#Autodesk/XAOS Agreement
29 messages in this thread
You heard it here first.
If I may toot my own editorial horn, please turn to page 57 of your
September 1993 TV Technology magazine where in the midst of reviewing
Pandemonium on the SGI Indigo I said:
" . . . There are alot of PC-based 3-D Studio and Topas animators out
there who'd love to get some of these effects. To me, Pandemonium
seems to be a natural for porting over to a series of IPAS tools. "
So maybe your article had something to do with it? <g> (Maybe Xoas
was listening…..)
Perhaps you could, once again, turn your keen soothsaying powers on
and tells us when Adesk will release a multi-platform renderer and
NURBS and IK <g>.
You are an ace prognosticator, Bruce!
Bruce,
>> If I may toot my own editorial horn,<<
well tooted! If I may toot may own horn (if I could reach), then I'd say that
the head programmer up at Xaos is an old friend of mine – he's a long time 3ds
user from r1 days. We've talked together about trying to port Pandemonium to
IPAS for over a year. He'd plugged it to "the suits" and they didn't like the
idea because they felt they would sell a few copies and everybody would just
pirate the heck out of their software. They seem to have changed their minds,
possibly because of the numbers of users. There was talk of an NT or OS/2
version of Pandemonium, and I'm not sure if it's still in the works or not.
If anybody has any ideas that they'd like to plug for the IPAS product then let
me know and I'll pass them on.
That's great Martin! So we can look forward to some really excellent IPAS from
Xoas. And you, you lucky bugger get to Beta test them no doubt. <g> Well,
you've got a volunteer here, if they ask for them.
-JE
John,
I haven't been asked to beta test them, but if I show enough interest then I'll
probably be involved. That applies to anyone, I think.
>He'd plugged it to "the suits" and they didn't like the idea because they felt
they >would sell a few copies and everybody would just pirate the heck out of
their >software. They seem to have changed their minds, possibly because of the
>numbers of users.
Interesting. What is the number of users (I'd heard it was about 3,500 but that
was before I bought 3DS – it must be at least 3,501 by now)? Why do you think
they would think that greater numbers means less piracy?
Jim,
last I heard, there were about 25,000 legitimate copies of 3d Studio sold. Bob
Bennett at Adesk is the man to ask, if you want more info.
>> Why do you think they would think that greater numbers means less piracy? <<
Well, there probably wouldn't be proportionally less piracy, it's just
that there would be a greater pool of people from which a proportion
will buy the software. More users, more buyers, more pirates. They
probably all go up proportionally. Who knows? Talk to the SPA, they
probably have all kind of interesting statistics….and some of them
may even be true <g>.
Martin:
Sorry, I got in on this thread late, could you tell me about the Xaos
pandemonium IPAS stuff? I'm somewhat familiar with Pand., but am not sure
about how all of this will be implemented. Will this be implemented to the
actual objects, or the files rendered? (Kinda like some do while rotoscoping.)
What are some examples of the things it will be able to do? Thanks.
JNJ
The Pandemonium port to IPAS is in conceptual stages right now, so we'll have
to wait and see how they implement the port.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
JNJ,
I don't know how it's going to work. I've just been asked for suggestions
because the head programmer is an old friend of mine. I would guess that it
will simply be a bunch of .ixp IPAS rountines. Things I would like to see would
be some timing control of the effect. Like ease-in, ease-out, hold, ping-pong
etc.
>timing control of the effect. Like ease-in, ease-out, hold, ping-pong etc.<
Yes, with spline type time based controls would be nice. (Similar to
Playmation's channels feature)
>a bunch of .ixp IPAS routines.
Ok, so this would be to the image, not the objects.
Why not then, an external program as well? For non 3DS users? The market
would be bigger. Or both .ixp and photoshop type filters in a package, with
them both running the same way, just in different environments. Some kind PAR
support would also be of interest. (which would be, of course, included in .ixp
routines)
John,
You guys should check into 'Winimages FX' by Blackbelt software. It
allows you to add a number of effects such as flares, glows, image warping,
tonal and gamma control, standard image correction controls, and other fun
stuff to a series of images or a single image over a number of frames. You can
control the effects with spline type controls over the range of frames. It's
really pretty cool, but I just got it a couple of weeks ago, and haven't had a
chance to mess with it much yet. As a registered owner of Winimages / Morph, I
got it for $50, but I think it retails for $199.
David
David – I agree the WinImages F/X package is pretty neat and for the price,
quite a buy. My only complaint is that is doesn't anti-alias with any of the
tools. All the things you mentioned are great. But I see the anti-alias thing
as a big problem for any professional type work. Course you could always take
the image into a paint program and blend the edges, but that's really not quite
the same thing. Interested in any other observations you might have picked up.
Like you, its on the system, but except for a couple of evenings haven't had
much chance to really get productive with it.
-JE
John,
I haven't spent more than half an hour playing with it, so I'm not in a
position to really throw in much of an opinion yet, aside from "Wow, this is
pretty neat". I do find it a little awkward to use though, but I'm sure I'll
get used to it (like when I read the instructions! <g>). That does bring on
another point… online help is great, but I hate not having a printed manual
that I can browse through while messing with the program!
Regarding the anti-aliasing you mentioned, I'm not sure in what respect
your talking about, but after reading your message I fiddled with it a little
and found this: go into the area menu uptop and select 'transparency
controls'. Set the edge slider to one or click on the 'soft edges' button. This
I believe is supposed to anti-alias the selection areas, it did for me. You can
also feather the edges to any degree using that slider. I hope thats what you
where talking about.
David
David >> online help is great, but I hate not having a printed manual.. <<
Here, Here! I think its awkward too. About the only thing you can do it print
it out, which I haven't done.
What I was working with was cutting an irregular shape and then dissolving in
the background. I did use transparency but didn't find the edge control. I was
looking for an "anti-alias" button 🙁 Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out. I
especially like that they created many standard effects with the option to
customize them.
So did you see Billy in Burbank on his whirl wind tour of L.A. ?
-JE
John,
>>So did you see Billy in Burbank on his whirl wind tour of L.A. ?
So thats what that blinding flash and rush of wind was.<g>
I watched him on tv live during his meeting at the airport, and when he was
speaking, I felt an aftershock roll through the area. I almost expected him to
dive under a table or something, but he kept right on talking without so much
as a flinch. Makes me wonder if he felt it at all, maybe they just wanted us to
think he was in LA. Maybe he was really in florida at Disney world or
something…. You know, they can do almost anything with computers
nowadays.<g>
David
David
>> You know, they can do almost anything with computers nowadays.<g> <<
Did you see him on Larry King last night in Washington. Sure, we're supposed to
believe he was in L.A. and in D.C. Ah Huh… And looking like he just had a
vacation in Bermuda. Hmmmmm …. <g>
And what do they do when he gets a question he doesn't want to answer? Why they
pretend it was a wrong number and cut to a prerecorded over the shoulder shot.
Hmmmm or was that a CG standin? <g>
-JE
JNJ,
my contact at Xaos had mentioned that Pandemonium was to be ported to OS/2,
then that changed to WinNT. I don't know how that stands now. The PAR will just
appear to be another hard disk so should work fine with any software. There is
probably going to be a 3ds vtpadi driver written for it which will treat it
like a vtr.
Pandemonium for OS/2? NT? How much?
XAOS is porting Pandemonium (more or less) to IPAS (I don't know about OS/2),
but it won't be ready for a while. It'll be a suite of image processing tools
in the tradition of XAOS' unique craziness.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
John, >> ..won't be ready for a while. <<
I seem to recall that Pandemonium IPAS was to be released at NAB or do you
think that that was just a rumor? <g>
Seriously, I read that somewhere, and I think it was here, in the first
announcement of the agreement.
But it wouldn't suprise me at all if YOU had the inside track. <g>
-JE
They plan on SHOWING it at NAB, but they don't have a publicly available
release date announced yet.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
Typically when a company SHOWS at NAB its as good as a release, but in this
case I guess we'll make an exception. <g>
-JE
JNJ,
>> Pandemonium for OS/2? NT? How much? <<
It's probably not even much beyond an idea yet, so I've no idea if it's even
going to happen, never mind a price.
I'm going to try and talk to my friend and see what's going on over there.
Lior says hi.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
John,
good old Lior! How come you know him?
See your E-mail. I met him the other night. He's a really nice guy, and seems
to know his stuff (although anyone could pass as a programmer before me, I
don't know a damned thing about programming <g>).
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)