This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (46 messages)
Douglas, Every 3DS Plug-in developer I've talked to has been ecstatic about the move to NT. They feel that writing their routines as DLLs, using Visual C++, will be easier and faster than for the DOS 3DS. They've also already started the process; by the time MAX ships this January,…
Douglas, Autodesk has *not* "sat on its butt for years." (Especially since 3D Studio accounts for fully *half* of all installed 3D graphics/animation seats in the world, according to several market research firms. This includes Alias and Softimage.) 3D Studio MAX has been under development for *three* years. Gary Yost…
Tim, >I sure wish After Effects and Pandemonium would port to NT.< >Me too. I hope Adobe gets off their butt and starts moving more stuff to NT. HSC needs to do that also. Those guys need to see the Mac is on a steady decline.< You can add Debabelizer…
Peter, One thing that we all need to remember: 3DS MAX is *not finished.* What was shown at SIGGRAPH was a pre-beta release, and Jack and Gary emphasized that more features will be added to it (and they, and Autodesk, don't want to confirm or deny all of those, for…
Gary, Um, Victor, a guy I work with at Acclaim, walked up to the president of Alias/Wavefront at the last SGI user group meeting and said, "Hey, I just thought of a new name for your company!" The prez asked, "what is it," whereupon Victor said, "Well, you just take…
#Vib. Driver for Nokia?
Message #178991
Everyone, RE: *Duh* — what I meant to say was, I'm having trouble with my existing Vibrant 3DS drivers for my Diamond Stealth 65 (w/ 4M RAM) and my new Nokia monitor. . . and, again, does anyone have a suggestion? Thanks. — Jon
Ted, I've been using a Diamond Stealth 64 (w/4M RAM) for months, with 3DS and Photoshop, and it most certainly does support 24-bit color. I've had no problem with the Vibrant drivers. — Jon
Chase, Seeing as how I know the development team on 3DS, and that they're friends of mine, your statement caused me undue emotional distress. Therefore, I am suing you for $1000 legal fees, as well as $1.76 trillion punitive damages for reincarnation trauma, karmic impairment and general yucky feelings of…
Jonas, I haven't tried it with a series of Targas, but at this point it may be moot. About 20 minutes after I uploaded my message, one of our programmers came downstairs and gave me a Compaq PCI P90 computer we were going to use as our server. (We're going…
#3DS/AST Lockup Problems
Message #167893
Hey, Brian — I've been having some maddening problems getting 3DS R4 to work on my AST Bravo 90. It's a Pentium 90/PCI machine with 128M RAM, 2G SCSI HD with Adaptec 2940 controller, a 4M Diamond Stealth 64, and QEMM; 3DS recognizes the full 128M of RAM. Ancillary software…
#Animation Master
Message #166758
Edward, On the *third* hand, as I recall, that CGW article on 3D painting programs stated that they cost around $15,000 — and some people are complaining about spending $500 on Meshpaint 3D. The situation could be worse — we could not have this software available at all. — Jon
Grant, Y'know, after thinking about it all weekend, had *I* received the same message I first sent you, I would have reacted exactly the same way you did. I must've been having a *really* bad rendering day to have posed my question as tactlessly as I did. Never again. Thanks,…
#Lightwave vs. 3DS
Message #166177
I apologize for wording my message so badly re: the Voyager model — personally, I hate the game of "let's watch you and him fight," and I've *never* sent an email note out that instigated that — until now. It was wrong to have worded it the way I did,…
Um, I don't want to cause trouble, but I seem to remember you saying that the Voyager CGI model has *300,000* faces?! I mentioned this to a CGI effects director at ILM recently, who said, "If that's true, then they simply built it *wrong.* The CGI Enterprise for 'Generations' had…
#What's happening at NAB?
Message #164284
Hey, anyone — I was just curious as to what was happening at NAB; if anyone is attending the show, and is logging on while there, it would be fun for all of us to read your thoughts on what's hot/what's not in the CGI/video world. Thanks. — Jon
Joe, I'd like to address some of the points made in your letter re: 3DS and its hardware lock.
Hey Ron, What's happening, dude? Glad to see you here. FWIW, I left Sega about 6 weeks ago and am now 3D effects director at Acclaim's new Coin-Op division down in Mountain View. (Sega's Multimedia Department is in the process of self-destructing at the moment.) Hope you're doing okay; drop…
Could you clarify *exactly* what you saw — was it Softimage running under UNIX (and Microsoft talking about its features under NT), or was it an actual beta of Softimage running *under* NT? Inquiring minds want to know. Thanks.
Heinz, The lens flare code in Photoshop was written originally by John Knoll, co-author of Photoshop and and ILM special effects supervisor ("Baby's Day Out," "Star Trek Generations." He wrote the code for a matte painting scene in Spielberg's "Hook." Since then, he has (half-jokingly) suggested that he should've patented…
Lee, I don't know why, but Photoshop 3.0 is noticeably slower in its screen updating than 2.5. (I'm running it under Windows 3.1 on a P90 with 32M of RAM.) It's so annoying that I pulled it from my hard drive and re-installed 2.5. — Jon
Robert, I'm not (yet) a Photoshop expert, so I can't really answer your question (I also have never used Photostyler). You might want to go directly to Adobe. Hope this helps. — Jon
Byron, This may make some people out there completely freak out, but… I know of several instances where Gateway has shipped computers with VIRUSES already on them! When I got my first Gateway five years ago, it came with the Jerusalem-B virus on the hard drive; Tom Hudson also got…
Dennis, I just picked up a 1.75G IDE Micropolis 2217A from NCA in Palo Alto last Thursday; the price had dropped from $850 to $609 in only 2-3 weeks. They still have several in stock; I got it because I needed a good, big IDE HD to supplement my SCSI…
Jack, Have you played with Photoshop 3.0 very much? I'm curious what you and others here think, because on my Pentium 90 w/ 32M RAM, it's noticeably, painfully slower than 2.5. I actually went back and re-installed 2.5 because of this. It seems as if the new layers option has…
Jim, Some people have probably already mentioned this, but be *very* careful about distributing copyrighted designs, especially those from the Star Wars films. In a word, *don't.* Lucasfilm, like Disney, is extremely aggressive in stomping on anyone using their designs without permission. — Jon
Little-known but still nonetheless trivial fact: years ago back in Missouri, Tom Hudson (one of the primary authors of 3DS) and I used to meet with a friend of ours, a Class 3 federal firearms dealer, go out to a limestone quarry, and shoot up dead high-tech hardware with fully…
Jim, for me, Softimage is, without question, the buggiest piece of software I've ever seen. In the last two years, I've gotten it to crash literally 3 dozen times. I can be doing something as prosaic as changing the texture on an object, and BAM! it blows me right out…
Interesting times!
Message #154239
Space Anim…help
Message #138484
John, As the author of the "Destination: Deep Space" chapter in New Rider Publishing's "3D Studio Special Effects" book, I can offer the following suggestions. Place a large sphere around your entire space scene (encompassing all the elements, including the camera.) Assign it a shiny but completely transparent material; if…
Dave, I work at Sega of America, which has made a considerable investment in Softimage. — Jon
Mike, It's tough for me to be objective about this, since all the developers of 3DS are long-time friends of mine (I've known Tom Hudson almost 20 years), but Studio looks better and better when you compare it to programs costing 10 times as much. I work with Softimage every…
David, Just curious — what other packages are you considering? If you don't want to shell out the money for 3DS, then are you willing to spend ten times as much for workstations and their related software? — Jon
John, It's been so long since I built it, I have no idea what I called it! (I no longer have a copy of it, as I got rid of my ST 5 years ago.) It might've been something like FIGHTER or CRUISER; it could've been something even more imaginative,…
3DS Special Effects Book
Message #127864
Kevin, I just received a Federal Expressed author's copy of "3D Studio Special Effects," and all I can say is — WOW. The book is absolutely beautiful, and I'm proud to be a part of it. One interesting thing I noticed: on page 109, Effect 11 is a picture of…
#ATI Mach64 & Matrox MGA2
Message #124053
Scott, We're running ATI Mach 64 cards with Dell 90Mhz Pentiums at work, and although the card itself seems fast, the screen readjustment/refresh times when you switch resolutions (from 640×480 in the Materials Editor to 800×600 in the other modules) is incredibly slow — 3 to 5 seconds! It also…
#123622-
#3D Studio Employment
Message #124052
Christopher, Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, there is _incredible_ demand from multimedia companies (CD-ROM titles), "regular" software publishers, video production houses, and especially computer game companies, for people with 3D experience. You could contact some corporate recruiters in this area, if you're willing to move here. You could…
#123809-
Diamond Stealth 64 2MEG
Message #124051
Spencer, I have a Diamond Stealth 64 PCI card with 4M of RAM, and it works fine with the latest Vibrant drivers. You should be able to get them on one of the Autodesk Multimedia libraries (don't have the exact info in front of me). — Jon
John, I work in Redwood City at Sega full-time, but I live in SF. I'm going to be gone until Monday; I'll drop you a note when I get back and we can swap 3D stories ("Oh yeah? Well, I once rendered a scene THIS big. . .!") — Jon
David, When you get around to playing with ER, please keep us informed as to its coolness factor. Thanks! — Jon
John, Thanks for the infor on Razor. BTW, I saw you (or at least your name tag) walk by at Siggraph, and I spent half a day trying to remember where I'd seen "Tissavary" before. Too much monitor radiation interfering with my normal brainal functions, I suppose. — Jon
John, I believe that our comments have been given _serious_ consideration. Cross your fingers. — Jon
Jamie, Sorry for the delay — just insouciant, I guess. When and if you get Elastic Reality, I'd love to know what you think of it. We're supposed to get a couple of copies of CoSA Aftereffects soon at Sega, so that'll be fun to play with. BTW, I'm wondering…
Jack, Yep, yep, and I'm not sure. Maybe someone else here has that info? — Jon
Jack, Almost two years ago I got John Knoll, an effects supervisor at ILM (and co-author of Photoshop) a copy of 3DS 2.0, via Gary. John ported a spaceship model from Electric Image to 3DS, brought over the texture maps, and did 2 renderings with both packages. The 3DS render…
#Buy Altamira Composer?
Message #121853
David, Annoyingly, Photoshop 3.0 still lacks batch file/macro capability, unlike Debabelizer. John Knoll wanted to put it in 2.5 (and then 3.0), and Adobe dragged their feet on it. I've been bugging the Debabelizer guys (including Dave Theurer — sp?) to port it to the PC; it's an incredibly useful…