CompuServe Thread

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