CompuServe Thread

I wrote a book about Vista Pro, and obtained it directly from Virtual Reality Laboratories. I've seen it at Egghead stores, and I have also seen it from time to time in the mail order ads. I don't, however, have a specific source that I can guarantee has it on the shelves. Ron

I tried that last night and ended up with a real blocky looking end result. I tried smoothing in 3ds to no avail.

Tim, TB> Quite the night owl, aren't you? Yeah, I'm usually up to about 4AM or so. I get up around noon… It looks like you're up late too! MCNV saves it's data in Small Vistparo landscapes. To load the seperate chunks created by MCNV do the following: 1) Set the DEM Size (Project Menu) to either Large or Huge. Large will give you an area equivalent to 4 Small landscapes. Huge is 16 Small landscapes. 2) Use the Load Region menu item (Load Menu) to load in multiple hunks. When Load Region asks for a filename, pick the one that you want to go in the lower left hand (south-west) corner. Vistapro will then automatically load all files that fit in the defined area. 3) You can then save the Large or Huge DEM file using the Save DEM function if you want. Note that the "empty" areas will still be rendered as 0 altitude, so don't use a DEM Size larger than necessary to hold the data of interest. Be sure to keep each set of DEM files from MCNV in seperate directories since Vistapro searches through all files in a given subdirectory for landscapes that will fit into the current region. If you put zillions of files in one directory it will take longer to load regions. There's also the possibility that other files will map to the same area leading to them being loaded over the area of interest. The PCX->DEM method is less useful than MCNV since a PCX image can only support 256 discreet altitudes (one for each color). But sometimes there's no other way. And you can use PCX->DEM and DEM->PCX to export landscapes, modify them with a paint program, and then re-import them. I recommend using a smoothing pass or one Fractalize pass to either smooth out the steps or add fractal detail. By "wire frame mesh" I assume you mean as a 3D export function. I'll probably add it to the next version of Vistapro, or maybe as a standalone utility. You'll be dissapointed with what you get from 3DS though. Like I mentioned before, the Amiga version has supported one of the Amiga output 3D formats for quite some time. We often get people complaining that there's something wrong with Vistapro since the other 3D packages can't render these exported landscapes nearly as nicely as Vistapro. A Small Vistapro landscape is 66,000 points, and 130,000 triangles. And that's before any fractal detail or trees are added. I have rendered images with over 10 million polygons! There are some uses for Vistapro DEM's within other rendering packages though. For instance, some people on the Amiga are using the exported landscapes as a guide for placing other objects in their 3D packages. They then use Vistapro to render the backgrounds and overlay the objects rendered with the other package. I imaging that it will also be useful to save out a small area around a house or other item of interest so that 3DS objects can cast shadows on the part of the landscape it renders. Other utilities I'm considering are a routine to transform a Vistapro script into a 3DS camera path and vice-versa. This will make it easier for animators to synchronize paths. I'll be looking into the possibility of an IPAS version of Vistapro but I don't think 3DS will be able to handle it…. In any case, thanks for purchasing Vistapro. I hope you spend many enjoyable (and maybe even productive) hours playing with it. And I do appreciate your suggestions and comments even though I can't always deliver…. John.

John, Could you send me a copy of InterChange Plus for the PC when it's ready? My Amiga died recently and I don't really have any plans to revive it…. Are you going to do InterChange Plus under Windows or DOS? I could be persuaded to part with my DOS windowing stuff if you need it… John.