This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
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#Vibrant , MGA, bad 1280
Message #148294
The inline driver that ships with R4 (1.0.5.somethingorother) has a problem in the Matrox MGA 1280x1024x16bit mode – there is a wierd shift to the left in the text during mode test, and a similar shift/widening of the whole user interface once in 3DS4. tia, John Tissavary | LUNA cie,…
I can't remember the exact procedure, since CGW mistakenly credited me (indirectly) with the image, when in fact Lior Saar, head programmer of Pennello, did it. He used a bubbly looking brush, set the parameters so that it looked like the bubbles were moving down the image, then rendered the…
The docs are pretty useless, but a few minutes test driving can go a long way. I avoid manuals unless absolutely necessary, I guess it has its advantages sometimes . jt
I can't wait for Painter 3.0! Almost worth getting a PM for jt
A buddy of mine is/was on tour with him playing drums. Oh, well, he does lots of different bands so I'm not surprised he's not with JWH anymore. John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
I loved the Pop-O-Pies. They had an album photo of them punching Jerry Garcia in the face – he actually did pose for the picture and was a fan of theirs. John "make this batch with extra grease, this one's for the chief of police" Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
You can get away with 640×486, but higher horizontal resolution will get you a better picture in NTSC. Mitch is completely wrong in his statement that NTSC can't handle more than that. Horizontal rez is NOT fixed in that format. The current digital standard resolution is 720×486 (D1 rez), and…
>>Anything above 640×480 is redundant for NTSC output since it cannot display even that many lines
Yes – MGA setup, windows, and ACAD were running fine. It was only the Vibrant drivers that were unable to detect the MGA chip. After switching MB's I was back in buisness, and the card makes 3DS as pleasant a place to work as on the SGI (1280×1024 lightining speed!).…
>>Sorry John, I must me confused with Y/C, Y-C and (Y,R-Y,B-Y). Not being a video person I thought that component was (Y,R-Y,B-Y).
>>Let me paraphrase, adust the phase/chroma till all the white bars look alike and the same with the black bars, is this correct?
Since Colin is in the UK he'll need PAL, not NTSC. But I understand PAR is PAL friendly now. John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
Tell me, exactly, which other system have a mesh optimization routine built in? Optimize provides some of the highest quality, lowest density meshes I've ever seen, and I work in several packages on several platforms.
I love Mirage, but them I'm a big fan of 2d graphics effects. Besides, it's easy to integrate into 3D scenes using masking. John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
I just used animated masks for the 6th time in mirage. You need to simply specify mask*.tga (or other extension). John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
Was a tall, lanky, short-bleached haired guy playing drums with John Wesley Harding?
I've got the exact same card as you, and it works fine. I originally had a problem with an OPTI based chipset (dual pentium architecture) but after switching to an INTEL Neptune chipset board everything was fine. Apparently there are two flavors of PCI, and the OPTI had the flavor…
Super Black
Message #133665
Actually, the Abekas DDR's output very nicely to SP. There's a component option for that, and just about everyone here in SF has that on their DDR's. The reason most folks I know use DDRs (and PAR/MAX for that matter) isn't because of portability, its because of the flexibility, speed,…
Blue gun only is for phase/chroma calibration. This will cause only the blue gun to emit. You put up NTSC or SMPTE bars on the monitor, hit the blue button and then you just make sure each white bar looks as much as the others as possible, same for the…
RGB is component, which I did specify as a basic requirment for modern video monitor. John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
Pavel Korensky wrote a .PXP that uses MGA Impression hardware to render real-time scene previews. I believe it's available for free in the libraries. If not, drop him a line. I don't know if it'll work on the plus, though, since this is a different card. John Tissavary | LUNA…
>>We think that the Impression Plus is an Athena chip, but we are having some problems in getting these boards in house. Version 1.0.5 should work.
Since spline modeling (complete implementation) was high on many people's wishlists, and the Yost Group is nothing if not attentive to this list, that it'll end up in 3DS sooner or later. John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
#130843-
#job types
Message #131020
An article in the last issue of CGW credits some scenes in Johnny Pneumonic as being done in Alias by Gene Bodio, but I think almost all the rest of it was done in 3DS. I didn't work _at_ Apogee, rather on a distant location soundstage. It was a pretty…
It's possible that the differences in the Impression Plus (it uses several chipsets in addition to the MGA chip) make it as yet not supported. You should contact Chuck Walbourn from Vibrant for confirmation on this, though. He hangs out on the forum, but I don't have his CIS #…
Ricky's doing great! He's deep in thought right now (sleep ). Glad you got your Accom filetransfer happening. I've got a TCP/IP gateway for Lantastic coming in the mail tommorrow or the next day so I can hook my unix box up as well. I think Gus Grubba's YUV IPAS…
Himem sys could be your problem… but with PCI I'm not really sure. You might want to try QEMM? John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
I'm not sure what the PVM-2030 is. You want these basic features in a video monitor (for _RDPADI_ rendering to a video frame buffer): Type C Phosphor blue gun calibration component/composite/Y-C inputs chroma/color selection comb filter adjustment underscan/overscan selection Then, as if that wasn't enough, the more lines of resolution…
I don't know exactly what featues Danny will be implementing in his patch modeler, but fundamentally it works like this: You can choose building blocks of either planes or a cylinders. These spline meshes have something like 16 control points, or CV's that have influence over the shape and deformation…
That's good news, Danny. This sounds like a good middle ground solution to the disappointment the exclusion of your module has cause 3DS'ers. While I've been saying a lot about the limited usefulness of patch modeling on the forum, I don't wish to underestimate its power – it will be…
You should look in the libraries (not sure which one, exactly) for the latest Vibrant in-line driver update. This will give you flawless MGA support (it does for me, anyway). ADI drivers are not ideal for 3DS, so the vibrant drivers should be used whenever possible. John Tissavary | LUNA…
Have you ever tried to model something in patches alone? It's really just a part of spline modelling, the preferred method being able to draw and skin spline curves. Patch modeling is of limited use, and not necessarily more powerful than current 3D vertice editing of polygons. I'm constantly amazed…
I understand, from another thread, that you do f/x for movies? I used to do this, too, although most of my production carreer (6 short years) was as a gaffer/key grip. I did work with John Dykstra, and (forgot the name) the guy who did the rubber fishy in Jaws…
I don't think any changes were made to the renderer in R4. John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
You're definitely not on my shit list – I just wanted to make sure you don't blow $1.2K on software that won't suit your needs. John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
I think you'll be happy with R4, it's got enough features and increased stability to make the measly $295 (that's a relative use of "measly", I know ) worthwhile. John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
Things are going well. I've been "out of circulation" for a few weeks getting some training, but I'm back to regular production as of monday. There are some pretty wild things on the horizon for my company. I got some of the Dgate sell-sheets – they look pretty good. What…
My "theory" is that this is not so much a "new method of upgrading" or "new school of thought" as a way of getting some sorely needed features into 3DS quick. There were some bugs that needed fixing, some cool new IPAS's that needed a deeper IPAS interface (programming, not…
I think you would have been vastly underwhelmed by the overall usefullness of patch spline modeling. Without the ability to draw curves and skin them, splines are just as confusig and painful as polygons. You still have to move CV's around like crazy to get anything resembling a 3D model.…
I haven't used Metareyes, but I've played with Explore's metaballs, and they're quite fun. John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
The features you seem to be looking for are readily available… but not to "dirt poor architects" . If you had a few hundred grand to blow you'd be in big time buisness with Alias AutoStudio. It's about as feature rich and awesome as you get. There just isn't such…
I'm so glad you asked…. I have also been involved with Real3D since last year, being a beta tester. Bill and I had many phone conversations about Real3D, and most of them we were shaking our heads wondering why the programmers felt they could release a product that was so…
Hi John. Long time no chat. How are things? John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
I think Guy might have meant how much is the upgrade to R3 or R4? John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
Yes, I did. As I mentioned to Donald in another reply, it was due to MB chipset incompatibility with Vibrant's driver. The chipset was OPTI. Switching to intel's Neptune did the trick, and got me a faster board, too. John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
The only time the vibrant drivers couldn't find the MGA on my computer was when I had an OPTI chipset based motherboard installed, which used a flavor of PCI designed for multi-processor boards (confirmed by OPTI). As soon as I switched to an Intel Neptune based MB I was back…
I think you'll be happier with the sony, which is a _real_ video ntsc monitor. The IDEK is a computer monitor with appropriate inputs for video, but not really designed for video monitoring (video as in broadcast). I would not use a computer monitor for creating images to go to…
oozing blood is definitely a job for metaballs. Who knows… maybe you could even script (if you are of the scripting persuasion) a .kxp in conjunction with the balz to give that extra natural oozing feel . John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
That's an interesting resolution/aspect ratio. I wonder what they're doing to it before it gets on film… John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
I tried the OPTI chipset version and didn't like it. It used a flavor of PCI that the Vibrant drivers didn't deal with very well. Also, it seems the Intel Neptune chipset boards perform a bit better. The OPTI was designed for multi-processor applications. John Tissavary | LUNA cie, inc
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