparently the software includes the ability to copy
blocks of images to other locations to allow glitchless looping at the cost
of drive space.

>     c) better yet, have a script file or something similar to have
>     a scene where a and b can be done over and over in any order etc...

As mentioned above, frames must be sequential on the drive for glitch free
operation. This is why DPS is not pursuing the non-linear editing market.

> 4.  Related to 3, how or can you even insert a frame?

I'm not sure how that works yet.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Re: grass
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 93 14:58:11 CDT
From: Wayne Haufler <[e-mail]>

> On Wed, 9 Jun 1993, Shayne White -- BA/ITAS - Boston wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >         I'm starting a project that will require a pasture, as in
> > a grassy field.  Has anyone done this type of simulation in the
> > past?  Any info would be appreciated.
> >
> > SHayne
> >
> A friend of mine used Essence textures to get the look of grass. I think
> that he used the bump texture
>
> Nik.
>
> [e-mail]
>

I used a combination of Roughness and Essence Bump texture, but it
was only for a rough still of a backyard scene.

Your approach might depend on your camera's point of view of the ground.
Will the camera be pretty much at eye level and fairly close to the ground?
Or will it be mostly overhead?  That is, sideview or top view?  If the former,
then the previously mentioned technique from the magazine (I'll try to dig
up my copy) would work.

I think the article's technique mapped onto the sides (and tops) of various
'chunks' of earth on top of a ground plane, each chunk at different distances
from the camera.  But it was a broken-up marshy scene, rather than a
smooth prairie scene.

Hope this helps some.

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


##

Subject: IDE drive for DPS PAR (was Re: IDE vs. SCSI)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1993 06:05:01 +0800
From: watters <[e-mail]>

>     What does IDE stand for?

I was told once that it stood for Integrated Digital Expansion, I
was also told it was for Intelligent Disk (Drive) Expansion.
We are a bit biased to SCSI around here so when I have asked in the past I
always got I Don't care Either...IDE.

>Can both exist on the same system?

Yes.

>  I ask because I
>     already have a SCSI controller in my 2500/30.  I am interested in
>     the DPS harddrive animation system and realize it needs an IDE
>     interface.

It has it's own IDE interface onboard.  The DPS PAR with work in a system
that has a SCSI controller.

I hate to make a plug, but if people are planning on getting a drive for
the DPS Personal Animation Recorder... I strongly suggest you get in touch
with the company I work for as we are a distributor for many high-end drive
vendors including HP and the better Seagate stuff and I believe the
Seagate 3600A is  the only drive that has been qualified so far.
I will own a DPS PAR myself so you will have some experienced technical
support if you get the drive here.

Believe me... I don't care if you get the drive here or not... the money
doesn't go into my pocket... although I would enjoy getting to talk to a lot
of Amiga people that need help instead of a day full of Unix dweebs. :)

While we are at it... if you need any large hard disks, MagnetoOptical drives,
or tape (4mm DDS/DAT, 8mm, etc.) give Cranel a call because you will get
some decent pricing from a distributor and I will get to talk to a lot more
of you!  We also sell multi-Terabyte optical systems if you are rendering
a lot! :)

Cranel's number is [phone] or [phone]
You can find info and adds from Cranel in most Unix and Imaging Rags such
as SunWorld and Imaging Magazine.

Hope this wasn't too bad... I just hate that we don't sell to many Amiga
users... some Universities here and there that we are already under contract
with but that is it.

             _      __
David    ~  |_|_---'  |@,__
Watters   ~   ( )-_______-()`-

--
David R. Watters ([e-mail])    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering

          Congratulations Emerson Fittipaldi, Chevrolet, and Penske!!!
                    -=+ 1993 Indianapolis 500 Winners +=-


##

Subject: Re: IDE vs. SCSI
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 93 16:56:28 EDT
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

>     I am interested in
>     the DPS harddrive animation system and realize it needs an IDE
>     interface.

The IDE interface is built right into the DPS board and the drive is dedicated
to it. No additional IDE controller is needed.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Re: grass
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 93 13:59:55 PDT
From: "Charles Congdon" <[e-mail]>

On Wed, 9 Jun 1993, Shayne White -- BA/ITAS - Boston wrote:

>
>
>
> Hi,
>         I'm starting a project that will require a pasture, as in
> a grassy field.  Has anyone done this type of simulation in the
> past?  Any info would be appreciated.
>
> SHayne
>
>

    The Amazing Computing article featuring the creation of grasslands was
written by Marc Hoffman, and appears in the April 1993 issue.  Marc uses a
combination of color, filter, and altitude maps applied to a number of planes
at different distances to simulate grass.  While great for static scenes, this
technique is not very well suited to animations with a great deal of camera
motion (unless you are an amazing artist who can redraw the brushmaps from all
viewpoints in the animation).

    For animations, Essence is a reasonable solution, so long as you don't
get close enough to the grass to see it is simply bumps.  It also depends
on the sort of grass you want - Essence (or any form of alitude mapping that
is not used in conjunction with filter and color maps) is great for lawns and
golf courses, but not too good for waving fields of wheat.

    For "realistic" grass that has actual height and can be veiwed from all
angles, you need actual grass objects.  Unfortunately, you need between 1000
and 5000 blades of grass (at 3-5+ points each) to get something that doesn't
resemble a desert.  This uses a *lot* of memory, and renders very inefficiently
since the blades of grass are so much smaller than the Imagine world size.  If
you want your grass to blow in the wind, you need one object for every frame,
which rapidly eats up disk space as well.
    If you try to implement this anyway, note that you can't do this via
groups of Imagine objects (Imagine 2.0 locked up for me when I tried to group
more than about 200 objects).  Instead, you need to create a single object
using something like Glenn Lewis' T3DLIB (it's shareware - please register)
that represents a large number of grass blades.  Be careful that you don't
exceed Imagine's 65K point object limit, which is really easy to do when
modelling "natural" objects.
    Alternately, you can create each blade in the stage editor using either
T3DLIB or John Grieggs' ISL.  While the stage editor is not bothered by huge
number of objects, only add the grass to your scene after everything else has
been laid out (the screen update time can be very long).  Be warned that your
staging file will easily be larger than a megabyte in size.

    Unfortunately, modelling natural objects at the level of detail you see
looking out the window (OK, a very small portion of what you see out your
window) is very difficult without playing all sorts of tricks that involve
memory/speed tradeoffs.  The level of detail in even a simple shrub or a 10cm
sqaure of lawn is simply mind-boggling.

    Have fun with your project!
    Charles

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Congdon                                      Oracle Corporation
   Standard disclaimer...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Re: 3D-ROM, InterChange v3.0
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 93 15:34:29 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    The 3D-ROM sounds great.  One suggestion/question: Is there a conversion
    program for the IBM PC to convert IFF files to TIFF, PCX, GIF, BMP or
    any other common bitmap format?  If there is such a beast, I think
    including it on the 3D-ROM would be a good idea.

------------------
Yes, it is called PBMplus... And it is very available... Yes, I am
a little fresh, but it is better than being rotten. They should really
put everything in either RLE, PPM or JPG format since those
are supported by most machines UNIX, non-UNIX alike.