CompuServe Thread

#3DS

2 messages in this thread
#50596From: gary tiltonJul 22, 1993 9:52 AM
Regards 3 A ARegards 3D Studio: What combination of hardware gives us the speed necessary to produce animations in the shortest period of time? Is there a driver to use HP's Paintjet XL300 the tabloid size device, a step up from the A-size tabloid? What other plotters have drivers available, like the HP600C? What is necessary to take pictures with a standard camera, place the photo on an HP ScanJetIIc and using DeskScan, produce a satisfactory .tga file for backg Cround or maps in 3DS? So far 3×4 glossy photos give poor results. My copy of Deskscan is 1-2 years old and does not translate directly to tga. Am I loosing much in translation using HiJack? One minute animations of complex models produced in AutoCad Rev. 12 AME and DXF'd to 3DS takes 48 hours on 486/33 16 meg RAM, 500 Meg HD (d (doubler chip is used). Help, we need speeeeeeeeeeed!
#50627From: Yost GroupJul 22, 1993 11:15 AM
A lot of questions here. Let me try some of them: Speed? Looks like you need more RAM. You could also use a faster processor. The bottom line is: If you're paging to disk while you're rendering (the disk light is flickering like mad), then you don't have enough RAM. There's no way that 16-megs is going to handle complex architectural models. First thing I'd do is put my budget into RAM and get it all the way up to 64 megs before I spent any money elsewhere. (Unless I had the budget to get a 486/66 with 64-meg RAM. Printer drivers? Except for the Paintjet driver that ships with 3D Studio, none of the printer manufacturers out there have come up with ADI drivers for 3ds. However, one reason may be because most 3ds user's don't really need them. To get hardcopy, output your rendering as a TIFF or Targa file, and then use one of the many software solutions that print those files to hardcopy. That would include programs like PhotoShop or PhotoStyler, or you can find some shareware solutions in the Graphics Support forum (Go graphsupp). I don't understand the poor results you're getting from your HP IIC ScanJet. I've got one, and it produces excellent images. Make sure you're capturing the images in 24-bits. (Click on the "Type" popup and select "Millions of Colors.") Set your scaling so the output image will be the same size as your background (probably 512×486 pixels). You can set the Deskscan software to pixels instead of inches. You might also go into the Image Type dialog box and add Light or Normal sharpening to the image. There should be no reason to convert your Scanjet output in Hijaak. Output them as 24-bit, color TIFF files, and you can use them directly in 3ds. – Jack