#T4000 Arrives!
Well, I got my first chance to play with a Toaster 4000 today – VERY
nice little unit! (All high-end Amiga & Toaster stores should be receiving
their demo units this week.)
The new 24bit ANIM-Wipes are marvelous! Complete with full 8-bit alpha
channel! I don't remember anyone mentioning that they can also PLAY SOUND
SAMPLES DURING THE EFFECTS – as part of the wipe itself! (This is far
cooler than I'd originally assumed.)
It is possible to load a HAM8 ANIM as if it were a framestore, yeah, we
all know that . . .BUT, did you know that it is possible to use the mouse
to 'scratch' back & forth in the video in real time! (I can see it now:
Video rappers 'scratching' their videos just like they used to do with
vinyl records. :^)
The demo models will all include a number of framestores and animations
from some of the bigtime LightWave shows. I saw a number of still frames,
including a VERY nice underwater shot from seaQuest! (Go, John, go!)
There's also a complete 5 second sequence of the Vorlon ambassador's ship
entering the Babylon 5 space station, and a shorter bit from the bouncing
Toaster-with-an-attitude seen on 'Invention'. The latter animation looks
VERY good, with playback quality more than adequate for most
applications.
There are a number of very useful canned animation croutons, too. There
are wedding bells, snow, stars, examples of Alpha channel dissolves – both
still & animated, a little rotating earth with lens-flare (I'd SWEAR that
they rendered it using the earth object I uploaded to CIS & a few other
places – I recognized the specular reflection map, and the cheezy brown
palette I used on that object. Then again, maybe I'm getting a 'wee bit'
egotistical there. :^), a bunch of flying logo wipes and such (20% off &
such. There were some nice semi-transparent dropshadows & such on some of
them.), and variations on the old Toaster effects.
The CG looks MUCH better, and they truly did include nearly 300
Postscript fonts! (It's possible to use these fonts in programs like
ProPage and as system fonts too, so this is a BIG benefit to some
end-users!) I didn't spend much time with it, but I can tell that I will
finally be able to use that part of the system to its fullest.
ToasterPaint still supports the same version number. I forgot to try
and load up an image, but I've been told that is HAS been upgraded to
support AGA modes, at least.
LightWave 3.0 is great! The interface has been greatly revamped with a
number of REALLY nice features, like: Pull down menus & arrow-key support
for many list boxes, hierarchical menus & buttons,better organization of
dialog boxes and requesters, the ability to use the return key instead of
clicking the OK button (!), 3 different options for pixel aspect ratio, a
time-line editor(YAY!), and more other new features than you can shake a
stick at.
All in all, this looks like a very nice upgrade. I also feel that given
the right additional hardware and software (some of which may not exist
yet . . .), the future Toasters to come will leapfrog into fields
currently not even supported.
Toaster 4000 – look for it in a store near you!
Keep On Toastin'
Erik Flom