CompuServe Messages

David, Now we're getting somewhere… I agree with most of your remarks, especially the “I want this option so I can decide if it's better for the specific animation or not'' remark. And apparently John Stetzer, who has used another Scanline program, agrees with you as well, based on his following remarks about Shadow mapping: >>They're brutal, ugly, have to be tweaked to look right a great deal of the time…and are sometimes the only way to get something in on time. As an example; one of last year's projects involved 3 250,000 poly. meshes used in an animation (the total animation count ended up being 15000+frames). W/a single traced shadow, it took more than a half hour to render a frame on a P5-60; w/a single shadow mapped spot, it never took more than 10 minutes. The end result was ugly (I had to keep things low so it would get done), but added definition that wouldn't have been there w/out shadows and met the customer's needs. I think there should at least be the option for them; it could mean the difference 'twixt getting things done and not (assuming you have the memory to spare).<< I guess I've never thought of Imagine as principally a *Scanline* renderer. Don't get me wrong,… I'm glad Imagine does some Scanline stuff,… but I believe Imagine's reputation was built on its strength as a `Ray-tracer', and that's also the way Impulse has promoted it. I think it's expecting a lot for them to do things the same way as other companies who've focused *most* of their efforts on beefing-up Scanline procedures. Remember Ray-tracing is a fairly new feature to programs like 3DS and LW, but it's been an integral part of Impulse's products from the very beginning, starting with `Silver' some 6 or 7 years ago. I guess this is one of the reasons why I keep focusing on suggestions to beef-up their Ray-tracing. But who knows… maybe Impulse IS intent upon making Imagine as strong a Scanline renderer, as it is a Ray-tracer. (Mike, GreG?) Imagine is already an extremely fast Tracer. (On my P90, moderately complex scenes with shadows and reflections typically take 2 to 10 minutes to render at 640×480.) And my hope is they can get all this stuff to work in Trace mode so its almost as fast as other's Scanline renderers. Furthermore, with the addition of new 3D accelerator boards (S3, Creative Labs, Cirrus-Logic, Matrox and others) and API's coming out in the next year or so, I think the issue of *speed* will be irrelevant, because both Scanline *and Tracing* will be fast enough to get the job done. I guess that's why I don't think its wise for Impulse to divert too much of their energy into Scanline technology. But I'd hate for them to loose committed, inquisitive users like you in the meantime. (Mind you… I'm not implying this would happen, this is strictly hypothetical.) I think it would help if they put in more controls to determine which objects can RECEIVE and CAST shadows, and maybe combine some Traced elements with their Scanline mode, as you and others have suggested. But I don't know how difficult this would be. -Tim