Antic's 3D models
32 messages in this thread
Sometime ago, I ordered the Dinosaur Design Disk from from Antic Software.
When I loaded in some objects (eg, the tyranosaurus objects) to Turbo
Silver 3.0. SV, I found that some (actually ALL) of the body parts were not
to scale. For example, the head was much larger than the torso and the jaw
was much too small for the head. Needless to say, scaling the objects to
the correct proportions was almost impossible. I won't even mention the
difficulty I had trying to put them together. Has anyone had this problem
before with Antic's 3-D models? Is there a solution to this scale problem?
I would very grateful for any input offered.
I have, with the Human Design disk. I think it's pretty careless
although I would never have had those objects without Antic. So
since I think I got them sized correctly without to much difficulty I
didn't really sweat it. There skeleton had tons of vertices so I'm
lucky I did that project during the two, happy but brief, months that
my 020 worked. Otherwise resizing would be a MAJOR pain in the neck.
I also had problems with the Sizes of Antic objects,But I attributed it to
the fact that I converted my ST Design Disks from Antic to the Amiga using
Interchange.Mayhaps thats all they did also and thats why the objects you
got are all out of whack?
Assuming that the objects were correctly scaled when in their original
formats, then they should still be in the same respective scale after
interchanging them…. they might be very small (or large) according to
the new systems coordinate system, but they should be in scale with each
other. (John F correct me if I'm wrong)
At least I've never had a problem with IC screwing things up that way….
TTFN
–jp–seattle–
Ya could be right,but it only happens with certain objects,others are
fine.strange
Could be. Did you use them on the ST and were the parts all to scale
there? How was the ST 3-d software? Having only been an Amiga user I
think I may have been exposed only to filtered feedback on other systems.
Gerard Menendez
Everything was fine on the ST when I used the Antic Disks but when I
Converted them the scaling problem devoloped on some objects and not
others,very strange. As for 3D on the Atari It is limited to 16 colors for
Shading(VERY limiting) but has one of the BEST modelling prg's around in
Cyber Sculpt in fact so far the only Modeller that is in my opinion as Good
is Impulses Imagine,the rest drove me nuts on the Amiga I mean a Drag Box
is a MUST have for me.There is a new line on the ST for Animation and
Raytracing from Ex Antic programmers called Lexicor Which Sound incredible
but since I use my ST now only to run my BBS I'll stick with Imagine on the
Amiga.BTW My BBS # is 718 714 1423 if ya wanna drop by.Also check out the
objects I uploaded and lemme know what ya think please.Thanx
If you liked Cyber, you should see 3D Studio. Of course, you'll need a
$4000 PC to run it, and $3000 more for the software. 🙂 I should upload
some objects converted from 3D Studio. (Hmm. How did I do that? 🙂
Yeah, I agree – 3D Studio has a terrific modeler, the best I've seen.
Easy and straightforward, although it could use some Amiga-tization..:)
I also think that Hash's Journeyman has a great modeler, in some ways
even better than 3DS, but the renderer's output looks like poop..
Jonathan
Jonathan – from Albany, NY, via whap!
Actually, I saw a 3 1/2 minute animation that Hash did for themselves, on
tape, with a soundtrack, on videotape at Siggraph. Martin was running
around with Ken Baer and a little Video Walkman. It looked quite good –
organic characters, real lip-syncing, and an animator's sense of style.
As for 3D Studio, do you know of anyone who's using it in tandem with
Amigas? So far, the only one I know of is Todd Rundgren.
John–
Actually, I hope to be doing the 3DS/Lightwave thang real soon. I am
hooking up with someone that is a real 3DS head, and is making a fortune
selling VGA realtime animations (truly, a crime…). This is all very
tentative right now, so the division of labor between programs/platforms is
really up in the air. A direct translator would be truly wonderful –
perhaps something for Interchange Plus. I believe that a lot of folks will
be using this software, because it is quick 'n' easy.
I've found that Hash was a wonderful and idiosyncratic company; if a
program worked well enough as a tool for them, then they considered it
finished. Additionally, Martin's attitude towards the Amiga is *VERY*
depressing; I hope that he has some luck with Windows or the Mac. Also, I
think that Hash could use a "big brother" company for his software, someone
that could support it past his limited resources. Whatever happens, I hope
that a wide audience gets to use his excellent interface. Still, I never
did see either Amiga-mode or 24bit output from that program that impressed
me.
Jonathan
Jonathan – from Albany, NY, via whap!
GREAT IDEA!!!! I just finished a Robotech type Robot last nite,came out
Quite nice.lotsa nice Reflective surfaces.I now need to come up with a cool
Water ATT file(I have Surfac master but I have trouble using others work on
my "ORIGINAL" stuff,very silly) I wanna Recreate a Android model I have as
a Water ATTed object and render to get a sorta Abyss/Terminator look s
The problem is, CAD-3D points are described with a 16-bit integer. When the
InterChange CAD-3D converter turns those XYZ values to floats, we divide by
100. This can introduce a small round-off error, but it's insignificant as
compared to the sloppiness I've seen in supposedly "coincident" points in
CAD-3D objects. When rendered to an ST screen in six or 15 colors, in
relatively low-res, those points look fine. Magnified and examined in an
Amiga point-editor, they don't line up. Ray-traced, those faces aren't
going to match. One answer is to use the GridSnap Tool that comes with the
Turbo Silver Module Pack, using a very fine grid. This will align the
points to each other and remove coincident points, making the object render
more smoothly. Except I can't convince you to spend the $20 to get this
Module Pack. 🙂
Hehehehehehehe I'm waiting for the Imagine Model Dude,I have already
Retired Turbo Silver.Also I'm using Imagine to model ALOT now. The Robotech
type model I did is 90% Imagine modeled,I took the head and hands from CAD
3D objects I have s
Peter, John F pointed out in another message that Interchange will scale
objects on the fly at times (he was mentioning CAD-3D)…. Well, the Antic
disks (in Sculpt format) will suffer from problems when Interchanged over
to Silver/Imagine as well.
Interchange scales all Sculpt objects by 1/100 when converting to
Silver/Imagine format. And since the object size limits for Silver/Imagine
default to -1- (minimum) and -1024- (maximum) you can run into scaling
problems when converting some Sculpt objects.
For instance, the bounding box of the original FemalePelvis object (Antic
object disk) in Sculpt format has a size of 10.85x, 8.38y, 11.8z. When
Interchange scales that down, it *wants* to make it: .1085x, .0838y,
1180z, but it *cannot*. It is limited to the -1- minimum size. So it only
scales it by about 1/8th in order to keep all dimensions larger than -1- in
the converted object. So the Pelvis has been scaled by 1/8th.
Fine, except then you convert the FemaleJoint object. It has a bounding
box of 24.3x, 9.37y, 76.5z. Interchange scales this by about 1/9th, in
order to keep all dimensions larger than -1-. So the Joint has been scaled
by 1/9th.
You see the problem. The objects were in correct scale in Sculpt format on
the Antic disk, but they will be mostly scaled differently when converted
to Silver/Imagine.
It turns out that so long as the all ORIGINAL objects (in Sculpt format)
have sizes between 100 and 100,000 then they will remain in porportion when
converted to Silver/Imagine, since they can all be scaled by 1/100 and
remain in the size limits. Objects smaller/larger than that will get
scaled by different factors, leading to the problems you are experiencing.
The cure: create all your objects in their original formats with size
ranges between 100 (smallest) and 100,000 (largest). Then Interchange will
retain porportionality between them when converting to Silver/Imagine. (or
John F rewrites the Silver module to allow larger/smaller Imagine
objects….)
[ MORE ]
I'm rewriting the Imagine / TS 3.0 module, what do you want? Should I make
a mechanism to allow different max and min values for object size?
Yeah, since Imagine allows for more flexible object sizes, I'd think that
just allowing one to increase/decrease the min/max sizes for objects would
be a very good thing. What is the actual smallest/largest size of object
that Imagine can handle? I don't know, but will experiment for you if you
like? Let me know.
Or…. allow the user to specify the scaling that you do (so that it isn't
always 1/100th).
Can I take this opportunity to suggest a few other items:
1) I love your STAT module. Always use the summary info at the top
of the stat file to figure out what I've got. This means that I
usually run my original/converted object through it when I do
anything. How about having an option to create two files when you
convert something. First, the converted file (natually). Second,
the stats for the original and converted objects. Just the summary
stats (ie. bounding box, hierarchy, etc). The option could be a
toggle on the Interchange screen, and would be highlighted if
appropriate (ie. doing a conversion/scaling/etc), and disabled when
inappropriate (ie. doing a stat request, etc).
2. How about allowing scaling/gridSnap/pointReduce when converting
an object, at the same time? This is done seperately now, so
the request is a NO BIGGIE, but it would be convenient. Would
also get rid of those LONG file names:
— Blah.silver.scene.scene.scene — 🙂
–jp–seattle–
You're talking about the scaling on the CAD-3D module? Sure, we could make
that adjustable – for the half-dozen people who've been interested enough
to buy it. 🙂
I don't think I've ever heard praise about the Stat module till this week!
One woman called, said she uses our Caligari module (now discontinued) to
convert to Stat format, then her programmers have a program that reads Stat
files, and turn them into custom data for use in shoot-em-up games! I
think this was Bethesda Softworks. As for adding Stat-ability to every
module, it wouldn't make much sense. We'd need to add it to every module,
when instead, you should just convert twice. 🙂
Hmm. Sounds like you want what I've planned for InterChange Pro – a series
of conversion steps, instead of single conversions. In this way, you could
run an object through a series of modules, and then route the data to two
modules at once for output.
John–
With GVP's support of Caligari, don't you think it may be time to dust
off the old module for new release?
Jonathan
Jonathan – from Albany, NY, via whap!
The short answer, no. Why? Because Octree is a moving target, they change
their file format on a whim, and they've never been able to suplpy us with
reliable information about their format, and I'm tired of playing catch-up
with the "Beta of the Day" club. We've dropped support for their format
completely for this reason. I feel sorry for the people who get roped into
getting Caligari with the GVP bundle.
Well, I was thinking of the Imagine module actually. (allowing varying the
scaling, etc) Right now your Silver module always converts Sculpt objects
at 1/100th, right? Subject to the minimum/maximum size restrictions? So,
you could either make the min/max size restrictions more flexible, or just
allow different scaling (other than the default 1/100th). Make sense?
I've used STAT to convert Vista landscapes into another format not
currently supported by Interchange. Not too difficult to do. Save the
Vista as a Silver object, run through STAT, and then process the resulting
files (ASCII list of 3D points).
Re the Stat-ability of every module, here's what I had in mind, in case you
misunderstood. I load a Sculpt object, and choose Silver as the output
format. Then I also click on a toggle that says "STATS?" or such, and when
the object is converted, I wind up with:
1) object.scene – original sculpt object
2) object.scene.silver – converted object
3) object.scene.stat – SUMMARY stats for sculpt obj
4) object.scene.silver.stat – SUMMARY stats for silver obj
I just find that I do this all the time anyway, to get the details on the
objects (bounding boxes, etc), so having it automatic would be nice. Like
you say, I can (and have) just run it through the STAT module
seperately…. no biggie.
Waiting eagerly for Interchange PRO. If you'd just stick an ARexx port in
Interchage and all the modules, then another interface could be done pretty
easily in an authoring language, rather than you spending all your time….
just a thought.
–jp–seattle–
Ah, no. It's the Sculpt module that scales the raw 32-bit XYZ values from
Sculpt, to InterChange's internal FFP floats. On conversion *to* Sculpt,
it multiplies the float by 100, coming from Sculpt, it divides the LONG
value by 100. That's the one you want to customize. Silver/Imagine module
scales the object to a given bounding box size, if it exceeds the slider
values, currently 0..1024. To which format did you send those Vista files?
[ continuation ]
Hope this helps.
–jp–seattle–
Oh, another potential cure: Use the SCALE tool in Interchange to scale all
of your Sculpt objects larger, making sure that the smallest one ends up at
least 100 units in size (in all dimensions). Scale all by the same amount,
of course.
Then when you convert to Silver/Imagine, everything will remain in same
porportion.
Oh, all of above is speculation on my part, with several tests here to
verify. My extensive testing (about 5 different sized objects) has born
out my speculation, but consider this a theory until more fully verified 🙂
–jp–seattle–
Thanx a TON for the info.If yer looking for Objects check out my SWORD.LZH
and DWING.LZH files of Imagine/Turbo Silver Objects with more on the Way.
Peter, *always* looking for good objects. I'll check them out. Thanks.
–jp–seattle–
Hope ya like em Bro.Let me know,BTW using Surface master's Water ATT aand
Imagine's Disturb I am attempting a simple animation of a Terminator like
object
I've noted your number and I'll check out your objects. I'll talk to you
on your board in a few days.
Gerard Menendez
They are also available here /exit
***SIGH***, I guess it's time to dish out for an accelerator, because I'm
working with an unaccelerated A500 and believe me, it IS a REAL pain
resizing those objects! Geez, there's no end in sight when it comes to
expanding my A500 (e.g, ECS, accelerator, COLORBURST or DCTV, more memory,
etc., etc.).
If you don't wanna spend a fortune look at the Adspeed from ICD it is
pretty quick and relatively cheap I have one and it doesn't quite cut my
rendering time in half
Well, do it if you can. I went quite awhile with 1meg, 68000, and 2
floppies – and new disks weren't in the budget! Now, although I'm back to
the 68000 I know I'm getting the '030 in a month or two. The funny thing
is that the only good quality complete projects I did were on that basic
system.
Gerard Menendez