This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (179 messages)
#22509-
Single-frame VCRs
Message #22541
Thanks, Peter. I downloaded and read the press release on CineMorph, and it sounded pretty good. Being used to IBM-compatible software prices, I'm constantly amazed at the low cost of high quality software for the Amiga platform! Jerry
#22510-
Single-frame VCRs
Message #22533
Your best bet is call 800 852 8442, tell them what happened, and we'll send a new one, free. No cost to you at any point in this process. We won't EMAIL these things, though. Glad you like the new button classes. We've got more in store before 10.0, and…
#22509-
Single-frame VCRs
Message #22532
Peter, Anitialiasing, at least with Imagemaster, can affect certain types of morphs much more than others – specifically, when an area is stretched, as in a distortion morph. Try the following experiment: Take an image of a face (human) and drop a 40-point ellipse around an eye – then stretch…
#53-
Video Graphics Overlay
Message #88
[ continuation ] surely get some software suggestions. Good luck in your pricing search, but be advised that you will be much happier with your amiga system if you can find a local dealer to support you. Forget the mail order firms until you are well established with yourself about…
#53-
Video Graphics Overlay
Message #87
Ron – Welcome to the wonderful world of Amiga. For the kind of work you are into – The Amiga is really the only way for you to go. But – be for-warned, although you can get into an Amiga system for alot less money then you can get into…
Derived Art Library
Message #4597
DEAR Sysop, I would like to upload a few files to your derived art section but the system is saying its full. Is there anything that can be done or is that section up to its limit? Jeff Herbert 74270,10
Large # of colors
Message #4507
A proposal for interchange format (IFF) for files with large number of colors: If the number of bit planes in an IFF file is greater than or equal to twelve (12) and is divisable (withoug remainder) by 3 (e.g. 12, 15, 18, 21, 24), and there is no colormap chunk,…
Video Animation Blues
Message #4366
Why not buy a Frame Buffer for you're Amiga and either Sculpt 3d or Turbo Silver. Both support them and will give you 7?? by 4?? pixels with 16 million colors. I think Mimetics has one of the available frame buffers for the Amiga GreggT
The software I'm using is called Big D. Big D is a raytrace software designed to work with Autocad. You use AutoCAD to create the 3D model and then render it with BigD. Big D creates shades, shadows, reflections, transparent surfaces and more, and with a Targa 16 or compatible,…
Why not buy a Frame Buffer for you're Amiga and either Sculpt 3d or Turbo Silver. Both support them and will give you 7?? by 4?? pixels with 16 million colors. I think Mimetics has one of the available frame buffers for the Amiga GreggT
BIG HAM pics in vend
Message #4262
Two LARGE HAM images have been uploaded to AmigaVend/ASDG. These were done with ASDG's SpectraScan full color scanning system. Programs which will properly load these images are: Prism Plus, Deluxe Photo Lab, and of course, SpectraScan. Please feel free to dl these images and ask questions about how they were…
I'm thinking about Silver, but I already have so much (time as well as cash) invested in Sculpt. I may take a long, hard look at Silver next time I'm in a store, especially if they have a copy of 3.0. …wjas {;-O>
weather sat pix
Message #4238
For those of you interested in weather satellite images, I have been uploading my images to the picturs support forum recently for a wider audience. (GO pics) The GIF format may be viewed with hamgif or giffy2 for the amiga available in the same forum. The program iff2gif will convert…
Thank you patrick, I'll try it! Ken
Joe – The upgrade from Silver 1.1 to Turbo Silver was $30. The only real reason for the charge was that Turbo Silver is a major re-write of the original package, and we felt the $30 was justified, given the added features and enhancements it offers. Turbo version 3.0 is…
Stan, the letter that came with the Silver 1.1 upgrade some time ago said future upgrades would probably be $25 or so. Have you changed your policy? (Personally, I don't mind at all paying a reasonable amount for upgrades that add features, but I'm probably in the minority :-). )…
Of course! and one each for left and right parenthesis.
The most difficult part of this type of program is the object editor. (for us at least) The reason being the inherent problems with the Amiga re-draw and amigados clipping routines, prohibit us from actually doing it the way we want to. For the forseeable future we have no plans…
Thanks Stan. I thought that when you mentioned the TSilver version of 3-Demon in an earlier message, you were alluding to 3-Demon's full support of TSilver. I did't know what it was then, but I have just read a review in Amiga World. The way this is heading, I will…
Stan, I'm just curious. I'm not a TSilver user, or a Sculpt user, or a user of any 'art' program other than DPaint II. However, since you admit your object editor isn't the greatest and some of your users confirm this, will Impulse be upgrading it in the near future?…
Bob – Once an object is brought into TSilver via interchange you can then give it whatever properties you didn't have in the original editor, i.e. refraction, or mapping etc. 3-Demon should have their Turbo Silver version out shortly, and they support all of our properties except mapping and textures.
I think you are missing a basic point of both our packages and the others on the market for the Amiga. All of us, with the exception of Caligari, are really pushing it on the Amiga to get the results we currently are. It is IMPOSSIBLE to acurately time HAM…
It seems as though the shortest path to more realistic renderings is to move to Turbo Silver and adjust to their object editor. I know that there are object translators, but if the source object editor doesn't have the characteristics that TSilver has, how can it translate what is not…
I saw an animation package last week at the media lab which was somewhat closer to what I expect in an animation package: large 24-bit color screen, all scenes iconsized in a window, click on scene and a blocky version plays instantly in another window, object motion done at the…
I called Byte by Byte on Friday to check this out, and the answer is "No", the "glass" texture is the same as the old one, although the rendering is supposed to be a little improved. We are still not able to select the refractive index. My feeling is that…
Claude – I'll try some different lighting effects to see what the optimum results are at given distances. The "ears" on the street say that several rendering packages are about to come to market in the next few months giving the user lots of choice. As long are ancilary products…
Stan, Your welcome. I will be looking for the later pics. I suspect that the 'ghost' is caused by the screen phospher not decaying fast enough from the fairly bright polygon. The effect is noticable because the object is in the foreground, ie, the companion object is displaced more then…
Joe – To be honest the cost to the end user is rarely a consideration when we design hardware. Our main concern is the final results. We have been in development for about 5 years, and have always created products We wanted for ourselves first. It it turns out that…
Thanks Joe we do appreciate it. Remember to have your dealer keep a good stock of Interchange and the Turbo Silver module around, so you can use the objects you created in SC3D and not have to re-build them. I think with the release of 3.0 we will start seeing…
Leslie – The cost of the VD1 with Frame Buffer is $1000. REAL availability should be just another few weeks, though we have shipped some already.
I'm a Digi-VIew owner, who is looking for a purchase in the LIVE! department. I like LIVE! due to it's "live" look, and how other software houses are starting to develop software that interacts with LIVE! (Such as Fantavision, Invision, etc ). LIVE! is also price effective, costing less than…
Thanks for the information. Since I already own Sculpt-3D, I will probably wait till I see Silver 3.0 on the shelves before I buy.. though I WILL buy Silver. From playing with it at the stores, I find it more powerful than S3D, a few extra features, and most importantly…
#3985-
Ray Traced Pictures
Message #4056
The VD1 digitizer sounds great but expensive! Is it avalible now (I haven't seen any ads for it) and (shutter) what is the price?
Mirrored surfaces have to be rendered in PHOTO mode. Change your observer mode to PHOTO, start rendering, pop a movie in the VCR, make some popcorn, and enjoy yourself while your mirrored image is created. A full-length movie should cover the waiting period beautifully.
Claude, Thanks. The reason it was in DL 11 is because the pictures are "rendered" not painted and DL11 is for "Derived Images". Please be as critical as you can. We are trying to produce as effective a set of images as possible. It's possible that the ghost is from…
#3DTEST
Message #4033
Stan, I D/L'ed 3DTEST, (was looking for it in LIB 6, found it in LIB 11), and it looks 3D to me. I haven't heard anything from Haitex abt the formal release of their software, waiting. To be constructivaly critical, There is a ghost to the left of the polygon…
Joe either in the DL's here or in AmigaVendor DL4, download a couple of the pictures done with the VD1. As with Digi-View, the quality of the output is mostly determined by the quality of the incoming signal. It's the old "GIGO" routine. The pictures of the Orange, Trumpet, Waterfall…
Joe – The washed out results definitely sound like either the light is too bright or too close to the object. Given the same setup I'm very confident that you would find the colors in the rendered image noticebly better in TSilver. As for your problems with the color requester,…
#Using 3D Sculpt
Message #4020
Can anyone answer a question about using 3D Sculpt? I have not been able to get the true mirror-effect that I've seen in some of the sample pictures. Selecting Mirror-effect just gives me a suface that looks dull-grey? What am I doing wrong?
#3985-
#Ray Traced Pictures
Message #4019
Your VD1 digitizer, is it commercially available? If so, can you please give me more info. I'm wondering if you can achieve Digi-View quality with the digitizer. As for LIVE! compared w/ Digi-View I find that Digi-View has the quality, whereas LIVE! has the speed. Where does your VD1 come…
#3606-
#Ray Traced Pictures
Message #4018
I've been playing with Turbo Silver at my local neighborhood computer dealer to evaluate it before I dish out the money to purchase it. Through my hours of playing, and rendering, I have to admit the time required to render an object is considerably faster than Sculpt-3D. With Sculpt-3D, rendering…
This Targa system you mention, can you give me more information concerning this? I've heard Targa around the system, but don't know about it. I'd appreciate knowing what system it runs on (IBM I assume), costs, etc..
Bob – The NEW manual for TSilver went to the printers yesterday, and we expect to have them back by Friday next week at the latest. I do agree that our object editor leaves much to be desired. But with programs like Interchange and 3-Demon out there, lots of folks…
Thanks Stan, but I have Turbo Silver and it is superior in the ways you mention, but I have a hard time mentally 'connecting' with your object editor/user interface. Some aspects are obvious and intuitive, but others seem cryptic and obtuse, or even arbitrary. And, frankly, the documentation I have…
Bob – There always IS Turbo Silver which does include true refraction and image mapping for about $300 less money, not to mention the Trace times are magniudes faster than Sculpt products.
I don't know if a refractive index is a new feature of SA4D, but if the glass sphere on the tripod is any indication, there is no refraction. Unless, of course, that object is really a soap bubble. Refraction is not mentioned in the feature list. I was a little…
I was more interested in the other picture in the 4D announcement — the one with the transparent sphere. Does this mean that the Sculpt series will finally have a true "glass", with a refractive index that I can set, etc?
#3873-
Sculpt Anim 4D
Message #3874
Thanks for responding, Steven. I saw the B&W printed version of a Teapot and 2 cups full of liquid credited to Marcus Brooks made with Sculpt Animate 4D. It looks super printed in B&W and reduced to 3"x4". I just wondered what it looks like in HAM at my house.
I know, I know… Don't worry, I'll be getting Turbo Silver eventually… I wanna get some more memory (and maybe a hard disk…) first. Until then, DBW Render is acceptable… I still think you ought to put in the capability to stop and continue later, though… How difficult can it…
Cmon' now Steve Turbo Silver should be fast enuff so you wouldn't need to stop it in the middle! . Why have to stop a trace that will take 20 or 30 hours to complete when you could trace the entire picture in a fraction of that time. .
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