This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (998 messages)
FieldRend bug workaround
Message #98660
As of this writing, the current version of Imagine is 3.1, and it suffers from a bug that manifests itself when you combine pop morphing with field rendering. I'm very happy to share with you a workaround for it! As you know, Imagine doesn't allow morphing if the source and…
Re: exporting fields from the PAR as separate files Be careful to check your aspect ratio — if it's wrong, an effect perfomed inside a circular area would come out oval. Blaq!
the Amiga's double-buffering is hardware-based, and the key to what "just doesn't look right" in other computers' animated displays. On the Amiga, the display chips can pump video from any area in your 1 or 2M of Chip RAM. The display address can be changed for every scan line, which…
Craig, _________________ * Inexpensive Photo CD Kiosk — With a simple TV monitor and a PhotoCD player, it would be possible to create a flexible, easily changed display of ads or products. Put one in a mall running through 30-100 photos for local merchants. That same approach could work with…
To all: let me vouch for Ben on this one! When Imagemaster, the Amiga predecessor to WinImages and WinImages:Morph, was developed, Black Belt actively sought out and implemented user suggestions. Some vendors put up a front of openness, only to callously follow their own misguided insights; Black Belt really means…
Ben, your answers reveal some very intriguing aspects of WinImages. I can only hope that the Amiga situation picks up and some of that software engineering trickles over to Imagemaster. WinImages sounds like it has some incredible functionality! Blaq!
#Pseudo duotone
Message #97761
Ben, here's a message I posted in AmigaArts, under a thread title which you may have decided to skip. Perhaps it can serve some purpose at Black Belt, as an example of an easy and artistic Imagemaster effect.
Hank, I'll send you the ApAssist file, part of Imagemaster R/t 1.50's online documentation, which lists changes for all versions starting at 1.00. You'll be able to see all that you're missing. Blaq!
Walt, Apex Publishing has created several products which are vital to any Imagine user. "Understanding Imagine 2.0" was a crystal-clear explanation of every facet of Imagine 2.0, complete with tips about correct usage, and warnings about common pitfalls. The book for Imagine 3.0 has not been released yet. "Essence I…
Dennis, let's be realistic. The Pentium error is several decimals beyond the point. Even if the error occurred in a significant calculation, for example when Imagine determines the position of an object, which affects every point belonging to it, the error would be an infinitesimal fraction of a pixel. Nobody…
Mike, thanks for the reply. I guess unless I read some revolutionary, mind-blowing post by a clever user, I'll simply keep ignoring shininess as I'd been doing all those years. Blaq!
#44815-
Amiga & Other Multimedia
Message #44840
Andrew, > (Duotones are) something that could be done with IM and OpalPaint Actually, just ole Imagemaster will do. I'm more than happy to share this: I consider it my best discovery yet. Load an image into Imagemaster. Use Standard Adj/Luma to turn it into a greyscale. Go to the…
Andrew, > (Duotones are) something that could be done with IM and OpalPaint Actually, just ole Imagemaster will do. I'm more than happy to share this: I consider it my best discovery yet. Load an image into Imagemaster. Use Standard Adj/Luma to turn it into a greyscale. Go to the…
You can use any Amiga image processing program, such as the $70 Imagemaster R/t from Black Belt Software, to either alter each image to conform to the first, or to do a soft-edged composition when stitching the 4 images back into one. I suppose that the differences come from the…
I use: AutoPilot UUxT, GUI front-end for UUencoding/decoding, by Asher Feldman View, by Michael Hartman AmiQWK II, by Jim Dawson ToolPrefs 2.1, by Nico Francois NickPrefs, by Nico Francois SCSI mounter 2.03, by Martin Blatter As for your second question, I find online shareware registration convenient and attractive. I would…
#Shininess: hum-drum?
Message #97018
Mike, I wasn't trying to recreate any specific effect; I was simply trying to understand Shiny, including how it differs from Reflect. So far, my tests with Shiny don't seem to show anything I couldn't obtain with Reflect. These two separate functions have been part of Imagine since time immemorial,…
John, if you go to a store to check out 3DO, ask if they have an opened copy of Twisted: The Game Show to use as a demo. I played that game for 10 minutes at a store last month, and not only was it incredibly intuitive, but it was…
#WB palette problems
Message #177287
Karl, under WB 2.04, the first 4 colors are (11,10,9), (0,0,0), (15,15,15), and (6,8,11). Just in case you have to resort to setting them by hand in AdPro's palette requester. Blaq!
#Amiga news?
Message #95763
Ben, I haven't seen any action on the Imagemaster R/t front in a long time. Any idea what's in store for us Amiga folks, and when it might come out? Something along the lines of "a total rewrite, due out this Christmas" would be nice. Blaq!
"The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it's queerer than we can imagine." That would make a great T-shirt. Blaq!
Yes DJ, Bruce Boxleitner played the title role in Tron. He also played the half-tit'e (?) role on TV's "Scarecrow & Mrs. King". Mind you, I _was_ getting to like ole Jeffrey Sinclair. The actor playing the part, whose name escapes me at the moment, became much more interesting as…
Desp 4 Vel Scaling hlp!
Message #93771
David, I created an Imagine project that outputs an attractive graph showing you the time/motion relationship between various start and end Velocity Scaling parameters. It's wonderful to play with it, plug in various numbers, and understand what those mysterious numbers mean. I may not have time to upload it this…
#VTU continued on Page ?
Message #93770
Jim, actually, I too noticed this month how tiny the "continued on page X" notice was. My suggestion was to put the page number in bold type. Simple. Blaq!
Andrey, to add gravity to a fireworks display, have the base object follow a vertical open path, with constant acceleration. I did that to a Walmart store with the Explode effect once. Worked great. Blaq!
How about this? parse var rcvdstr . 'SL/IP session from (' firstaddr , ') to ' secondaddr, ' ' . I used commas at the end to split the code into multiple lines, in order to make it more readable. You can code the parse statement in one long line…
I agree that looping would burn some time, which is why I would use delay() for most, but not all, of the delay. I assumed a more general case, where processing time for each iteration could not be precisely specified. The CPU load might be higher or lower, causing processing…
Barbie for the 90's? Blaq!
Michael, I'd rather buy an '040 accelerator than a PAR; it would give me much, much more bang for the buck. One thing I like about recordable optical discs is their archival ability: every bit of experimental crap I've ever produced is on the disc, ready to be played to…
Jim, to follow up on your idea, I do the following: Initialization: use TIME() and store the last digit into X loop until last digit of TIME() X /* this means you just started a brand new second */ Main loop: use DELAY() to wait, ohhh, .8 second or so…
It's good to hear you'll be releasing additional 3D-ROMs. Hopefully I'll manage to contribute some more worthwhile objects this time. Blaq!
Ben, howcum ImageFX has managed to get a PhotoCD loader based on public domain code, and Imagemaster hasn't? Blaq!
James, whenever I have a problem with the last frame of an amination, I simply create the anim in Action with an extra frame, render all frames, and disregard the last frame. (This solution also applies to looping animations, at least before Imagine added a "looping" button.) With regards to…
Pete, I don't want to take Mike's place, but he did indicate that a future version of Imagine would have alpha channel support, and knowing Impulse, I'm quite confident that, perhaps a version or two later, we'll have a renderer that outputs two streams of frames, each to its own…
Pete and James, Give me a couple of days and I'll upload a little ARexx utility which will let you correctly field render using Imagine and the PAR. I can't bear to see you losing jobs over this. The macro will simply read images from one directory and copy them…
Wayne, boy, am I glad I'm not doing this for a living. So far, I've done a few animations for this cheaper-than-Scrooge client, and my biggest problem is… I can't control myself, I have to have everything just perfect. Part of it is I'm still in learning mode after 3…
Sean, a friend of mine uses the following internal calculation to figure out his rates: his time is worth $40/hr. and computer rendering time is $20/hr. (CDN$) He uses Imagine, renders on a stock 25 MHz A3000, records to PAR, and often delivers on Betacam tape using a rent-a-day VCR.…
Robert, you may get more information through GO CEVIDEO, the video section of the consumer electronics forum. Lotsa reeely, reeely smart people over there. Blaq!
#S-VHS for DTV setup?
Message #43822
I'd like your advice on whether to get an S-VHS rather than VHS VCR. Currently, none of my gear is set up for S-VHS, but one has to start somewhere. I would especially like information on how much value an S-VHS VCR would add to my desktop video setup –…
Bruce, considering your setup, good ole DPaint might be your best bet. Keep the bitplane depth low for fastest screen updates, and set # frames to 500. Create a screenful of credit text on the spare page. Pick it up as a brush, set the handle to the top left…
Jim, I see a possible problem with morphing from one object to the next by fading two states in and out. Halfway through the morph, object1 will be 50% transparent, and so will object 2. The result will indeed be a half-and-half composite of both attributes, but the result will…
Sean, one thing comes to mind: the silhouette animation you're mapping onto the square is 30 frames/second, compared to 60 fields/second for your final field-rendered render. (How's that for redundant wording?) Perhaps the impression you're getting comes from the contrast between the jerky, 30-fps silhouette and the silky-smooth, field-rendered final…
Paul, do you know if any of these newfangled pizza-sized satellite dishes can operate behind a window? We just moved into a 13th floor condo with an expansive south view, but no balcony. If only I could install the dish at my livingroom window… Blaq!
Patrick, GO AMIGAFF (File Finder). You'll be able to do a keyword search on all 5 Amiga Forums at once. There is an IBMFF and a MACFF too, I believe. You may want to GO DTP for a selection of desktop publishing Forums, too. Blaq!
Roy, I had a choice between IBM and Mac format; IBM is what my Amiga programs read. As for high vs. low density, everyone has access to an IBM these days. If they send me the fonts on a 1.44M disk, I'll just copy the files at the office onto…
>> "East Coast vs West Coast (…) It would have been more fun with (…) micro vs mainframe" Ummm, Christopher, the reason it's East Coast vs. West Coast _is_ that it represents the old mainframe pioneers vs. the microcomputer whippersnappers. Blaq!
Ted, if you download NickPrefs, you may be interested in my Workbench backdrop… the classic Jim Sachs image of an Amiga keyboard, cut away to reveal chips and resistors, and a big boing ball on top. I used Imagemaster to dither and remap the image to 16-color hi-res interlace, while…
#(Almost) free PS fonts
Message #43498
I just spotted an attractive item in Publish! magazine. A company is offering 64 Postscript typefaces for free, although there's a $7 shipping & handling charge. I ordered this week, so I have no idea how good, varied or Imagine-compatible they are. (The salesman told me they use Adobe encoding,…
Thomas, GO AMIGAVEND; in section 7 you'll find messages and files related to Syndesis, the company which produces those wonderful CD-ROMs. Blaq!
George, I'll cross-post my reply over onto AmigaVend and see what Mike H. comes up with. One thing is for sure: a user setting up an especially-colored background (i.e. 0,0,0 or 255,0,0 or…), designed for post-render removal by an external image processing program, will _not_ get the same result as…
Don, Thanks for the reply. Yes, I could perform a simple backup using AmigaDOS commands; however, there's the matter of setting the archive bit on all files, and the trickier problem of incremental backups: how do I perform the _next_ backup, a week later, on those files which have changed…
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