#Resolution
14 messages in this thread
Hi,
I am relativly new to this forum and computers in general. I hope that
I have posted this in an appropriate place. I am running acad-12 for windows
and 3d studio-2. Both of these were on a cd titled the autodesk collection. I
have a relativly new system purchased last Feb. Pentium 90, 1 Gig disk, 32 meg
ram, Diamond Stealth 64 graphics card.
I came to realize that the default resolution of my monitor was set at
800×600. I changed this from the diamond stealth menus to 1024×768. Now when I
load acad the window that appears is about 1/3 the size that I used to see. I
drag a corner to enlarge it but I'm wondering if the fact that I must do this
each time suggests that I don't have my display set correctly. If all is well
how can I make acad come up in its full screen size at this higher resolution?
When I load 3d studio it appears to me that it has the lower resolution
800×600.My suspition is that when in 3ds (dos) my resolution has not been
increased. Does this make sense? If so how can I increase the resolution in
dos? All of this resolution and number of colors is quite confusing to me. I
have read all of the printed literature and on line help that I have about
these issues but still feel "drain bamaged" on this. Can anyone reccomend any
understandable text on this or a better forum to ask these questions in? TIA
for any input.
mark
Mark,
I have a simmular setup on anouther system. Acad 12 (Windows) and 3DS R2.
When you are in Acad type config. Then under the configure section type 3 (I
think) it's the display driver menu. Select the "Windows Driver". This uses
the setting in the windows setup panel (where you pick the display drivers).
Also some where in the config menus there is a way to change your font size, so
the text isn't so small. Personally I like ACAD for DOS. It runs quicker and
has less bugs to work out.
As for 3DS R2 what res is it you want to change, the render display, main
display, or the materials editor display? These can be changed in the 3ds.set
file or using the VIBRANT configure program. I don't know if the vibcfg
program will work with R2 but if it does you can download it here. I just
Downloaded the latest ver. today.
The kid who can't spell,
Dave Winters (Rusty's son)
Video Construction
NH
Hi,
Thanks for the response ! As I said, I am pretty much of a rookie at
this.
>>As for 3DS R2 what res is it you want to change, the render display,
main display, or the materials editor display? These can be changed in the
3ds.set file or using the VIBRANT configure program.<< I opened 3ds.set in
ms-write and looked it over. Following are what I determined to be the relevant
sections:
; Display to use for the main interface (VGA/RCPADI) if you have
; the proper RCPADI (combined rendering/display) protected mode
; ADI driver. (the sample RCPVESA.EXP driver is for VESA-compatible
; VGA cards.)
; If this is not set, it defaults to 640×480 VGA.
;MAIN-DISPLAY = RCPADI
; Display to use for Materials Editor (VGA/RCPADI) if you have
; the proper RCPADI (combined rendering/display) protected mode
; ADI driver. (the sample RCPVESA.EXP driver is for the VESA-compatible
; VGA cards.)
; If this is not set, it defaults to 320×200 VGA. Note that using
; the RCPADI interface for the Materials Editor is basically pointless,
; and will only slow you down without actually using the extra
; "real estate."
;MATERIAL-DISPLAY = RCPADI
; Default rendering driver to use…
; Built-in output drivers: VGA320X200, Vision16 (512×486),
; NULL (any-resolution), VistaL (512×486), VistaH (756×486)
; ADI system rendering display driver: RDPADI or RCPADI
; Note: Must have SET RDPADI or SET RCPADI statements
; in your AUTOEXEC.BAT for ADI drivers to function.
; Defaults to VGA320x200.
RENDER-DISPLAY = vga320x200
After reading your response one of my questions is will I benefit from
increasing resolution in any of these areas? The manual for my monitor claims
that, in addition to lower values, it will support 1024×768 at 60/70/75 Hz and
1280×1024 at 60 Hz. I am certain that my Diamond Stealth64 card supports these
resolutions also. It is my further understanding that a refresh rate of less
than 70 Hz causes unacceptable flicker. Consequently I have endevored to use
1024×768.( I started out with 60 Hz and saw no flicker. I am now set at 70 Hz
and decided not to use 75 Hz because it requires horz. and vert sync. polarity.
I don't know what this sync. polarity is but decided to avoid it untill I
understand ). Scince my system has this capability shouldn't I make use of it?
If I were to make changes would I need to edit the bottom line in the
appropriate sections of the 3ds.set file? The top 2 sections of my 3ds.set that
I included have that semi-colon looking punctuation mark in front of thier last
line while the last section does not. Are these marks actually semi-colons
that have remarked out those lines and caused those sections to have thier
described default values?
As for acad, I went into the config menu and found that I had 2
available video drivers, Windows Driver and Windows Accelerated Display Driver
ADI 4.2. The latter is my current video display. I changed to the Windows
driver but saw no change so I changed back to ADI 4.2. I tried dragging the
acad window to fill the screen and using shift+alt+f4 to save setting, but I
still get a very small acad window each time I load acad.
All of this makes my head fill like it's out of RAM. Thanks for your
HELP.
mark
telluride,co.
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* CompuServe would not respond *
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Hey Mark,
I've spend close to an hour messing around with display settings for you, heres
what I've come up with. With 3DS R2 I think the best display setting your
going to get are 640X480X256 in the Render and Editor and 320X200X256 in the
Materials editor. But you can try upping them your self. My release 2 is on a
notebook which makes display setting even more complicated. If all this just
messes up your system it is reversible. First got into the autoexec.bat file
at the C:\ type
"EDIT AUTOEXEC.BAT" in the Autoexec add the line "SET
"RCPADI=C:\3DS2\DRIVERS\RCPVESA.EXP" (use the correct directory on your
system). Save, exit, Reboot.
Go into the 3DS directory and delete the 3DADI.CFG file "DEL 3DADI.CFG". This
is the display resolution setting file.
Now type "EDIT 3DS.SET" in the set file unremark the DISPLAY = lines (delete
the ;). they are the three lines you sent me EX: "RENDER-DISPLAY= RCPADI".
Make sure all three = RCPADI. Save, exit, start 3DStudio.
You will be prompted to select the display settings you can pick from 640X400,
640X480, 800X600, 1024X768. It will ask you 3 time one for each section of 3DS
(Render, Materials, Editor).
I couldn't get any of the 4 settings to work in the Editor of Materials
Editor. The Render worked fine though in all four modes. Render is the most
important high res setting after all.
Each time you want to change the display settings you'll have to delete that
3dadi.cfg file. If after trying all the settings and none work got back to the
3DS.set file and remark the materials and editor lines. If even your render
doesn't work remark that out too.
Let me know what happiness.
Dave Winters (Rusty's son)
Video Construction
Derry, NH (skiing is OK but rather be where you are!)
Dave,
Great tutorial! Good message to save for future 3DS2 video problems.
Thanks.
Hello Dave,
I followed your instructions and had a very pleasantly successful
experience! One little mysterious event in which all of a sudden a config. menu
appeared for Panacea Turbodld. I had been looking for this, I was sure I had
installed it but could not "bring it to life". Got through that and won't bore
your with the details.
I left the materials editor remarked so it would retain it's default
resolution. The comments in 3ds2.set recomend this and who am I to argue. I
upped my display and renderer resolutions to 1024 x 768 w\ 256 colors, started
3ds, and shazam. This is way more better!
The DS64 manual claims to support 1152 x 864 w\ 16.7 million colors and
1280 x 1024 w\ 65,536 colors. My monitor manual has a bunch of
resoltion\refresh rates listed that it supports but makes no mention of numbers
of colors. It is my understanding that increasing resolution\number of colors
decreases rendering speed.Is there any way other than trial and error to
determine an appropriate balance between res\colors and speed? I am afraid to
try some of the higher settings because of all the disclaimers in the manuals
about causing your computer to go balistic and burn down your home.
I thank you very much for all your help, it has been very valuable to
me.
mark
telluride co.
Multiply the height times the width to get the total number of pixels. For a
given scene, 2x the number of pixels will require about 2x the amount of time
to render. So a 640×480 resolution will take about 4 times as long to render
as a 320×240 resolution.
With regards to color depth, 3ds always renders to 24 bit color. Going to 256
color display actually slows things down as 3ds needs to figure out which 256
colors are the most representative. I haven't run 65k colors, but my
understanding is that it should run at the same speed as a 24 bit color
display.
LAM
Mark
Glad to hear it worked. As far as chooseing the proper res, we mainly output
to video tape. For video we output at 512 X 486 16.7 mil colors. For VGA
(Staying in the VGA format) were still at 640 X 480 X 256. VGA animations 320
X 240 X 256 and 640 X 480 X 256. Anyting higher takes 10 times lnoger to
render. No to mention the massive disk space it eats up. But for stills I
would think that 1024 X 768 would look great. I'll have to try it.
Dave
Mark,
I would recommend that you run the wireframe/3Deditor in 1024×768 8-bit mode.
Set your rendering resolution to 640×480 24-bit, and leave the materials editor
at 320×200. For rendering it is much more important to have a fast full color
image than a slower or lower color image.
Terry Gilbert
Forcade & Associates
Hi Terry,
Thanks for the helpful input. I guess I must reveal the true saturation
of my greeness. I looked through all of my reference material and have a very
rookie question. How many colors are in 8, 24, etc. bit "mode" ? Thanks.
mark
8 bit – 256 colors
16 bit – 65k colors
24 bit – 16.7M colors
48 bit (3ds internal color space) – some humungous number <g>
LAM
>> Hi Terry,
Thanks for the helpful input. I guess I must reveal the true saturation
of my greeness. I looked through all of my reference material and have a very
rookie question. How many colors are in 8, 24, etc. bit "mode" ? Thanks.
mark <<
We don't really care, on this forum, what color you are. Refering to colors by
bit depth is a bit of shorthand jargon that we often forget is not obvious to
beginners. I see that Larry Minton has listed out the colors for you. I will
add one other that is available on some video cards: 15 bit – 32,000 colors.
If you have any other "green" colors, please feel free to ask them.
Terry Gilbert
Forcade & Associates
Hi Terry,
Thanks again. This forum has been invaluable to me. I haven't
experienced any other place where busy professional people take time to share
thier knowledge and offer guidance to struggling beginers like myself. It's
very refreshing. The software is cool but the people who are associated with it
are inspirational. I only hope that I may someday know enough to reciprocate.
For now it's pretty overwhelming and seems like it will take years to gain a
working knowledge. Helpful responses from forum members such as yourself are
motivational. Much appreciation.
mark
>> Hi Terry,
Thanks again. This forum has been invaluable to me. I haven't
experienced any other place where busy professional people take time to share
thier knowledge and offer guidance to struggling beginers like myself. It's
very refreshing. The software is cool but the people who are associated with it
are inspirational. I only hope that I may someday know enough to reciprocate.
For now it's pretty overwhelming and seems like it will take years to gain a
working knowledge. Helpful responses from forum members such as yourself are
motivational. Much appreciation.
mark <<
Gosh, Mark. I guess most of us just think this stuff is so cool that we want
to spead the word.
I doubt that it will take you years to develop a working knowledge. In a
couple of months you will probably look around and realize that you know enough
to do most of the things that you want to do. It may take longer before you
learn enough to be able to do everything that you want. I think that is an on
going process since what we want is a moving target. Good luck with your
exploration and keep asking questions. We often learn things just by answering
your questions.
Terry Gilbert
Forcade & Associates