Multimedia Toolkit 2/Multimedia Toolkit 2.iso/imagine/text/arc40

Text File | 1993-09-28 | 156.9 KB | 3,904 lines

IMAGINE archive: collected off of [e-mail]

ARCHIVE XL
Jun. 18 '93 - Jun. 24 '93

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

note: each message seperated by a '##'

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Subject: Re: Two Requests...
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 9:25:42 PDT
From: [e-mail] (John T. Grieggs)

>
>
> Hey Guys,
>
>   I have two requests to make:
>
>   1) Can any of you guys with Icoons please let the rest of us know
> where to find it on the Internet (if it exists on the net)?  I did an
> archie search but it turned up nothing.
>
I got mine from that there German archive site which has all the Aminet
stuff on it.  Can't remember the exact name at the moment, sorry.  I think
it's now on Fish, too.

>  -and-
>
>   2) Can we hold back from erupting into any major flame wars?  I see
> trouble brewing here since the last few days and I'm hoping we can
> curtail it before we get into some major bandwidth squandering.  If you
> feel you must let loose some stinging comments about somebody's post,
> send it to the sender, not the list.
>
I would have loved to reply to you directly, but your address was not
passed along with your post.  :-(

> <off my soapbox>
> Mark
>
>  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> |                                                                             |
> | Mark Marino              | [e-mail]           |  uunet!osf!omar         |
> | Open Software Foundation | 11 Cambridge Center    |  Cambridge, MA 02142    |
> |_____________________________________________________________________________|
>
_john


##

Subject: RE: Floating Point GURUS
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 19:37:58 BST
From: [e-mail]

----- Begin Included Message -----
Dudes && || Dudettes,
  Has anyone been experiencing guru mediations that indicate either a memory
error or co-processor illegal instruction? This happens often enough that I
cannot set up a sequence of frames to render before I go to bed and have any
confidence at all that it will be finished the next morning (i.e. it will have
crashed after several frames). It seems to happen by far most often when
running rendering in Imagine, although that could just be because it works the
system the hardest.

  As I said, I expect that there is a timing problem within my A1000 - LUCAS
accellerator - FRANCES memory expansion setup (PD Hardware), but you never
know. I've taken a logic analyzer as far as it will go; I've arranged access to
a 68020 in-circuit emulator, but due to wedding plans have been too busy to try
it.

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

Well bob,
    funny you should mention it...:)

I had no end of trouble like this about a year and a half ago. Basically to
cut a long and painful story shortish, I bought an accellerator from a UK
company called Solid State Leisure, a B5000-40, which was a 40Mhz 030 with a
55Mhz 68882. After a lot of crap getting a working one, I still had problems.
It would run any program you like... (sarcastic pause :) for about an hour.
It would then crash with a guru lik 8000000B.345345973 <- the 8...0B is the bit
I remember the rest is make believe. Anyway, SSL insisted it was a bug in
Imagine, and I insisted that it wasnt so I am in the process of blasting their
collective arse in court, and me a poor little undergrad! I dont know what it
was that was cuasing the problem, but alot of people have said that the
SSL board did not DMA properly when used with commodores 2091 card.

Any help? Probably not, but well you have my sympathy and admiration if you
made your own accelerator card!

Jason..


##

Subject: Re: Floating Point Gurus
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 9:21:49 PDT
From: [e-mail]

>
> Dudes && || Dudettes,
>
>   I often experience a problem on my Amiga sometimes while rendering under
> Imagine 2.0 that I figure is due to my home-made accellerator but will ask
> anyway:
>
>   Has anyone been experiencing guru mediations that indicate either a memory
> error or co-processor illegal instruction? This happens often enough that I
> cannot set up a sequence of frames to render before I go to bed and have any
> confidence at all that it will be finished the next morning (i.e. it will have
> crashed after several frames). It seems to happen by far most often when
> running rendering in Imagine, although that could just be because it works the
> system the hardest.
>
There was a problem with an early version of Imagine 2.0, which would cause
it to crash at random while rendering scenes with curved transparent surfaces.

Does your scene have anything like that?

What size is your Imagine binary?

>   As I said, I expect that there is a timing problem within my A1000 - LUCAS
> accellerator - FRANCES memory expansion setup (PD Hardware), but you never
> know. I've taken a logic analyzer as far as it will go; I've arranged access to
> a 68020 in-circuit emulator, but due to wedding plans have been too busy to try
> it.
>
> Thx
> Rob
> --
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
> | Rob Hounsell                          INTERNET:  [e-mail]            |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
>
_john


##

Subject: Re: Floating Point Gurus
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 12:05:21 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dave Wickard)

>From [e-mail] Fri Jun 18 11:04:12 1993
From: [e-mail] (John T. Grieggs)
Subject: Re: Floating Point Gurus
To: [e-mail] (Rob)
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 9:21:49 PDT
Cc: [e-mail]
In-Reply-To:  <"4240 Fri Jun 18 10:12:33 1993"@bnr.ca> ; from "Rob" at Jun 18, 93 2:12 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.2 PL14]

>
> Dudes && || Dudettes,
>
>   I often experience a problem on my Amiga sometimes while rendering under
> Imagine 2.0 that I figure is due to my home-made accellerator but will ask
> anyway:
>
>   Has anyone been experiencing guru mediations that indicate either a memory
> error or co-processor illegal instruction? This happens often enough that I
> cannot set up a sequence of frames to render before I go to bed and have any
> confidence at all that it will be finished the next morning (i.e. it will have
> crashed after several frames). It seems to happen by far most often when
> running rendering in Imagine, although that could just be because it works the
> system the hardest.
>
There was a problem with an early version of Imagine 2.0, which would cause
it to crash at random while rendering scenes with curved transparent surfaces.

Does your scene have anything like that?

What size is your Imagine binary?

>   As I said, I expect that there is a timing problem within my A1000 - LUCAS
> accellerator - FRANCES memory expansion setup (PD Hardware), but you never
> know. I've taken a logic analyzer as far as it will go; I've arranged access to
> a 68020 in-circuit emulator, but due to wedding plans have been too busy to try
> it.
>
> Thx
> Rob
> --
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
> | Rob Hounsell                          INTERNET:  [e-mail]            |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
>
_john


##

Subject: Re: Getting to business
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1993 13:20:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: Naked Man <[e-mail]>

  Howdy, Hannes:
    I, too, have been using Imagine since it's creation.  I've recently
    been having an affair with Caligari24, but your predicament is more
    than common.  I am convinced that anyone wanting to earn money off of
    animatics or videographics need have an initial investment of no less
    than ten grand to do work of a quality meriting actual pay.  I've had a
    few lucky breaks, though:  A local cable company bought a Dpaint Anim
    that I made for a local dealer for a meager but welcome $250.  I'm
    currently doing some work worth thousands right now for free.  This is
    one case were exposure is as good as gold. (that DEMO reel is going to
    be the only thing some houses will care about, you know!)
      It occurs to me, though, that the pssibilities are quite boundless
      provided that you have the means.  I desire to marry computer
      animatics with education (instructional technology).  Of course, any
      local schmoes who run businesses in your community may advertise on
      the local cable company.  Rattle their cage for some business.  Hires
      Dpaint anims seem to work out just dandy, and they're usually just
      Fascinated wid all der blinkin lights and whistles you can pull out
      of your hat.  Give them something worthwhile and new. Much more to
      say, but I'm drifting off topic for the list, so please keep in touch
      in personal correspondence if you want to continue this thread.
   Anybody, for that matter!  take care
   wes~


##

Subject: Thread Rot
Date: 18 Jun 93 13:52:20 EDT
From: John Foust / Syndesis Corporation <[e-mail]>

To: [e-mail]

I've had my fill of non-Imagine-related messages!  Useful content is
approaching zero.  I don't want to wade through a "message" that's
composed of a previous message, quoted, followed by "Gee, that's a
good question."  (I do realize this is the Internet, and by law,
useful information can't exceed 3 percent per message.)

If you don't know what IDE is or what it stands for, don't ask here.
This is not the place to debug your PC.  Mailer and elm questions
should be solved in private mail with the list administrator.  Read
the FAQ and learn how to subscribe and unsubscribe.  I don't care if
you've been on television.

I don't think a signature is necessary, and should never be more than
one or two lines.  I don't want to see your prowess with ASCII
graphics.  If I'm curious about your favorite soda or car, I'll ask,
OK?  Otherwise, I don't want to know, and I don't want to read about
it every three days, or even three times a day, kholland.  And for
heaven's sake, you don't need to quote the other person's signature,
too.

This is not the POV or Wavefront or metaballs or Radiance or Rayshade
mailing list.  I don't want to hear about your favorite user group's
collection of PD disks.

Enough!  Enough!


##

Subject: Bla in Trace mode ?, help !
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 16:03:51 EDT
From: Florence Ormezzano <[e-mail]>

Hello !, I need help !
I have an irregular sphere and an object inside. I checked the size of
the sphere, it's around 900.0000 and I checked the size of the world, and
set it for 1024.0000...the camera is inside the sphere with two lights,
one spherical (& diminish intensity) one cylindrical (& cast shadows). Now
when I render in scanline mode its fine, but if I render in trace mode
it's BLACK, with a vague grey shape on top of the frame.
Now I don't know what else to do, what to check...anybody who knows?
Thank you !

[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Phong shading and stuff
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1993 09:25:15 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail] (Scot Schneebeli)

>
>     There is a shareware 3D modeller called "Icoons" that does exactly this.
>     It lets you model with splines, and then breaks the curves down into
>     polygons for rendering.  The modelling works a lot like
> ------------
> And it is incredibly impossible to learn how to use.. I gave up on it.
> ------------

I didn't think it was all that bad to learn. The documentation's description
of what constituted a surface (which would render vs be open space) helped
a lot. I gave up on it because it kept making me visit the GURU.

> /***********************************************************************
> ** Kiernan Holland, [e-mail], [e-mail] **
> ** (University Of New Mexico - Los Alamos Branch Computer AIDE)       **
> ** "If it doesn't work, turn it off/on or ask me to watch."           **
> ***********************************************************************/
>

--
Scot Schneebeli                       <[e-mail]>


##

Subject: Re: Oh, where have all the pictures gone???
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 16:56:34 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

>
>
>Hi all,
>
>    I would like to know where the new ftp site is for uploading
>and down loading imagine pictures.  I know hubcap is gone now and
>that someone has picked up the slack.  I thought it was wuarchive.
>However, I looked in systems/amiga/incoming/gfx and imagine, they
>are empty.
>
>Thanks for any help.  I would like to see the newest stuff coming
>from this list.  As well as uploading some of my own.
>
>Brian Ridout
>[e-mail]
>
>

    Check out wuarchive.wustl.edu

    /pub/amiga/incoming/imagine

    off of this is art, anims, and other directorys.  I have placed
most of my old pics and some new ones in the art dir.

        Enjoy!



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


##

Subject: IML archives
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1993 15:12:28 -0700 (MST)
From: [e-mail] (Marvin Landis)

John Foust writes:

> I've had my fill of non-Imagine-related messages! ..........(lots deleted)

Well I'm afraid I have been thinking the same thing for over 2 months now.
Since I am the person keeping the IML archives, I have had to make a decision
about this group.  Unfortunately, I have not been using Imagine at all lately
(I hardly even turn my Amiga on anymore), so even the Amiga Imagine discussions
haven't really been beneficial to me.  And I really don't care about PC Imagine
or all the new graphics cards and peripherals for the Amiga.  There is just
very little useful information for me here anymore.

So I said all that leading up to this.  I have chosen to resign as the archivist
for this group.  I have been doing this for over 2 years now, and I guess I
need to share the fun with someone else.  I will keep the archives until the end
of June, at which time if nobody else has taken over the job, then the archives
will not be updated anymore.  Of course I believe all the messages posted to
the list have all been saved on Portal (that is right, isn't it Harv?), and
there are probably other places saving the messages also.  So the messages
should exist somewhere, whether I am providing this service or not.

So, if you are looking for instant fame and fortune (hahahaha), send me or
Dave some e-mail expressing your interest in keeping the archives and we can
try to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Marvin Landis
[e-mail]

PS.  BTW, I have several new archives almost ready to be uploaded to wuarchive
     but I have fallen behind, so they should be ready soon.  I haven't quit
     yet, just getting farther behind.


##

Subject: IML Landfill Update
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 16:15:41 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dave Wickard)

There is a change underway at the IML Landfill (our FTP
site at wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4))

According to the powers that be, we will have ONE incoming
directory (pub/amiga/incoming/imagine)
so please use this for your uploads.

Our permanent files have been moved to a new permanent location there
as well (pub/amiga/video/imagine/*)
so be sure to include this in any of your network
Imagine related searches.

Just thought you'd like to know.  :-)


Dave Wickard  [phone]  "The rats keep winning the Rat Race."
[e-mail]       -Altanta Rhythm Section
[e-mail]
[e-mail]  <--- to subscribe/unsubscribe/change address!


##

Subject: Re: Any experience with DPS PAR ?
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 18:15:47 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

>capture with the TBC4. For playback, Q16 had very noticeable artifacts around
>areas of high detail. Q23 looked very clean (not flawless) and Q18-Q20 looked
>pretty good. I would say that it doesn't seem that this device could match
>a BetaSP tape deck, but it does look pretty darn good. Further tests with a
>high quality deck and realtime output are necessary to fully evaluate it.
>
>

    Hmmm.. I just got my demo tape in today on VHS.  (to bad it
wasn't SVHS).  Anyhow, I wasn't very impressed.  Though most was due to
the way it was put together.

    1] At least they could have put some music or something behind
it.
    2] The still images with just the text before each animation
looked very poor - ie blury.  I wonder if this was done off a toaster
directly or off the board.

    3]  The animations looked good, there were definitely no glitches
or problems with playback speed, but everything flickered. ie:
interlaced look...ack!

    I am not sure if this flickering is common to all 24 bit anims,
as i haven't had the opportunity to do much.  Perhaps some one could
point out whether this is an artifact of the device, or just the way
high res anims take to tape.

            Mike C.



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


##

Subject: Re: IML archives
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 17:30:02 PDT
From: [e-mail]

[...]
>Of course I believe all the messages posted to
>the list have all been saved on Portal (that is right, isn't it Harv?), and
>there are probably other places saving the messages also.  So the messages
>should exist somewhere, whether I am providing this service or not.
>
>Marvin Landis
[...]

I just looked at the "collection" (Portal terminology) that holds the
IML here in the Amiga Zone message base and as I type this it has 3661
postings in it. The earliest is dated 18 Nov 19, and I've purged out
errant "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" articles along the way.
I'm not exactly sure when the first postings appeared on the IML
but most of Marvin's archives are online in our library as well going
back as far as he did, so yes, it should all be online here on Portal.
Since our message bases don't scroll off and Portal has given me
2.5 gig of disk space for the Amiga Zone message bases and files with
a promise of more whenever it fills up againI think it's safe to say
that the IML will be available, in its entirety, on Portal for a good
long time to come.

Portal is, of course, a commercial service, unreachable without a
paid account on it. Anyone can dial 1-408-973-9111 to join or email
me for more info about it.

And Marvin, thanks for your years of devotion to this list. We were
just talking about some of your early Amiga animation work online the
other night (remember your anim about the little house that thinks
it's a hot air balloon? :-). Sad to hear your Amiga is languishing
now.

Harv
[e-mail]


##

Subject: IMAGINE.question!
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 22:53:36 EDT
From: Florence Ormezzano <[e-mail]>

Hello !, I need help !
I have an irregular sphere and an object inside. I checked the size of
the sphere, it's around 900.0000 and I checked the size of the world, and
set it for 1024.0000...the camera is inside the sphere with two lights,
one spherical (& diminish intensity) one cylindrical (& cast shadows). Now
when I render in scanline mode its fine, but if I render in trace mode
it's BLACK, with a vague grey shape on top of the frame.
Now I don't know what else to do, what to check...anybody who knows ?
Thank you !
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Fred Fish
Date: 18 Jun 1993 22:33:25 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Jean Pepin)

Nikola Vukovljak <[e-mail]> writes:

>Well, where can these be obtained apart directly from the club ?

>Nik.

>[e-mail]

Editions Le Grand Moulin
5495, rue Aubert
Trois-Rivieres, Quebec G8Y 5G8
Tel. or FAX: [phone]


--
\***  CCC AAA M   M  CLUB AMIGA MONTREAL           ------- Internet -------
***   C   A A MM MM  3501 Cote Ste-Catherine #212 |   [e-mail]   |
***** C   AAA M M M  Montreal, Quebec H3T 1Z8      ------------------------
 ***  CCC A A M   M  [phone]                Jean Pepin -- PRESIDENT
---------------------------Le bon sens c'est CAM-------------------------->


##

Subject: Re: Floating Point Gurus
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 4:22:53 CDT
From: Evan Kirchhoff <[e-mail]>

Dave Wickard writes:
> There was a problem with an early version of Imagine 2.0, which would cause
> it to crash at random while rendering scenes with curved transparent surfaces.
>
My problem exactly (I suspected this was an FAQ that would come round
again): a test scene wouldn't raytrace successfully until I removed the
glass cylinder.  I assume I need a software update.
What is Impulse's current customer support number?  I used to have a
number that worked, but it was only on the photocopied update pages
to the 1.0 manual, and I lost those at some point.

--
Evan Kirchhoff, [e-mail]


##

Subject: Wacom tablet and FC24/Light24
Date: 19 Jun 1993 12:34:29 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Stephen Menzies)

Has anyone got a Wacom tablet working successfully with
Light24 (paintbox on the Firecracker24)?
If so, I would appreciate knowing how (perhaps someone has
written a driver).

thanks,
    stephen
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\\\Stephen Menzies, TFX Animation Inc., TAARNA Systems, Montreal, Qc.///
[[]] [e-mail] [[]] [e-mail] [[]] [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: MPEG converter
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 14:02:04 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    >where did you get it??? I want a copy ;-) I know of an encoder for
    >Xwindows and UNIX, but it is a piece of kaka...

    This may be a port of that same program, I haven't tried it yet.  The
    program I am refering to is PVRGMPG.zip .  It just came across
    comp.graphics.animation  and alt.binaries.multimedia The complete
    source code is at havefun.stanford.edu   (so I have read)
    I will repeat for anyone who may have just tuned in, this is a PC
    program, not an Amiga program.

    The person who did the conversion is
    [e-mail] (whew glad my address isn't that
    long!) He was attempting to get the program up on SIMTEL also.

    I would love to see this program ported to the amiga.  Go for it KH!
------------
I don't have a C compiler.. Have you been able to play your animations
using the XING MPEG player? Last time I tried to view animations
made with that MPEG encoder, MPEGXING just puked its guts up all over the
place. The reason, as I recall, why MPEGXING didn't like it was that
that MPEG encoder did not put the animations into a resolution that
MPEGXING would accept... That MPEG encoder would do resolutions like
320 by 342 and such... actually any resolution.

I will try to download the file and see what kind of stuff it handles
and such... Thanks for telling me about it. I will try to get my hands
on it and will put it on wuarchive and several others...chances are it is
already on the nets... if not, I do have access to USENET (thanks to
the IML I haven't read any USENET in months ;-) ).

Well later

Kiernan Holland
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Imagine, Amiga ragging
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 17:35:03 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    >>market successfully, they now know that the Amiga is where it is at...
    >>They are not going to abandon the Amiga platform... I think that
    >>is what most Amiga users are afraid of, therefore they kiss *ss...

    +  Well I've had my Amiga since the 1000 days, moved to the 2000, now have
--------
What a coincidence... I did tooo... I had a 1000 and a 2000 and I have a
3000. I also had a C64 and a disk drive for it... I would say I have
been a Commodore user for a decade now.
---------
    + a 4000. I don't feel I've been kissing anything, but am really happy CBM
    +has maintained an upward path, and with the AGA chipset a grand one at that.
---------
It is lucky that they are still doing something because I would have
been gone 6 months ago with the 486-33 crowd... Don't ever forget
how long it took them to decide that the Amiga was better than thier
PC line... I will never forgive them for years 87-90. They are
still falling behind a little.. But I'm sure that the AMiga is the best
platform for what I am doing, but that has almost nothing to do with
CBM's progress...
---------
    +All with a minimum of software incompatability. As far as CBM and Mac
    +releasing new models, most CBM has kept the product line as lean as possible
    +and still managed to offer a product that is widespread amoung users. Most
    +hings that run on the 1200(exclude games) will run on the 4000. You don't see
---------
Of course, it is the same chipset... and the operating system is the same..
Though OS 1.0 programs are incompatible with everything after about 80%.
But at least the GURU's are not as numerous as with the Amiga 1000.. bought
my 1000 in 1986 from CMO..  I bought my 2000 with the Amiga 1000 tradeup
deal. And I bought my Amiga 3000 on a student discount (lot a good that did,
you can buy two Amiga 3000T's for what I paid).
----------
    +this on the other platforms. CBM deserves credit for a job well done on the
    +4000, and AmigaDos.I am pleased with the software I have  on the Amiga, and
----------
Maybe so... But I am waiting for a AGA chip upgrade..  At least in a
expansion card form.. Others say it is impossible but I say that is
pur 100% saturated bull sh*t.. CBM doesn't want to make one..
They are lazy and you know it.. Look at all the hardware that comes on
the AMiga...  it is all kludges... What was the amber?? A deinterlacer???
what, they couldn't afford to make a non-interlaced graphics chip?
What is the new HD drive??? It is a Chinnon floppy disk drive with an
ability to go double speed. More sectors but the same number of tracks.
What, couldn't they just get a drive with twice as many tracks??
The disk storage idea was pretty good, but then you consider that
there are floppy drives that can store 2.88 megs now, even on the PC's.
I would like to have a 1.44 meg or 1.76 meg disk drive on my Amiga 3000...
It's impossible??? No, CBM just doesn't want to implement it... It
is just a cloud that they use to conceal the truth...
------------

    +though I do see room for improvement I realize a small compaanies have limited
    +resources as opposed to the very large firms supporting other platforms.
-------------
What is the definition of limited resources. Really, I think CBM doesn't
have any troubles... If the head of the company can earn 3 million a year,
there is something definitely wrong.. Even GVP and PPS can make better hardware
than CBM.  CBM makes alright software, but the hardware serriously
lacks in some areas and their level of support lacks a ton...
-------------
    >I don't... I like what I see and I will talk about it, but I don't feel
    >inclined to admire CBM or Impulse, or anybody... If it is a good
    >product, it is a good product... They could sell Imagine for
    >20 bucks and it wouldn't matter... disks are easier to mass produce
    >than any material good in the entire world and yet it costs an
    >arm and a leg for programs that come on them...

     +I have seen some really admirable stuff done with Imagine, and for it's
     +price I can't complain. I get many hours of enjoyment out of Imagine
--------
Ya, that is alright... But you can't get Imagine on student discount.
You can get Studio 3D (Autodesk) on student discount for 500 dollars
I hear..  But whatever the price, Imagine should at least do what
it does very well... I mean, the programmer of Imagine probably
adds a lot of stuff on to the program but does not optimize the
thinsg already existing on the program. He could really work on the
rendering algorithms, he could support instantiated objects,
better object editing tools (like Caligari's ability to color faces
individually by just clicking on the face...), things that would
be pretty simple to implement. I have a feeling that he
is writing this program at the computer rather than taking the normal
route of a careful programmer (flowchart or pseudocode, top/down
design, bottom up implementation, full documentation on the
technical and novice user levels, etc. ) I bet you that is the reason
why his port of Imagine croaks on the PC's in several ways..
---------
     +and long ago passed the point of not getting my monies worth. To relate
     +the value, or cost of a program to the medium it comes on is not the
     +sign of a clever person at best.
---------
No, that is not what I meant... I meant that they are not paying
hundreds of dollars to develop the program, the advertising may
cost a lot, but the distribution is almost nothing and the manual
lacks serriously.. Impulse could do a whole lot better.
I don't know much about 3D graphics programming, but I bet that
if I knew how to program them, I could do it better than whoever is doing
it now.. It is not a matter of knowledge, it is a matter of will..
You can know everything there is to know about graphics but if you don't
have any reason to improve your programs, you will not.. You will just
add more and more features because you would be bored dealing with
all the old problems.. I know how some programmers think.. If I was getting
paid to write programs (which I am not right now... I do mine for my own use),
I would at least involve some planning and good program design into
my work.. I know programmers that just "want to get it over with" and are
willing to put global variables all over the stinking place, use
magic numbers when they can and use code that is not smart (it doens't
sense its environment before it performs an action on it) in that
it depends upon a particular system design... You know why Video Games
on Amigados 1.3 don't work on the newer systems?? You know why
some MSDOS games go 5 times faster on newer systems? It all has to do with
programs that "think" they are in an Amiga 1000 with 512K of ram and an
PC XT with CGA, respectively, when really they are on a
AMiga 4000 with 16 megs and  a 486-66DX2 with SVGA. The first
one, Amiga 1000 games, could have been cleared up, possibly, by
having the program use the system calls that CBM provided with
thier machine and by asking the system how much memory is available,
additionally providing an alternative in the cases of too little or
too much fast ram or chip ram.. Sure, it may be uneccesary now, but
what it uneccessary now will be easier to change tommorow.
On the last case, the PC game, the developer could have at least
tested the system before running the game to find out how fast the
processor is, or could have asked the user upfront how fast the
machine is and what kind of processor is being used.
------------
    As programs get better, the old revisions lower in price much faster
    than hardware... Probably because some users like myself have
    figured it out that programs are overpriced... Less work, more
    money... that's the idea... sell it for what the people will bare...

    + It seems that you need a course in business 101 at least. As a
    +program matures and you recoup your investment you find yourself
    +able to contain cost so to speak much easier. This is also aided by
    +the revenue generated by upgrade fees. Some programs that were grossly
    +overpriced, as you indicated in the following paragraph had to reduce
    +to be competive with the other offerings.
-------------
That too.. But unltimately, the reason Imagine costs 200 and not 100
is that nobody has started selling something as good as Imagine at
150 dollars. Nobody is going to do it anyway, because it would
mean that they would start getting less.. If the users all of
a sudden decided to stop buying the programs and complaining about
the price, the company would lower thier prices or improve their
software in order to keep thier userbase. In Impulse's case it is
"add more features and keep the price".  It is somewhat like
how the GAS stations run in our town... One gas station sells gas at
1.39 a gallon (something like that), a Texaco station, and if any
other station tries to compete, the Texaco station lowers thier
prices to 50 cents a gallon, to run the other gas station out
of business. Now if the other gas station adds two more kinds of unleaded
gasoline with a super-super-additive, they can still sell gasoline
at a price equal to the Texaco station without losing thier
customers, thier userbase.  In the Amiga's case, Impulse is the
Texaco station and Octree and othe such companies are the other
gas stations.. Octree will not lower Caligari's price below Imagine's
because Impulse has enough money that they could hold out at a lower
price with Imagine, puting Octree out of business. Octree will not
challenge the market unless they lose thier userbase, in which case
they will either lower the price of the software or make the software
better. Octree has lowered the price of thier software in the past from
2000 to 200 dollars to get a larger userbase, and probably since
more 3D animators are in the general market now. Ultimately, Imagine
was the reason, I'm sure..

If Imagine is maintained by one guy, this means that Impulse can pay
this programmer less than what they would have to pay to have seven
programmers maintaining the program. No training or teaching would
need to be payed for in case that one of the seven programmers should
jump to another company, causing them to hire and train new programmer.
There must be a good reason why the single programmer is staying
with the company (owns 20% share of the companies profits?), he
probably finds some interest in the company too. There is no need
to organize meetings to talk about the software development
since there is only one programmer and one organizer, manager, and such.
They provide free revisions so that they can use the users as guinea
pigs on thier program, so they don't have to waste money on a
set of trained software testers. This also means that the single
programmer gets a lot of work, may be overworked, and will pay less
attention to the finer details of the design.. So they get more money
and the users get crapier software. Nothing says that they couldn't just
hire six more programmers, add a training program, get two programmers
which have aminor in english, to alternatively write the manuals.
One of the six could also have some experience in public speaking
and possibly another could have some experience in psychology ( to
create easier to use interfaces for children as well as adults),
another could have some experience in art, making a more
attractive user interface. One could have some experience in
computer security, to make harder to crack software (a euor-cracker who
knows how to crack Amiga programs would be best), the last could
have a minor in math,as he could verify algorithms and possibly optimize
the rendering processes.

What would they be paying the programmers??? I don't know..
But they could cut down on advertisement.. As we all know, AMiga users
tend to spread the word a lot faster than any magazine could..
They shouldn't depend on this, but they could monitor the sales over a
period of time after cutting down the ads in Amiga magazines..
Besides, Amiga users now Imagine exists, what use is it to
tell the .1% of the users that it does???

My way, they would have better software and a bigger userbase because of
it, rather than poorer software with userbase that is willing to put up
with the software.

The variable that needs to change is US! I really believe this is the
answer to the whole problem. Actually Impulse probably needs better management..
I could be wrong since I am basing this all on the rumor someone
passed around about impulse having only one programmer working on
Imagine.

Oh ya, to keep the integral part of the software designers, the original
programmer, from leaving Impulse would have to increase his salary
(because he probably deserves it) and put him at a higher rank with more
responsibility as the software design team manager. There is a lot of reasons
to do this. One is is that without him, the progress of the software
design and its technical parts would be hard to describe from the code
without the brain behind it all. He could also train newcomers and
have them design only the part that that newcomer should work on.
If one part should have a new idea that would make the software better
and easier to implement, a meeting between the software developers
would be set to discuss the idea(s) of the other programmer as well as
thier own.

It would be best for everyone... The executives would not have to
cut programs short of being finished, the technical writers/programmers
could write memos to management explain in plain english what problems
have arrised, giving an estimate on when they think the bugs will be cleared.
The technical writers could alternatively write the manuals and write
speeches for demonstrations at the big software shows by the programmer
who has experience in public speaking.

There is many ways it would improve things, but I don't feel
like telling all the ways.
-----------
    Amiga users can't afford costly programs, that is why Caligari costs
    200 bucks, Imagine costs 200 bucks and Dpaint costs less than 100
    dollars.. On the Mac's there are more companies that got more dough,
    and they can afford to pay high prices.... Look on any low-end
    platform and you will see that this is true...

    +Speak for yourself ! I'm a adult that has the ability to manage to
------------
23 here..
------------
    +budget for my software. I see the prices rising as the quality, and power
    +of software improves. However I have the advantage of owning most of the
    +better stuff since it's early days and upgrade as often as I can. With
    +AGA I'll have to space the upgrades out but will eventually get them all.
    +I realize the need to support the Amiga Platform and am +willing to sacrifice
    +a little to do so, others seem only interested in a free ride. I buy from my
    +local dealer whenever reasonable to support him. $10.00 more or less is a small
    +price to pay to help him survive. I am not stupid. I know I can save money
------------
Ya... if you have a good dealer... Otherwise, you end up like me.. You
probably don't know what it is like to go to an Amiga store where
Deluxe Music construction set still costs 80 bucks and has been sitting on
the shelf for 4 years.

The users should not have to support the local dealers volutarily...
The Amiga dealers I know provide an alternative service as a PC/MAC
supporter... I don't mind, as long as they still sell Amiga's.
If Amiga's are really good, it should change those who use PC's and MAC's
that buy from the store to change thier opinions about Amiga's..

They'll survive with or without our help.. Sure I don't mind
chipping in 10 dollars more for a product at a local dealer,
just as long as the dealer doesn't treat me like crap.. My last dealer
didn't treate me bad, but she had really old software, knew less
about the technical aspects of her hardware/software (she's an
Santa Fe artist by trade) and she smoked in her store (which is bad
for floppy disks and hardware in general, it also makes the
store and the products smell like a smoking room).
------------
    +buying elsewhere, but The Amiga is in an awkward posistion. Because the user
    +base is amaller it makes the support extended by this user base much more
    +important.
------------
No really, what you need is a user group, not an Amiga dealer..
It is not the Amiga dealer's job to care about your computing..
Only if he can get something out of it, otherwise most don't
care.. If you can get someone who cares... Then on any platform,
even a PC, he is a good person to support over mail order..
I have always believed (to some extent) in buying from a local
dealer first, but you can't become a slave, otherwise you
lose a lot of money.  I have found that researching companies
and software, and asking other users as well as asking dealers (although
you must consider that their primary motive is to sell)
is the best way to go. You must take your own chances...
------------

        And they send free(thats right, I said FREE(as well they should))
    upgrades when     they make mistakes. I've seen 3D packages on the MAC(can't
    recall which one)
    ----------
    +Virtual Realities, and ASDG both offer excellent support of their programs
    +as an example.
------------
ASDG is alright, but I have found programs (WASP, HAMlab, JPEG V3.0) that
do better even in shareware/pd. They are doing a lot better, but they could
at least bring the prices of thier software down a bit... Like maybe 100
bucks for Morph Plus with Adpro. GVP could also follow thier lead.
--------------
    There are 50 million PC users and 10 million Mac users... the Companies
    can get away with it there.. Now when teh Amiga user base expands
    to 10 million, expect to find companies charging for upgrades...
    ----------
    +Disagree here. Bug fixes no, actual product enhancements I see the Amiga
    +developers having the right and ability to charge for upgrades. It allows
    +them to generate development funds, and the user to enjoy the fruits of
----------------
Yes... however, the users provide free software testing and the developers
should respect this service becuase they could always have hired
a professional team or could have wasted more money on research.
----------------
    +these development efforts at an incremental cost. The need for upgrade
    +charges is even more critical in the Amiga Market.
----------------
Tell me, why not have one product, then make revisions and sell the
product with a new set of revisions?? Do you think that a product
with 1 revision costing 10 bucks apiece over the period of 10
revisions would cost as much as an upgrade with all ten
previously unreleased revisions?? What if the upgrade costs 50 dollars
more than the first program??  What would you consider a good
time to sell the product?? Before the potential bugs are fixed  or
after??  If the developers think "before", I would expect free revision
upgrades... Otherwise I would make sure that each revision that
I payed for added to the quality of the program, not fix up
bugs that shouldn't have existed in the release of the program.
Of course, the developers retain the right to sell revisions
to the users, as sure as NewTek can justify 1000 dollars for a
upgrade [as they did] to the 2.0 software of the toaster...
Just as we retain the right to complain and choose software...

Don't become a slave, get wise!!
---------------
    with half the features that cost twice as much as Imagine(keeping with the topic
    of the list).  So, don't get me wrong...ya gotta complain if it don't work. But
    ----------
    MS makes most of thier money off upgrades...

    It is all a matter of user base and ethics... It is one reason
    I don't own a PC... Then again I would rather have an Amiga developer
    tha makes an effort to make bug-free, defect free, understandable software
    (like most MAC software) rather than just make revisions when the users
    complain... That is about how it goes on the Amiga...
    Either they look for errors deliberately, or they wait for the errors
    to come knocking at their door... Impulse should clear up thier
    errors before they upgrade thier software... It will make it easier
    on both them and the users, however they seem to be doing it the
    more screwy disorganized way... Hunt and hack...

    +Well I do wish it could be this way also, but in reality bugs are always
    + a possability. There are so many varables in a software program, and
    +especially in a program like Imagine that it would be near impossible
-----------
And there is good and bad ways to write a program... Believe me,
there is a way to write near bugfree programs... It is through
careful planning.. Anything else that has nothing to do with the program,
is the operating system's fault.. In a PC this means making sure that
you push and pop all registers and variables that should not be changed
during the course of a subroutine or interrupt call. I don't believe
in global variables, therfore I don't use them.  I think that the programmers
should focus more on making more bug-free programs than adding more
features to existing programs. Some programmers will only work on a program
until they can't find any bugs, others will work on programs until
they think the users will not notice any bugs, and the real good ones
will beg users to find bugs for them... Its all a matter of discipline
and will, and all the stuff that comes with being a good software
designer.. Of course, from the software designers perspective,
if you aren't getting paid enough, jump to another company or
stay where you are and keep making code that lacks perfection..
-----------
    *to eliminate them all and still ship in a reasonable amount of time. I
    +have recieved free disks from Impulse(YES IMPULSE) in the past to fix
    +critical problems. Regard most Mac software, Yes it seems to have inherent
    + better stability, that is unless you count the problems with stuff and
    +system 7. This stability is also easier to obtain when you don't concern
    +yourself with backward compatability.
-----------
But the users have a choice.. they don't feel they have any direct
dependance on the company providing the software. Some do however,
but they probably never researched thier choice or probably
didn't wait long enough to see if the company was a reputible
business. Small companies are known to sell software for more
and have been known to go down the tubes faster. ABout 10% of the
software bought (estimate) is poorly researched by the user
and often ends up obsolete...  If you have a large userbase,
if the company that sells the package goes bankrupt, chances are
another will buy their company up... or others will continue to
develop software to improve the packages provided by that company.

MAC's are hard to program I hear.. You can program better programs
if you stick to the rules of the company that makes the operating
system. If you violate those rules, chances are you will end
up with a lot of troubles. It doesn't suprise me... All computer
companies make these mistakes... Tell me what happened between
OS 1.3 and OS.20 back in 1990!!! Seee... How about MSDOS 5.0
to MSDOS 6.0? Or how about that fancy trick to get UNIX SVR4 and
BSD to work together?? It is just a fact of computers, you will
have problems wherever you go... The thing I like about
MAC's is that the user interface is the most important thing in the
equation.. In traditional programming, you optimize your program
to make it faster then you add the interface... With MAC software
it seems that the interface is optimized then the internals..
Sure the computers are slow, but they are simple.. One of the reasons
why most users like MAC's are that they are easy to network, I know some
PC users who know how to write complex programs in assembly
on the PC's but prefer a MAC for use between work and home..
-----------
    I believe in smart coding styles like programs that are flexible,
    modular, top-down design bottom-up implemented, and can "sense"
    the environment before they continue execution... Imagine doesn't
    seem to do this... Otherwise it would be capable of running
    on a PC or whatever,

    + Well I think this is a little out of line. Developing for the PC
    +with it's many inherent problems has nothing to do with the above.
    +Regardless of how you develop your code, if your new to the PC
    +(piece C***) enviornment your going to have problems. It's not
---------
I agree.. but you should only be concerned with your program... If
it croaks because of the operating systems problems, make a small
fix but don't depend on it.. Wait for the operating system to
improve or build an environment that uses the operating system
but hides the implementation from you.. I mean, something like a
virtual system... I guess for dos this would be like going into
C++ and creating a class that uses windows as objects rather than functions.
Later when the operating system changes, all you need to do is change the
class and not the entire program... The program will treat the class
as it did before... there is a conventional name for it but I can't recall
it from the top of my head.
---------
    +easy going from a OS like Amigados, and a AUTOCONFIG(tm) system
    +like the Amiga to the hodgepodge world of messy dos. This is an
    +even harder task if your trying to get the same functions you have
    +on the Amiga.
---------
Oh I know, but if you design your code the first time around so it
doesn't try to pull any fancy tricks like bypassing bios interrupt
calls and using the I/O ports and memory instead... I guess, if you
know what a good structure looks like, you can design it.. You don't
have to be a wiz at this stuff.. I have maintained A averages in
my programming courses becuase of the way I approach programming..

I tend to overdue some of my programs.. For instance, one
semester in aseembly language class I was told to write a
program that converted decimal numbers to hexidecimal in assembly..
I did, but I devised a routine that would do multiple conversions
(anything in fact) in with 32-bit numbers... While the other
kids were checking for a number that was larger than 65,356,
my program would simply take the number and divide it by the base
taking the remainder and testing to see if it was decimal, binary,
hexidecimal or something like ascii-decimal then push it on a
stack, pop it off and print it until a sentinel. This was all
written for an 8086, which is incapable of performing the operations
I created... so I invented routines to handle 32-bit dividision,
multiplication, addition and subtraction. I didn't need
all of them, but they came in handy later.. This may not seem
like such a big deal, but what did you do in your first
semester of assembly language??
------------

     and you would not need to replace register values in
    the program's binaries to make it support resolutions like 1280x1024...
    The programmer could have at least had Imagine determine how much memory
    is available for graphics, what chipset is being used, what the current
    screen resolution is, how many colors are possible, etc. and change the
    global variables to reflect the environment... But no... The programmer
    has to hard-code the magic numbers in that choose only one of two resolutions
    (hires and hires-lace).. It is what we call "Poor Software Design".
    I bet the programmer(s??) of Imagine doesn't even have a Masters,
    Probably not even a bachelors... It is so obvious..

    +Opps Again. I admit that support for the different resolutions would be nice.
    +I also realize that these 1280x1024 requirements wern't even a dream until
    +a short time ago. Imagine Supports all the standard(and DCTV) formats that
    +were available during it's design cycle. I have a 4000 but still only a 1084s
    +for a monitor. The large majority of Imagine users will not have a problem
    +with this restriction for quite a while.(I don't consider us netters the
    +average user) In time as things settle down and support for 3.0 grows these
    +problems should go away.(At least I think so). To throw darts at this time
    +seems a little rash, to slam the programmers especially in regards to education
    +is outright rude(please forward me a beta copy of your 3D modeler). I'd much
    +rather Impulse spend time on the features list than waste it on screen
    +resolutions at this time.
----------
I would rather they work on potential bugs and interface considerations..
if you want more features, they can always provide a higher-priced package
for the time being.. The truth is is that you can't work productively if the
code is sensitive to small system changes or if the code never
worked correctly in the first place.
----------
     This thread has become disjointed so I simply makked my thoughts with
    a "+" to seperate them. We should also remember that Impulse have offerd
    Imagine PC to us for $100.00 . At that price I can put in on my desk at work
    and then I can see if it runs or not:-)
                            bill
-----------
Well, aren't they nice??? (sarcasm) The only reason why they
did it is because they wouldn't have a userbase to justify it
if the Amiga users weren't using the PC version of Imagine.
I think they see this more as a business oportunity.. Think about it,
you sell the Imagine users Imagine for 100 bucks, they take it
to work, show it off to thier friends, the Imagine users
ofcourse are Amiga users and Amiga users have been known to hype
everything about 4 times as much as it really is. That kills
the amount of advertising that would be needed if they didn't
have that option. Could we be seeing a transition?? Possibly a
switch to the PC platform?? Or are we seeing a multi-platform
profit to be made?? Or is it free testing for the PC version...
Maybe AMiga users provide the kind of feedback that they do not
get elsewhere.. It could be that they are doing it to make
it easier on the Imagine users... My point is is that in
all businessesm there is a motive behind everything...
Criticize before you claim..

    /------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Bill leimberger. NASHUA N.H.
    I am Not an Amiga dealer, or developer. I am simply An
    Amiga user that appreciats The Amiga and the things it allows me to do.
    These ramblings are my own and do not reflect on my employer, or anyone
    else for that matter*/

/***********************************************************************
** Kiernan Holland, [e-mail], [e-mail] **
** (University Of New Mexico - Los Alamos Branch Computer AIDE)       **
** "If it doesn't work, turn it off/on or ask me to watch."           **
***********************************************************************/


##

Subject: Imagine.quest.(reply)
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 22:34:45 EDT
From: Florence Ormezzano <[e-mail]>

Thank you for your suggestion about my problem in trace mode (screen all
black)...
I have 2 meg of chip ram and 4 of fast on a 3000 machine, while rendering
the fast ram goes down to about 500.000 or around that...it might be that
I don't have enough...?
thanks again for your help !
Florence


##

Subject: Re: Two Requests...
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1993 11:57:26 +1000 (EST)
From: Nikola Vukovljak <[e-mail]>

On Fri, 18 Jun 1993, Mark Marino wrote:

>
> Hey Guys,
>
>   I have two requests to make:
>
>   1) Can any of you guys with Icoons please let the rest of us know
> where to find it on the Internet (if it exists on the net)?  I did an
> archie search but it turned up nothing.
>
Last time I checked it was on wuarchive.wustl.edu but don't ask me exactly
where. That site is huge!

>
>   2) Can we hold back from erupting into any major flame wars?  I see
> trouble brewing here since the last few days and I'm hoping we can
> curtail it before we get into some major bandwidth squandering.  If you
> feel you must let loose some stinging comments about somebody's post,
> send it to the sender, not the list.
>
> <off my soapbox>
> Mark

Hear, hear.

Nik.

[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Any experience with DPS PAR ?
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1993 12:05:14 +1000 (EST)
From: Nikola Vukovljak <[e-mail]>

On Fri, 18 Jun 1993, Mark Thompson wrote:

> > Now that some time is gone by and DPS is availible I want to ask
> > you people out there if there are any experiences with this board.
>
> Mine hasn't arrived yet, but I did go check one out at a local dealer.
> First off, I liked the interface; clean, professional, and pretty intuitive.
> The output imagery was good and writing/compressing images to the device
> was transparent and fast (a few seconds per frame). You wrote to it like
> it was any drive in the system. As for compression, apparently it can be
> controlled both during recording and playback. To control compression ratios,
> it allows a quality factor from 0-23. Apparently when you are rendering,
> you set it to 23 and it will choose the best value it can on playback to
> maintain 30fps. You would only set it lower than 23 when doing real time video
> capture with the TBC4. For playback, Q16 had very noticeable artifacts around


Any idea whether this gadget :-) will be available in PAL ? I hope this
isn't another one of those NTSC only products.

Nik.

[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Floating Point Gurus
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1993 12:01:32 +1000 (EST)
From: Nikola Vukovljak <[e-mail]>

On Fri, 18 Jun 1993, Rob (R.D.) Hounsell wrote:

> Dudes && || Dudettes,
>
>   I often experience a problem on my Amiga sometimes while rendering under
> Imagine 2.0 that I figure is due to my home-made accellerator but will ask
> anyway:
>
>   Has anyone been experiencing guru mediations that indicate either a memory
> error or co-processor illegal instruction? This happens often enough that I
> cannot set up a sequence of frames to render before I go to bed and have any
> confidence at all that it will be finished the next morning (i.e. it will have
> crashed after several frames). It seems to happen by far most often when
> running rendering in Imagine, although that could just be because it works the
> system the hardest.
>
>   As I said, I expect that there is a timing problem within my A1000 - LUCAS
> accellerator - FRANCES memory expansion setup (PD Hardware), but you never
> know. I've taken a logic analyzer as far as it will go; I've arranged access to
> a 68020 in-circuit emulator, but due to wedding plans have been too busy to try
> it.
>
> Thx
> Rob
> --

Well, I can't help you much except to say that I rarely have Imagine crash
on me and it even kept going when it took all but 10 K of all the system
RAM! (yep only had 10 K CHIP RAM) - it just didn't render everything but
only a part of the object.

It may really be your accelerator.

Nik.
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Bla in Trace mode ?, help !
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1993 12:24:29 +1000 (EST)
From: Nikola Vukovljak <[e-mail]>

On Fri, 18 Jun 1993, Florence Ormezzano wrote:

>
>
> Hello !, I need help !
> I have an irregular sphere and an object inside. I checked the size of
> the sphere, it's around 900.0000 and I checked the size of the world, and
> set it for 1024.0000...the camera is inside the sphere with two lights,
> one spherical (& diminish intensity) one cylindrical (& cast shadows). Now
> when I render in scanline mode its fine, but if I render in trace mode
> it's BLACK, with a vague grey shape on top of the frame.
> Now I don't know what else to do, what to check...anybody who knows?
> Thank you !
>
> [e-mail]

Well, you haven't really given us enough information here (could try to
describe the scene a bit more) , but check whether the sphere is located
at 0,0,0 - if not, the world size may still be too small.

Also, how much RAM do you have left when rendering starts (you may be
running out)

Nik.

[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Imagine.quest.(reply)
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 21:37:27 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jeff Walkup)


> I have 2 meg of chip ram and 4 of fast on a 3000 machine, while rendering
> the fast ram goes down to about 500.000 or around that...it might be that
> I don't have enough...?

If you mean you have 500,000 bytes of fast mem left, and all of your
chip mem (less what imagine and the WB are using for screens -
naturally), then no - it sounds like you have plenty of memory.

What are the attributes for your spheres?  (Using any Filter, Reflect,
etc... ?)

--
Jeff Walkup - [e-mail] - Digital Animator / Videographer


##

Subject: Re: Wacom tablet and FC24/Light24
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 20:34:42 CDT
From: Joe Hanson <[e-mail]>

As Stephen Menzies writes:
>
> Has anyone got a Wacom tablet working successfully with
> Light24 (paintbox on the Firecracker24)?
> If so, I would appreciate knowing how (perhaps someone has
> written a driver).
>
> thanks,
>     stephen
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> \\\Stephen Menzies, TFX Animation Inc., TAARNA Systems, Montreal, Qc.///
> [[]] [e-mail] [[]] [e-mail] [[]] [e-mail]
>
>

I attempted to use a WIZ tablet with Light24/Firecracker.  It didn't
work.

I contacted TriMedia, the company that supplied the driver package,
who in turn contacted Impulse.
I was informed by TriMedia that the problem was with Light24 and how
it interpreted mouse movements.
I asked Mike Halvorson about it, but his response made me think it
wasn't a high priority issue.  I haven't heard of an update.

I thought about buying, but haven't tried, third party paint packages
compatible with the Firecracker.

So Stephen, your situation may be the same as mine.


joe hanson.


##

Subject: FC24 Blooz
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1993 16:33:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: Naked Man <[e-mail]>

  Is it just me or is there a lack of support for an otherwise
  extraordinary piece of hardware known as the Firecracker? Or is it just
  that Impulse is trying to be as much like Comodore as possible.  Do they
  desire to become as bankrupt as Big 'C' one day?  Imagine may go the way
  of another toy and the Firecracker may asphixiate from lack of support.
  Light24 is wonderful in giving realtime 24 bit painting, but has it been
  improved one little jot since it came out?  What do those guys DO up
  there all year except plan for snow-ins?  I wouldn't be so bitter if it
  weren't for the fact that NOTHING is being improved on.  Let's examine
  the word 'nothing' a moment
  in small words so there is no misunderstanding:
    a thing that does not exist... "no"  "thing"  a complete and thorough
    lack leaving no exception to its utter non-existence.
  Any clues would be greatly appreciated.
  wes


##

Subject: ISL routines WANTED
Date:     Mon, 21 Jun 1993 11:00:38 +0200
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

There is a stagefile re/compiler around but what about some neat
programms for it.

Stretch a animation to n files
including an object sequence into a scene.
How about advanced animation technques (gravity and so on)

Lets talk about ISL as it is VERY imagine related :-)

HANNES


##

Subject: Ok here is an imagine related one :-)
Date:     Mon, 21 Jun 1993 10:56:33 +0200
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

Someone pointed out that on this maillist there was too few
imagine related subjects discussed lately.
So here we go:

How about exchanging essence settings via this mailllist.

Anyone who has produced some marvellous effects with this package
go and post it NOW

Hannes


##

Subject: Re: FC24 Blooz
Date: 21 Jun 1993 08:13:11 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Stephen Menzies)

Naked Man <[e-mail]> writes:
> [...]
>  Light24 is wonderful in giving realtime 24 bit painting, but has it been
>  improved one little jot since it came out?  What do those guys DO up
> [...]
>  Any clues would be greatly appreciated.
>  wes

We contacted Imapulse regarding a problem between Light24 and the
Wacom tablet (they don't work together). They said they ..."might
look into it in 6 months to 1 year". One can safely assume that
this means in the next year or 2 and most likely, never.
Too bad, it is quite fast, in comparison with other packages.

-stephen
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\\\Stephen Menzies, TFX Animation Inc., TAARNA Systems, Montreal, Qc.///
[[]] [e-mail] [[]] [e-mail] [[]] [e-mail]


##

Subject: Trace.prob.solved
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 10:19:22 EDT
From: Florence Ormezzano <[e-mail]>

Hye !
Thanks to everybody I solved my trace prob.
If anybody is interested the problems where 1/objects not located at 0,0,0
and 2/objects too big (not enough ram).
The picture took 10h to render and was not too interesting ! hahaha oh well...
thank you very much for all the help !
Florence


##

Subject: ISL idea
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 05:57:20 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Daniel T. Edwards)

Hannes has a good idea...
are there programs that make automatic modifications to your ISL script.
I just recently discovered this neat utility, I can now use it from DOpus
without leaving the wonderful world of GUI.

For those who may have forgot... ISL (Imagine Staging Language?) is a
couple of programs that you can use to convert an Imagine staging file
into a human readable format... and back again.  It is similar in function
to TTDDD except TTDDD converts objects into human readable format.

I'm not a programmer (er... I'm a lazy programmer), but I would like to see
a program that uses ISL to do motion blurring (oooooo!) it seems that a clever
programmer (not a lazy one 8) ) could write a program to load an ISL stage,
check for object motions, if an object moves the threshold distance during
one frame, then TTDDD would take the old object COPY it AND Change the Filter
values, then the program (the one I didn't write) would re-write the ISL stage
and include the filtered object (made with TTDDD) at an interpolated
position/alignment so that the final image would appear to have a
semi-transparent trail.  For those that have 1GB of ram to fool around with,
there could be an option that would allow multiple copies of the moving
object to be given varying filter values and placed adjacent to one-another
thus making the filtered trail more complete (continuous (sp)).

That's my idea... it's free!

 ____________________________________________________________
/                                                            \
| Amiga 2000                James R. Walker                  |
| 2MB Chip             [e-mail]           |
| 18MB Fast    ______________________________________________|
| 130 MB Hard /                                              |
| 68040 33Mhz |read this R.M. of WB> This Imagineer for rent!|
\____________________________________________________________/


##

Subject: Re: stuff
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1993 10:13:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Mr. Scott Krehbiel" <[e-mail]>

>
>
> On Wed, 16 Jun 1993, Mr. Scott Krehbiel wrote:
>
> > I realize in re-reading my earlier post that I wasn't at all clear
> > in what I was saying.  I hate it when I do that!
> >
> > What I was wowed by was the amount of control that Wavefront gives

(stuff deleted)

> > Scott
>
> So what is your point here?

(stuff deleted)

> Nik.
>
> [e-mail]
>

My point was to highlight some neat stuff that's available in high-end
software, so we can start looking for more neat features in future
versions of Imagine (yeah, right) and so we'll start using tools
available in pd/shareware.  (like Icoons)

I agree that comparing Wave and Imagine is stupid, (and there really was
quite a thread-loss in there)  but I think it's very important to keep
aware of the high-end stuff and try to figure out convoluted bizarre
ways of using a whole bunch of non-related tools together to get
results that nobody has ever gotten b4.  That's my point.
Also, the longer and louder we shout at Impulse, the more they
have to spring on Aspirin.

Who knows - maybe with a little practice, Videoscape can do particle
animation.  (I'm kidding)

Here's a question for you: What changes would you like to see in the
                           Attributes editor?  What nifty new features?

Scott
and if my other post today made it through somehow, sorry for the
redundancy.


##

Subject: Re: renderman... pd??
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 12:21:45 EDT
From: Eric A. Haines <[e-mail]>

>> But there
>> is a program out (distributed with a book) called BOB that looks just
>> as good as Renderman..
>
>FYI,
>The book is by Stephen Coy who is the author of VIVID.  BOB is a version
>of VIVID.  Both shareware raytracers, and worth looking at.

Actually, Christopher Watkins is the first author.  The book is pretty good, and
BOB is quite fast.

%A Christopher D. Watkins
%A Stephen B. Coy
%B Photorealism and Raytracing in C
%I M&T Books
%C San Mateo, CA
%D 1992
%Z comes with a disk of code for "Bob" raytracer

Eric Haines


##

Subject: Re: Trace.prob.solved
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1993 01:31:21 +1000 (EST)
From: Nikola Vukovljak <[e-mail]>

On Mon, 21 Jun 1993, Florence Ormezzano wrote:

> Hye !
> Thanks to everybody I solved my trace prob.
> If anybody is interested the problems where 1/objects not located at 0,0,0
> and 2/objects too big (not enough ram).
> The picture took 10h to render and was not too interesting ! hahaha oh well...
> thank you very much for all the help !
> Florence

Glad we could help. How did you get around the memory problem ? Just made
the object less detailed?

Nik.
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Ok here is an imagine related one :-)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1993 01:14:30 +1000 (EST)
From: Nikola Vukovljak <[e-mail]>

On Mon, 21 Jun 1993, Hannes Heckner wrote:

> Someone pointed out that on this maillist there was too few
> imagine related subjects discussed lately.
> So here we go:
>
> How about exchanging essence settings via this mailllist.
>
> Anyone who has produced some marvellous effects with this package
> go and post it NOW

Yea please! Even if they are just reprints from the first Essence
newsletter. No-one outside the US ever recieved it.

Nik.
[e-mail]


##

Subject: CD-ROM
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1993 11:47:51 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail]

With all this talk about CD-ROM objects, I was wondering
if there is a SCSI CD-ROM drive that can be hooked up externally
to an A500?  My External drive takes up my expansion port so Commodors
(Ack no backspace) drive will not work... Any ideas?
I have an old Trumpcard controller (Way slow - sigh)

Also, is it possible to get a sample of some Essance Textures?
I havnt even >Seen< Any much less had a chance to play with any. :(

Thanks,
     Don

[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: stuff
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1993 01:21:24 +1000 (EST)
From: Nikola Vukovljak <[e-mail]>

On Mon, 21 Jun 1993, Mr. Scott Krehbiel wrote:

>
> My point was to highlight some neat stuff that's available in high-end
> software, so we can start looking for more neat features in future
> versions of Imagine (yeah, right) and so we'll start using tools
> available in pd/shareware.  (like Icoons)

Hmm, Ok, but I won't hold my breath. :-)


>
> I agree that comparing Wave and Imagine is stupid, (and there really was
> quite a thread-loss in there)  but I think it's very important to keep
> aware of the high-end stuff and try to figure out convoluted bizarre
> ways of using a whole bunch of non-related tools together to get
> results that nobody has ever gotten b4.  That's my point.
> Also, the longer and louder we shout at Impulse, the more they
> have to spring on Aspirin.

I'd love to be able to combine SGI produced stuff with my work, but alas I
don't have access to one. Then again I'd be happy if Image Master gave me
real-time feedback so I could actually use it properly to composite my
images. Oh, and a new manual.

>
> Here's a question for you: What changes would you like to see in the
>                            Attributes editor?  What nifty new features?
>

Well, actually I've always been bitching about the Attributes editor, actually
 not the attributes editor itself but the Textures editor - I want Sliders
there. The colour indicator was a good start but that should have been
there in the first place. I want some feedback on what the actual texture
would look like applied to some object (anything will do I just want
feedback) - especially Essence textures.

Also, the brushmapping needs to be totally revamped. Altitude mapping
especially. I want to be able to apply alt. maps to any objects with ease
and not just flat planes, balls or cylinders. Controlling the depth of the
bumps with the y value while also controlling the extent of the map is
plain STUPID!

Ok, enough bitching... :-)

Nik.
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: T3DLIB [TDDDConv] for DOS?
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 15:54:16 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Glenn M. Lewis - ICD ~)

    After all of the Essence PC and Essence II PC work is completed,
I will take a look at T3DLIB (aka TTDDDLIB, aka TDDDConv) and see how
difficult it is to port to an MSDOS machine.  Apparently, nobody has
done the port yet, and I *know* that at least two people have officially
tried.  So I'm not promising anything, and I am especially not promising
any "delivery" date.  But I will look at it after the commercial
products get released.
    [ Sorry to the IML for having to read this answer about every
two weeks, but I am getting barraged by this question and hope these
posts will help people be patient. ]

                            -- Glenn Lewis


##

Subject: "The" Eric Haines? (was Re: renderman... pd??)
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 13:07:14 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Setzer)

>
> %A Christopher D. Watkins
> %A Stephen B. Coy
> %B Photorealism and Raytracing in C
> %I M&T Books
> %C San Mateo, CA
> %D 1992
> %Z comes with a disk of code for "Bob" raytracer
>
> Eric Haines
>
What?  No plug for your wonderful book?  Well, the book to which you made a
contribution?

For those of you who are unaware Eric(I hope you are the same Eric Haines) wrote
part of a book(that comes from the notes from a SIGGRAPH class, if I'm not
mistaken) called "An Introduction to Ray Tracing."  Its an excellent book with
lots of examples and detailed explinations without getting into *too* much
math(hard to do with raytracing). I recommend it for anyone who is interested
in this stuff.  There are some really nice pictures of some of Erics work
as well.

I didn't know you visited this list, Eric.  Have you done any work with
Imagine(or any other renders) lately.  Sorry if this is common knowledge, I
don't visit the uploaded-pictures sections much.


Tom Setzer
[e-mail]

*** This .sig intentionally left blank ***

ps  "Look Ma, no bounce messages!!!!"  Thanks Dave!!


##

Subject: Essence Idea...
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1993 15:10:50 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Cyrus J Kalbrener-1" <[e-mail]>

      This was inspired by the fire tutorial in the essence newsletter.
Hope you like it!

This will create a two-dimentional ring of fire, but with the right moves,
it will look like it's 3D and be quite convincing.

Add a plain disk and make it BRIGHT.

Set it's COLOR to a dark, fire like red, and it's FILTER all the way up to 255
for red, green, and blue.  If you want to add a fire color brush or
texture instead, do so now.

Now add the Cylindturb texture and rotate it's X axis 90 degrees so that
the Z a xis points directly out from the surface of the disk.  Make the
TRANSITION RADIUS about 70%-80% of the disk radius.  Set the TRANSITION
and VARIATION WIDTH to about 5%-10% of the object radius.  Set the COLORs
all to -1 and all of the filters to 0.  Leave everything else at the
defaults.

Add a second Cylindturb and again rotate the X axis so the the
Z axis points directly out from the surface of the disk.  Use the same
settings as before, except make the TRANSITION RADIUS about 90% of t he
disk radius and set the FILTERS to 255.  When rendered it should create an
opaique (sic) ring of fire with a clear center.

Keep in mind that STARS will not be visible through the inside of the ring
and nothing will reflected through it.

Movement can be simulated over time by morphing the textures positions
along their Z axies.  This effect can also be done with Shellturb and
Radialturb, but when animating they will look different.


    Cyrus J. Kalbrener


##

Subject: Essence
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 16:20:11 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Kevin Kodama)

The essence examples being posted are pretty cool :-) Any chance of
Steve and Glenn releasing LIGHTWAVE Essence ? (please ?)
Also, since I don't have essence yet, can someone or anyone tell me
approximately how much rendering slowdown are you experiencing, vis a vis
image mapping etc.. ? For example, in Lightwave 2.0, procedural textures are
*slower* on the 040 than the 030 (this has been corrected i hear in 3.0)
Are those of you running 040's and Imagine running into similar slowdowns?
thanks
kevin
[e-mail]


##

Subject: trace.last
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 0:02:32 EDT
From: Florence Ormezzano <[e-mail]>

Just making the object smaller (scaled it in xyz) allowed me too use the
trace mode and still have everything being rendered ( instead of half the
object ). But it was so slow ! it's not possible to make an animation that
way...I will buy more ram...
Florence


##

Subject: CD-ROM
Date: 21 Jun 93 23:02:36 EDT
From: Jonathan Hirschman <[e-mail]>

>With all this talk about CD-ROM objects, I was wondering
>if there is a SCSI CD-ROM drive that can be hooked up externally
>to an A500?  My External drive takes up my expansion port so Commodors
>(Ack no backspace) drive will not work... Any ideas?
>I have an old Trumpcard controller (Way slow - sigh)
>
>Also, is it possible to get a sample of some Essance Textures?
>I havnt even >Seen< Any much less had a chance to play with any. :(
>Thanks,
>     Don
>
>[e-mail]


Don,

Almost any SCSI CD-ROM can be hooked up externally; I am using an
externally cased Toshiba 3301B, and it works quite well along with the
Xetec file system.

Take a look in any Mac magazine, and get something with specs that are
agreeable to you and your budget.  Any good Amiga mail order house will
have the Xetec file system.  All you need is the proper cabling after
that!  Xetec's installation procedure is very easy.

Make sure that the Trumpcard is SCSI-Direct compatible (I believe it is),a
nd make sure that the CD-ROM mechanism is one that is well supported, like
Toshiba or NEC.  You'll need the right SCSI cable, and a terminator; you
will probably have to take terminators either off the drive in the
Trumpcard housing, or off the Trumpcard electronics.


           //Jonathan,
       \\//via AutoPilot


##

Subject: Animation formats and programs
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 1:10:28 EDT
From: Steve J. Lombardi <[e-mail]>

I just finished rendering 50 frames in imagine. I want to convert
them from iff24 to a suitable ham8 animation format. some questions:

1. Speed wise is anim 7 or anim 8 faster. or perhaps another format??

2. Can anyone recommend a good piece of shareware to convert a series
of iff24 images to the above superior anim format??

3. Is there a version of Viewtek that can do this or do I need to create anim5
before going to anim 7.

4. I remember a fellow (Udo Shurman?? I hope I didn''t butcher your name
to badly, Udo) recommending a program, actually a set of programs, to do
exactly what I want. The name fails me. It was something like a??-a??

A tip of my hat to anyone who can help. thanks.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
                    | why would he be such a jerk? i know that he doesn't smoke
steve lombardi      | drugs. and he doesn't do cocaine. and he doesn't shoot
[e-mail] | smack. and he doesn't even drink beer. Why would he be
                    | such a fu*ker to me? --WEEN


##

Subject: Metaballs
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 07:24:47 +0100
From: [e-mail] (Heberle H.)

>As mentioned in my previous post, metaballs are what you want to achieve what
>you are talking about. TDI recently added metaball modeling and rendering to
>their software and if I remember, Prisms has it as well. I forget if Softimage
>does. But no, no PC based software has this capability. Bones in Imagine
>are likely a copy of what they are in LW, a means to put a skeletal structure
>inside an object and deform the object based on the movements of the skeleton.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, Softimage does allow you to model with metaballs.
Horst
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Animation formats and programs
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 0:50:32 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jeff Walkup)


> 1. Speed wise is anim 7 or anim 8 faster. or perhaps another format??

Anim7_32 is the fastest, but also gets the worst compression.
Anim7_16 is a little slower, but the files are smaller.


> 2. Can anyone recommend a good piece of shareware to convert a series
> of iff24 images to the above superior anim format??

I recommend "MainActor".  It will let you build anims from frames
(rendered only, no 24bit or JPEG), bust anims up into frames, append
anims, view anims or portions of anims, etc etc etc...  MainActor is
shareware and can be found on Aminet in gfx/edit.  Too bad the author
wants $50 (!!!) for registration....
Since it can't deal with 24bit files, you'll need something else to
render them into HAM first.  "Rend24" is probably your best bet, it's
also on Aminet under os30/gfx.


> 3. Is there a version of Viewtek that can do this or do I need to create anim5
> before going to anim 7.

Viewtek doesn't create anims, only plays them back (and shoddily at
that).  MainActor plays Anim7's much better, if you can load the whole
thing in memory - if you can't, it'll play it back from hard disk (much
slower and choppy, of course).

--
Jeff Walkup - [e-mail] - Digital Animator / Videographer


##

Subject: imagine-question
Date:     Tue, 22 Jun 1993 13:49:04 +0200
From: Peter Bugla <[e-mail]>

Hi imagine-users!

First my apologies, if my question is too simple, but I started
working with Imagine 2.0 (PC-Version) about 2 weeks ago.

I made the p51 (which comes with the program) follow a "holding"-
path (something like a horizontal loop), with nice banking in
turns :) without any greater problems as follows:
Copy your flight-path, edit new path, click on start-point, split
segment for some time and erase all new points except the last new made,
and  erase(!) the point you started with, then let a simple axis
(TRACK) follow this second (track-)path , and track the plane to TRACK.
The plane now follows the TRACK, which is a little ahead.
Now you can do banking with 'rotate around y-axis' in the
info-requester in the action-editor making nice little exact
30degree turns ;-) while the plane is still following its path.
(Any suggestions for an easier way to do this?)

Now my BIG problem:

I added a looping to the flight-path (looking like a circle in the
z-x-window (front). The points that define the looping (5) are aranged
as follows:
           <-
          __*__
             /  3  \
            /       \
            |       |  ^
           4*       *2 |
        |       |
            \      /
  ->         \    /          ->
  _________*__>__<__*__________
           1        5

(Ufff! I'm really not so good with this kind of graphix.)
with each point oriented:
z-axis pointing to the center of the circle,
y-axis pointing in the direction of the plane (along the looping)
x-axis (logically) to the viewer (corresponding to the above pic).

The plane behaves as expected (cockpit facing the center of the looping)
until it reaches point 2, where it suddenly (from one pic to the next)
makes a 180 degree roll facing cockpit out. It "stays" in this orien-
tation (cockpit facing out) until it reaches point 4, rolling back
to cockpit-in orientation, leaving the loop correctly.

This means: The lower half of the loop is "flown" correctly,
but the upper half belongs to an outer looping (or out-looping ?).

Why this turn ?????
I'm absolutely sure I didn't asked for it!

The plane's (and TRACK's) axis are oriented (with plane horizontal!):
z-axis pointing up (in the sky)
y-axis pointing in the way it is expected to fly: from the middle
       through the propeller
x-axis (logically) to one wing.

Is there anyone who can tell me how to fix it?
Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanx in advance
    Peter

PS: My Imagine crashes very often, totally unintended without any key
pressed or mouse movements made.
Sometimes it even crashes in the moment it tries to start (on
a new booted system !!! (imagine this !! ;-) ) , telling :
Abnormal program termination!
Remember what you were doing and call impulse.
"Well, I just started this $#@^$%#^%@ Program, okay!!"
I don't think Impulse will like me saying this on the phone :-).
Is there somebody else with major crash-problems?
Any suggestions?


***********************************************************************
*Peter Bugla                              "Gravity brings me down..." *
*E-mail: [e-mail]        -- unknown            *
***********************************************************************


##

Subject: Re: trace.last
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 08:11:21 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

>
>Just making the object smaller (scaled it in xyz) allowed me too use the
>trace mode and still have everything being rendered ( instead of half the
>object ). But it was so slow ! it's not possible to make an animation that
>way...I will buy more ram...
>Florence
>
>

    Hmmm.. Buying more RAM is a good idea, but don't expect it to
make things faster! For that you need to either not trace (do scanline)
or to get an accelerator card.



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


##

Subject: Re: Thread Rot
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 08:46:03 EDT
From: watters <[e-mail]>

> If you don't know what IDE is or what it stands for, don't ask here.
> This is not the place to debug your PC.  Mailer and elm questions
> should be solved in private mail with the list administrator.  Read
> the FAQ and learn how to subscribe and unsubscribe.  I don't care if
> you've been on television.

Whether you like it or not, the list eventually becomes a group of friends
who will end up discussing things other than Imagine.  A kind note reminding
people to get back on track might help, but a note saying 'I don't like this..
quit it...  quit it...'  doesn't.

> I don't think a signature is necessary

I do.

> and should never be more than one or two lines.

I believe four is the accepted norm.

> I don't want to see your prowess with ASCII graphics.

You are telling a bunch of artist to quit being creative??

> If I'm curious about your favorite soda or car, I'll ask,
> OK?  Otherwise, I don't want to know, and I don't want to read about
> it every three days, or even three times a day, kholland.

unsubscibe | [e-mail]

> And for heaven's sake, you don't need to quote the other person's signature,
> too.

This is true.

> This is not the POV or Wavefront or metaballs or Radiance or Rayshade
> mailing list.

So.  They should certainly be discussed with regards to how they compare and
relate to imagine.

> Enough!  Enough!

Fine.  Equally so, enough of the post about how Pixel 3D sucks rocks, and we
should all go out and buy Interchange as well as weekly notices about the up
coming object CD.  Neither topic seems to be directly related to Imagine.

However, if it was up to me... feel free to talk about that, other software,
they latest greatest utility you got, new display boards and playback boards,
as well as the recent work you have done for considerably less than what it
was worth!  The kind of things that friends with something in common talk about.

ps.  I really was on national TV, I've included some ASCII graphics, and if
you can't tell what make of car I like by my >2 line sig, I can post a message
talking about it in detail

pps. a partial smiley applies.

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

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


##

Subject: Re: Re: Thread Rot
Date: 22 Jun 93 09:15:28 EDT
From: John Foust / Syndesis Corporation <[e-mail]>

To: >internet: [e-mail]

watters <[e-mail]> writes:
> Whether you like it or not, the list eventually becomes a group of friends

I am not your friend.  These people on the list are not your friends.
The computer is your friend.

> I believe four is the accepted norm.

So you use eight or nine?  Do you say "Hi, I'm David Watters and I
like Porsches" every time you sit down with your group of friends?

> However, if it was up to me... feel free to talk about that, other
> software, they latest greatest utility you got, new display boards
> and playback boards,

Not really.  You must be confusing the "Imagine mailing list" with
the "general Amiga" areas of Internet mail.

> Fine.  Equally so, enough of the post about how Pixel 3D sucks rocks,

I see - I can't post about my area of expertise, but it's OK for
"computer aides" who've taken an entry-level assembler class to spend
500+ lines three times a day talking about proper software
development, and for everyone to pipe up "Golly, I've read about
metaballs, too, and they should add that to Imagine!"

> notices about the up coming object CD.  Neither topic seems to be

The 3D-ROM disc has more than 500 Imagine objects...  that's more
relevant than IDE or SCSI.  Why not post those unrelated responses to
the SENDER, not to the LIST?  That's much more friendly.

As for Syndesis's online presence - where's Impulse?  Where's Axiom?
Apex is here, of course.  Where's any other Amiga or Imagine-related
company on this mailing list?  Oh, they're not our friends.


##

Subject: Re: Animation formats and programs
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 00:41:32 +1000 (EST)
From: Nikola Vukovljak <[e-mail]>

On Tue, 22 Jun 1993, Steve J. Lombardi wrote:

> I just finished rendering 50 frames in imagine. I want to convert
> them from iff24 to a suitable ham8 animation format. some questions:
>
> 1. Speed wise is anim 7 or anim 8 faster. or perhaps another format??

Depends on the machine. If you have an AGA machine the two should be
similar in speed. If not then Anim7. Anim8 has been optimised for AGA
machines only.

>
> 2. Can anyone recommend a good piece of shareware to convert a series
> of iff24 images to the above superior anim format??

Hmm, I know that Rend 24 will convert to Anim5 and then you can use a
program that comes with Viewtek to convert to Anim7.


>
The commercial option would be AdPro of course especiall with a new add on
program called Anim Workshop, but this is not a cheap way.

Nik.

[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Animation formats and programs
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 9:40:02 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Virtually Here)

Steve J. Lombardi just said:
> 1. Speed wise is anim 7 or anim 8 faster. or perhaps another format??
>
Anim 7 seems to be a bit faster on machines where the CPU has a 32
bit path to chipram (i.e., 3000, 4000, 1200).

> 2. Can anyone recommend a good piece of shareware to convert a series
> of iff24 images to the above superior anim format??

I'm not sure if it will work directly with IFF24 images or not (I
don't beleive it will), but MainActor (available on the AmiNet
mirror near you) will do most of what you want.  It can load and
save in a variety of formats, including IFF Frames, AnimBrush, Anim
7 (with either 16 or 32 bit compression) Anim 5, Icons, etc etc etc.
It also supports altering the animation via changing screenmodes,
centering the anim, changing the timing of individual frames in the
anim, and lots of other little goodies.  It has a GREAT GadTools
interface, and fully takes advantage of the 3.0 operating system if
it finds it.  Very cool stuff.

It's shareware, and IMO very well done.

   /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
  //  Scott Ellis //  IRC: ScottE // WARNING: This signature warps   //
 //    [e-mail]   //  time and space in its vicinity //
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


##

Subject: Re: Thread Rot
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 13:25:49 EDT
From: watters <[e-mail]>

Last one from me... I promise

> watters <[e-mail]> writes:
> > Whether you like it or not, the list eventually becomes a group of friends
>
> I am not your friend.  These people on the list are not your friends.
> The computer is your friend.

Okay, glad to know you aren't my friend.  Some people on this list our my
friends... so all my posts should be read by them only I guess.

> > I believe four is the accepted norm.
>
> So you use eight or nine?  Do you say "Hi, I'm David Watters and I
> like Porsches" every time you sit down with your group of friends?

I don't tell them where I work every time either... this is totally stupid.

> > However, if it was up to me... feel free to talk about that, other
> > software, they latest greatest utility you got, new display boards
> > and playback boards,
>
> Not really.  You must be confusing the "Imagine mailing list" with
> the "general Amiga" areas of Internet mail.

Well then John, you tell me what the mailing list is?  I would rather this
be a newsgroup, but as this idea was rejected before due to a lot of people
not having UseNet news we are stuck with a mailing list.
Wether it come through Email, or in a newsgroup... it is the same.

> > Fine.  Equally so, enough of the post about how Pixel 3D sucks rocks,
>
> I see - I can't post about my area of expertise, but it's OK for
> "computer aides" who've taken an entry-level assembler class to spend
> 500+ lines three times a day talking about proper software
> development

This is not happening.  What is happening is people are discussing other
products (DPS PAR w/ IDE, CDROMs, Video Boards) which they are using or
buying on the same machine they run Imagine on.

> and for everyone to pipe up "Golly, I've read about
> metaballs, too, and they should add that to Imagine!"

YES!  If a person on this mailing list once to voice his opinion that
Imagine should have iso-surface support... he should do it!

> The 3D-ROM disc has more than 500 Imagine objects...  that's more
> relevant than IDE or SCSI.

The SCSI/IDE discussion, as I saw it, had to do with the recording and playback
of 24bit animations off of hard disk.

> As for Syndesis's online presence - where's Impulse?  Where's Axiom?
> Apex is here, of course.  Where's any other Amiga or Imagine-related
> company on this mailing list?  Oh, they're not our friends.

I value the online presence of ANY and ALL companies.  They do, however, have
to be very carefull not to raise a ruckus as you have with me because I will
no avoiding buying Interchange PRO if I can help it, and I am starting to wish
I hand't bought Interchange... especially since I never use it and always use
Pixel 3D instead.

It's that easy to loose a customer or perspective customer just because you
got a little tired of skipping messages that covered animation playback of
IDE or SCSI, or the fact that I was on TV.... I really was you know.

btw... How does this little argument fit in you NewImagineWorldOrder for the
list?


<look out John... here comes the sig... and I think it mentions Porsches again>

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

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


##

Subject: Re: Re: Thread Rot
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1993 11:06:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: First Consulting Group <[e-mail]>

You have no right to say something like,

"These people on the list are not your friends"

without prefacing it with IMO or IMHO.  As far as I am concerned, people
who contribute to the list, especially those who volunteer their time in
solving others' problems, are behaving in a friendly way and deserve to be
called friends.  I regard anyone on the IML as a potential friend I just
haven't met yet.

IMHO, discussion of hardware and software other than Imagine is still of
use, in that it can contribute new tools to the Imagineer's bag of tricks.
 If you want to publicize Syndesis' CD-ROM (and please do, I for one am
very interested), you should also tolerate others' questions about
interfacing CD-ROM drives, and, by extension, any other hardware or
software useful or necessary to using Imagine.

Life's too short to waste time on intolerance.  Everybody lighten up!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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: looking for Adpro help
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 13:15:22 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dale R Rogers)

    If anyone is familiar with working with colors in ADPro, please
    contact me personally.  I would like to ask you some questions
    about working with merging pictures.

    Put that way... I should stay out of trouble.

    If I don't ANY response, I'll probably post something to the list.
    Fair warning.  ;-)

    Dale


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


##

Subject: Re: Animation formats and programs
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1993 13:43:46 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Cyrus J Kalbrener-1" <[e-mail]>

On Tue, 22 Jun 1993, Steve J. Lombardi wrote:

> I just finished rendering 50 frames in imagine. I want to convert
> them from iff24 to a suitable ham8 animation format. some questions:
>
> 1. Speed wise is anim 7 or anim 8 faster. or perhaps another format??

Anim 7 is suposedly faster than Anim8

> 2. Can anyone recommend a good piece of shareware to convert a series
> of iff24 images to the above superior anim format??

Main Actor, while rathe buggy, can convert individual frames to anim 5,
anim7, anim7_16, or anim7_32(for 16 or 32 bit machines).

> 3. Is there a version of Viewtek that can do this or do I need to create anim5
> before going to anim 7.

See above

Remainder deleted...


    Hope this helps!



        Cyrus J. Kalbrener



##

Subject: CONTACT
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 13:14:21 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Dave Wickard)

Hey hey hey Imagineers!   :-)


I would like at this time to clarify what I see my
role as IML administrator as.

Ideally, I see myself as the person nobody knows exists
except when they are subscribing or unsubscribing to the
list...or have delivery problems.

Realistically, I think I have to take a role that's only
slightly more active. If we begin to deviate from the
acceptable bounds of the IML charter (we have), if we
step over the bounds of common courtesy (we have),
or if we tend to delve into areas that are not
productive to the group as far as scope, length or
atmosphere (we have)...then I should do something.

Allow me to quote from the IML Guide-

>The single and cardinal rule of the IML is to treat your fellow
>readers and posters with the same respect you would appreciate
>accorded yourself. In other words, it's OK to reasonably
>and intelligently describe why one package or hardware platform is
>preferable for your use in a specific instance. It is NOT OK to blast
>or flame the large time and financial investments made by others in
>competing hardware and software products.

While it is indeed acceptable to quote portions
of a prior message for clarity's sake... one would have to
acknowledge that for the most part, we don't need a tremendous
amount of quoting here. Remembering that some members pay per
mail volume (line/bytes/message), efficiently communicating your
message in a minimal volume should be a goal of us all.

I think alot of our trouble has arisen from the tendency we
all have to state our feelings as indisputable fact.
Even if we don't *feel* that way, our written words are strong,
decisive and unwavering. They are virtually "lines in the sand"
that are drawn as we dare anyone to step over them.

Let's just call a timeout if we can, on some of the more
controversial interactions we've been having. Nobody wins those.
Everyone reading has an interest in Imagine and/or 3D rendering
in general. We have quite a few knowledgeable professionals
here as well as highly talented hobbyists. Let's draw on
this strength and get back on track.


Again, other packages are open for discussion here, but let's
try and at least keep things within the global sphere of
Imagine, at a reasonable length, with the courtesy assumed
in a civil conversation.


Sorry to get in your faces with this... and it's not aimed at
anyone in particular...it's merely a preventative measure.



Dave Wickard  [phone]   "Son, we didn't talk to our elders like
[e-mail]        that in my days."
[e-mail]      "Well these are *my* days sir, and we do."
[e-mail]        -The Simpsons
(for subscribes/unsubscribes/changes)


##

Subject: Re: Animation formats and programs
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 12:47:54 MDT
From: [e-mail] (Ben Scott)

I keep seeing people praising MainActor but I tried it on my 4000 and could
not get it to do anything but crash.  My system is otherwise very very stable
(even Imagine itself doesn't crash much...) and the crashes were repeatable.
Is it working for everyone but me?

.                         <<<<Infinite K>>>>

--
.---------------------------------------------------------------------------.
|Ben Scott, professional goof-off and consultant at The Raster Image, Denver|
|Internet [e-mail], or call the Arvada 68K BBS at [phone].|
>----------------------------------------..---------------------------------<
| "It's Woodstock!  Three days of peace, || The Raster Image IS responsible |
|love, and stock footage!" - Joel, MST3k || for everything I say! **Amiga** |
`----------------------------------------'`---------------------------------'


##

Subject: Just a thought ...
Date:     Tue, 22 Jun 1993 22:44:15 +0200
From: Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]>

Well I know that someone will flame me again, when I write something
that is not directly related to imagine but just hold on and you will
probably agree that my "thoughts" are quite imagine related :-)

Listing last weeks to the list revealed to me that most of the
more professional imagine users are hungry for nice new features
in new versions of imagine. In there postings they talk sometimes about
complex graphic tools/features (such as Metaballs ...). I think
that there are some very professional experts on this list which
reached the limits of imagine.
Now to my thought :-)

How about using their potentials to spawn a new mailing list or
newsgroup for developing a own rendering software. As far as I know
there are about 300-400 members on this list. Take five to ten
percents of them to be professionals that makes about 15-40 people.
I think that this number is more then sufficient for
1) found a new maillist
2) develop a own software

I know that there are other maillists around (dealing with exactly
this kind of thing) but I think that especially here on this maillist
are quite smart people. Take
-> Steve Worley and Glenn Lewis (Essence is superb, nobody will doubt
that)
-> Mark Thompson (well he is actually not a imagine guy :-) but
also a very trained person in cg). For those you do not know, take a
look at some of his pictures, they are marvellous!!

This is by far NO COMPLETE LIST AT ALL but you will agree that
there is a potential lying here on this list which ought to be
"exploited"
For those who want to flame me to death:
It was just a thought of mine, an idea what we could do ...
In the end the only thing that interests everyone on this list is
HOW TO MAKE STUNNING COMPUTER GRAPHICS

Now folks, let the flames come .... :-)
But I also want to here your opinions about my "thought"

Hannes

PS: Where are nice settings for essence textures. Keep them coming !!!!


##

Subject: Re: Thread Rot (boy does it)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 15:47:29 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Setzer)

[bunch of stuff I could care less about deleted]
> > > Fine.  Equally so, enough of the post about how Pixel 3D sucks rocks,
> >
> > I see - I can't post about my area of expertise, but it's OK for
> > "computer aides" who've taken an entry-level assembler class to spend
> > 500+ lines three times a day talking about proper software
> > development
>
> This is not happening.  What is happening is people are discussing other
> products (DPS PAR w/ IDE, CDROMs, Video Boards) which they are using or
> buying on the same machine they run Imagine on.
>
Sorry Dave, I have to disagree with you here... It is indeed happening.  In
fact, I don't see how you missed it, considering that is how this thread got
started.  Just the other day I arrived to find ~32k of crap(IMNSHO) in one mail
message.  Did you read it?  Sure, John exaggerated a little, but not much.

> > The 3D-ROM disc has more than 500 Imagine objects...  that's more
> > relevant than IDE or SCSI.
>
> The SCSI/IDE discussion, as I saw it, had to do with the recording and playback
> of 24bit animations off of hard disk.

The original IDE discussion was about what IDE stands for.  It started with a
relevent subject but degraded to "I'm Dumb, Everyone".  No big deal, small
mail, deletes easy, takes up little space.
>
> > As for Syndesis's online presence - where's Impulse?  Where's Axiom?
> > Apex is here, of course.  Where's any other Amiga or Imagine-related
> > company on this mailing list?  Oh, they're not our friends.
>
> I value the online presence of ANY and ALL companies.  They do, however, have
> to be very carefull not to raise a ruckus as you have with me because I will
> no avoiding buying Interchange PRO if I can help it, and I am starting to wish
> I hand't bought Interchange... especially since I never use it and always use

Dave, come on.  Isn't there a rule about whining on the Net.  No?  maybe not.
but don't go stomping out of a room like a pouting 5 year old because someone
defends what they said.  We use Imagine, and Impulse won't even talk to us, much
less flame us.

> btw... How does this little argument fit in you NewImagineWorldOrder for the
> list?
>
I was wondering about that too. Well, he was expressing his opinion which is
what you are for, but you are flaming him because he said you shouldn't
express opinions on the net.  Vicious cycle.  (Ok, so I was reaching, we're
all friends here right?  Ooops, sorry, wrong mail list ) ;)

Tom "Does a new line take up more space than anyother character" Setzer
The following sig contains only one new line at the end so can be considered only a one line sig.  I hope it doesn't offend anyone that can't do automatic linewraps.  Sorry to John as well, I couldn't resist. Here comes the new line. ;)


##

Subject: Re:4 Thread Rot
Date: 22 Jun 93 16:51:04 EDT
From: John Foust / Syndesis Corporation <[e-mail]>

To: >internet: [e-mail]

First Consulting Group <[e-mail]> writes:

> You have no right to say something like,
> "These people on the list are not your friends"
> without prefacing it with IMO or IMHO.

Apparently no one caught the "Paranoia" game reference.

I'm sorry, I think it's a bit unbalanced to declare that the reason
it's OK to talk about anything on a mailing list with a very specific
topic. David wants this list to be a replacement for comp.amiga; he
as much as said so in his last posting.

Although I've had plenty of true online friendships, I have enough
sense and civility to keep myself from declaring that a majority of
strangers are my "friends" and therefore will tolerate any sort of
nonsense I care to create.  (Meanwhile, I've received more "I agree
with you" e-mail, about 3:1).

I disagree about the CDROM info, even if it was generated within the
context of the 3D-ROM.  If someone has general SCSI questions, they
should go elsewhere.  I can live with "Imagine and related topics" as
the purpose of this mailing list.

Hannes Heckner <[e-mail]> writes:
> HOW TO MAKE STUNNING COMPUTER GRAPHICS
> Now folks, let the flames come .... :-)
> But I also want to here your opinions about my "thought"

Everyone, all together, "This is the Imagine mailing list."  Even if
you start a new mailing list for "stunning graphics", I'll probably
subscribe.  You can bet I'll still complain if someone starts
debating SCSI Porsche vs. IDE Porsche.  Meanwhile, I'll defend my
notion of the integrity of purpose of the Imagine mailing list.


##

Subject: rotating more than 360
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 16:12:08 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Setzer)

I was making a gear that looks like a long gear but is twisted.  So I made my
outline of points and edges, made a path, extruded along the path while
rotating.  It works ok if it is less than 360 degrees but it doesn't seem
to want to rotate more than that.  (ie if I set it to > 360, it gives the
equivilant < 360 degree value).  Because I want sharp edges on the teeth of the
gear, I turn off Phong shading.  The gear is only one segment, because if it is
more than one segment, the segments show up since shading is off.  If I use
more than one segment, I can rotate and have a gear that is twisted more than
360 degrees(each segment rotates the specified amount), but again, it doesn't
look nice.  Any suggestions?

BTW, I worked on this about 2 weeks ago, for a brief period of time.  If
I am doing something stupid, just let me know in the harshest of manors so
that I will be hurt and upset and never ask a stupid question again ;)

Tom Setzer
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Imagine3.0, Essence, and copyrights
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1993 17:33:46 -0500 (CDT)
From: Peter Garza <[e-mail]>

Some rambling questions and a setting for Essence:

(sorry if theses have been asked before)
1.  Is Imagine3.0 being beta-tested yet, or is it still in pre-beta
development?  If it is being beta tested, any comments?  Seems that
Real3D got a lot of good PR by the testers going "WOW!" and I'm just
wondering if Imagine will keep up with Real3D (I havn't had a chance
to use it, so please don't flame me if it's not that great).

2.  Are there any plans for Essence II?  I don't think I've made an
anim since I got Essence without using at least one or two of its
textures.

3. I used Essence to make an electrical arc between two rods, like
something out of Frankenstien's lab.  Start with a plane with 255
R,G,B on Color and a light blue (or whatever color you want the arc)
in Filter.  Then use Ringfract (with the cylinder pointing out of the
plane) with a color of 0 on R,G,B and turn off the filter and reflect
values.  Put the axis of Ringfract in the middle of the bottom edge of
the plane.  Now use Swapcrf to swap the color and filter values.  Now
when rendered, there should be something similar to an electrical arc
(or maybe some sort of plasma).  To have the arc grow, rotate the
Ringfract axis up or down so that the plane and cylinder do not
intersect at 90 degrees.  If you animate this it looks like the arc
gets taller until the arc breaks (i.e. the plane no longer intersects
Ringfract's cylinder in a curve, but instead in two lines).

My $.02 for what it's worth.  Sorry I couldn't be more specific on 3.
but I was describing from memory.  If you have any questions or
comments, feel free to e-mail me.

4.  I made a light cycle (a la TRON) and was wondering what sort of
copyright stuff I have to do if I use it or distribute it.  Thanx.


Peter Garza
[e-mail]


##

Subject: MainActor +
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 16:53:55 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jeff Walkup)

Regarding problems/bugs with MainActor:

What exactly are the problems y'all are having?

The only bug I get is garbled text under "Select Display" (the text that
describes the screen mode - the actual screen where the graphics are
displayed look fine).  If I select a mode that doesn't have an 'official'
name under WB2.1, I get garbage.  I.e. "NTSC:High Red Laced" works,
"NTSC:640 x 400 DPF2" doesn't ... what is that anyway??

Other than that small bug, it works OK on my system: A3000/25 - WB2.1

I've been using MainActor extensively over the last few days, to convert
a Vista animation (in DCTV format) directly to wonderful Anim7_32.
I'm even using it for playback now, since it handles Loops better than
ViewTek.  I'm getting at least 25fps in 736x482x3 DCTV with 70-80K deltas.
"JOY!"

Eventually, I'm going to use these frames as a background sequence in
Imagine - that's why I've saved each frame in JPEG as well.  Don't ask
me how I'm going to load the JPEG's into Imagine.... I don't have the
disk space for 256 frames in 24bit ... <sigh>.  Either I'll unpack 15-20
of them and render in batches, or I'll wait for PEGGER - supposedly adds
JPEG load/save to ANY program.  That's due in late July...  (Scroll back
thru comp.sys.amiga.announce for the full story.)

Of course, "JPEG Compression" has been promised for Imagine 3.0 ... ...
I'm waiting ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

--
Jeff Walkup - [e-mail] - Digital Animator / Videographer


##

Subject: Re: MainActor +
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 21:17:50 EDT
From: Steve J. Lombardi <[e-mail]>

> Regarding problems/bugs with MainActor:
> What exactly are the problems y'all are having?

Looks like a cool program however whenever I tell it to show a picture
or play an animation I get  A blank screen!! I'm running on a 4000/040
Anyone having a similar problem?

>
> Eventually, I'm going to use these frames as a background sequence in
> Imagine - that's why I've saved each frame in JPEG as well.  Don't ask
> me how I'm going to load the JPEG's into Imagine.... I don't have the
> disk space for 256 frames in 24bit ... <sigh>.  Either I'll unpack 15-20
> of them and render in batches, or I'll wait for PEGGER - supposedly adds
> JPEG load/save to ANY program.  That's due in late July...  (Scroll back
> thru comp.sys.amiga.announce for the full story.)
>
Yes! the C.S.A.A. Pegger teaser was intense. I hope they deliver
all of the promised features. Sounds too good to be true. Imagine 3.0
with promised JPEG support is at least a mid summer release. Impulse
seems to be quite busy fixing up PCImagine, so perhaps longer.

Hey! does anyone know Udo Schurman's address. I''d like
to ask him about the animation creation/playback package he mentioned here
a ways back. I Haven''t yet received my Adpro2.3 and would really
like a reliable means of packing animations up.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
                    | why would he be such a jerk? i know that he doesn't smoke
steve lombardi      | drugs. and he doesn't do cocaine. and he doesn't shoot
[e-mail] | smack. and he doesn't even drink beer. Why would he be
                    | such a fu*ker to me? --WEEN


##

Subject: Animation formats and programs
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1993 22:54:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: Udo K Schuermann <[e-mail]>

Steve J. Lombardi <[e-mail]> writes:
> I just finished rendering 50 frames in imagine. I want to convert
> them from iff24 to a suitable ham8 animation format. some questions:
>
> 4. I remember a fellow (Udo Shurman?? I hope I didn''t butcher your name
> to badly, Udo) recommending a program, actually a set of programs, to do
> exactly what I want. The name fails me. It was something like a??-a??

Ah, me thinks that fellow was I!  :)
The program I had good luck with is ...

AAP_AAC         (Disk #779) Animation playback and convert programs. (AAP
                and AAC). AAP can show IFF ILBM pictures, show IFF ANIM_5
                and IFF_ANIM_7 animations. It can show (long) sequences of
                animations and/or pictures using a script file and can
                operate from memory (preload) and/or disk. AAC converts
                between the supported anim filetypes and/or sequences of
                pictures. AAP version 1.2, AAC version 1.1. Includes source
                and a small sample sequence mix of pictures/animation from
                script file. Author: Wolfgang Hofer

This is on fish disk 779, available from many fine ftp sites, including
ftp.cso.uiuc.edu:pub/amiga/fish/f7/ff779/

My own experience with this program is good, but I don't know how well it
performs with HAM8, as I don't have access to an AGA machine :(

One nice feature of the player program (AAP) is its test mode, where it
flashes color 0 in green if the frame is "on time" or red if it is "late."
If your animation shows any red flashes, your animation suffers from a
bottleneck and won't run at the speed you specify.

I have had very good luck with overscanned 360x240 HAM animations that run
out of RAM with full-screen deltas: I get a reliable 30 fps with these on
an accellerated 2000.  If I had a 3000 or even an AGA machine I'm sure I
could get 720x480 HAM8 at full speed.


As to converting the images from 24-bit to HAM8, you just can't beat ADPro,
I think.  I had it convert 180 frames (and scaled them, down a little, too)
with a minimum of effort.  Of course, ADPro is commercial.

 ._.  Udo Schuermann
 ( )  [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Swivel
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 93 23:25:26 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    Scott was saying something about Swivel on the Mac. I was going to try and write
    an object converter between Imagine and Swivel. Does anyone know the Swivel
    object format?

                                                       Tom
--------------------
Well, I think Swivel is a spline based modeler like Caligari (I think that
is right)... So you could only do approximations of objects
in Imagine since it is a polygon (not spline) based modeler (to my
knowledge).


##

Subject: Re: Animation formats and programs
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 10:16:42 MET DST
From: [e-mail] (Tomasz Plonka V rok)

> I keep seeing people praising MainActor but I tried it on my 4000 and could
> not get it to do anything but crash.  My system is otherwise very very stable
> (even Imagine itself doesn't crash much...) and the crashes were repeatable.
> Is it working for everyone but me?

Hi,

I was using MainActor for two days on my A4000 and it crashed once.
In fact, another program caused this. I found MainActor as a very stable
program. I tried it in PAL & NTSC as well. Worked OK.

Tomasz Plonka


##

Subject: Re: Swivel
Date: 23 Jun 93 09:26:12 EDT
From: John Foust / Syndesis Corporation <[e-mail]>

To: >internet: [e-mail]

Swivel is not spline-based, it only uses polygons.  Syndesis wrote
the Swivel translator that's bundled in the Toaster.  Although
Paracomp / Macromedia might give you information about the file
format, I'll warn you that the format is among the strangest I've
ever encountered.

It is an accretion of several older programs written while author
Young Harvill was at VPL.  Some of the data structures are copies of
the Forth stack, others resemble Pascal, later parts are C-like.  It
switches between coordinate reference systems at different levels of
the database (i.e. changing sign and/or swapping Y/Z), and different
parts of objects have strange scale factors with little rhyme or
reason.

There are very few Swivel objects out there, and it's not a
spectacular modeler, so I wouldn't bother writing one if you could
avoid it.

> Imagine since it is a polygon (not spline) based modeler (to my

To be more precise, Imagine uses only triangles, and has some uses
for lone edges and points.  To convert from Swivel arbitrary polygons
to Imagine triangles, you'll also need to write a polygon tesselator.


##

Subject: Re: Thread Rot
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 09:32:15 EDT
From: watters <[e-mail]>

(A lighthearted tone applies throughout)

porsche> David wants this list to be a replacement for comp.amiga; he
porsche> as much as said so in his last posting.

"Just when I think I am out.... The keep pulling me back in!"

(This time I mean it!!! Last one)


My point <imagine> which is obviously opinion <imagine> is that a lot of list
<imagine> members don't have UseNet <imagine> news.  Therefore I am <imagine>
more tolerant than <imagine> you... John.... to their questions <imagine>
concerning anything <imagine>.  Your statement <imagine> above is incorrect
<imagine> anyways, I want comp.sys.amiga.3d.imagine <imagine> to be a <imagine>
replacement for <imagine> this list <imagine> but it won't happen.

porsche> (Meanwhile, I've received more "I agree with you" e-mail, about 3:1).

I hope this helps you feel better.  I have recieved a lot of "Ignore Foust,
he is an ass" mail but that is irrelevant.

porsche> I disagree about the CDROM info, even if it was generated within the
porsche> context of the 3D-ROM.  If someone has general SCSI questions, they
porsche> should go elsewhere.  I can live with "Imagine and related topics" as
porsche> the purpose of this mailing list.

I don't think many care what you can and can not live with <imagine>.  I don't
anyways, <imagine> but maybe <imagine> I am <imagine> alone on <imagine> this
one.  Regarless <imagine>, I will never jump <imagine> on someone for asking
<imagine> a question <imagine> on this list no matter <imagine> what it has
to <imagine> do with.

porsche> Everyone, all together, "This is the Imagine mailing list."

That <imagine> didn't sound <imagine> like everyone.

porsche> You can bet I'll still complain if someone starts
porsche> debating SCSI Porsche vs. IDE Porsche.

I was converting the porsche object with your software last night and just
laughed at the irony! 8^)  It was very self-amusing.

porsche> Meanwhile, I'll defend my
porsche> notion of the integrity of purpose of the Imagine mailing list.

That's right... your notion.  I have never gotten the letter informing me of
your new IML moderation duties.  I will, however, keep in line with you
guidelines from here on out. <Imagine>

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

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


##

Subject: Seagate IDE for DPS Personal Animation Recorder
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 09:45:05 EDT
From: watters <[e-mail]>

<John Foust... You may want to delete this mail immediately, it is for my
friends on the IML 8^)>

A few people have taken advantage of the deal I arranged for the members
of the Imagine mailing list.  I want to make sure that everyone has gotten
an opportunity to know about it and express any interest.

The price on the Seagate 3600A for members of Amiga related mailing lists is
$750 + shipping + tax if applicable.  This is about $40 under some of the
cheapest prices found by most people.

If you haven't gotten a chance to check out the DPS PAR, I would strongly
suggest it.  I used it yesterday and it looks great!  Even video people
(i.e. non computer people) are impressed with the possibilities with it.

Anyways, here are the specs:

------------------
The only drive to have been qualified on the DPS Personal Animation Recorder
so far has been the Seagate 3600A.

The 3600A is a 540MB formatted IDE drive
It has a 10.5ms average seek for reads and a 12ms average seek for writes.
It is rated at 200k power hours between failure and draws 5.5watts idle.
The drive runs at 5,411RPM for a average lantency of 5.54ms.
It is a low-profile drive with dimmensions of; 1" high, 4" wide, 5.75" deep,
and it is 1.65lbs.
It has a 256KB multisegmented cache and a 2 year warrenty.
(This is all from the spec sheet)

The price is $750 plus shipping and must be done COD, Visa, or Mastercard.
No terms.

You must be a current member of one of the Amiga related mailing lists
at this time to be able to get it at this price.  This is merely to limit
the scope of who is involved.

If you are interested you should get in touch with me through Email at:
[e-mail]

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

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


##

Subject: Re: rotating more than 360
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 09:39:03 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Setzer)

>
> I was making a gear that looks like a long gear but is twisted.  So I made my
> outline of points and edges, made a path, extruded along the path while
> rotating.  It works ok if it is less than 360 degrees but it doesn't seem
> to want to rotate more than that.  (ie if I set it to > 360, it gives the
> equivilant < 360 degree value). Because I want sharp edges on the teeth of the
> gear, I turn off Phong shading....

Whoops, boy was I not thinking.  I went home and played some more.  Rotating
more than 360 using only 1 segment would require Imagine to support curved
lines.  I realize that on the way home yesterday.  180 degree rotation causes
the line that make up the sides of the object to go through the center of the
object.

So, as Michael Comet suggested, and as I read in Understanding Imagine 2.0 last
night, just use Make Sharp and Make Soft to get the desired effect.

I didn't get a chance to try(render) it, as there are currently Stealth bombers
flying through the Grand Canyon on my machine(Scenery Animator 4.0 rendering).
How do those other people live without preemptive multitasking?(No flames on
that last comment please, I was just expressing my satisfaction with my Amiga)

Tom Setzer
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: trace.last
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 09:58:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Mr. Scott Krehbiel" <[e-mail]>

>
> Just making the object smaller (scaled it in xyz) allowed me too use the
> trace mode and still have everything being rendered ( instead of half the
> object ). But it was so slow ! it's not possible to make an animation that
> way...I will buy more ram...
> Florence
>

Could this slowdown be due to more stuff in the same octree areas?
Is it possible to reduce the size of your octrees, thus speeding
up Imagine?  I have a 68000 with 4 megs fast, 512K chip, and I
have an Enterprise object that takes a long time to initialize
before rendering. (20 minutes) I think a scanline render takes about
45 minutes total... and that's just with the Enterprise, no attacking
Star Destroyers yet (but coming vewy vewy soon)

Might it help me to reduce my Octrees (if possible)?  Should I scale
the object up so it intersects more octree boundaries, and gets
more subdivided?

Gee, might it help if I buy an '040?  I heard there was a way to make
a 68000 faster than the '040!  Anyone know how to do that??
(please DONT take that seriously)  ;->

Scott Krehbiel
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Imagine3.0, Essence, and copyrights
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 06:15:21 EST
From: [e-mail] (Yury German)

Hi Peter (Peter Garza), in <[e-mail]> on Jun 22 you wrote:

: 1.  Is Imagine3.0 being beta-tested yet, or is it still in pre-beta
: development?  If it is being beta tested, any comments?

    I doubt that the people who are beta testing could reply to you.
The undesclosure agreements are getting tougher every day. I beta a few
programs but I can not even mention the names of the programs because of
the undisclosure aggreement (its not Imagine trust me).

: 2.  Are there any plans for Essence II?  I don't think I've made an
: anim since I got Essence without using at least one or two of its
: textures.
    Steve will probably answer you himself. But Essence II is shortly
approaching release date! I think its a week left unless there was a
setback.


##

Subject: Re: rotating more than 360
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 10:12:04 MDT
From: [e-mail] (Brian Ridout)

I was making a gear that looks like a long gear but is twisted.  So I made my
outline of points and edges, made a path, extruded along the path while
rotating.  It works ok if it is less than 360 degrees but it doesn't seem
to want to rotate more than that.  (ie if I set it to > 360, it gives the
equivilant < 360 degree value).  Because I want sharp edges on the teeth of the
gear, I turn off Phong shading.  The gear is only one segment, because if it is
more than one segment, the segments show up since shading is off.  If I use
more than one segment, I can rotate and have a gear that is twisted more than
360 degrees(each segment rotates the specified amount), but again, it doesn't
look nice.  Any suggestions?

Tom Setzer
[e-mail]

Go ahead and use lots of segments.  The more the smoother. If you
only use one the edges will not be curved.  Keep phong shading on.
Select the edges you want to be sharp and use make sharp.  This
part is tedious but works.

Anyway thats my suggestion.  Hope it helps.

Brian Ridout
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: trace.last (octree?)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 10:52:38 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jeff Walkup)


> Could this slowdown be due to more stuff in the same octree areas?
[etc..]
> Might it help me to reduce my Octrees (if possible)?  Should I scale

What's an octree?  I've seen the entry in the Preferences editor for
"Max # of Octrees" or whatever it is, but I don't really understand it.

Can I speed up rendering by reducing the number of octree's?  Will all
my objects render properly if I do?

--
Jeff Walkup - [e-mail] - Digital Animator / Videographer


##

Subject: Are there any AREXX compata
Date: 23 Jun 1993 14:29:17 U
From: "Charles Hymes" <[e-mail]>

REGARDING                Are there any AREXX compatable object editors out
there?
Greetings all, this is my first week with imagine, and my first post to this
list.
I want to create precedureally created objects. I plan to create everything
from fractal snowflakes to 4th dimentionally "roatated" faces.
To do his simply, I would like an object editor that can accept commands from
AREXX.  Does such a beast exist?

Charlweed Hymerfan


##

Subject: Re: Buggy Imagine Pc Buggy
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 16:51:32 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    |I bet the programmer(s??) of Imagine doesn't even have a Masters,
    |Probably not even a bachelors... It is so obvious..

    I promised myself I would stay out of this, but I'd like to try and head
    off an Amiga v. PC bashfest like comp.graphics has been seeing...

    First off, regarding CBM trying harder...

    Kiernan said, "If the users compalin about the computers, CBM would work
    harder to impress the users."

    CBM is a rather unusual company.  The CEO & president, Mehdi Ali, calls all
    of the shots.  All of them.  His decisions reflect where he thinks he can
    make money next *quarter*.  Not next year.  Not the next 5 years.  The next
    3 months.  What the engineers design and what the company releases often have
    little in common.  The first spec. for the AA machine (1200 & 4000) called for
    up to 8M of graphics memory and an on-board DSP with CODECs for audio and
    telephone.  Look at what actually shipped.  The first design for what became
    the 4000 called for a machine with an '030, SCSI and DSP on board, and in a
    package that would retail for $995.  Instead out came the 4000 at ~$2800.

    How do I know this?  I used to work there.  I was layed off in this year's
    second downsizing in April.  As for CBM abandoning the Amiga, they may not
    need to.)  They may abandon the business world first.  (For those that haven't
    heard, CBM posted a first quarter loss of ~$177 million.  This prompted the 3rd
    round of layoffs last Friday.  Companywide it amounted to ~65% staff reduction.)

    As for buggy Amiga programs...

    Have you written much SW for the Amiga?  How about the PC?  I've written for
    both.   SW can be very portable between the two *IF* you plan to support that
    from the outset.  SW that's written expressly for the PC is painful to port to
    the Amiga, and vice versa.  On the Amiga, you query the display database for
    the type of screen you want (resolution, number of colors, PAL/NTSC, etc) and
    you are given a "magic number"  that you pass to the OS's display routines.
--------------
Is it a magic number or is it a set of flags. To me, a magic number
is a number that has no easy to describe idea behind it, is purely kludged
or made up as a quick fix, that seems to work, and isn't given any name.
I mean, if you are using CGA mode on a PC, there is a set of flags and
values used for each character and each pixel... Is the magic number
an address of a memory location which contains an address of the first
pixel in memory, or something like that? If you know what it means, then
it isn't a magic number...  I have written programs in AmigaE that
call screens and windows, but I didn't know what half the numbers
used to open a window and a screen meant.. Is this CBM's
way of keeping control information secret?
---------------
    That's what you're seeing being mimiced in the PC.  I'm sure they used good
---------------
On the PC's you do something about as wierd... I remember reading about
how to open screens on a 8541 based graphics card.. It is like you
poke values in the graphics card using the OUT and IN operations to
determin the mode used, and you just hope that the card does what you
want it to. I tried it once, but the system went on the fritz and I
just decided to stick with the 10H graphics interrupt service calls
even though they don't support anything beyond 320x200 in 256 colors
(they do, but anything above AL=13H on a Int 10H with AH=00H
 is nonstandard... but interesting).
----------------
    (or at least reasonable) development practices, but those were focused on the
    Amiga environment.  Given the choice, I'd much rather port between the PC and
    UNIX (either direction) than port between either of those and the Amiga.
----------------
Why? The PC's don't even support standard UNIX-style filenames,
or even the directory structure... Did you know that MSDOS is limited
to 100 files per directory on floppy disks?? This means it will
not let you save files in a directory unless you create a sub-directory.
I would, if i was porting programs between systems, rather port
between Linux and UNIX, not MSDOS and UNIX, than Amiga and UNIX.

Couldn't you just create classes in C++ to mimic all the functions
(I don't know how to do this exactly, but I know it can be done)
needed on a general level... When you port between the machines
you would only need to re-implement the functions that are hidden
within the scope of each class, this way you wouldn't have to rewrite
all the extra code needed to perform the non-specific functions
like opening screens, checking screen dimensions, setting screen
dimensions, defining errors, handling screens and windows, handling
I/O, etc. Once you have written your program on this level, then
you write the code to do the low-level work and the interfacing
between the general software and the operating system used..
If you don't break the rules and try poking values directly into the
hardware with assembly from the general part of the program, the
code should port very easily. You could use C, but C++ makes
it easier since you are not always having to look up functions
in libraries, and you don't have to worry about which data
is supposed to be passed to a function, that is all handled
by C++...  I mean, you may have a function that needs
a address value for the screen and some special sauce passed to
a function "winadr *OpenWindow(screentype,specialtype) ",
instead in C++ you could overload the "=" operator to handle screens
and windows on the Amiga and Unix and
use "new window ; window = currentscreen"..

I have a friend who says his brother is working on an operating system
that will be entirely written in C++ and he will need only about 8000
lines of machine code to interface the operating system to any machine..
Making it very very portable.
-----------
    Remember, the original Amiga team was building a game machine, not a micro-
    computer.  They apparently saw nothing to be gained by modeling their OS
-----------
Whether they built it for a video game machine or a business machine,
it doesn't matter.. PC's are no mirracle... What do you call
modeling a operating system after CPM?? a Business operating system...
No a silly piece of archaic sh*t. MSDOS thinks it only has 2^20 address
lines and it was designed entirely around memory mapping and interrupt
service calls and 64K data,code,stack and extra segments..
At least the AMiga is dynamic in its placement of resources and
allocation of memory, the way it should be.
------------
    interface after anyone else.  The engineers at CBM have tried to improve
    things, but that is difficult without throwing a lot of stuff out and starting
    over.  The changes they have made have been for the better, but SW written
-------------
ya.. Just talk to Microsoft, they are having to work at a snails pace
and carefully to maintain its userbase without aggrevating the developers..
I think Amigados is designed much better,and was because it was
developed 3 years after MSDOS, the programmers of Amigados and the
CBM engineers came from all walks of life as far as operating systems
went... Why do you think Amigados has dynamically linkable libraries,
dynamic allocation of memory, multi-tasking and 25 character filenames??
Jay Miner's original plans were to create a video game system, which
was going to have a somewhat different design than the Amiga 1000,
but in the last few years between paying Atari back for the loan
they gave him when he started out and making a deal with CBM to
make the machine, he decided to aim the Amiga at the personal
computing market. The original idea was to make it a video game machine
but that wasn't the idea when it was released...
-------------
(extra stuff deleted)
-------------
    I'm trying not to defend or accuse anyone here, I'm just trying to present
    the facts of the situation.  Anything that was written expressly for one
    environment is going to take time to get working correctly in another.  If
    you want to be able to run on both Amiga & PC you need to design that in
    early on.  The game "Lemmings 2" is one example that comes to mind of a
--------------
No you don't... You can write software for any machine if you design
it in a way that it can... It is not impossible, it may be hard, but
it is not impossible. All you need to do is know what to expect,
a disk drive, hard drive possibly, graphics output, I/O interface,
joystick controller, sound system, etc. In short, you write a
interface between the part that will run the program and the
operating system. Any graphics screens, calls, such will be handed
to the interface between the program and the operating system.
The program can be designed on a higher level without sacrificing
speed using C++. Then when you need to port the game all you need
to do is rewrite the interface between the game and the operating system.
I guess this is what they call a virtual system, I don't know,
but I would think that it is more dynamic than something that
is directly written on the operating system for the operating system.
--------------
    program designed for either environment.


##

Subject: Re: Fred Fish
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 17:05:42 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    No internet nor CDROM.
---------
Well then, FISH is obviously superior...
---------
    >be interested. Personally I have never heard of CAM.. heck I live more than
    >1000 miles away, how could I...
    You can see CAM contain in French MAG "Amiga News / Amiga DP".
---------
Big whoopee... I can afford zilch... I would rather download 20
fish disks from my local Internet access through a anonymous
ftp site than buy some stupid silly frech magazine which is
probably written in french, which I don't speak or read...
Get it into your head... we Internet users who have access to FTP
and Telnet do not pay for disk magazines. Some do, but they
probably don't have the time to mine the Amiga disk collections.
I do, and I am not going to bite the hand of the Internet that feeds
me. If you can't afford a CDROM or a Internet link, you might
as well get the disk magazines but to tell you the truth I haven't
bought a disk magazine since 3 years ago, and I don't intend to,
even if the taste is of superb quality.

Have you ever heard of the CD-ROM disk magazine for the PC's
called Nautilus?? Each magazine comes with 20 megs of sampled
sound, some even have videos and you can get a years subscription
for 120 dollars.. This is the kind of stuff people are looking
for, not individual floppy disks full of maybe 4 or 5 programs
that cost you 12 dollars to purchase and probably are not
as useful as they claim to be... I could be wrong, but
I know what can be done and should be done if you want CAM
to become as big as the Fred Fish disk collection...


##

Subject: Re: C code in postings
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 17:14:06 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    hi,
    can people either*not* post lengthy C code stuff here, or at least warn
    us in the headings that you are doing so, so we can avoid having to read
    them ?
------------
Sorry... but no..
If it gives you horrible nightmares, then look at the code..
The lengthy code I put up wasn't even lengthy... If you want lengthy C code,
I could just mail the entire Gnu C++ distribution... What I sent
was just a 100 line program that makes animations in rayshade.
It was justifiable.


##

Subject: Re: Buggy Imagine Pc Buggy
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 21:55:26 MET
From: [e-mail] (Philippe Berard)

Hello Devon (Devon Miller). On Jun 17, you have written :

> I promised myself I would stay out of this, but I'd like to try and head
> off an Amiga v. PC bashfest like comp.graphics has been seeing...

    Okay, let's give it a try.

    First, don't forget that the Amiga has a RealTime philosophy which isn't
    even present on Sun machines (try to do realtime data acquisition without
    a card on a Sun, and I'm sure you'll be surprised).

> Remember, the original Amiga team was building a game machine, not a micro-
> computer.  They apparently saw nothing to be gained by modeling their OS

    No way ! Amiga Corporation was doing a flight simulator machine, not
    something for games. And Metacomco and people at the Cambridge University
    who did the first Amiga OS, named Tripos. All of these people are
    responsible of the Amiga machine, and C= bought Amiga Corporation because
    they were having some money problems.

> over.  The changes they have made have been for the better, but SW written
> for one version of the interface will either not run or not run correctly on
> a different version.

    Most of the programs are upward compatible, as far as I know. Most of
    the bugs found with old programs are mostly due to lame programming.
    And, of course, this old MMU protection discussion should be stopped
    in september, from what I've heard.

> Also, compatability testing requires that you keep some machines running
> with older (probably buggier) OS versions.  Which translates to machines
> you can't use for development, only test.

    I don't think this is the case actually, as most users have the 2.0
    package, now. And I don't see why you would test a program with older
    versions of the OS, if one of the newest (2.0 in this case) is now
    the standard. It's to the OS to handle every special case/bugs of the
    hardware, not the program itself.

> I'm trying not to defend or accuse anyone here, I'm just trying to present
> the facts of the situation.  Anything that was written expressly for one
> environment is going to take time to get working correctly in another.  If

    Only if people handle the bugs of the OS incorrectly. But it's quite
    past history, as 3.0 is *very* stable (not enough, IMHO, though).

    By the way, I'm programming under Windows and on Unix machines too,
    and I don't get as much pleasure with those environments as with the
    Amiga's. Those multiple/scrolling screens are something I don't want
    to see disappear.

> you want to be able to run on both Amiga & PC you need to design that in
> early on.  The game "Lemmings 2" is one example that comes to mind of a
> program designed for either environment.

    Yes, true, even if Psygnosis said that DMA designed Lemmings 2 on the
    Amiga first.

    One last word : with CBM stopping the PC line, maybe we will have a better
    Amiga marketing support.

    Regards,
                                        -- Philippe


##

Subject: Re: Seagate IDE for DPS Personal Animation Recorder
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 17:42:51 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    The 3600A is a 540MB formatted IDE drive
    It has a 10.5ms average seek for reads and a 12ms average seek for writes.
    It is rated at 200k power hours between failure and draws 5.5watts idle.
    The drive runs at 5,411RPM for a average lantency of 5.54ms.
    It is a low-profile drive with dimmensions of; 1" high, 4" wide, 5.75" deep,
    and it is 1.65lbs.
-------
sounds pretty good but how about SCSI interfaces?? IDE's have been known to be
pretty slow past 200 megs... Or was that 600 megs?


##

Subject: Re: trace.last (octree?)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 17:50:17 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    What's an octree?  I've seen the entry in the Preferences editor for
    "Max # of Octrees" or whatever it is, but I don't really understand it.

    Can I speed up rendering by reducing the number of octree's?  Will all
    my objects render properly if I do?
-----------------
I think it has something to do with object intersection tests...
I remember something about a method where a cube of space is
split up into a tree structure that is traversed recursively, somehow,
and used to determine where one object ends and another begins...
It has been two years since I had it described to me, but
it is a coded implmentation that seems to be pretty common...
Imagine and Turbo silver both use it.. I heard that if you increase
the size of your objects it speeds up rendering... I don't know
why, but it does seem to work...



##

Subject: Re: Any experience with DPS PAR ?
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 18:05:30 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    areas of high detail. Q23 looked very clean (not flawless) and Q18-Q20 looked
    pretty good. I would say that it doesn't seem that this device could match
    a BetaSP tape deck, but it does look pretty darn good. Further tests with a
    high quality deck and realtime output are necessary to fully evaluate it.
    Note that even though DPS states that the algorithm they are using is not
    JPEG, it is enough like JPEG to exhibit similar style artifacts, ie. little
    fuzzy squares around contrasty details.
-------------
It is probably something that uses Discreet Sine Transforms than Cosine
Transforms.. I don't know, maybe Fast Fourier Transforms...
I know I don't know what I am talking about, exactly, but
if it has fuzzy squares around contrasting detail it is probably just
DCT with thier own algorithms based on JPEG algorithms.. It is
probably JPEG, just not JPEG exactly...

I know that the JPEG distribution uses different techniques
depending on what quality setting you are using... If you
use a quality setting above or including 35, it is not the same
as the quality settings below 35 because a different technique
is used to store the data... DPS probably uses only one technique
and doesn't change its nature depending on what quality settings
it is given...  WHat JPEG does is it take a set of graphics data,
it segments the data into small blocks, then it performs some kind
of 2D transform on the array, cuts the information that the
human eye theoretically can't perceive and saves the rest..

When you decompress the data all you do is re-synthesize the
array of graphics and segment them into pixels...

At least, from what I have read in some magazines and a few
reference books, this is what happens.. In MPEG a lot more is added
in... No to mention the Sound compression..
Does the DPS board support sound compression/decompression???
If it doesn't then it is only half what the MPEG standard is.


##

Subject: Re: Grass
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 17:40:02 -0600
From: [e-mail] (AIDE Kiernan)

    capabilities doesn't mean that is true of everyone. I designed my first
    computer vision system (HW & SW) when you were only halfway through grade
    school.
----------------
It is easy to say you are older, but it doesn't mean anything
unless you can prove that it was better.. Tell me, how much ram did
your system use and what kind of chips were you using (if you were
using chips). I know I am just learning now, but 7 years ago I
knew more than my brother about computer systems, 7 years later
he is owkring on a masters in computer science and can design
microchips and operating systems. We have plenty of military technicians
around that I know that like to tell everyone about the days
when they used kinds of tubes to store information in creative ways.
It is interesting to hear, but it is not the same as technology
used today. For instance, in the 70's programmers tried to make
programs as small and efficient as possible. In the 80's and 90's
they have been forced to use comments, structured programming
styles, and complex ideas and common design practices. The reason
why is the technology has changed... Back in the 70's it was a
matter of kilobytes and thousands of instructions per second and
omni operating systems, etc.. Now it is a matter of understandability,
portability, etc. because the products are no longer limited
by a tight boundry of the underlying hardware... developers
must assume features and should keep everything structured
otherwise they pay the price that those who wrote and bought business programs
written in COBOL in the 1960's and 70's are paying right now...
----------------
    > >  you really aren't using up memory like you would if you were actually
    > >  copying objects.

    Memory usage is only part of the problem. Rendering is a BIG issue. Particle
    systems can accomplish these tasks many times faster and can easily take
    advantage of "data amplification" techniques which minimizes the modeling
    required by the animator.
-----------------
Nice words... but you are using jargon...
Please define data amplification..
-----------------
    > >  There was a animation I saw where some instantiated
    > >  several manequins on unicycles to infinity.

    Yes, it was done on an 800 MFLOP AT&T Pixel Machine. And as Charles Congdon
    pointed out, this is a bit different from the case of grass.
-----------------
Couldn't we just do it with a CM-5??
;-)
Los Alamos, where I live, has one of these hooked up to a cray, but
from what I hear you have to have special access and the code
must be optimized to run specifically on the CM-5 when possible.

They only cost 5 million dollars and can process 65,000 numbers
at once... though this is a SIMD design.. Is that what the Pixel Machine
is??
------------------
    Charles Congdon writes:
    > particle systems require memory to track each particle (the amount depends on
    > the complexity of your particle simulation).  The results, however, can be
    > *very* satisfying.

    An excellent example of this technique can be found in the '85 Siggraph
    proceedings (pg. 313) where Bill Reeves details work done at Lucasfilm
    to model trees, grass, and fire. The accompanying pics are quite nice
    and one is a still from an animation of a tall grass field in which the
    wind blows the blades about. Render time was on the order of a couple hours
    using a VAX 11/750, a truly slow machine by todays standards.

    If Kiernan thinks he can accomplish this with polygonally modeled grass
    blades, I challenge him to do it. The image in Avid done with Raydance
    (no relation to Radiance) had only a couple square feet of grass which
    cost over a million polygons and 25 hours of rendering. LightWave comes
    closer to a viable solution because it supports 2D particles or lines.
    I ran a test last night which filled about a 100 square meters with tall
    grass (textured lines) and it took under 10 minutes. It was still a far
    cry from a field.
-----------
I'll try it...

I don't mind..
------------
    %~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
    %      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
    % --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
    %      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
    %     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
    %                                                                          %
     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Re: Animation formats and programs
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 22:14:27 -0700
From: Charles F. Kane <[e-mail]>

> I keep seeing people praising MainActor but I tried it on my 4000 and could
> not get it to do anything but crash.  My system is otherwise very very stable
> (even Imagine itself doesn't crash much...) and the crashes were repeatable.
> Is it working for everyone but me?

Though I didn't really have any problems with MainActor crashing my 4000, I
DID have a lot of problems with displaying anims; the screenmodes were always
screwed up! If I set the screenmode to match the mode that the anim was
originally created in, it will show the anim, but in the wrong mode. For
example, I load a HAM, 320x400 (lo res interlace) anim, set the screenmode to
NTSC 320x400, and it plays the anim in NTSC 640x400!!  If I set the mode to
anything else, it just shows a blank screen when I try to run the anim. Very
screwy. Then, if I turn off Mode Promotion (via Icontrol), instead of a
blank screen, it shows a 'garbage' anim screen, with the pixels apparently
randomized.

-CFK


##

Subject: Re: MainActor
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 93 1:31:07 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jeff Walkup)

Yes, it appears my suspicions were correct, MainActor has definite
problems with identifying and displaying the multitude of Screen Modes
in the various versions of the OS.

If no one else has mailed the author yet - I'm going to.  Sounds like an
easy fix (but then everything is easy if you don't have to do it...).

--
Jeff Walkup - [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Seagate IDE for DPS Personal Animation Recorder
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 93 08:11:08 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

>sounds pretty good but how about SCSI interfaces?? IDE's have been known to be
>pretty slow past 200 megs... Or was that 600 megs?
>
>
    Actually, I think the drives have to be at least 500 megs or
they are too slow. (ie: bigger better?)  I could be wrong.
(Of course I've only heard of 2 drives that have really been ok'd for
use. a 500 megs seagate, and i think a 1.2gig maxtor).  Anyhow, the DPS
is an IDE controller...hence it only uses/can use IDE drives :(.

    Well, I just ordered mine yesterday, so when it comes it I will
post and tell everyone how it works with Imagine!



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


##

Subject: Re: Are there any AREXX compata
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 93 08:51:43 EDT
From: watters <[e-mail]>

> Are there any AREXX compatable object editors out there?

You may not like this answer, but Modeler3D 3.0 has AREXX support.
(It comes with the Toaster4000)
Real3D has RPL and AREXX, though I don't know how extensive the support is
for object creation.

You may want to look at Vertex and Icoons as they MAY have something.

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

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


##

Subject: PersonalSFC
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1993 10:29:30 -0700
From: [e-mail] (Greg Burger)

Hello

Has anyone here had experience putting there Imagine animations to tape
using the PersonalSFC? I was thinking of getting one to use with a Panasonic
S-VHS VTR (can't remember the model, but it is frame accurate and has time
code.) I'm also going to need a 24-bit display device to single frame them
out in 24bit color right? What boards can any of you recomend that are under
$1000? Does the PersonalSFC have to specifically support the board?

I've never use single frame controllers before, so any help will be
GREATLY appreciated!!

Thanx!!
-Greg


--
-=-=-=-=-=-=-///-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
            ///           [e-mail]       I had raytraced my
        \\\///  Only                or                 .sig, but I forgot to
         \XX/  Amiga      [e-mail]     include a light source.


##

Subject: Are there any AREXX compata
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1993 10:15:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: Udo K Schuermann <[e-mail]>

"Charles Hymes" <[e-mail]> writes:
> I want to create precedureally created objects. I plan to create everything
> from fractal snowflakes to 4th dimentionally "roatated" faces.
> To do his simply, I would like an object editor that can accept commands from
> AREXX.  Does such a beast exist?

You should definitely look at Glenn Lewis' TT3DLIB software, which is a
textual 3D format that can be converted to/from Imagine.  With that you are
not limited to what an object editor can do, so you can fully indulge
yourself by algorithmically describing objects.

I just looked around on wuarchive, but couldn't find it.  If someone knows
where EXACTLY it can be found (Glenn?) please let us know.

 ._.  Udo Schuermann
 ( )  [e-mail]