#Learning other programs?
12 messages in this thread
Ah! Mr GreG
Hello, and great to meet you!
You seem to be a very wise individual when it comes to 3d, animation, Imagine
etc.. as I have seen in this forum," as well as others" by your many
contributions.
Now that I have you all buttered up, it is time I ask of thee.:-)
Can any of the objects, textures,effects, etc used in Imagine3.0 work in 2.0 ?
Will ISL or any other utilities/add ons work with 2.0 ? Where can I dnload
these items ?
For now, I am trying to learn, what I need for what I am trying to do,as far as
computer software/hardware, which is constantly changing. Their's no doubt I
need MOMEMORY! I have'nt decided to upgrade to more mem or get a new system
that is more optimised for my needs. I will undoubtedly upgrade to ImagineX.X
or maybe AM by hash. I saw them at siggraph94 their stuff was pretty
impressive.
I mainly want to create 3d animation,graphics,audio and output to VCR. I know a
little about PAR. any comments appreciated.
Thanks for the reply.
Todd
P.S. I just uploaded a flic I created in Imagine of 2 brass gears rotating in
front of a mirrored plane the viewer flies around the gears it is called
"Todgears.zip".
Check it out if you get a chance.
Howdy Todd,
Nice to meet you and have you here. You can use objects in 2.0 that were
created in 3.0 and above, but you will not be able to access any of the
imbedded STATES that may be in these objects. Also, I believe that subgroups
defined in 3.1/3.2 will not be maintained when importing into 2.0. You most
probabably will not be able to use the new textures or effects with 2.0, though
I am not 100% certain.
Currently we only have the latest ISL which works with IM3.x, I don't know
where you could find ISL for 2.0, sorry.
As for objects, we have a few here in the Imagine section, as well as a few PD
textures that were written by Steve Blackmon, but they are specifically for
IM3.x.
A great place to look around for objects, imagemaps, even ISL, is the internet
site at avalon.vislab.navy.mil
If you use WinCim 1.3.1/1.4 you can GO FTP and access the net.
-GreG
P.S. I looked at TODGEARS.ZIP, and enjoyed it. Nice work…though probably a
little tedious to make knowing you were using 2.0! <g> I'd recommend you at
least Upgrade to Imagine L/T, which comes on CD for $99.00. You'll at least
see how far Imagine has come since then. And you can always upgrade to
IM3.x/IM4.0 from there.
Hey greg
< I'd recommend you at least Upgrade to Imagine L/T, which comes on CD for
$99.00.>
Yea I read somewhere in the threds about L/T it seems like a pretty good deal
One more question, (for now) as far as uploading Flics/AVIs do you have any
recomendations on how to keep the file size as small as possible without
any/minimal loss of quality?
Thanks,
Todd
>>
as far as uploading Flics/AVIs do you have any recomendations on how to keep
the file size as small as possible without any/minimal loss of quality?
<<
Todd,
ZIP'ing them is the only way to further compress the files once they are
created. However, if you want the OPTIMUM delta compression while maintaining
optimum quality I'd recommend you process the FLC with Daves Targa Animator
(DTA). It samples all frames to get the best palette, and THEN creates the
FLIC. Imagine as you know, will either lock the palette to the first frame, or
use a unique palette for each frame.
You can find DTA over in GRAPHDEV by doing a filename search of "DTA" or "DTA*"
-GreG
Another way to compress flics is with a program called Smacker. It is made
entirly for compressing 8-bit animations. It can compress animations with a
ratio of 12:1 without any loss in quality! Also it allows real-time
decompression. A 24-bit windows version is in the works now.
Just thought I'd let you know :^)
Jason
Jason,
Doesn't SMACKER produce a proprietary formatted anim?
-GreG
I have only read 2 reviews of Smacker, so don't know much about it. This may
sound dum, but what is a proprietary formatted anim?
Jason
Jason,
I may be wrong, but from what I understand, SMACKER uses a compression format
that they developed. To use that format you have to buy thier software. I
don't believe they made this format available in the public domain, so you need
to buy their software to use it. A proprietary format like that, tends to take
longer to become popular, if it ever does.
-GreG
-If my impressions about SMACKER are wrong, please do let me know
I will reread my magazines tonight and find out if it comes with a freely
distributable player.
Jason
Todd,
>>Will ISL or any other utilities/add ons work with 2.0 ? Where can I dnload
these items ?
If you are on an Amiga, look on Aminet for version 2.0 of ISL. That one
supports Imagine 2.0.
The first PC version of ISL was 3.0, so I can't help ya if you're on a PC.
Sorry. Hope you're on an Amiga! 🙂
_john
>> The first PC version of ISL was 3.0
What is ISL?
David,
>>What is ISL?
Wow, what an opening! 🙂
ISL is the Imagine Staging Language. Basically, it's an ASCII version of the
staging file, with programs to convert back and forth.
ISL makes certain operations much easier. For example, if you want to do an
operation on a bunch of objects in a stage, you can use one of the ISL programs
to convert the stage to ASCII, use your favorite text editor to make the
changes, and use one of the other ISL programs to convert it back. This is
especially useful when you need to move a project to a different directory.
It's much nicer to use an editor to make 50 changes than to navigate with the
mouse, pop up a box, select the right field, edit, and close the box for each
one!
It comes with a utility to join two stages together, and a piece of sample code
showing how to programmatically generate a stage. There are also a number of
other utilities floating about which can use or depend on ISL, so it can be a
handy thing to have lying around.
ISL is (inexpensive) shareware. The unregistered version may be found in the
file library here.
_john