Multimedia Toolkit 2/Multimedia Toolkit 2.iso/imagine/text/archive.33

Text File | 1993-03-12 | 144.9 KB | 3,737 lines

IMAGINE archive: collected off of [e-mail]

ARCHIVE XXXIII
Feb. 26 '93 - Mar. 10 '93

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

note: each message seperated by a '##'

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

Subject: Re: Babylon 5
Date: 26 Feb 93 13:35:47 EST
From: [e-mail] (David Tiberio) (David Tiberio)

In an article, src4src!mcdhup!rutgers!gcx1.ssd.csd.harris.com!srp (Stephen Piet
>I'm told that Allen Hastings and Stuart Ferguson also make cameos, but I
>didn't
>catch where.
>

>srp

     Well, someone said that Hasting's arm was used, as an alien... the only
significant arm scene I remember is when Kosh got the poison...


-------------------- Via Amiga Graphics BBS [phone] --------------------
 David Tiberio                //       Amiga Graphics BBS  [phone]
 [e-mail]   //      NO SUPRA MODEMS --- BY POPULAR REQUEST
 Long Island, New York     \X/     USENET - 3D - Music - Fonts - Pics - Utils
--


##

Subject: Re: Vivid24, Editmaster, anyone owns this stuff already ???
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 93 11:02:53 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> Last question:
> true color video. In fact, does the Editmaster also display anything
> or does this board only compression stuff ?

Well it has video input and output and if you hook either up to a video
monitor you will see your video. Note that Editmaster only compresses
incoming video. If you have a hard drive full of rendered imagery, you
will need one of the various image processing packages available to do
the compression. Once the sequence is compressed, Editmaster should be
able to play it back in real time.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: re: Amiga 1200
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 09:47:00 +0000
From: "Christopher (C.) Arthur" <[e-mail]>

 > Power up?

  All I know is that I got a mailer from the only Amiga dealer in Dallas
mentioning some deal with the 1200 for $549 dollars, or somthing like that.
Now that I think about it, that could be the suggested retail price, for all
I know.  I never have trusted that dealer.

Christopher Arthur
[e-mail]
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Imagine Gazette (HA HA HA)
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 93 11:15:05 CST
From: [e-mail] (Dale R. Rogers)

    This is only my opinion so excuse my ramblings.

|
|But I digress. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS CRAP! I *know* that
|Impulse aren't the most businesslike people around but
|this thing is real garbage. Spelling checkers? Pah! Grammar
|checkers? Pah! (Or are the rules of American grammar now made
|by random number generators?)
|
|What Impulse seem to need is a REALITY CHECKER. I mean, get
|real guys. Do you *REALLY* expect to make serious inroads
|into the (already) crowded PC market place with stuff like this?
|PC (and Mac users too) will treat it with contempt.
|
|Take a leaf out of Centaur's book. Start a BBS, listen to
|your customers. Treat them like living, breathing, THINKING,
|people.
|
|Look - I've got a spelling checker here if you really don't
|have one at Impulse. E-mail me the text and I'll run it through.
|But PLEASE - don't waste trees with stuff like this again.

    HA HA HA.  Stop.  I'm laughing so hard my sides are splitting.  As
    a coworker of mine from Canada just said, "You can sell anything
    in this country".  BTW I agree with you... we waste enough trees
    as it is.

|
|Sad to say, but without folks like Steve Worley propping it up,
|Imagine (great program though it is - I use it almost every day)
|would probably be down the tubes. Poor manuals, indifferent
|Tech support (at least in my limited experience) and now this.

    I agree.

|
|I hate to be negative about stuff like this - after all it
|affects MY livelihood too - but I really just couldn't let
|this one pass.

    Yeah... I try to live by the maxim "live and let live", but I must
    say it does nothing for my confidence to use a product created in
    an environment with this mind set.  It gives me the feeling like
    the company is run by hackers with more interest in skate boards,
    comic books, and video games than producing a production tool for
    professional quality 3D animation.

    I don't have a toaster.  But I don't get the feeling that NEWTEK
    has an amateurish mindset about the Amiga.  It makes me question
    the quality of this new "mystery box" that Impulse is considering
    marketing.  Is it a professional quality tool, or an expensive
    toy?

    Impulse.  Are you guys serious about your product?  Maybe it's
    just a marketing blunder.  I don't know.  Other products are
    offering an entry level "change products" price for there
    software.  I'll wait and see what Impulse does before making any
    decisions.




       _____________________________^_____________________________
                                  __ __
                                ____ ____
       _____________________________ _____________________________
       dale r. rogers
       [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Babylon 5 Praise and Critisizms(nothing to do with Imagine)
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 93 13:06:28 CST
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Setzer)

> From @pobox.mot.com:[e-mail] Sat Feb 27 14:11:49 1993
> Subject: Babylon 5 Praise and Critisizms
> To: [e-mail]
> Date: Fri, 26 Feb 93 12:24:20 EST
> From: Peter Mancini <[e-mail]>
> Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]
> X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
> Content-Length: 6009
> --Pete "Mr. Tired Fingers"
>
> P.S. Go see Army of Darkness before it is gone from the theaters.  It is
> great!
>
>
I got all excited(well, not ALL excited ;) about your post until I saw your
"p.s."  Saw it and to put it lightly, Army of Darkness sucked! Period.  End
of sentence.  No reason to discuss it.(How many shots do you get from a double
barrel shotgun, anyway?) The only good thing about it was the length, only
1 hour and 20 minutes.

As for Babylon 5,  it airs here(Chicago area) tonight on Ch 50.  I hope its
good.


Tom Setzer
[e-mail]

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


##

Subject: Amiga 1200
Date: 28 Feb 93 03:24:08 EST
From: [e-mail] (David Tiberio) (David Tiberio)

In an article, src4src!mcdhup!rutgers!bnr.ca!carthur writes:

>
>  Question:  I currently have an Amiga 500 w/3 megs, a hard drive, and the
>stock 68000.  I was considering an upgrade to an Amiga 1200.  The power-up
>deal makes the price pretty good; that is, if the machine does what I want
>it to do.  What I want it to do is render my Imagine scenes faster, for
>starters.
>

>Christopher Arthur

        Here are some tips on how to speed up your A500. First, the A1200 will
not be twice as fast, as it has no fast ram. So when you get an MBX board, try
to get one with an FPU and it will increase the speed even more when using
programs like Imagine with fp specifac code.

        Second, if you are using interlace mode and are using Imagine, here is
a cool trick Tomas Arce and I discovered in 1990. It works only if you have no
deinterlacer, from what we tried (just A500/A600/A1000/A1500/A2000/A2500
owners) although it might work for A1200/A4000 owners.

        Now, put your workbench in a non-interlaced screen, and boot Imagine
and put it into an interlaced screen (so that it flickers). Get a nice long
frame to render, like 20-30 minutes. Start the rendering, and stay on the
Imagine screen and check the time using the info function. Remember the time
it took. Now, render the same exact frame again in the same mode. This time,
click the workbench (non-interlaced no-flicker) to the front and make sure it
is active. Since you remembered how long the first frame took, wait that long
and then go to the Imagine screen. Check the second rendering's speed using
the info function, and it should have redered almost twice as fast.

        Last night I told this to Spamgod on IRC and he said he did two
renderings using his Sapphire 020 board. The first rendered in 25 minutes, and
the second rendered in 16 minutes! Now, next time you do this, do the
following. With the same set up, Imagine in interlace and workbench in
non-interlace, start a rendering and note how fast the numbers are changing.
Then, drag the screen down and click on the workbench but do not push it in
front. You should see that the Imagine rendering will speed up drastically.


        I tried some tests with task priorities, and a 25 minute rendering
finished about 8 seconds faster with all other processes killed. However, we
were able to increase the rate that workbench windows update!

        Good luck, remember it does not work if you have a flicker fixer or
deinterlacer.



-------------------- Via Amiga Graphics BBS [phone] --------------------
 David Tiberio                //       Amiga Graphics BBS  [phone]
 [e-mail]   //      NO SUPRA MODEMS --- BY POPULAR REQUEST
 Long Island, New York     \X/     USENET - 3D - Music - Fonts - Pics - Utils
--


##

Subject: Lens Flares
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 93 12:55:27 MST
From: [e-mail] (David Ingebretsen)

Lens flares are a part of the "new" lightwave 3.0 system not yet released.
To do it with Imagine or any other renderer, you have to do it frame by
frame by hand. Oh well...

David


##

Subject: Re: Babylon 5
Date:     Wed, 24 Feb 1993 05:51:19 -0500
From: John J Humpal <[e-mail]>

Michael B. Comet writes [about Babylon 5]:
>
>     It's here!!!!!!!!!! :)
>

    It sure is.  I caught the 2-hour pilot last night.  The CG
was very nice, but IMO was always identifiable *as* CG.  I'm not
complaining, mind  you!  I think I'm just too familiar with Lightwave
images,  so that when those Vorlon ships show up with their animated
textures, I said to myself "that looks just like the old Rundgren video."
Anyway, the modeling is very nice -- espcecially the Vorlon ships, and
there were a lot of nice touches that tried to reduce the CG look of
the show (specifically, some artfully deployed lens flare, and a nice
simulated  strobe light).

    I won't report any spoilers because the show won't air until
next week in some parts of the country.  But I've just *gotta* say
something about the acting.  In a word, it  stinks.  The actor who
plays the director of the station makes William Shatner look like
Olivier.  Whoever he is, he  acts and looks like a cut-rate Gary
Cooper and I kept hoping he'd be killed off.  I won't tell you whether
my wishes came true.  The rest of the cast isn't much better.  The
security chief was probably the least annoying, and even he looked
like somebody else; in this case, a bloated Bruce Willis.

    The story is ok.  And the writers have left enough hooks to
make for some interesting future episodes.  But, the main attraction
for most of us, I'm sure, is the CG.  I'd say that Lightwave (and
MorphPlus) have made a pretty decent showing in their nationally
syndicated tv debut.

--
-John

John J. Humpal -- [e-mail] -- short .sig, std. disclaimer


##

Subject: New Imagine options
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 22:20:11 -0600 (CST)
From: "Cyrus J Kalbrener-1" <[e-mail]>

    Well, I just got done seeing Babylon 5 here in the Twin Cites, and I
must say that, even though the graphics were obvously computer generated,
they really kicked ass.  The lense flare was particularly effective, which
brings me to my point...

    It seems obvious that Impulse has a lot of catching up to do.
While Light Wave is only availalbe with the Video Toaster, programs such
as Real 3D 2.0 are planning to have both lense flair and motion blur (from
what I heard at SIGGRAPH in July, at least) in addition to it's already
powerfull object manipulation.  These new options come on top of the
already exellent output of Real 3D 1.4, which includes true ray tracing and
up to 32,000 x 32,000 pixel resolutions.

    This may seem like I'm just stiring up the flack that was present
here a few weeks ago, and I am.  I don't want to see a great program like
Imagine fade away because of an un-updated rendering engine or lack of a
powerfull television quality option that is available in a slightly higher
priced, but more capable program.  I like Imagine a great deal, but I
cringe at the idea of investing in an under powered, low priced upgrade
instead of paying more for a program that is guarantied to fulfill all of
my needs.  This seems to have been the way of the FireCracker, and
naturally I fear the worst.  The upgrade to Imagine 2.0 seemed more in name
than function, and unless Impulse takes the time to really improve 3.0 we
are all going to go the way of the Dinosaur.

    As for service, hell, I'll start up a BBS for Impulse if I can get
the backing.  I live right near by in the Twin Cities.  I'll even proof their
news letter (which, by the way I still haven't recived as of 1 Mar) if
they llet me.

    In closing, true ray tracing is essential, followed closely by
lense flair and motion blur.  Perhaps an economy version and a
professional version, or options available only through modules or
libraries.  Whatever Impulse does it MUST be a big improvement over 2.0 if
they plan to stay in the rendering game.  I for one wil be in the
stands rooting for the home team.


    Cyrus J. Kalbrener
    [phone]

    750 Curfew st. #4
    St. Paul MN 55114


##

Subject: Re: Lens Flares
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 22:56:45 -0500 (EST)
From: Naked Man <[e-mail]>

>
> Lens flares are a part of the "new" lightwave 3.0 system not yet released.
> To do it with Imagine or any other renderer, you have to do it frame by
> frame by hand. Oh well...
>
> David
     Oh well, you had better bet that you have inspired me to cheat it out
     of Imagine now.  (I love a challenge!)  Everyone thinks I'm insane,
     true, but tell me what you all think of this: Lens Flare objects which
     are actually disks with the radial texture applied to them.  Hinge a
     few of these puppies together ina  graceful hierarchy and make them
     slightly different sizes, positioned just right before your scene, and
     perhaps...?  As far as the disks themselves, the radial texture will
     tend from transparent at the centre to  perhaps Pastella or Angular at
     the rim, hopefully emulating the way lens flares are dim, refractory
     looking things....  please return input on this one, I'm inspired now!
     wes~
  Oh, yes, another great cheat with backdrop piccies:  Blur them in Adpro o
  your favourite bitmap butcherer for fake depth of field; the illusion is
  great as long as your camera is staying put.  any other good 'cheats' you
  folks may be hiding out there?


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine options
Date: Mon,  1 Mar 93 21:11:00 PST
From: [e-mail]

>    In closing, true ray tracing is essential, followed closely by
>lense flair and motion blur.  Perhaps an economy version and a
>professional version, or options available only through modules or
>libraries.  Whatever Impulse does it MUST be a big improvement over 2.0 if
>they plan to stay in the rendering game.  I for one wil be in the
>stands rooting for the home team.
>
>
>    Cyrus J. Kalbrener
>    [phone]
>
>    750 Curfew st. #4
>    St. Paul MN 55114

Question for you, Sir. Why is "lense flair [sic]" so essential?
No one ever mentioned it in the years that I've been reading zillions
of postings about Amiga renderers and ray tracers, including
bajillions of articles on the net, not to mention over 2500 articles
in this mailing list, until the time that Rundgren's "Theology"
video started getting limited circulation and now since B5 has
been shown.  Why wasn't everyone hollering for lens flare in the years
prior to this?

While it can be pretty , it's a gimmicky effect that really calls
attention to itself. Only in recent years have film directors
actually strived to get blatant flare in their movies rather than
go all out to avoid it.

Is this really the (kind of) feature that CG animators will throw
money at to get or is it just another filmic gimmick that everyone
thinks they need in their bag'o'tricks this week?

Personally, if Impulse was going to cram a lot of stuff into the next
Imagine I'd sooner see them work in a true 3-D perspective editing
stage first. :)

Harv


##

Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 02:17:38 PST
From: [e-mail]

    hello,

  The following is a blurb I picked out of a posting that came thru
 the other day. It had already bed imbedded into another reply so I
 can't say who did the actual post.

>|Sad to say, but without folks like Steve Worley propping it up,
>|Imagine (great program though it is - I use it almost every day)
>|would probably be down the tubes. Poor manuals, indifferent
>|Tech support (at least in my limited experience) and now this.

  I agree that Steve Worleys book is an excellent reference to
 Imagine. However I'm tired of everyone ragging on the Impulse Manual.
 The 2.0 manual my be dry reading , but IF read it will give one
 a much broader knowledge base than Steve's book. It is almost a
 complete tutorial on Imagine. As an example not long ago a fellow
 netter was having trouble tumbling objects . He had read STEVES
 excellent book. Well I wrote him offline. His problem was he had
 not read the Imagine manual(because THAT is where the answer was).
 You have to group your objects to an parant axis before you can
 tumble them. Sure enough he had his manual gathering dust.
 in the corner. the manual is dry but if I had to chose between the
 books I'd keep the manual. Now I use Steve's book, and thru my efforts
 it has a place on the local Amiga dealears book shelf, but it has some
 serious holes in it. Have any of you people actually tried to read the
 Manual ? ? I wonder because it contains the answers to many questions
 that come across here. Sure It's dry reading, but if a newcomer followed
 it thru he would have a better understanding than if all he had read was
 Steves reference book. The Manual is a WEALTH OF INFORMATION, an any
 new Imagine user that fails to work thru it will pay a hefty price on
the learning curve later. I had also spent a long time trying to get
 blocks to tumble, finally set one book aside picked up the 2.0 manual
 and had tumbling blocks very shortly afterword.
  AS for the newsletter! throw the next one away without reading it and you
  won't be agitatted :-)

>    Impulse.  Are you guys serious about your product?  Maybe it's
>    just a marketing blunder.  I don't know.  Other products are
>    offering an entry level "change products" price for there
>    software.  I'll wait and see what Impulse does before making any
>    decisions.

/*************************************************************************
  I have a spell checker and know grammer but it is to early in the day to
be bothered.
PS. I have another renderer. Imagine can render a scene before the other
 one can save a 24bit pic                Bill Leimberger
*************************************************************************/


##

Subject: Disc Lens Flares
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1993 14:06:43 +0000
From: "Rob (R.D.) Hounsell" <[e-mail]>

Wes,

>      Oh well, you had better bet that you have inspired me to cheat it out
>      of Imagine now.  (I love a challenge!)  Everyone thinks I'm insane,
>      true, but tell me what you all think of this: Lens Flare objects which
>      are actually disks with the radial texture applied to them.  Hinge a
>      few of these puppies together ina  graceful hierarchy and make them
>      slightly different sizes, positioned just right before your scene, and
>      perhaps...?  As far as the disks themselves, the radial texture will
>      tend from transparent at the centre to  perhaps Pastella or Angular at
>      the rim, hopefully emulating the way lens flares are dim, refractory
>      looking things....  please return input on this one, I'm inspired now!
>      wes~

  Minor niggle, but lens flare typically has a polygonal (i.e. octagonal or
better) outline, since it is an artifact produced by the geometry of the lens
iris. Anyhow, give yor plan a try and tell us.

Rob
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Rob Hounsell                           BNR WAN:  HOUNSELL@NMERH53           |
| NT Product Performance: OA/M           INTERNET: [e-mail]            |
| Dept. PS26                             PHONE: [phone]                |
|                                        ESN: 395-2904                        |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+


##

Subject: Re: Babylon 5
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 09:32:20 CST
From: [e-mail] (Michael J. Mikottis (x2-6197))

   =>
   =>   Michael B. Comet writes [about Babylon 5]:
   =>   >
   =>   >     It's here!!!!!!!!!! :)
   =>   >
...
   =>   my wishes came true.  The rest of the cast isn't much better.  The
   =>   security chief was probably the least annoying, and even he looked
   =>   like somebody else; in this case, a bloated Bruce Willis.
...                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   =>   -John
   =>
   =>   John J. Humpal -- [e-mail] -- short .sig, std. disclaimer

"Bloated Bruce Willis", you're killing me: that's exact!  Like many pilots
this one's a bit spotty, and it did have it's moments.  But there's potential.

As for the CG, pretty nice job.  For an example of a non-CG point of view,
my wife kept asking "Was that computer graphics?"  Sometimes it was and
sometimes it wasn't (as far as I could tell :) ).  I think "average" viewers
(i.e non-CG techies) don't know and don't care how scenes are created as
long as they look good...

A little more story, some better acting, yeah, but really not too bad overall.


Mike Mikottis   ([e-mail])


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine Options
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 09:09:30 CST
From: [e-mail] (Dave Wickard)

[e-mail] (Harv Laser) writes about
[e-mail] (Cyrus Kalbrener) writing:

>>       In closing, true ray tracing is essential, followed closely by
>>lense flair and motion blur.

>Question for you, Sir. Why is "lense flair [sic]" so essential?
>No one ever mentioned it in the years that I've been reading zillions
>of postings about Amiga renderers and ray tracers, including
>bajillions of articles on the net, not to mention over 2500 articles
>in this mailing list, until the time that Rundgren's "Theology"
>video started getting limited circulation and now since B5 has
>been shown.  Why wasn't everyone hollering for lens flare in the years
>prior to this?

I'm with Harv on this one. Todd Rundgren is at fault for deficiencies
in Amiga rendering programs.

Huh?     What?     That wasn't Harv's point?      OH!

Well, to be honest Harv, me thinks it's like those first
black and white commercials that appeared as if the cameraman was
having a seizure. Bouncing all over, strange camera angles, that kind
of thing. Pretty soon....EVERY commercial got to be that way.
Volkswagen, Buick, Levi's, AT&T, Nike, MTV, Coke, Pepsi... and on and on.
They all used this same old scheme...and pretty soon, every OTHER
commercial-maker started thinking in those terms and it wasn't long
before that appearance was part of their creative line of thinking.
That look was actually imbedded in the creative process.
Thankfully, after 4 or 5 years of it now, they seem to be
coming out of their creative "comas"  now.

Lens flare and motion blur both seem to have this
same bandwagon effect. For me, they'd be nice...but certainly
not essential to create the images that I desire.

They would, however, be one more creative weapon in an arsenal
that can not be overstocked.  :-)

>I'd sooner see them work in a true 3-D perspective editing
>stage first. :)

Yup.


>>I'll even proof their
>>news letter (which, by the way I still haven't recived as of 1 Mar) if
                                                    ^
>>they llet me.
       ^^

It ain't so easy as it looks Cyrus. (no offense intended, of course)
:-)


>> Well, I just got done seeing Babylon 5 here in the Twin Cites,

Me too. I just thought I would let you all in on a little rumor.
Remember the ambassador in the suit? The one nobody could ever see?
(Kohs...Kahz...Koss) well, guess what it looks like.
It's Wilson, the neighbor behind the fence on "Home Improvement"!

Sorry about the spoiler.


Dave Wickard  [phone]   "The big lump in your Pork n Beans is
[e-mail]        the Queen Bean! And all the other beans
[e-mail]       are the worker beans who serve her."
                                -Dr. Stupid on Ren N Stimpy


##

Subject: Why should I get screwed?
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 11:58:25 CST
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Setzer)

I was just sitting here thinking about how much the new Imagine(if and when it
comes out) is gonna cost me.  I've been using Imagine from the early days of
Turbo Silver.

  Turbo Silver (I don't remeber how much, but lets be fair and say $50.  I
                think thats about $40 bucks shy of the price I paid but lets
                just pretend)  $50

  TS SV upgrade (Again, I don't remember so say $15 which is again generous)
                    $15

  Imagine 1.x   $100 or $150?  can't remember.  $100.   Well worth it.

  Imagine 2.0   $100.

 thats already $265, more than Imagine 2.0 costs the new comer.  And now
 another $100 for 3.0....

 for a grand total of $365!!!!!!  Wow, for supporting these guys through the
years I get screwed!  Hmmm, if that upgrade isn't substantial, looks like I'll
be learning a new ray tracer.  Real 3DV2 here I come....(maybe I'll wait for
R3DV2.1 so I don't have to pay the extra $15 for the upgrade ;^)


Tom Setzer
[e-mail]

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


##

Subject: Re: Babylon 5
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 11:02:28 CST
From: [e-mail] (Daniel Jr Murrell)

  Hmm, I noticed the Bruce Willis double too.. :))
Commenting on what someone said earlier about the film quality, it just didn't
"feel" right to me too.  I just didn't like the transition to the "videotape" look
of the toaster stuff to the "film" look of the real scenes.  Couldn't they have just
shot the whole thing in video?  Sure, it'd have that cheesy soap opera look to it,
but at least it'd have better transition.  :)
  We ended up getting bored with it after an hour or so, and turned to Empire Strikes
Back on some cable channel.  THAT still amazes me.  It was nice to see the Amiga in
action though.  BTW, did the Impulse commercial I heard rumors about ever get shown?

Danimal
[e-mail]


##

Subject: RE: Why should I get screwed?
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 14:36:13 EST
From: W. Bruce Moore <[e-mail]>

"Thomas Setzer" wrote:
>  I was just sitting here thinking about how much the new Imagine(if and when
>  it comes out) is gonna cost me.  I've been using Imagine from the early days
>  of Turbo Silver.
>
>  Turbo Silver (I don't remeber how much, but lets be fair and say $50.  I
>                think thats about $40 bucks shy of the price I paid but lets
>                just pretend)  $50
>
>  TS SV upgrade (Again, I don't remember so say $15 which is again generous)
>                    $15
>
>  Imagine 1.x   $100 or $150?  can't remember.  $100.   Well worth it.
>
>  Imagine 2.0   $100.
>
>  thats already $265, more than Imagine 2.0 costs the new comer.  And now
>  another $100 for 3.0....

You forgot to subtract the value of having used those products during all
that time.  What you've computed is simply the cost of buying them and leaving
them on the shelf, i.e. buying then versus having waited until now to buy a
current product.  You've been screwed only if you bought before you were able
to make use of the earlier products.


##

Subject: Why
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1993 14:03:19 -0600 (CST)
From: "Cyrus J Kalbrener-1" <[e-mail]>

On Mon, 1 Mar 1993 [e-mail] wrote:
 =20
> >=09In closing, true ray tracing is essential, followed closely by
> >lense flair and motion blur.  Perhaps an economy version and a
> >professional version, or options available only through modules or
> >libraries.  Whatever Impulse does it MUST be a big improvement over 2.0 =
if
> >they plan to stay in the rendering game.  I for one wil be in the
> >stands rooting for the home team.
> >
> >
> >=09Cyrus J. Kalbrener
> >=09(612) 649-1437
> >
> >=09750 Curfew st. #4
> >=09St. Paul MN 55114
>=20
> Question for you, Sir. Why is "lense flair [sic]" so essential?
> No one ever mentioned it in the years that I've been reading zillions
> of postings about Amiga renderers and ray tracers, including=20
> bajillions of articles on the net, not to mention over 2500 articles
> in this mailing list, until the time that Rundgren's "Theology"
> video started getting limited circulation and now since B5 has
> been shown.  Why wasn't everyone hollering for lens flare in the years
> prior to this? =20
>=20
> While it can be pretty , it's a gimmicky effect that really calls
> attention to itself. Only in recent years have film directors
> actually strived to get blatant flare in their movies rather than
> go all out to avoid it.
>=20
> Is this really the (kind of) feature that CG animators will throw
> money at to get or is it just another filmic gimmick that everyone
> thinks they need in their bag'o'tricks this week?
>=20
> Personally, if Impulse was going to cram a lot of stuff into the next
> Imagine I'd sooner see them work in a true 3-D perspective editing
> stage first. :)
>=20
> Harv
> =20

=09I do understand your point.  What I mean by lens flare being next
to essential is that it helps CG to not look quite so perfect.  It is a
distraction and one that I think is a good one.  Most of the people that I
saw B5 with would make frequent mention of how the graphics were so obvious=
ly
computer generated=FB except when the lens flair was "on".  Yes it is a
gimmick, but it does add a more "Cinematic" touch to animations.  While I
do feel that it is close to essential it is because the competition DOES
have it and, as far as I know, Imagine will not.  While it is a gimmick, it
is something that people like myself will take into account when we have
to choose between upgrading to a system that is behind the pack, or taking
the leap into a piece of superior software.=20

=09As for improving the detail and stage editors, I'm all for it.=20
But the place where it really counts is in the final rendered picture, and
that is where I will be looking for the biggest improvements.

=09Cyrus J. Kalbrener


##

Subject: RE: Why should I get screwed?
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 14:41:38 CST
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Setzer)

> From: W. Bruce Moore <[e-mail]>
>
> "Thomas Setzer" wrote:
> >  I was just sitting here thinking about how much the new Imagine(if and when
> >  it comes out) is gonna cost me.  I've been using Imagine from the early days
> >  of Turbo Silver.
> >
> >  Turbo Silver (I don't remeber how much, but lets be fair and say $50.  I
> >                think thats about $40 bucks shy of the price I paid but lets
> >                just pretend)  $50
> >
> >  TS SV upgrade (Again, I don't remember so say $15 which is again generous)
> >                    $15
> >
> >  Imagine 1.x   $100 or $150?  can't remember.  $100.   Well worth it.
> >
> >  Imagine 2.0   $100.
> >
> >  thats already $265, more than Imagine 2.0 costs the new comer.  And now
> >  another $100 for 3.0....
>
> You forgot to subtract the value of having used those products during all
> that time.  What you've computed is simply the cost of buying them and leaving
> them on the shelf, i.e. buying then versus having waited until now to buy a
> current product.  You've been screwed only if you bought before you were able
> to make use of the earlier products.
>
So, (chuckle chuckle) by your method of calculations, those who buy earlier
buggy versions should pay more, and those who wait should pay less?
I guess patience is a virtue.


Tom Setzer
[e-mail]

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

ps I think I'll wait for VistaPro 3.1


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine Options
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 11:31:32 PST
From: [e-mail] (Rev Lebaredian)

>
> Lens flare and motion blur both seem to have this
> same bandwagon effect. For me, they'd be nice...but certainly
> not essential to create the images that I desire.
>
  I agree with you on the lens flare as being just one more gimmick, but
not the motion blur.  The motion blur is essential.  Without it, you
will allways have the superclean look of CG, not to mention problems
with jerkyness in rapid movement.  Even traditional animators have to
simulate motion blur by hand.  This is the way the eye percieves rapid
motion.

  One more thing I'd like to tack on to the list is depth of field.  This
is another important aspect of real world optics that Imagine fails in.
It's one of the reasons I'm switching over from Imagine to Real3D V2.0


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

                                                    "My moral standing is lying down."
                                                    [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Amiga 1200
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 14:48:17 CST
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Setzer)

> From @pobox.mot.com:[e-mail] Mon Mar  1 17:55:43 1993
> >
> >  Question:  I currently have an Amiga 500 w/3 megs, a hard drive, and the
> >stock 68000.  I was considering an upgrade to an Amiga 1200.  The power-up
> >deal makes the price pretty good; that is, if the machine does what I want
> >it to do.  What I want it to do is render my Imagine scenes faster, for
> >starters.
> >
>
> >Christopher Arthur
>
>        Here are some tips on how to speed up your A500. First, the A1200 will
>not be twice as fast, as it has no fast ram. So when you get an MBX board, try
>to get one with an FPU and it will increase the speed even more when using
>programs like Imagine with fp specifac code.

How much faster is a 68020 than a 68000?  I know it doesn't have a FPU, but
the integer version of Imagine should render faster on the A1200, right?  I
would guess atleast twice as fast(maybe?).  OOOHHH and all those pretty
colors;^)


Tom Setzer
[e-mail]

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


ps  Geez, I'm starting to sound like one of those people who never contribute
 anything usefull.  AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH, I am, I am.

pps  still working on those textures (That damn noise function is killing me.
What is that guy trying to say, Steve? :(


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine Options
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 15:25:29 CST
From: [e-mail] (Dave Wickard)

[e-mail] (Rev Lebaredian) retorts:

>  One more thing I'd like to tack on to the list is depth of field.  This
> is another important aspect of real world optics that Imagine fails in.

Oooo-ooo!  Yeah...that would be very nice.

When I talked to Mike Halvorson a week or so ago, he said that
3.0 was due in April or May (in spite of the comments made in
the hrmph 'newletter' about March).

I hope they don't "Moonwalk" this date TOO much.

I agree with all of you that are hoping for a major
step on this upgrade. I would sooner have a more costly,
but more worthwhile upgrade that will keep me working with
this package for a long time to come.

Dave Wickard  [phone]     "As the only adult here...I feel
[e-mail]          I have an obligation to say something
[e-mail]         ......COOOOOL!"   - Otto Man in the Simpsons


##

Subject: Environment suit thingie
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1993 16:47:04 -0500
From: "Mr. Scott Krehbiel" <[e-mail]>

For those of you who taped Bab 5, take a look at the Environment suit
thingie that the medusa was wearing.
The surface of it had a certain quality (mostly the helmet) that did hot
ops I mean did not look real.

Do you think they could have rendered some parts, and merged the imagery??

The helmet color seems a bit strange, the lighting stranger, and it just
looks a little TOO plasticy.  Perhaps parts of the suit were rendered?
Now the big question:::  WHY???   Running low on costume budget???

Scott
[e-mail]


##

Subject: G-Lock
Date: 1 Mar 93 19:37:40 EST
From: [e-mail] (Darrin Yancey) (David Tiberio)

Does anybody have any idea on how to use a genlock with the A3000 and
firecracker.  I just bought a G-Lock and it doesn't work.  It wont key or
genlock 24-bit graphics.  Any ideas.


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine OptionsDate: Tue, 2 Mar 93 09:09:30 CST
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 10:57:32 MST
From: [e-mail] (David Ingebretsen)

Dave Wickard replies to Harv Laser's reply to ...

   From: [e-mail] (Dave Wickard)

   [e-mail] (Harv Laser) writes about
   [e-mail] (Cyrus Kalbrener) writing:

   >>       In closing, true ray tracing is essential, followed closely by
   >>lense flair and motion blur.

   >Question for you, Sir. Why is "lense flair [sic]" so essential?
   >No one ever mentioned it in the years that I've been reading zillions
   >of postings about Amiga renderers and ray tracers, including

Comments about lens flare deleted...

   They would, however, be one more creative weapon in an arsenal
   that can not be overstocked.  :-)

   >I'd sooner see them work in a true 3-D perspective editing
   >stage first. :)

   Yup.

I write modelling software for Evans and Sutherland's real time Image
Generators and the feedback we get from our customers and internal
exploitation groups is that they don't like real time 3-D perspective
editors; They want a tri-view...

Rest deleted...

    David

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

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


##

Subject: Re: Babylon 5
Date: Tue,  2 Mar 93 12:57:10 PST
From: [e-mail]

>  Hmm, I noticed the Bruce Willis double too.. :))
>  We ended up getting bored with it after an hour or so, and turned to Empire
S
>trikes
>Back on some cable channel.  THAT still amazes me.  It was nice to see the Ami
g
>a in
>action though.  BTW, did the Impulse commercial I heard rumors about ever get
s
>hown?
>
>Danimal
>[e-mail]

The actor who played the security chief looked enough like (or was made
up to look enough like) Bruce Willis to be his twin brother from some
angles. I found that fact alone distracting enough not to pay much attention
to his lines.

The actress who played the telepath.. where have we seen her efore?
She has a very striking face and I know she's been in another series
or film or mini-series but I can't place her.

I did watch the whole 2-hour pilot again this morning on tape and
caught Kiki in the casino fiddling with some kind of futuristic
laptop computer or something. The Vorlon ship effects were very
well done, and I liked the organic flower-like look of their
ships, versus the typically hard-edged ships in the
Star Wars and Trek series and films. The complete alien-ness
of the Vorlon ambassador's unseen form was nicely complimented
by the complete alien-looking appearance of his fleet of ships. Reminded
me of some of Stephen Menzies' renderings.
But your comment about getting bored with it and switching to
Empire really hits home. And I think that you know that the reasonyou find
the Lucas films so much more entertaining, even after repeated
viewings, is that you CARE about the characters and what happens
to them.  The B5 characters were just so damn *serious* and full
of themselves, after a while I found myself not really caring
what happened to any of them. There's not a sympathetic character
in the whole lot... just a lot of stone-faced line readers.  NO
humor. B5 is a very cold, humorless place to be.

Again, I think this show, if it gets sold as a series, could really
use some star power, or if not some recognizable actors, at least
a few who we could really care about. It takes more than just
F/X to make a space show interesting.

Think about the pictures your mind painted when the Commander was
telling his girlfriend about "the line". There was just dialog...
no flashback scenes, no F/X. Your own imagination filled it all
in, like listening to a radio show.

In many cases like this example, the storyline has MORE impact
if it's NOT visualized FOR you.

The B5 pilot has the possibilities for a good series. But any 2-hour
show has a lot of padding in it. As an hour or even half hour it
would get tighter and more effective.

Harv


##

Subject: Re: Why
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1993 20:38:57 -0600 (CST)
From: "Cyrus J Kalbrener-1" <[e-mail]>



 On Mon, 1 Mar 1993 [e-mail] wrote:


> Question for you, Sir. Why is "lense flair [sic]" so essential?
> No one ever mentioned it in the years that I've been reading zillions
> of postings about Amiga renderers and ray tracers, including=20
> bajillions of articles on the net, not to mention over 2500 articles
> in this mailing list, until the time that Rundgren's "Theology"
> video started getting limited circulation and now since B5 has
> been shown.  Why wasn't everyone hollering for lens flare in the years
> prior to this?

> While it can be pretty , it's a gimmicky effect that really calls
> attention to itself. Only in recent years have film directors
> actually strived to get blatant flare in their movies rather than
> go all out to avoid it.

> Is this really the (kind of) feature that CG animators will throw
> money at to get or is it just another filmic gimmick that everyone
> thinks they need in their bag'o'tricks this week?

> Personally, if Impulse was going to cram a lot of stuff into the next
> Imagine I'd sooner see them work in a true 3-D perspective editing
> stage first. :)

> Harv


    I do understand your point.  What I mean by lens flare being next
 to essential is that it helps CG to not look quite so perfect.  It is a
 distraction and one that I think is a good one.  Most of the people that I
 saw B5 with would make frequent mention of how the graphics were so
obviously computer generated except when the lens flair was "on".  Yes
it is a gimmick, but it does add a more "Cinematic" touch to animations.
The second reason that I feel that it is close to essential is because the
competition DOES have it and, as far as I know, Imagine will not.  While it
is a gimmick, it is something that people like myself will take into account
when we have to choose between upgrading to a system that is behind the
pack, or taking the leap into a piece of superior software.

    As for improving the detail and stage editors, I'm all for it.
But the place where it really counts is in the final rendered picture, and
that is where I will be looking for the biggest improvements.

    And about the editing the news letter: if it's anything llike the
one I recived last summer, a fourth grader could have put better polish on
a finger painting than that piece trash (At least he/she could have kept
the fonts the same size...)


    Cyrus J. Kalbrener


##

Subject: Imagine pc questions
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1993 19:48:58 -0500 (EST)
From: James N Garrett <[e-mail]>

   I have a couple of questions :
Is Imagine pc out? cost?
will it have all of imagine 2.0's and eventually 3.0's features?
and I have one Imagine 3.0 question:what are the new features to be added
other than FFD's?
                         any response is appreciated!!!
                             James Garrett at C.I.


##

Subject: Lens Flares
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 09:50:47 MST
From: [e-mail] (David Ingebretsen)

   From: Naked Man <[e-mail]>
   Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 22:56:45 -0500 (EST)
   X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL20]
   Content-Type: text
   Content-Length: 1216

   >
   > Lens flares are a part of the "new" lightwave 3.0 system not yet released.
   > To do it with Imagine or any other renderer, you have to do it frame by
   > frame by hand. Oh well...
   >
   > David
    Oh well, you had better bet that you have inspired me to cheat it out
    of Imagine now.  (I love a challenge!)  Everyone thinks I'm insane,
    true, but tell me what you all think of this: Lens Flare objects which
    are actually disks with the radial texture applied to them.  Hinge a
    few of these puppies together ina  graceful hierarchy and make them
    slightly different sizes, positioned just right before your scene, and
    perhaps...?  As far as the disks themselves, the radial texture will
    tend from transparent at the centre to  perhaps Pastella or Angular at
    the rim, hopefully emulating the way lens flares are dim, refractory
    looking things....  please return input on this one, I'm inspired now!
    wes~
     Oh, yes, another great cheat with backdrop piccies:  Blur them in Adpro o
     your favourite bitmap butcherer for fake depth of field; the illusion is
     great as long as your camera is staying put.  any other good 'cheats' you
     folks may be hiding out there?
     >

This could work nicely. A tough part may be to make them fade out as the
light source moves behind an object, but maybe not. Someone else wrote about
using fog objects for the lens reflections. They may work nicely for the
flare as well. Let me know if you have any luck. Right now my time is
being spent trying to make Morphus make some waves in a swimming pool...

The idea about blurrng a backdrop picture is a good one. I'll file it in
"my ideas to try" directory.

    David

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

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


##

Subject: Re: Babylon 5
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 93 21:37:34 CST
From: [e-mail] (Thomas E. Smith)

Oh come on, don't you think the security chief is Dan Akroyd's long lost
twin brother????

                                                       Tom Smith


##

Subject: SLICE alternatives?
Date: Wed, 03 Mar 93 08:45:41 EST
From: Adam Benjamin <[e-mail]>

Well, last night I ran face first into the SLICE bug while trying
to add faces to an outline of my state map.
I found a workaround that might help anyone else trying to get the
slice command to work.
But first, I wanted to ask if there is any other program that will
convert pictures to objects and add faces to them like LOAD IFF and/or
SLICE would if they actually worked?
Does Vertex do this? or maybe pixel 3D?

Anyway, here is what I eventually did to get faces onto my state
outline:
I extruded the outline to make it "tube-like" (like a cookie cutter)
then deleted all the faces from the object. You may not have to
extrude it at all, I forgot to try this without extruding it first.
anyway, now CUT the outline with AMIGA-K and paste it back with
AMIGA-P twice so that you have two copies of the outline. hit F1 to
select ONE of the outlines and scale that sucker down till it's very
small (I mean tiny, minisule, invisible!)  Now just use the SKIN
command and it will add faces from your outline to your tiny center
outline that you scaled down.   That's all there is to it! wish I
would have thought of it before I wasted 2 hours trying to get the
SLICE command to work.

If you know of a better way, please pass it on!
And keep those other Imagine tips coming.

************************************************************
* Adam Benjamin                    [e-mail] *
* Christian Animator                   [e-mail]   *
* Disclaimer:  Nothing I say means anything to anyone that *
*               might take it to mean something I didn't!  *


##

Subject: What the heck is lens flare?
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1993 13:36:03 +0000 (GMT)
From: "Jonathan I Lonsdale - H601/91" <[e-mail]>

Hi - I've just subscribed to this list and everyone seems to be talking
about lens flare; this is a concept I'm not familiar with. At a guess
it sounds like the emulation of the peculiarities of photography.

Could someone tell me just what lens flare is trying to achieve and how
the effect will manifest itself in rendered images? Does it increase
rendering time substantially? It it the sort of effect that could
be achieved by image processing software?

Jonathan Lonsdale
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Mercator Maps on FTP
Date: 03 Mar 1993 14:04:23 -0600 (CST)
From: [e-mail]

Help!

I have tried numberous times to get the mercator maps that I saw on
ftp.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de

each time I try to FTP them...the server hangs ups after about 25 blocks

WHat can I do??  I really need these maps for a project I am doing
for one of my geography classes (along with vistapro3)!!

If anyone has this or a similiar map of the entire earth,  PLEASE
mail it to me or let me know where and how to FTP it


THANKS!!


##

Subject: Mercator Maps on FTP
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 93 13:37:18 MST
From: [e-mail] (David Ingebretsen)

I will put it up for grabs on ftp.uni-kl.de [131.246.9.95] in the
/pub/amiga/incoming/gfx/misc directory. It is called earth.lha and
earth.readme.


    David

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

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


##

Subject: Rubik Object Needed
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 93 13:04:12 EST
From: [e-mail] (William V. Swartz)

Under the gun here as always, I find myself searching for a rubik's cube
object for a demo.  I know I saw one sometime ago but can't seem to find it.

If anyone out there still has it, please, please encode it and mail to
me asap as I don't have ftp ability.

Return favor will be granted!

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


##

Subject: Re: Lens Flares
Date: Tue, 02 Mar 93 10:56:14 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

A Naked Man writes:
> > Lens flares are a part of the "new" lightwave 3.0 system not yet released.
>      tell me what you all think of this: Lens Flare objects which
>      are actually disks with the radial texture applied to them.

It is quite trivial to emulate a lens flare in any capable renderer. In
my last film which was done with LW 2.0, I created a series of objects that
emulated lens reflection rings. They were simply luminous disks with a
transparency map applied to them. I created the map myself rather than rely
on a procedural texture. The effect was stunningly similar to those seen
in Babylon 5 and Theology. A little creativity can go a long way. Very few
users ever come close to tapping all the capabilities of today's 3D software.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine Options
Date: Wed, 03 Mar 93 16:23:05 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

Rev Lebaredian writes:
>   I agree with you on the lens flare as being just one more gimmick, but
> the motion blur is essential.
>   One more thing I'd like to tack on to the list is depth of field.

Hmmmmm...comments like this really make me wonder what people are using
Imagine for. The compute expense for these effects is phenominal and
while they make really nice stills, they are quite impractical for animation,
at least on an Amiga. Unless you are doing special effects for film and
video, I really feel that such capabilities are mostly fluff and are most
useful for bullet items on a product feature sheet. Aside from the fact that
animation is about trying to effectively convey some idea or story rather
glitz the audiance in photorealism, I think too many people fail to attend
to more subtle photorealism issues such as good lighting, appropriate color
choices, layered texturing, and realistic modeling. If you want to target
features of other products that would make Imagine more competitive, I would
concentrate on things like animated free form deformation, inverse kinematics,
procedural animation, better user interfaces, scanline mode shadow generation,
particle systems, etc, etc.

> Without it, you will allways have the superclean look of CG.

You don't need motion blur to get rid of the "superclean look". Careful
attention to the areas I mentioned above possibly coupled with some image
processing can do extraordinary things.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: RE: Imagine PC questions
Date: Wed,  3 Mar 93 11:08:47 PST
From: [e-mail]

Imagine for the PC is identical to the Imagine 2.0 for the Amiga--they're
not even bothering to print different manuals :-)  I don't know if it
will always stay one version behind the Amiga version or not.  If they
don't catch up the version reasonably quickly, it will eliminate the
usefullness of a cheap 486 clone as rendering engine to the Amiga that
Impulse was suggesting at one point.

For registered Imagine owners, the PC version costs $100 direct from
Impulse.  I don't know anything about list or street prices yet.

As for Amiga Imagine 3.0, I can only remember a few of the features listed
in the latest Impulse Gazette:
    Bones - manipulate the shape of an object by manipulating its
        internal structure.  I'm not too clear on this, but it
        seems like it might smooth the intersection between
        jointed objects.
    "Real time" 3D stage manipulation - ability to move the camera in
        "real time" (quotations mine :-) and create paths inter-
        actively.
    Pop up action bars in stage editor
    Some kind of sound synching mechanism
    AGA support (HAM8)

There was also something said about shadows in scanline mode, but I can't
bemember if that was in the newsletter or was just a rumor.  I hope this
helps.

Mark Decker
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Environment suit thingie
Date: Wed, 03 Mar 93 12:15:25 CST
From: [e-mail] (Michael Linton)

Uhhh, no somehow I'd very VERY suprised if any part of that envro-suite
was modeled, and rendered.  It'd be a waste of time, and more trouble
than it'd be worth.  Get some high gloss lacquer clear coat, and spray it
over gloss plastic, with a motteled patteren... That's probably all they
did.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
  "...even the stuff you taught me, has been pushed back into the dark
recesses of my mind...  Need a candle or two (rendered of course, as
my light source) to find all that buried info again..."

                      -- Barb Hall on learning Imagine


##

Subject: Re: Why
Date: Wed, 03 Mar 93 12:08:43 CST
From: [e-mail] (Michael Linton)

Personally, I'm with Harv on this one too.  What's the big deal with lens
flare?  Sure, it's neat... It looks cool, and all that.  But, most people
try to AVOID lens flare when making a movie, or TV Show.  You don't
generally strive to get it into the shot.  :)  I personally think it was
over used in B5.  A little big goes a long way...  I does help make
things look less CG, but it takes more than just lens flare to do that.
The stuff in B5 was just too perfect, as is the cas with most CG things.
Hard to avoid, and requires a heck of a lot of work on the
animators/modellers shoulders to make something look more real, than CG.

So... What does all this talk about movies have to do with Imagine
anyway? :)


------------------------------------------------------------------------
  "...even the stuff you taught me, has been pushed back into the dark
recesses of my mind...  Need a candle or two (rendered of course, as
my light source) to find all that buried info again..."

                      -- Barb Hall on learning Imagine


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine Options
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 93 0:41:43 PST
From: [e-mail] (Rev Lebaredian)

>
> Rev Lebaredian writes:
> >   I agree with you on the lens flare as being just one more gimmick, but
> > the motion blur is essential.
> >   One more thing I'd like to tack on to the list is depth of field.
>
> Hmmmmm...comments like this really make me wonder what people are using
> Imagine for. The compute expense for these effects is phenominal and
> while they make really nice stills, they are quite impractical for animation,
> at least on an Amiga. Unless you are doing special effects for film and
> video, I really feel that such capabilities are mostly fluff and are most
> useful for bullet items on a product feature sheet. Aside from the fact that
> animation is about trying to effectively convey some idea or story rather
> glitz the audiance in photorealism, I think too many people fail to attend
> to more subtle photorealism issues such as good lighting, appropriate color
> choices, layered texturing, and realistic modeling. If you want to target
> features of other products that would make Imagine more competitive, I would
> concentrate on things like animated free form deformation, inverse kinematics,
> procedural animation, better user interfaces, scanline mode shadow generation,
> particle systems, etc, etc.
>

  1. The are only expensive in terms of rendering times if you switch
     them on.  If you don't need them, then don't use them.  Simple
     as that.

  2. I must disagree with you on the necessity of depth of field and
     motion blur.  Both of these are essential, not mention useful
     tools in composition.  I have needed these tools many times
     for the message I wanted to portray and there was no clean way
     of doing them using imagine.  Just take a look at any magazine
     and play close attention to how most of the time photogrophers
     use narrow depth of fields to draw your attention to one particular
     subject, instead of having it bounce all over the place
     unpredictabley.  Also, pay close attention to Computer animation
     you consider jerky, and computer animation you consider smooth.
     Chances are the smooth one made use of Motion blur extensively.

> > Without it, you will allways have the superclean look of CG.
>
> You don't need motion blur to get rid of the "superclean look". Careful
> attention to the areas I mentioned above possibly coupled with some image
> processing can do extraordinary things.

  Only to a certain extent.  For most people, the thing that lets them
know that what they are watching is CG is the jarring clarity resulting
from that lack of both motion blur and depth of field.   Humans are
used to seeing certain things out of focus and seeing theings blurred
when they move faster than their eyes are capable of handling.  Anything
that goes against this will clearly stad out.


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

                                                    "My moral standing is lying down."
                                                    [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Babylon 5
Date:     Wed, 3 Mar 1993 10:02:08 -0500
From: Jason B Koszarsky <[e-mail]>

>The actress who played the telepath.. where have we seen her efore?

Didn't she also play a role in the 'Night of the Living Dead' remake?  The
main female character, I don't remember her name.

Jason K.


##

Subject: CG "Reality"
Date:     Wed, 3 Mar 1993 09:11:15 -0500
From: "Christopher Stevenson" <[e-mail]>

People - greetings.

So much has been said about lens flare since B5 came out
that I had to put in my two cents' worth.  The issue, I
believe, is that suddenly everyone is realizing that it's
one of the growing tools in the contemporary animator's
bag of tricks for suspending disbelief - one of the many -
and you can't have too many tools for this if you want to be good.

We see images in two ways; through our eyes directly (which
you *really* wouldn't want transcribed onto film directly
because almost everything would be fuzzy except the precise
centre of your field of view, and everything would jump around
constantly), and from recreations, photos and the like.  All
photographs are recorded with *optics* of one type or another,
and the more complex the optic (the more lens surfaces it has)
the more likely you are to see scattered light and other effects.
Lens flare arises only from VERY bright light sources within, or
near to, the field of view of the optic - it takes the form of
multiple images of the len's aperture diaghram as inter-reflected
between those many lens surfaces in the camera.  Most commercial
optics are comprised of up to a dozen individual lenses; lots of
surfaces.  Lens flare "objects" are multi-coloured because of the
anti-reflection coatings on these lenses (to get an approximate
effect, look into the front of your 35mm SLR sometime with a bright
light behind you so that you can see it's reflections off of all those
lenses, maybe only three or four in something like a standard 50mm lens).
The "spiky" radial light is due to diffraction at the edges of the
blades of the diaghram; if the iris has 12 blades, then you'll see 12-
sided (roughly) "flare" objects and 12 primary sets of spikes. Then
there's all the scattered light from imperfections, etc, and this
can take many forms - rings, you name it.

The point is that lens flare exists in everything - even the glare
(not the flare objects, but only the diffraction effects) exists in our
own eye images.  Completely natural.  Computer graphics began by
approximating the real world with nice crude little facets, then
learned how to shade them, then learned how to make shadows, how to
do refraction and reflection effects, how to "fake" wonderfully
complex surface textures, how to "mimic" complex things like trees, smoke,
and broken rock.  The intent is to recreate images of the real world,
for people involved in graphics sold to that market.  Artistic uses
don't necessarily require it, nor do they even require resolution
(look at how favorably pixelation is used in many advertising
campaigns, etc etc).  There are still a few things that CG can't
do correctly.  Backwards ray-tracing (meaning that light is sent
FORWARD through the scene, to properly reproduce the caustic effects
one sees on the bottom of swimming pools, the focusing of light *onto*
something else by lenses, and so on) is still a real toughie - it's
hideously expensive unless you do it cleverly.  *Proper* post-filtering
to include all the diffraction effects you;d expect to see around bright
objects can be expensive.  Depth of field, another intrinsic property
of everything imaged by eye or camera, is usually forgotten.

The more tricks the better - if the intent is to recreate reality,
then what happens in reality has to be mimicked before you begin to
accept these images as real ones.  If CG is to be used as a replacement
for setting up real models of spacecraft i nreal studios, do it
properly.

Babylon 5 - for what it's worth, not half bad.  The story was thin and
ludicrously predictable, the characters were all stereotyped and seemed
like the sort of thing you'd find in any half-respectable Japanese anime
film, the visual design and concept was Star Wars, put very simply, the
acting was horrible - by modern cinemategraphic standards.  Had I seen
this in a threatre, I'd have left.  BUT, it should sell well to the masses
on television.  The graphics were clean and gorgeous to look at, but
they weren't realistic - free space doesn't have blue nebulae as bright
as planetary surfaces.. I thought of the classic mall "air brushed
unicorn"-type illustration, but fine.  This thing sells, or malls
wouldn't peddle them.  The lens flare was OVERDONE!  Even small ship
thrusters had excessive amounts (they shouldn't have had much at all).
The intent here, it seemed to me, was to imitate Blade Runner - IMHO.
There were many things that I did like; the design of B5, for one, and
the acceptance of the laws of physics (something which Star Trek has given
up on.  Gravity? What's that?   Even when people can walk through walls
they're always held up, somehow, by the deck plates).  The graphics, the
main reason I watched the pilot in the first place, *were* gorgeous but I
think I'd tire of them quickly.  The characters are at least varied. The
resemblance to yet another Star Wars Cantina scene of the whole show is
unfortunate - probably also a selling point.  B5 will be moderately successful,
in my opinion.  Not overwhelmingly so.  DS9 (Star Trek) and TNG have a hugely
successful tradition underlying them, and will always be popular - and
most of the episodes focus on the *human* aspect increasingly, the reason
why we all watch television or go to the movies, right? (I would hope
so...)  I can let the obvious reality abuses slide in favor of the stories,
and get about what I expect out of something with about a 45 minute
run time.  Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised.

The graphics sell the story - the story has to be believeable, and the
graphics should aid in this suspension of disbelief, whether their role
is to look mundane, very real, very bizarre, or even very computerish.

Now the real point: if Imagine wants to be thought of as not just a graphics
toy, it had better incorporate as many of these tricks from the bag of
reality it can - lens flare/glare, depth of field, motion blur.  Otherwise
it'll be lost in the crowd.  I like Imagine - too bad it's falling behind.

-More than my two cents' worth - my apologies!

Christopher C. Stevenson
Physics and Astronomy
York University

Disclaimer-  This institution has no influence on my comments here in any
             way whatsoever, in a direct fashion.


##

Subject: Re: SLICE alternatives?
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 93 13:12:19 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

>
>Well, last night I ran face first into the SLICE bug while trying
>to add faces to an outline of my state map.
>I found a workaround that might help anyone else trying to get the
>slice command to work.
>But first, I wanted to ask if there is any other program that will
>convert pictures to objects and add faces to them like LOAD IFF and/or
>SLICE would if they actually worked?
>Does Vertex do this? or maybe pixel 3D?
>
    Heck!  That's what Pixel 3D was first made for!


>Anyway, here is what I eventually did to get faces onto my state
>outline:
>I extruded the outline to make it "tube-like" (like a cookie cutter)
>then deleted all the faces from the object. You may not have to
    [STUFF DELETED]
>outline that you scaled down.   That's all there is to it! wish I
>would have thought of it before I wasted 2 hours trying to get the
>SLICE command to work.

    Holy Cow!  Zounds!  Brilliant!  At first I said...well okay
sounds resonable, but you end up with a hole.  But not quite:

    1] MAke a FLAT outline of your object (no need to extrude)
    2] Paste a smaller copy down.  Not too small, doesn't matter.
    3] Skin.
    4] here it is:  Select ALL the points that make up the inner
      "hole" and then select JOIN!

    That should give you a flat object similar to a primitive disk
in that it has one center point and a bunch of outline points.

    I admit, i haven't tried this yet....but i will!



--
+======================================================================+
|  Michael B. Comet - Computer Programmer / Graphics Artist  - CWRU    |
|  [e-mail]  -   This Sig file is temporarily Out Of Order      |
+======================================================================+


##

Subject: Make soft won't work!
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 93 15:15:33 PST
From: Byrt Martinez <[e-mail]>

Hello All!

        I'm having trouble with make soft/make sharp. I made an object
from a tube and cut out some pieces using Slice. After specifying some of
the edges to be sharp and rendering it, the tube Phong shades okay at one
end, but there is some faceting at the other end. None of the edges on
the tube itself is specified as sharp, so there should be no problem, but
it is there. I've tried different settings and still can't find out what
the problem is. It's frustrating because Imagine at least knows how to
shade part of it, just not all of it, like I would like. Anybody else
have this problem or a possible solution? Thanks!

Byrt


##

Subject: ISL 1.4 released
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 93 1:03:16 PDT
From: [e-mail] (John T. Grieggs)

Hi.

ISL 1.4 is out.  I personally uploaded it to Portal and ftp-ed it to
amiga.physic.unizh.ch.  Doubtless, it will propogate from there to
the other popular ftp sites.

Attached are the updated readme and history files.

As always, I appreciate feedback, good or bad.  I am still gathering a
feature list for a possible graphical replacement for the stage and
action editors; send specific suggestions to this address!

I would also like to get a better handle on the propogation of ISL to the
various non-Portal services.  If you would like to be the designated uploader
of ISL releases to CI$ or whatever, please let me know and I will select one
person per service.  There's no pay for this, just a good feeling inside.

Don't send it to Fred Fish, I want that honor myself!  :-)

_john

--readme--readme--readme--readme--readme--readme--readme--readme--readme--
Hi, and welcome to ISL version 1.4!

What is is?  ISL is the Imagine Staging Language, a language create to
make the creation and manipulation of Imagine 2.0 staging files a whole
lot easier.

Who needs it?  You do, if you are an Imagine user who is not satisfied
with the Action editor, and aren't afraid to try something new!

How much does it cost?  Nothing.  Nada.  Not one red cent.  This is my
little contribution to the Imagine user community.  What's a few thousand
lines of code between friends?  :-)  It may be freely distributed, as long
as it is not sold for more than media cost.  I require that you not charge
for it's use or sale and that you keep all the pieces together.  I also ask
that you give me a little credit if you use it for anything neat.  I'd like
to hear from you at one of the addresses below if you use it - it's always
nice to hear!  Bug reports should go there, too.

Keep what pieces together?  Well, this file, for one thing.  Also:

    name        size

    destage        23036        the de-compiler
    restage        44376        the re-compiler
    ISL.doc        5918        the docs
    ISL.BNF        5827        the grammar
    frames.c    2392        a sample c stage producer
    history.ISL    1418        version history

Now what?  Get it, enjoy it, and have a great day!


Electronic addresses:

[e-mail]
[e-mail]

Snail-mail address:

John T. Grieggs
1045 E. Locust St.
Pasadena, Ca.
91106

--readme--readme--readme--readme--readme--readme--readme--readme--readme--

--history--history--history--history--history--history--history--history--
3-3-93    - ISL 1.4

    Improved restage performance.

    Added hyphen '-' character to BNF.

    Changed restage info message to reflect it's being more of a
    compiler than a re-compiler.

    Removed gratuitous and hard-to-remember-to-maintain version numbers
    from several doc files.  README.ISL and history.ISL will continue
    to report the current ISL version.

2-20-93 - ISL 1.3

    Added QUICKDRAW flag to AXIS syntax.

2-10-93 - ISL 1.2

    Compiled with -O.

    Decided it was less confusing to give the entire package a version
    number, rather than each piece.  Thus, destage 1.2 and restage 1.2
    are here even though destage did not change.  At least, the source
    did not change - the size did due to the new compile option above.

    Fixed an oversight (bug) which limited the size of a binary stage
    which could be generated by restage to 100000 bytes.  Stages are
    now written directly to disk, and the sizes updated using fseek.

    Arbitrarily decided to remove the sample ARexx scripts.  While I
    appreciated the effort which went into writing them, they didn't
    handle the complete ISL syntax and I didn't want to put the effort
    into learning ARexx well enough to fix them.  Perhaps I'll bring
    them back in an enhanced form someday.

12-3-92  - destage 1.0, restage 1.1

    Added '-' to the filename characters recognized by restage, fixing
    a spurious parsing error.

11-22-92 - destage 1.0, restage 1.0

    Initial release

--history--history--history--history--history--history--history--history--


##

Subject: Ground?
Date: Tue, 02 Mar 1993 21:49:35 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail]

Hello all! This is my first post to this list :)
I have recently purchased Imagine 2.0 and am familier with Turbo Silver.
What I want to know is in Silver one is able to wrap an iff around
a "ground" image... how does one do this in Imagine, and also I am
having serious difficulty using a global brush in the action editor,
I understand that the image MUST be the same resolution as the render..
yet I still get an error even after matching resolutions.
Thanks,
    -Don


##

Subject: Re: Babylon 5
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 93 12:53:26 EST
From: [e-mail] (William V. Swartz)

>
> Oh come on, don't you think the security chief is Dan Akroyd's long lost
> twin brother????
>
>                                                        Tom Smith

This is exactly how I felt!  Where did you guys get 'Bruce Willis' out of
this actor other than the haircut?

Someone else had mentioned that they felt the actors were too serious and
full of themselves.  I felt they weren't very serious, in fact there a more
than a few scenes with serious dialog but the facial expresions on both the
commander and the 'Ackroid twin' made me think they were about to crack up!

My first viewing of B5 was a short one that left me disappointed in both the
acting and the CGI but know that I have watched the entire movie I am still
disappointed with the actors and the writing.  I had mentioned that the CGI
looked 'sterile' before but that is not the case.  It suffers from being very
clean video inserted into lower quality filming so the resulting edits make
the CGI video really stand out as far as crispness.  I know that the show was
produced on a shoestring and it really is a testament to what can be done with
desktop computer imagery but with such lousy acting and low quality filming
the 'enjoyment' of sci-fi is lost for me due to the distractions caused by all
of the above.  If this show does make series status without any changes I give
it all of 6 episodes before cancellation.

No Dave, I don't have "Toaster-envy" so quite being so damn defensive!

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


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine options
Date: Tue, 02 Mar 93 11:44:25 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> >    In closing, true ray tracing is essential, followed closely by
> >lense flair and motion blur.
> Question for you, Sir. Why is "lense flair [sic]" so essential?

As Harv pointed out, lense flare effects are rather gimmicky and do stick
out like a sore thumb. They should be used in moderation where appropriate.
I personally felt Theology GROSSLY overused this effect.

But my question is why do you think "true ray tracing is essential"?? Ray
tracing in general brings very little value to the animator and if anything,
hinders his/her productivity. In my mind, Real 3D's greatest weakness BY FAR
is the fact that it is a ray tracer first and foremost with only secondary
consideration to traditional scanline rendering. This is completely opposite
of nearly all professional production 3D packages on the market. I can think
of about 100 other enhancements Imagine could use before "true ray tracing".
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: asimVTR
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 93 18:03:47 EST
From: Steve J. Lombardi <[e-mail]>

Has anyone used/heard of/ gotton feedback on the asimvtr. I currently
have a 1200 frame animation I would like to output, without hte expense
of single frame recording. this product sounds promising. any
comments are appreciated.

For those who have not heard of this product I'll briefly mention what
I know about it. The asimVTR program should allow anyone with a fast scsi
harddrive to get decent playback of full screen images directly from
a custom harddrive partition. it only costs about 85 bucks! I've heard
that a standard a3000 can do better than 15 FPS with 3 bit dctv images.
An a3000 with the new 8.5 ms hd's from maxtor may do 50 fps.

anyone with any other suggestions for outputing a large animation w/o SFR
should drop a line here. anim format is out of the question. too much
change per frame. Moviemaker isn't out yet. THe DMI setup is a bit
expensive for what it currently does. I'm kind of stuck. anybody?? 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: New Imagine options
Date: 4 Mar 93 15:51:34 EST
From: [e-mail] (David Tiberio) (Amiga Graphics BBS 516-473-6351)

In an article, src4src!mcdhup!rutgers!student.tc.umn.edu!kalb0003 writes:

>

>        As for service, hell, I'll start up a BBS for Impulse if I can get
>the backing.  I live right near by in the Twin Cities.  I'll even proof
>their
>        Cyrus J. Kalbrener
>        [phone]

        Well, my BBS is geared towards Imagine, although I only have 157
megabytes of disk space and I need some too. I get all the comp.sys.amiga
groups, and some 3d mailing lists in my message base.

        I admit I only have 2400 baud because Mr SupraFAX wants to sit in the
box unopened and wait for a refund (should I say Mr SupraFAX the Fifth?), but
anyone is welcome to call and log in using the handle ANONYMOUS and the
password GUEST.

        I would also be glad to get support from Impulse. Actually all they
would have to do is make sure I get more disk space and upload some files, and
answer questions once in a while...



-------------------- Via Amiga Graphics BBS [phone] --------------------
 David Tiberio                //       Amiga Graphics BBS  [phone]
 [e-mail]   //      NO SUPRA MODEMS --- BY POPULAR REQUEST
 Long Island, New York     \X/     USENET - 3D - Music - Fonts - Pics - Utils
--


##

Subject:      inverse kinematics
Date:         3 Mar 93 19:26:09 CST6CDT
From: "Mike Jiang"  <[e-mail]>

What exactly is inverse kinematics?


Mike Jiang
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| "Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum."    | email==> [e-mail]  |
| "I think that I think,              | or    [e-mail]  |
|  therefore I think that I am."      |                              |
----------------------------------------------------------------------


##

Subject: DrawingPad by TriMedia
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 93 14:17:30 EST
From: Adam Benjamin <[e-mail]>


This maybe of little interest but here goes.

I was reading the premier issue of Amiga Video/Graphics (the new AVID)
and in a review of DpaintAGA Doug Shannon mentions this cool touchpad
called DrawingPad.  This is the first I have heard of this thing.
Does anyone have one?  How usefull is it?  Dpaint makes use of it
"pressure sensitive" tip to vary the width of the line you are drawing
(according to the article)   This sounds like a nifty thing to have if
it isn't a lot of money.
What other programs use it besides Dpaint? (briliance maybe? if that
ever ships)

The New AVG magazine is pretty nice by the way, missing a proofreader
for this first issue, but other than that a nice mag.

************************************************************
* Adam Benjamin                    [e-mail] *
* Christian Animator                   [e-mail]   *
* Disclaimer:  Nothing I say means anything to anyone that *
*               might take it to mean something I didn't!  *


##

Subject: 3.0 and the tacking of ilbm's
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 93 17:54:42 EST
From: Steve J. Lombardi <[e-mail]>

sorry if i'm jumping the gun but I have a few questions about 3.0 of imagine.
if anyone has any FACTUAL info on the following please respond.

1. please explain the benefits of what was mentioned in the newsletter
as tacking ilbms to faces.

2. it would be handy to save directly to jpeg, especially if
the impulse jpeg card is not vapor.

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: Panning Starfields
Date: Wed,  3 Mar 93 18:49:28 PST
From: [e-mail]

Hello fellow Imagineers...

I've been trying to get the illusion of panning across a starfield to
simulate the depth like you see in sci-fi fx.  Maybe you guys can suggest
a better way to do it...

Here's my solution:

In Dpaint, I spray a hires overscan  8 grey starfield.
I then FLAT WRAP it to a huge sphere in Imagine.
I put all my lights, cameras and objects inside the sphere.
Disadvantages:
My stars distort on two sides of the sphere where the wrap is completed.
My stars look to big and too close because Imagine resizes the map.

Any and all help would be appreciated,
Keith E. Veleba
[e-mail]

P.S.  I would appreciate if someone would try some of the ideas brought
forward on lens flares and maybe elaborate on how to do them consistently.
THANX


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine Options
Date: 3 Mar 93 12:35:49 EST
From: [e-mail] (David Tiberio) (David Tiberio)

In an article, src4src!mcdhup!rutgers!ho.sp.paramax.com!dave (Dave Wickard) wri
>[e-mail] (Harv Laser) writes about
>>Question for you, Sir. Why is "lense flair [sic]" so essential?

        If lens flair is the colored circles that appear when a light
source appears on camera, then I hardly see what is so complicated about
it, unless of course it is done automatically. :)


>Well, to be honest Harv, me thinks it's like those first
>black and white commercials that appeared as if the cameraman was
>having a seizure. Bouncing all over, strange camera angles, that kind
>of thing. Pretty soon....EVERY commercial got to be that way.

        Ugh! I noticed this too! TV has changed so much in the past 10
years...and I laugh whenever I see these types of commercials. They
still do it unnaturally. I have a brain...I know that when I open a box of
cereal the lids usually gets ripped, yet they continue to make the tops
perfect and stuff... they are so fake...I could go on and on about all that.


>That look was actually imbedded in the creative process.
>Thankfully, after 4 or 5 years of it now, they seem to be
>coming out of their creative "comas"  now.

        They are still not very realistic. If I did a commercial, of a sports
car for example, when the car in the end of the scene approaches the camera I
would use highly reflective paint on the car such that you could see a
reflection of the camera man and some guys sitting in directors chairs and
stuff. If I ever did commercials I would have so much fun... or for cereal
commercials I would have the 4 year old kid put in too much cereal and then
spill the milk all over the place! Americans incorrectly think that if it
looks good then it is good... I am tired of my bosses at work telling me to
make the floor nice and clean so the Burger King customers don't think it is
dirty, yet the way they store food and other products is ridiculous...

>They would, however, be one more creative weapon in an arsenal
>that can not be overstocked.  :-)

>>I'd sooner see them work in a true 3-D perspective editing
>>stage first. :)

        Imagine has some good poinbts, but I am liking Lightwave 1.0 more and
more each day...

>

>>>I'll even proof their
>>>they llet me.                                     ^
>       ^^
>>> Well, I just got done seeing Babylon 5 here in the Twin Cites,
                                                              ^^^

>Remember the ambassador in the suit? The one nobody could ever see?
>(Kohs...Kahz...Koss) well, guess what it looks like.
>It's Wilson, the neighbor behind the fence on "Home Improvement"!

        Kosh. I heard that Allen Hasting's arm was in the movie, and that
appears to be the only time an arm is significant...when Kosh was poisoned.
But them again, it fits Wilson's character well!

>Dave Wickard  [phone]   "The big lump in your Pork n Beans is


-------------------- Via Amiga Graphics BBS [phone] --------------------
 David Tiberio                //       Amiga Graphics BBS  [phone]
 [e-mail]   //      NO SUPRA MODEMS --- BY POPULAR REQUEST
 Long Island, New York     \X/     USENET - 3D - Music - Fonts - Pics - Utils
--


##

Subject: Depth of field
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 93 08:31:07 CST
From: [e-mail] (Thomas E. Smith)

What is depth of field, and how is it done?

                          Tom Smith


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine Options
Date: Fri, 05 Mar 93 13:09:09 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

>      Just take a look at any magazine
>      and play close attention to how most of the time photogrophers
>      use narrow depth of fields to draw your attention to one particular
>      subject,

This is definitely true of photography but I think you would be hard pressed
to find much use of it at all in 3D animation with a few rare exceptions.

>      you consider jerky, and computer animation you consider smooth.
>      Chances are the smooth one made use of Motion blur extensively.

Actually most commercial CG animation that looks smoother is not due to
motion blur but is instead due to field rendering (the ability to render
60 interlaced fields per second rather than 30 frames (effectively doubling
the motion sample rate). I ofcourse realize that motion blur is being used
by some (the recent Pixar commercials are a good example) but they are
definately not the norm.

> > attention to the areas I mentioned above possibly coupled with some image
> > processing can do extraordinary things.

>   Only to a certain extent.

My point is that even motion blur can be faked somewhat effectively with
careful image processing at a fraction of the compute cost to render it.

I would venture to guess that with a scene of any photorealistic quality
with motion blur applied, you will be looking at render times in the 3-4 +
hours per frame on a souped up Amiga. That is not acceptable for animation.
This is certainly conjecture but very educated conjecture.

I do not wish to belittle the visual importance of depth of field and
motion blur but I do think there are many other more important things
that help get the animators point across without creating a tremendously
huge CPU burden.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Re: Babylon 5
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 93 10:46:03 PST
From: [e-mail] (Christopher Stewart)

     I believe the woman who plays the telepath on B5 was also
featured in an article/advertisment on morphing. Morph Plus I assume,
I'll look it up.

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


##

Subject: Please Forward ASIMVTR Info
Date: Sat,  6 Mar 93 10:39:45 PST
From: [e-mail]

I would like any Info you recieve(d) on ASIMVTR, thanks.

If you are short on money but long on time you could try laying your anim
down by hand!  An article in Avid's July/August 1992 issue titled "Single
Frame Animation on The Cheap" described using a Sony VCR with Jog/Shuttle
to record a still for -say- 10 frames then use the Jog/Shuttle to back up
9 frames and record the next still for 10 frames, back up 9...

I used this technique on a 180 frame (Not quite 1200) Anim on my Sony V801
Hi-8 Camcorder with frame accurate positioning.  After some experimentation
I found that the camcorder will back up 4 frames from where I left it in
record-pause mode and then start recording.  So I position the video on frame
1 and record a still for 10 frames, back up to frame 6 and go into record-pause
mode, set up the next still and when I hit pause to start recording the camcord
er
backs-up to frame 2 (6-4) and I record for about 10 frames and repeat for each
frame.  Because the V801 is frame accurate (look for a Camcorder or VCR with RC
Time Code) I could do 10 frames and turn everything off to rest and come back
later and pick up where I left off.

I'm thinking about buying the Sony V-Box (Computer to Sony interface) and tryin
g
to automate this procedure.

Don DeCosta
[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Lens Flares
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993 16:53:41 -0500 (EST)
From: Naked Man <[e-mail]>

>
> A Naked Man writes:
> > > Lens flares are a part of the "new" lightwave 3.0 system not yet released.
> >      tell me what you all think of this: Lens Flare objects which
> >      are actually disks with the radial texture applied to them.
>
> It is quite trivial to emulate a lens flare in any capable renderer. In
> my last film which was done with LW 2.0, I created a series of objects that
> emulated lens reflection rings. They were simply luminous disks with a
> transparency map applied to them. I created the map myself rather than rely
> on a procedural texture. The effect was stunningly similar to those seen
in Babylon 5 and Theology. A little creativity can go a long way. Very few


      Sounds great, I am truly proud of you.  I'm not sure which is more
      efficient in Imagine, however: procedural textures or memory hogging
      bitmaps...  Do you use Imagine much at all or are you exclusively a
      Lightwave animator?  You probably know the balance in Cg animation
      between cost, time, creativity, machine efficiency...  I am perfectly
      happy to tweak a little effect here and there.  As an artist in
      traditional 2d media, I'm comforted with merely the 'illusion' of a
      reality (not just 'the' reality of human optics).  What an incredible
      day it will be when computers can render virtual scenes nearly
      indeeterminable from real life. ( scary, too, yes)... Not so much to
      see scenes of reality, but just in Imagining all of the possibilities
      that will have been opened along the way.
      wes~


##

Subject: Re: Panning Starfields
Date: 6 Mar 93 20:48:00 EST
From: "Ross Knepper" <[e-mail]>

Wrote [e-mail]:

> Hello fellow Imagineers...
>
> I've been trying to get the illusion of panning across a starfield to
> simulate the depth like you see in sci-fi fx.  Maybe you guys can suggest
> a better way to do it...
>
> Here's my solution:
>
> In Dpaint, I spray a hires overscan  8 grey starfield.
> I then FLAT WRAP it to a huge sphere in Imagine.
> I put all my lights, cameras and objects inside the sphere.
> Disadvantages:
> My stars distort on two sides of the sphere where the wrap is completed.
> My stars look to big and too close because Imagine resizes the map.
>
> Any and all help would be appreciated,
> Keith E. Veleba
> [e-mail]
>
> P.S.  I would appreciate if someone would try some of the ideas brought
> forward on lens flares and maybe elaborate on how to do them consistently.
> THANX

There is a better way to accomplish this, as long as you posess some
programming skills (there is nothing difficult).  All you need to do is
choose the "Genlock Sky" option from the globals screen, and the frames
render with the background as color 0.  Then, you load each frame into a
program which calculates the amount the pregenerated star map has scrolled
since the last frame using simple triginometry, and puts in stars over
color 0. This will generate a perfect background, but is slightly more
difficult to do.

- Ross Knepper

[The rest of this signature has been commandeered by the FBI]


##

Subject: Re: (Panning) Starfields
Date: Sat,  6 Mar 93 10:45:26 PST
From: [e-mail]

>Hello fellow Imagineers...
>
>I've been trying to get the illusion of panning across a starfield to
>simulate the depth like you see in sci-fi fx.  Maybe you guys can suggest
>a better way to do it...
>

I spent FOREVER trying to get a StarField I could pan.  I tried making a .0001
Imagine unit pyramid and then using TTDDD and a couple of REXX programs to
"Splatter" thousands of these little suckers all over the night sky.  I spent
WEEKS on this trying different Splatter techniques, forcing perspective by
scaling some of the "stars", shrinking things down to a point where I was
moving the camera from .05 to -.05 over 120 frames trying move *past* the stars
not just jerk from star to star... It was HELL!

And then one day I was sitting at my job, 30 miles away from my beloved Amiga
and the weirdest thing happened, my brain did a complete 180, shifted out of
Imagine mode and slipped into DPaint mode and said "Didn't you read a Joel Hage
n
article in Amiga World about using Dpaint and Color Cycling to draw star fields
?"

After sitting at work in toture for the next 6 hours I finally got home, dug
through all my old, disorganized Amiga Worlds and found the article! After a
mere 2 hours of experimentation I had a beautiful star field anim that I could
use as an Imagine backdrop and my weeks of suffering were over!

The article was in the May 1992 "Accent on Output" issue (proving that every
Amiga World has at least ONE decent article!)

I'll try to summarize.

    Needs DPaint III or higher (Anim Painting invloved)
    32-color screen
    create a 16 color grey-scale range (0-0-0 to 15-15-15) make it range 1
    Bring up the Spacing Requester (Right Mouse Button on Line Draw Tool)
    Select N Total and enter 16
    (You should now be able to draw a line and get 16 evenly-spaced dots
        instead of a continuous line)
    Select your range and choose CYCLE from the mode menu now when you
        draw a line you'll get 16 evenly spaced dots each lighter than
        the previous dot.
    Set up an animation with a number of frames greater than 16 (N Total)
        and that no divisor in common with 16... 25 is a good start.
    Hold down the AnimPaint key and draw a line, each of your evenly spaced
        dots will be a different FRAME now and be a different color.
    Keep drawing lines, long line for close stars, short lines for far away
        stars.
    When you are happy with your Anim save the frames individually, use
        ADPro to manipulate to the size you need for an Imagine
        backdrop and have fun.

The article was geared towards the classic "stars comming-at-you" star field
but the concepts are good for a panning star field.

Now If I could just get Leo Schwab to give his ES star field program a "Save
Frames" option (of course I guess I could ask him :-) Leo do you read this List
?)

Don DeCosta
[e-mail]

P.S. Could someone please tell me what I should have done to keep this post
     from being bounced to me a million times?


##

Subject: G-lock + Firecracker24
Date: 6 Mar 93 18:34:45 EST
From: [e-mail] (Darrin Yancey) (Amiga Graphics BBS 516-473-6351)

Has anyone had any luck using a genlock with the firecracker.  I have tried
the G-Lock and it doesn't key on the 24 bit graphics, only the amiga native
graphics.  I want to key 24bit titles over live or recorded video, preferably
on S-VHS


##

Subject: Re: DrawingPad by TriMedia
Date: Sun, 7 Mar 93 11:47:33 CET
From: [e-mail] (Thorsten Ebers)

Hi Rave-tracers,

>
> This maybe of little interest but here goes.
>
> I was reading the premier issue of Amiga Video/Graphics (the new AVID)
> and in a review of DpaintAGA Doug Shannon mentions this cool touchpad
> called DrawingPad.  This is the first I have heard of this thing.
> Does anyone have one?  How usefull is it?  Dpaint makes use of it
> "pressure sensitive" tip to vary the width of the line you are drawing
> (according to the article)   This sounds like a nifty thing to have if
> it isn't a lot of money.
> What other programs use it besides Dpaint? (briliance maybe? if that
> ever ships)
>


Could someone give more details about that touchpad.Besides that I
have seen it at WoC (Germany) .
If its affordable I think I need it.
Anyone experienced using a touchpad for rendering,modelling.
What things watching out ??

Thorsten

> The New AVG magazine is pretty nice by the way, missing a proofreader
> for this first issue, but other than that a nice mag.
>
> ************************************************************
> * Adam Benjamin                    [e-mail] *
> * Christian Animator                   [e-mail]   *
> * Disclaimer:  Nothing I say means anything to anyone that *
> *               might take it to mean something I didn't!  *
>

---
Thorsten Ebers   e-mail: [e-mail]

Tel.: [phone]=20


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine Options
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 93 23:45:26 PST
From: [e-mail] (Rev Lebaredian)

>
> >      Just take a look at any magazine
> >      and play close attention to how most of the time photogrophers
> >      use narrow depth of fields to draw your attention to one particular
> >      subject,
>
> This is definitely true of photography but I think you would be hard pressed
> to find much use of it at all in 3D animation with a few rare exceptions.
>

  I should have clarified this earlier.  Depth of Field is used in film
as well as video.  It greatly enhances the artisits ability to bring
his message across by filtering out needless visual noise.  Depth of
field is not limited to stills.

> >      you consider jerky, and computer animation you consider smooth.
> >      Chances are the smooth one made use of Motion blur extensively.
>
> Actually most commercial CG animation that looks smoother is not due to
> motion blur but is instead due to field rendering (the ability to render
> 60 interlaced fields per second rather than 30 frames (effectively doubling
> the motion sample rate). I ofcourse realize that motion blur is being used
> by some (the recent Pixar commercials are a good example) but they are
> definately not the norm.
>

  But they are superior...  Have you ever seen Ralph Bakshi's "Lord of
the Rings"?  It was hard to look at.  The whole thing was rotoscoped,
and without thinking, they cleaned up the motion blur instead of leaving
it in.  It was very jerky.  The same holds for CGI.

> > > attention to the areas I mentioned above possibly coupled with some image
> > > processing can do extraordinary things.
>
> >   Only to a certain extent.
>
> My point is that even motion blur can be faked somewhat effectively with
> careful image processing at a fraction of the compute cost to render it.
>

  You could not fake it with very complex scences(at least succesfully).

> I would venture to guess that with a scene of any photorealistic quality
> with motion blur applied, you will be looking at render times in the 3-4 +
> hours per frame on a souped up Amiga. That is not acceptable for animation.
> This is certainly conjecture but very educated conjecture.
>

  Excuse me, but how can you even give such a time without defining how
complex the scene being rendered is(number of polygons, primitives, etc...,
lights, procedural textures, bitmapped textures, etc...) not to mention
which alorithm's(program) is being used.  Such benchmarks of the top of
your head are meaningless.

> I do not wish to belittle the visual importance of depth of field and
> motion blur but I do think there are many other more important things
> that help get the animators point across without creating a tremendously
> huge CPU burden.

  Then don't use these features.  Many other people such as myself do
require such features.  That's why I am planning on switching over
to Real3D v2.0.


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

                                                    "My moral standing is lying down."
                                                    [e-mail]


##

Subject: Color problems...
Date: Sun, 7 Mar 93 22:42:54 EST
From: [e-mail] (Alan Wren)

ok, I'm pretty new to Imagine right now, and ran into an interesting problem...

I did a simple animation of a plane rotating on 1 axis... 30 frames, scanline, with a nice chrome att. as well.. I set the +zenith to white, the horizon to blue, and the ground to green.  it looked great! the colors reflected well and blended too. (I had sky blending set to 255 as well)

so I thought I'd make it more interesting... I added a circle path, had the camera follow it, and increased the animation to 60 frames to make it smoother...  all the globals and the lightsource stayed the same,the only change was the camera moving and the increased frames...

when it rendered, the green and white portions of the picture were completely gone, and all i  got was this super blue scene with the faint outline of the plane in it... I've rechecked all the globals many times, to no avail...

has this happened before?  is it solvable? what causes it?  if it is new, can the problem be named after my cat? (she was there the whole time)

oh yeah, Imaigne 2.0, FP version...

--
The Archdruid of Internet...      / Information wants to be free.
[e-mail]              /                 Believe it, pal.
---------------------------------     ::::::Bruce Sterling
                                 \_________________________________
We are the music makers.  And we are the dreamers of the dreams.
                                :::::Wille Wonka


##

Subject: Motion Blur  (was Re: New Imagine Options)
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 93 08:17:34 CST
From: [e-mail] (Thomas E. Smith)

>I would venture to guess that with a scene of any photorealistic quality
>with motion blur applied, you will be looking at render times in the 3-4 +
>hours per frame on a souped up Amiga. That is not acceptable for animation.
>This is certainly conjecture but very educated conjecture.
>
>%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
>%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
>% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
>%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
>%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
>%                                                                          %
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was wondering if an Arex script could be set up to use DCTV to emulate
motion blur ala Steve Worley. The script would essentially load in (1) the
just-finished Imagine frame, (2) a few frames before the frame in (1) and
set the filter to 50% or less, and blend them together? It should cut down
greatly on that 3-4 + hours of rendering time if it works. What to you think?

                                                     Tom Smith


##

Subject: Motion Blur  (was Re: New Imagine Options)
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 93 10:51:33 EST
From: Adam Benjamin <[e-mail]>

Regarding ideas for, and necessity of Motion Blur:

You can do it now! (well if you own Image F/X or Imagemaster)
You could easily write an AREXX script to blur all or a section of
each frame, or if you just wanted to blur one object you could do each
frame by hand, which would still be faster than tacking it onto the
render (it has enough to do already).

I did just this over the weekend (on one still image) I was not
impressed with the results I might add.

I don't understand why someone hasn't made a FOG or transparent set of
objects to simulate lens-flare either, it should be easy enough.

************************************************************
* Adam Benjamin                    [e-mail] *
* Christian Animator                   [e-mail]   *
* Disclaimer:  Nothing I say means anything to anyone that *
*               might take it to mean something I didn't!  *


##

Subject: Re: Motion Blur  (was Re: New Imagine Options)
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 93 13:18:48 PST
From: [e-mail] (Rev Lebaredian)

>
> Regarding ideas for, and necessity of Motion Blur:
>
> You can do it now! (well if you own Image F/X or Imagemaster)
> You could easily write an AREXX script to blur all or a section of
> each frame, or if you just wanted to blur one object you could do each
> frame by hand, which would still be faster than tacking it onto the
> render (it has enough to do already).
>
> I did just this over the weekend (on one still image) I was not
> impressed with the results I might add.
>

  Well, although you can simulate motion blure with some Image
processing programs, you cannot use it for all situations.  The
Image processing program does not know how fast the objects are
moving in relation to the camera at any given point.



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

                                                    "My moral standing is lying down."
                                                    [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Lens Flares
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 93 15:17:10 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

>   I'm not sure which is more efficient in Imagine, however: procedural
>   textures or memory hogging bitmaps.

Procedurals will almost always be more memory efficient. The question is,
how effective are they at producing the results you are looking for? In
my case, LightWave currently has no radial textures. Also, my bitmap was
only about 5K so there was little concern for memory usage (there seldom is
when you have 32MB :-) )

> Do you use Imagine much at all or are you exclusively a Lightwave animator?

Pretty much only LightWave. I own Imagine 2.0, Caligari Broadcast, and a
bunch of others, but LW is what works for me. That doesn't keep me from
watching what Imagine 3.0 will bring.

>   You probably know the balance in Cg animation
>   between cost, time, creativity, machine efficiency...  I am perfectly
>   happy to tweak a little effect here and there.

As a production animator, I must do this all the time. Its simpler to
set up a scene and tell the software to go and trace/render it all. It is a
bit trickier to do the extra legwork that will allow that scene to be
completed 50% faster. Doing things like faking shadows or reflections,
multi-resolution rendering with compositing, compositing backgrounds when
they aren't dynamic, etc. are all common tricks. Coming up with these
hair-brained hacks and tricks are half the fun of using the software ;-)
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Motion Blur and stuff
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 93 16:53:19 -0500
From: [e-mail] (PJ Foley)

Ok, first a gift:

Here is an AREXX/ADPro motion blur makin' script I made a long time
ago (April 12th, 1992 according to the datestamp).  It's a bit
crude, but it works.  Known bug:  source files need to be in
a directory, not a root.  Easy enough to fix, but I don't need to.

Anyway, here it is.  It works great for spachips flying through
space and such.

motblur.adpro

/* PJ's really cool motion blur program, taylor made for Imagine and
   DCTV. */
/* Motblur.adpro was written by */
/* Kinetic Dreams */
/* 901 South Fourth Street #38 */
/* Lafayette, IN  47905 */
/* [e-mail] */

OPTIONS RESULTS

ADDRESS "ADPro"

ADPRO_TO_FRONT

LFORMAT "UNIVERSAL"
SFORMAT "IFF"
GETDIR "'Source Directory'"
IF RC ~= 0 THEN DO
   /* No selection made */
  EXIT
END

SOURCE_DIR = ADPRO_RESULT

GETDIR "'Destination Directory'"
IF RC ~= 0 THEN DO
   /* No selection made, abort */
   EXIT
END

DEST_DIR = ADPRO_RESULT

GETNUMBER "'Starting Frame Number'" 0001 0001 9999

IF RC ~= 0 THEN DO
   /* What's that user doin'??? */
   EXIT
END

THE_START = ADPRO_RESULT

GETNUMBER "'Ending Frame Number'" 0001 0001 9999

IF RC ~= 0 THEN DO
   /* leave */
   EXIT
END

THE_END = ADPRO_RESULT

DO THIS = THE_END TO THE_START BY -1
   NOW = THIS + 1
   MIX = 100

   DO THAT = 1 TO 5
      DORKY = (NOW-1)||''
      DORKY = RIGHT(DORKY,4,'0')

      THE_FILE = SOURCE_DIR||'/pic.'||DORKY
      say 'loading file'
      say THE_FILE

      say 'Mix %'
      say MIX
      say '--------------------------------------------------'
      LOAD THE_FILE 0 0 MIX -1 -1 -1
      NOW = NOW -1
      MIX = MIX - 20
   END

   OPERATOR DCTV
   ADPRO_DISPLAY
   NERDY = THIS||''
   NERDY = RIGHT(NERDY,4,'0')
   THE_FILE = DEST_DIR||'/pic.'||NERDY
   say 'saving file'
   say THE_FILE
   say ''
   SAVE THE_FILE "IMAGE"
END

ADPRO_TO_FRONT

OKAY1 "'Finished Motion Blur Effect By PJ Foley.'"

EXIT


Second, a complaint/desparate plea for help:

Well, it's not that desparate, I know how to handle this in another
way, BUT...

Why does an object that has a filter value of 255,255,255 still have
visibility!?!?!?

I am applying a bitmap and a filter map to a plane, and it is working
partially, but the transparant parts of the plane are still effecting
the objects behind them.
The bitmaps are 12-bit IFFs, so I have used a full-scale value of
240.
I am rendering in 24bit, so the dithering setting should be ignored,
but I'm trying it again with zero dithering to see what that changes.

So, in effect, what I need is to composit a free-standing 2D picture
in a 3D world, without the visible effects of the plane resides on.

What gives?

1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS
 "pigs we get what pigs deserve"- NIN | [e-mail]| This message
 "Are you talkin' to me?              | New year's resolution:    | inspected by
  Did you rub my lamp?" - Genie       | Same as last year's.      | No. 38


##

Subject: Objects Wanted
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 1993 16:12:56 -0700
From: STEELE SHAWN CHARLES <[e-mail]>

Hi, I'm trying to get/make a small library of Imagine objects and would
like to know where to find some.  (Actually, they can be almost any format.)
I like making them, but creating every little detail object in a scene is
tedious.  So, if anyone knows where I can look for objects to ftp, I
would appreciate it.

Thanx,
shawn steele

[e-mail]


##

Subject: Re:  Motion Blur  (was Re: New Imagine Options)
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 1993 16:04:46 -0700
From: STEELE SHAWN CHARLES <[e-mail]>

If I recall, Sculpt-Animate 4D did some motion blurring during the
rendering process, and it didn't add too much extra render time.  I've
worked on some Raytrace math and software and think it could be done
without too much extra trouble per frame.

Shawn Steele

[e-mail]


##

Subject: Paths - Arrrrgggg.
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 1993 18:31:40 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail]

Thanks all who responded to my Ground problem.. I know have a beautifull
ground plane being rendered with some 3d text at this very moment!
I love multi-tasking... BUT know I have another prob.. sigh..
Up till know I have only used imagine (and silver before that) for still
shots, and I wanted to make a fly by of some 3d text (a logo) and I was
trying to get my camera to follow a path and track an object... but
when I hit the Make in the stage editor.. I get an Object not found in path?
Anyideas on what I am missing?  My text looks absolutely perfect and would
make a wonderfull demo if I can get an anim going.  Thanks all.

                                   -Don McCallum

              ------------------------------------------
              Computer users get shot at stabbed poisoned
              blown to bits an occationally accidentally
              executed.  - The Computer is your Friend.
              ------------------------------------------
              Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean
              they are not out to get you. (Muahahahaha
              they are not out to get you. (Muahahahaha)
              ------------------------------------------
              MUDDing is bad for your GPA! But much more
              fun. ;) RO 128.83.135.4 9999
              ------------------------------------------


##

Subject: Objects Wanted
Date: Tue, 09 Mar 93 08:01:22 EST
From: Adam Benjamin <[e-mail]>

>Hi, I'm trying to get/make a small library of Imagine objects and
>would like to know where to find some.  (Actually, they can be almost
>any format.) I like making them, but creating every little detail
>object in a scene is tedious.  So, if anyone knows where I can look
>for objects to ftp, I would appreciate it.

>Thanx,
>[e-mail]

I was reading a Computer Graphics World (Feb issue) and in the back is
small add for a company called VIEWPOINT.  They will send you a free
catalog with "hundreds" of 3D objects, I called them and they do
support Imagine objects. They are in UTAH, their number is:
1-800-DATASET (1-800-328-2738) Don't know what they charge, but the
call and catalog is free.

Adam B.


##

Subject: Objects Wanted
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 93 09:13:11 MST
From: [e-mail] (David Ingebretsen)

Viewpoint has an extremely large selection of objects in dozenz of formats.
They're a bit pricey, but you get nice stuff. For example, a highly detailed
full skeleton is $5000! Cars are around $300 to $500. Other things are
in the hundreds, such as human body parts, animals, and misc. We have
at times used them to custom digitize objects for us.

    David

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

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


##

Subject: Re: Objects Wanted
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 93 12:48:10 EST
From: [e-mail] (Stephen Pietrowicz)

> I was reading a Computer Graphics World (Feb issue) and in the back is
> small add for a company called VIEWPOINT.  They will send you a free
> catalog with "hundreds" of 3D objects, I called them and they do
> support Imagine objects. They are in UTAH, their number is:
> 1-800-DATASET (1-800-328-2738) Don't know what they charge, but the
> call and catalog is free.
>
> Adam B.

Depends on the object, but I think their cheapest object is something
like $50 or $150, and it goes up from there.   A lot of professionals
buy their stuff.  ViewPoint does really great work.

Steve


##

Subject: Objects Wanted
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 93 09:26:30 MST
From: [e-mail] (David Ingebretsen)

You can look at ftp.uni-kl.de [ 131.246.9.95 ]. It mirrored hubcap which had
many Imagine objects in it. There is also a graphics BBS that David Tiberio(?)
runs (I think it's him anyway). Don't know the number but I'm sure he'll
reply as well.

    David

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

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


##

Subject: Imagine Contenst Winners
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 93 09:24:18 MST
From: [e-mail] (David Ingebretsen)

I downloaded the winners from the Imagine contest. This was GOOD stuff.
I was very impressed with the efforts the contestants went to. My own
personal favorite was the 3D-studio.

Congratulations to all who entered and especially those who won. Next
time, I think I will enter...

    David

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

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


##

Subject: Re: Motion Blur and stuff
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 93 10:21:00 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Yury German)

Hi PJ (PJ Foley), in <[e-mail]> on Mar 8 you wrote:

:
: Ok, first a gift:
:
: Here is an AREXX/ADPro motion blur makin' script I made a long time
: ago (April 12th, 1992 according to the datestamp).  It's a bit
: crude, but it works.  Known bug:  source files need to be in
: a directory, not a root.  Easy enough to fix, but I don't need to.

    Well you could also achieve a good motion blur with Image FX from
GVP and nova design. THe motion blur there is a command and all you have
to do is load the animation and apply a motion blur to it with a
predefined setting... should be a snap.
    _____________________________________________________________________
   |                                                                     |
   | Yury German                  [e-mail]            |
   | Blue-Knight Productions      GENIE: Blue-Knight                     |
   | [phone]            ** Graphic Design and Video Productions ** |
   |_____________________________________________________________________|


##

Subject: Screwy action editor...
Date: Tue, 09 Mar 93 11:22:48 CST
From: [e-mail] (Michael Linton)

Okay... I've discovered something really interesting, as I've been
working on a rather complex animation (cartoon like thing) with Imagine.
The action editor, is flipping out on me - in that, the 'bars' for the
actors, get stretched out over the areas where the object name is, and
when I quit back to the stage editor, parts of the 'bars
still remain on the stage editor's screen.  It's beginning to really tick
me off, because I'm using LOADS of tweening, for position, and alignment,
as well as a great deal of morphing... There are enough bars on the
screen without there being "ghosts" of them!  AUUGH...  Anyone else have
this problem?  It's the first time I've ever experienced it to this
degree (probably because it's the most complex animation set up I've
ever done).  It only seems to happen once I scroll past a certian object
(the object which has the most tweening, and the most morphing)... After
that, all the objects actor bars are screwed up, as I said above.  So,
what's my point?  Well, I don't think I have one... I'm just babbling. :)


------------------------------------------------------------------------
  "...even the stuff you taught me, has been pushed back into the dark
recesses of my mind...  Need a candle or two (rendered of course, as
my light source) to find all that buried info again..."

                      -- Barb Hall on learning Imagine


##

Subject: Imagine sighting
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 93 15:10:06 CST
From: [e-mail] (Michael J. Mikottis (x2-6197))

Check out the "Gallery" section of the Feb/Mar issue of "Computer Artist",
page 45, for a work called "Cal Hog" by Victor Osaka of Santa Monica CA.
He says he used Imagine 2.0, ADPro, and Photoshop on his A2500 equipped w/
a Fusion Forty 68040 accelerator (along w/ a Mac IIci, Solitaire recorder,
and a Wacom tablet...)  In case you're wondering, it's a purple-tanked
"chopper" motorcycle set in a sort of stark surrealist orangey background.

Anyway...


##

Subject: RE: Screwy action editor...
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 93 21:52:15 GMT
From: Alex <[e-mail]>

>The action editor, is flipping out on me - in that, the 'bars' for the
>actors, get stretched out over the areas where the object name is, and
>when I quit back to the stage editor, parts of the 'bars
>still remain on the stage editor's screen.  It's beginning to really tick

I've had this problem as well (although I've only had the bar compleatly
corrupting the stage editor a couple of times). Like you say, it only seems
to happen in scenes with load of objecs/morphs etc. Often it clears up when
I go back to the stage editor or the bars only cover the screens borders.

Does anyone know why this is, or (even better) how to cure it +:o( ?

        Alex...


------------------------- #include <.signiture.h> --------------------------
****************************************************************************
Alex Craig.                             ///     CSE Student, Warwick Uni. GB
"MayTheSkyNeverFallOnYourHead!"     \\\///         [e-mail]
             -Cheif Vitelsatistix    \XX/ AMIGA    [e-mail]
****************************************************************************


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine Options
Date: Tue, 09 Mar 93 18:35:47 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> ...motion blur....depth of field...
>   Then don't use these features.  Many other people such as myself do
> require such features.

OK, uncle, uncle.... I said uncle :-)
I've already made my point, I'm not going to try and force it on anyone.

>   Excuse me, but how can you even give such a time without defining how
> complex the scene being rendered is(number of polygons, primitives, etc...,
> lights, procedural textures, bitmapped textures, etc...) not to mention
> which alorithm's(program) is being used.  Such benchmarks of the top of
> your head are meaningless.

Not a benchmark at all. Consider what it currently takes to render a
convincingly photorealistic image (minus the motion blur) of an average
complexity scene. Now multiply that by say 5 or 6 (a very conservative
estimate for the cost of generalized motion blur). If that doesn't get you
into the 3-4 + hours ballpark, I'd be a little surprised. Convincingly
photorealistic imagery, by its very nature, puts certain polygon and texture
mapping minimums on a scene. If you have done much photorealistic rendering,
you will have a feel for this already.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Re: inverse kinematics
Date: Tue, 09 Mar 93 16:37:06 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

> What exactly is inverse kinematics?

No one else answered so here is a quick and dirty explanation.  Kinematics
is basically the physics which models object motion with respect to time
without regard to force or mass.  In animation, kinematics are typically
used to model the interaction of jointed structures such as a skeleton or a
robot. Lets take for example a forearm. It rotates along one axis with
respect to the elbow. If you rotate that forearm about the elbow, the path
the end of the arm traverses with respect to time is described by
kinematics. Inverse kinematics, as the name implies, is this operation in
reverse. A classic example is a character on a bicycle. With proper
hierarchical and skeletal linking, the animation of such an event with
inverse kinematics becomes nearly trivial. The animator could simply spin
the rear tire, this would cause the chain to spin and consequently the
flywheel and pedals. The feet (because they are hierachically linked to the
pedals) would move with them. As the feet move, the lower and upper legs
would move accordingly to accomodate the motion of the feet.  This is
inverse kinematics. Obviously, it helps to have some sort of skeletal
definition support. When force and mass are entered into the model, you are
talking about dynamics, a FAR more complex subject. In dynamics you might
take into account the muscles and ligaments in the legs, the friction of
the road and in the bicycle gears, the mass of the bike and the character,
wind velocity, and a whole pile of other parameters. Modeling bowling
pins being struck by a bowling ball is a simple example of dynamics.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine Options
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 93 18:12:46 PST
From: [e-mail] (Rev Lebaredian)

>
> >   Excuse me, but how can you even give such a time without defining how
> > complex the scene being rendered is(number of polygons, primitives, etc...,
> > lights, procedural textures, bitmapped textures, etc...) not to mention
> > which alorithm's(program) is being used.  Such benchmarks of the top of
> > your head are meaningless.
>
> Not a benchmark at all. Consider what it currently takes to render a
> convincingly photorealistic image (minus the motion blur) of an average
> complexity scene. Now multiply that by say 5 or 6 (a very conservative
> estimate for the cost of generalized motion blur). If that doesn't get you
> into the 3-4 + hours ballpark, I'd be a little surprised. Convincingly
> photorealistic imagery, by its very nature, puts certain polygon and texture
> mapping minimums on a scene. If you have done much photorealistic rendering,
> you will have a feel for this already.

  Yes, I have done quite a bit of photorealistic rendering and I seldom
have any scenes rendered at half that time.  How can you make such
sweeping generalizations?  You still haven't mentioned what rendering
algorithms and at which resolution you render at.  3-4 hours is extremely
slow even for an 030 based Amiga.  Why don't you give some specifics.
Show me why motion blur would add so much to rendering time.  Can you
name some specific algorithms and specifics to how they achieve their
output?


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

                                                    "My moral standing is lying down."
                                                    [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Motion Blur
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 93 21:20:27 MST
From: [e-mail] (R. Todd Frazier)

> > >   Excuse me, but how can you even give such a time without defining how
> > > complex the scene being rendered is(number of polygons, primitives, etc...,
> > > lights, procedural textures, bitmapped textures, etc...) not to mention
> > > which alorithm's(program) is being used.  Such benchmarks of the top of
> > > your head are meaningless.
> >
> > Not a benchmark at all. Consider what it currently takes to render a
> > convincingly photorealistic image (minus the motion blur) of an average
> > complexity scene. Now multiply that by say 5 or 6 (a very conservative
> > estimate for the cost of generalized motion blur). If that doesn't get you
> > into the 3-4 + hours ballpark, I'd be a little surprised. Convincingly
> > photorealistic imagery, by its very nature, puts certain polygon and texture
> > mapping minimums on a scene. If you have done much photorealistic rendering,
> > you will have a feel for this already.
>
>   Yes, I have done quite a bit of photorealistic rendering and I seldom
> have any scenes rendered at half that time.  How can you make such
> sweeping generalizations?  You still haven't mentioned what rendering
> algorithms and at which resolution you render at.  3-4 hours is extremely
> slow even for an 030 based Amiga.  Why don't you give some specifics.
> Show me why motion blur would add so much to rendering time.  Can you
> name some specific algorithms and specifics to how they achieve their
> output?
>

    Well from what I know of motion blur, it is simply
anti-aliasing over time.  Motion is achieved by playing
back frames in rapid succession.  Each frame is a sample at some
specific time.  Well you get aliasing just like with any other
sampling, that is not fast enough.

    Real motion blurring techniques involve sampling the motion at
times before and after the actual frame and then summing the results
up with some method average, probablility dist. function etc.

    What it all boils down to is for each frame of animation, you
are actually rendering 3,6, 10 or whatever frames.  So depending on
the degree of ant-aliasing, your total rendering time may take at
least 2, 6, 10 times the original rendering time.

    R.  Todd Frazier
    [e-mail]


##

Subject: Some followup and stuff
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 93 00:52:10 -0500
From: [e-mail] (PJ Foley)

On the 8th, I asked what was up with transparent objects, and I found
the answer in my trusty "Understanding Imagine 2.0" book by Worley.
Sorry I don't have the page number handy, but it is in the "Renderer
Limitations" or somesuch section.
However, in the latest Amazing Computing (April 93), Marc Hoffman
wrote an article about making realistic grass in Imagine.  He mentions
that by putting a second transparent plane behind another, the
objects behind it are restored to normal in some cases.  Wierd.
Impulse doesn't even know why.

I also learned how to spell 'transparent.'  I thought that didn't
look right.

A quickie "I already heard that one' tip from PJ that I feel
obligated to give so I do not feel as though I am wasting bandwidth.

Softer shadow edges:
Use three shadow casting light sources in a row, close to each other,
offset slightly to the sides of the central one.  The "crossover" of
the light cast from the two extremes will soften the edges.
The price is TIME, precious TIME...

1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS1001001SOS
 "pigs we get what pigs deserve"- NIN | [e-mail]| This message
 "Are you talkin' to me?              | New year's resolution:    | inspected by
  Did you rub my lamp?" - Genie       | Same as last year's.      | No. 38


##

Subject: Cycle morphs...
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1993 03:25:29 -0500
From: Frank R. Dana Jr. <[e-mail]>

I've got an interesting one for you guys. It's probably gonna have some
really simple explanation, but I can't find it so far. I've been poring
over Understanding trying to find any mention of what I'm trying to do,
but the venerable Mr. Worley doesn't really make any mention of what I'm
trying to do. The short version:

I'm trying to create a cycle morph. I simply need a cycle object that
looks like object A in frame 0, morphs smoothly into object B (which is
simply a point-drag of the first, and has the same faces, points, etc...)
at cycle frame 5, and then turns back into object A at cycle frame 10 - then
keeps repeating this over and over and over again. All of the discussion in
Understanding is about relations between multiple objects, and the movements
and transitions that happen between them. I'm looking for ONE object, with
no links on the cycle tree - just two different poses. I've tried every
possible way to use "load pose", but nothing seems to happen.

What am I missing?

                            Thanks,
                             Frank Dana
                             [e-mail]


##

Subject: Re: Screwy action editor...
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 93 10:31:37 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

>
>The action editor, is flipping out on me - in that, the 'bars' for the
>actors, get stretched out over the areas where the object name is, and
>when I quit back to the stage editor, parts of the 'bars
>still remain on the stage editor's screen.  It's beginning to really tick
>
    Yes....I've had this happen to me recently too.  Seems if you
scroll right and THEN down, the bars go all the way across.  Or
something like that.  MAybe it was down and then right.  Dunno, I just
live with it.....i think they disappear when i change editors though.



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


##

Subject: Re: Cycle morphs...
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 93 10:40:18 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Michael B. Comet)

>I'm trying to create a cycle morph. I simply need a cycle object that
>looks like object A in frame 0, morphs smoothly into object B (which is
>simply a point-drag of the first, and has the same faces, points, etc...)
>at cycle frame 5, and then turns back into object A at cycle frame 10 - then
>keeps repeating this over and over and over again. All of the discussion in
>Understanding is about relations between multiple objects, and the movements
>and transitions that happen between them. I'm looking for ONE object, with
>no links on the cycle tree - just two different poses. I've tried every
>possible way to use "load pose", but nothing seems to happen.
>
>What am I missing?
>
    Ahhh.  I think the thing here is that a) you really just need a
standard morph.  and B) All morphing is still done in the stage editor,
but as Mr. Worley has pointed out, it is possible to morph cycle objects
per se, when they're cycling.

    All you need to do is to load your object in at frame 1 and
morph it in the stage as normal to frame 5.  And back to 10.
Unfortunately, you will have to do this over and over again as far as i
know.  (maybe ISL or the new 3.0 will help this).

    The cycle things is really for use where say you have a robot
arm moving.  Then you could create ANOTHER cycle object with the SAME
points and SAME keyframes, but could make the key positions different
and even the pobject structure so you could morph the arm into a human
arm, or make it smoothly tween from, a slow movement into another etc...



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


##

Subject: Re: Motion Blur
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 93 15:21:55 EST
From: scott a king <[e-mail]>

Forwarded message:
> From [e-mail] Wed Mar 10 01:56:07 1993
> From: [e-mail] (R. Todd Frazier)
> Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
> Subject: Re: Motion Blur
> To: [e-mail]
> Date: Tue, 9 Mar 93 21:20:27 MST
>
>
> > > >   Excuse me, but how can you even give such a time without defining how
>
> > > >   Excuse me, but how can you even give such a time without defining how
> > > > complex the scene being rendered is(number of polygons, primitives, etc...,
> > > > lights, procedural textures, bitmapped textures, etc...) not to mention
> > > > which alorithm's(program) is being used.  Such benchmarks of the top of
> > > > your head are meaningless.
> > >
> > > Not a benchmark at all. Consider what it currently takes to render a
> > > convincingly photorealistic image (minus the motion blur) of an average
> > > complexity scene. Now multiply that by say 5 or 6 (a very conservative
> > > estimate for the cost of generalized motion blur). If that doesn't get you
> > > into the 3-4 + hours ballpark, I'd be a little surprised. Convincingly
> > > photorealistic imagery, by its very nature, puts certain polygon and texture
> > > mapping minimums on a scene. If you have done much photorealistic rendering,
> > > you will have a feel for this already.
> >
> >   Yes, I have done quite a bit of photorealistic rendering and I seldom
> > have any scenes rendered at half that time.  How can you make such
> > sweeping generalizations?  You still haven't mentioned what rendering
> > algorithms and at which resolution you render at.  3-4 hours is extremely
> > slow even for an 030 based Amiga.  Why don't you give some specifics.
> > Show me why motion blur would add so much to rendering time.  Can you
> > name some specific algorithms and specifics to how they achieve their
> > output?
> >
>
>     Well from what I know of motion blur, it is simply
> anti-aliasing over time.  Motion is achieved by playing
This isn't really true.  Its a technique to make the pictures more realistic by
adding aliasing not taking it away.
> back frames in rapid succession.  Each frame is a sample at some
> specific time.  Well you get aliasing just like with any other
> sampling, that is not fast enough.
>
>     Real motion blurring techniques involve sampling the motion at
> times before and after the actual frame and then summing the results
> up with some method average, probablility dist. function etc.
>
>     What it all boils down to is for each frame of animation, you
> are actually rendering 3,6, 10 or whatever frames.  So depending on
> the degree of ant-aliasing, your total rendering time may take at
> least 2, 6, 10 times the original rendering time.
The techniques that do it this way give "okay" results but the Cook paper points
out the flaws with them.
>
>     R.  Todd Frazier
>     [e-mail]
>
This is not really true.  Of course it depends upon the method used but THE
paper on the subject (its only a part of the paper), "Distributed Ray Tracing"
by Cook et all solves the problem without shooting any more rays than what you
have to to get decent antialising any way.  For scanning algorithms you can do
it as well only costing you extra for those objects that are moving.

Scott


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine Options
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 93 11:33:33 EST
From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>

Rev Lebaredian writes:
>  Yes, I have done quite a bit of photorealistic rendering and I seldom
> have any scenes rendered at half that time.

I assume you mean half the 3-4 hour mark. I would sure hope that your render
times are less than half of that.

> How can you make such sweeping generalizations?

Gotta big broom :-)  :-)  :-)

> You still haven't mentioned what rendering
> algorithms and at which resolution you render at.  3-4 hours is extremely
> slow even for an 030 based Amiga.  Why don't you give some specifics.
> Show me why motion blur would add so much to rendering time.  Can you
> name some specific algorithms and specifics to how they achieve their
> output?

There are several ways to accomplish generalized motion blur, but the
underlying basic concept is rendering "x" number of additional frames
(sampled over time), and blend them together. Different people approach
this different ways. Pixar did it within the renderer and called it
distributed ray tracing because pixel sampling was distributed over time.
They typically used 15 additional rays per pixel to achieve good results.
SGI uses what they call an accumulation buffer into which the scene is
rerendered and blended. In their 1990 Siggraph paper in which they describe
the technique, they used between 23 and 66 images to compute one frame.
For photo realistic motion blur, anything less than about a dozen passes
is not going to look so hot unless the motion you are blurring is very
slight.

Now with some tricks and careful coding, you can avoid the linear degradation
of render times that this method implies. But the 5-6x cost that I gave
as an example is very aggressive and it would likely be higher. Therefore
I feel my "sweeping generalization" of at least 3-4 hours for a motion
blurred photo realistic image of a scene of reasonable complexity is well
founded. Note that depth of field uses similar techniques but often requires
even more samples per frame than motion blur. If you wish to debate this
further, I propose you tell me how you will get past the above mentioned
computation overhead. If you think you can, I reccommend you get your method
published because this problem has eluded the rest of the CG community.
Sorry about the confrontational tone.
%~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~%
%      `       '        Mark Thompson                 CONCURRENT COMPUTER  %
% --==* RADIANT *==--   [e-mail]        Principal Graphics   %
%      ' Image `        ...!uunet!masscomp!mark       Hardware Architect   %
%     Productions       [phone] [phone]   & General Nuisance   %
%                                                                          %
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


##

Subject: Re: New Imagine Options
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 93 08:52:55 MST
From: [e-mail] (David Ingebretsen)

   Date: Tue, 09 Mar 93 18:35:47 EST
   From: Mark Thompson <[e-mail]>


   > ...motion blur....depth of field...
   >   Then don't use these features.  Many other people such as myself do
   > require such features.

   OK, uncle, uncle.... I said uncle :-)
   I've already made my point, I'm not going to try and force it on anyone.

   >   Excuse me, but how can you even give such a time without defining how
   > complex the scene being rendered is(number of polygons, primitives, etc...,
   > lights, procedural textures, bitmapped textures, etc...) not to mention
   > which alorithm's(program) is being used.  Such benchmarks of the top of
   > your head are meaningless.

   Not a benchmark at all. Consider what it currently takes to render a
   convincingly photorealistic image (minus the motion blur) of an average
   complexity scene. Now multiply that by say 5 or 6 (a very conservative
   estimate for the cost of generalized motion blur). If that doesn't get you
   into the 3-4 + hours ballpark, I'd be a little surprised. Convincingly
   photorealistic imagery, by its very nature, puts certain polygon and texture
   mapping minimums on a scene. If you have done much photorealistic rendering,
   you will have a feel for this already.

Evans and Sutherland renders "photorealistic" images in real-time
(Sorry Mark, I couldn't resist). :)


    David

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

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


##

Subject: POLICE ALERT
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 93 09:41:35 CST
From: [e-mail] (Dave Wickard)

Howdy out there folks!  :-)


As some of you have noticed, lately there's been an increase
in the administrative-type posts.

i.e. ("subscbribe me"   "unsubscribe me")

One thing that I have really strived for, is the
removal of those type posts from the public part of the
lists. It's distracting, and especially for people who pay
on a PER mailing basis, it's expensive. For the most part, I
think I've been successful at it. We have a much lower percentage
administrative posts than many of the other mailing lists that
are "open" or non-moderated that I subscribe to. I appreciate that.

So, in the interest of *keeping* our list clean,
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.... if you would like to
subscribe, unsubscribe, change addresses, or request
something, feel free to use any means of contacting me
you'd like from phone, to any of the addresses listed below...
but don't post them publically.

Also, if you will be losing an account... changing addresses....
altering delivery methods.... or can let me know you
are having hardware trouble and will be down for an extended
period, please do so at your earliest chance.

If you'd like a copy of the latest version of the IML Guide,
I will be posting it on Friday along with the IML Directory.
I'd suggest keeping a copy somewhere for easy reference.
The newest version of the IML-FAQ will be ready in a couple
of weeks and is being compiled by Michael Comet even as we speak.

Anyway... please use the

[e-mail]

address whenever possible to keep me updated on your
status. It will keep the bounces down, and unwanted traffic
to a minimum. I thank you, and so does everyone who posts.


Dave Wickard  [phone]
[e-mail]  (change address,subscribe,
                                       unsubscribe,trouble notice, etc)
[e-mail]    (checked several times daily)
[e-mail]   (checked at least daily)
[e-mail]       (forwarded)
[e-mail]   (checked several times daily)
[e-mail] (checked at least daily)