#VP3.0
16 messages in this thread
Clint, FYI, got the RAM, installed VP3.0, no problems w/installation, ran
the tutorial stuff, screwed around a bit….
THIS THING IS GREAT!!! love it!! 8^)
Barry:
Glad you like it! <grin> Let me know if you have any questions.
Clint <VRLI>
geez… I was just reading an e-mail message when the VP3 rendering in the
background got done and suddenly filled the screen!! Talk about
not-so-subtle introductions!! I did a Pikes Peak from the ENE w/trees,
clouds, 'n stuff, but apparently my camera is too low, as I'm looking at
PP through branches (what's the symbol for sh*t-eating grin?? 8^) )…
bitchin'….
I showed a quick n dirty PP render to an employee whose an engineering
student and is vaguely familiar with the Amiga. His response was "if I
were a civil engineer, I'd be on the floor in ecstasy!"
Three thumbs up!
I haven't quite got the hang of the color IFF file->Alt bit… the
tutorial didn't mention the levels had to be *certain* colors, but I tried
to run my IFF through the IFF->Alt and back to IFF, then assign the colors
in order of elevation and rerun through IFF->Alt…. make sense??
Anyhow, I've had it running for less than 24 hrs, and so far so good.
It's fun to play with and fun to watch work… now if I could only have
time to *really* tinker w/it….
– Barry Jarrett
** letting my Amiga do all the work…. on Autopilot!! **
Barry:
There is a "VideoNoDisplay" command in the script language that will
allow you to render to the 24 bit buffer, but doesn't do the display after
it's done. I know the screen to front at the end is annoying, and I
probably should have changed it to a screen beep, but that was one of the
'wish book' items which didn't get done due to time considerations.
Actually, it's color register numbers that are important for the
IFF->Alt function. It's described on pages 2-19,2-20 of the manual.
I'm glad you're having fun with it! That's what it's there for.
<grin>
Clint <VRLI>
Clint,
I'm having some real SLOW renders on my A4000 on VP3.0. Any suggestions?
Clark -|-
Williams –O-o-O– Via George
Clark:
Grass will slow the rendering time considerably, as well as pushing
all of the Crown and Detail values on trees. Tree density is a big factor,
as is the proximity to the ground that the camera is placed. (ie … near
to the ground will be slower than farther away.) A typical rendering with
Altitude texture set to H and Poly size to 1 with trees and clouds should
run about 30 minutes on the 4000. If you look at the polygon count (see
About Image) you will see about 1,000,000 or so polygons. Some images will
come in alot higher for alot of reasons. Rendering rates of 600-1000
polys/second are common on the 4000. Are you running 3.03?
Clint <VRLI>
Clint,
Got my 3.03 upgrade yesterday and I'm VERY impressed. Render times are
a little longer than I'm used to when I render at highest quality but the
images are worth the wait.
I do have a couple of suggestions for the program though:
1. A small 3 ring binder would be nice for the manual. With the 3.03
update I now have the VisatPro 3.0 manual, the tutorial manual, the script
language manual, the terraform manual, the terraform 2.0 suppliment, and
the makepath manual.
It would be nice to be able to hole-punch the small manuals and put them
into the VistaPro binder to keep everything together. It'd also be cheaper
for VRLI since they'd only need to change a couple of pages on the manual
for the Windoze version. Might be worth suggesting to the management at
VRLI.
2. I noticed in the manual that you can't have the camera above the
clouds. I've found that punching through a cloud bank is a good transition
from an Imagine rendering of a planet to a Vista rendering of an island.
You can then drop down to the ground level and do a landscape anim.
I understand that this limitation comes form the fact that VistaPro
renders clouds first and then the landscape, and that if the camera is
above the clouds the landscape will be drawn over top of them.
Perhaps it would be possible to modify the rendering routine so that it
checks the altitude of the camera and clouds and if the camera is above
the clouds they're rendered last otherwise they're rendered first.
(Or I could just continue to use AdPro for the transitions.) ;^)
3. I though the forward, port, and starboard camera postions are a neat
feature, but why no aft view? If you rotate the camera 180 degrees and do
another forward to use as an aft view will the edges still line up? The
reason I ask is because this sounds like an easy way to do an anim of a
camera rotating in position but you only have to render 4 frames. How
about a button to render all 3 (or 4) automaticly? :^o
<continued>
Jeff,
To get the "rear window" view you need to rotate the Heading 180 degress, and
negate the Pitch and Heading. For instance if the forward camera is pitched up
by ten degrees the rearward camera is pitched down by ten degress. The same
goes for the Bank.
Remember the images only "line up" at the Wide lens setting (16). Even so,
shifting through the set of four images is not the same as rotating the camera.
Vistapro (and all other rendering programs) are designed to render to a flat
surface — the screen of your monitor. To do what you suggest (render four
images and scroll through them) would require a cylidrical projection for
accuracy. On the other hand you may be able to live with the difference under
some circumstances. I don't know how noticable the difference is since I have
never done it.
The main reason for the Port/Forward/Starboard settings was for a travelling
demo that uses three large projection screens with the viewer sitting in the
center to give a feel of total-immersion.
Front
+———–+
| |
| |
Port | Viewer | Starboard
| |
| |
+ +
The back side is left open so you can get in and out, and so that people
standing outside can see what's going on. Under these circumstances it wasn't
necessary to generate the rear view. And on the PC version (where all the
non-amiga-specific development was going on) there's no left room left on the
Lens panel for another button!
The biggest problem with having a camera above the clouds is that it requires
transparecy in the rendering — too much trouble to add in this version (and it
will slow things down). It will probably be in the 4.0 release….
John.
4. Save Turbo Silver? I'm surprised that hasn't been changed to save
Imagine. With the price of Imagine 1.1 and 2.0 Turbo Silver is pretty much
a dead product. Save Imagine would also apply to the Windoze version.
I hope you don't think I'm nit picking too much. These are all really
minor points and as I said before I'm REALLY impressed with the new
version. Of course if you squash all the bugs in VistaPro and you start
getting really bored…… :^)
Jeff, even tho Vistapro "Save's Turbo Silver" you can load them puppies
right into Imagine. PROVIDING you have the Humongous amounts of RAM this
requires. There's ALOT of Polygons in them DEM files when converted to
Turbo Silver.
I know they will load into Imagine. My point was that probably 99.6% of
the people saving landscapes as Turbo Silver are using Imagine these days.
Might as well just change the menu and file format a bit and drop the
older version.
Imagine and Turbo Silver use a very similar IFF-like file format, so Imagine
loads TS objects just fine. Imagine objects have a few extra hunks that
contain extra info that TS can't use. Turbo Silver 2.0 is a different beast
altogether – if you need to take TS 2.0 objects (say, from Impulse's old
"Terrain" program) to Imagine, you can use a translator program like
InterChange Plus.
Clint,
I'm running 3.00, should I upgrade?
Clark -|-
Williams –O-o-O– Via George
Clark:
Look in your emailbox in the morning. <grin>
Clint <VRLI>
Three thumbs up? You must not be a member of the Humans For Genetic Purity
society.
:^)
–Ben
…via AutoPilot