#3DTEST
6 messages in this thread
Stan, I D/L'ed 3DTEST, (was looking for it in LIB 6, found it in LIB 11),
and it looks 3D to me. I haven't heard anything from Haitex abt the formal
release of their software, waiting. To be constructivaly critical, There is
a ghost to the left of the polygon panel, and the far background could be a
little brighter. Otherwise, it's great. The pointed rod is lamost within
reach!
Claude, Thanks. The reason it was in DL 11 is because the pictures are
"rendered" not painted and DL11 is for "Derived Images". Please be as
critical as you can. We are trying to produce as effective a set of images
as possible. It's possible that the ghost is from a shadow being cast from
one of the other images. The pictures were Ray Traced in Turbo Silver, and
I Used 3 shadow casting lights. I will try some more later this week with
less shadows, We were mainly interested if the effect worked with the
Haitex system, as we are doing this with a "homebrew" interface and Sega
glasses. We are still waiting for the Haitex Development kit. THe next
sets I will increase the overall lighting (ambient level) and hopefully it
will brighten the images.
Stan, Your welcome. I will be looking for the later pics. I suspect that
the 'ghost' is caused by the screen phospher not decaying fast enough from
the fairly bright polygon. The effect is noticable because the object is in
the foreground, ie, the companion object is displaced more then one in the
background. I am using SA3D, and am upgrading to 4D, (shipping starting
next week), 'cause it was the first one to have an object editor that I
could handle. howeven time passes and new products come to be. I have asked
my friendly dealer to let me look at T-Silver, and will probabaly buy it
(i'lljust have to give up cigars for awhile 8^.).
Claude – I'll try some different lighting effects to see what the optimum
results are at given distances. The "ears" on the street say that several
rendering packages are about to come to market in the next few months
giving the user lots of choice. As long are ancilary products like file
and object converters exist, users will be able to construct in one program
render in another, and post produce in still a third. if that's the way
they want to go. Buying everyon's package is still 50 times cheaper than a
wavefront system <grin>
I saw an animation package last week at the media lab which was somewhat
closer to what I expect in an animation package: large 24-bit color screen,
all scenes iconsized in a window, click on scene and a blocky version
plays instantly in another window, object motion done at the motivational
level, with newtonian physics….
I've found my main limitations are not speed of rendering but on one hand,
the ability to render at all (for example, since TSilver does no morphing,
It's useless to me, since my objects – none of which are regular solids –
are hand built single sheet topological surfaces which require phong
shading to work) and on the other hand the inability accurately to time
sequences, motions etc.
The only package with the technology in it to do that for Amiga is
Caligari, and we've been yelling at the guy who has been writing the
animation module to trash the prototype "script" animation system they've
been using and use their technology instead. Grrrr. Am I going to have to
write my own package again? (I did linear-slice 3d-rendering to drive a
plotter a few years ago….) Then of course, there is the problem of
scripts. J H H "tracey" Lowengard
I think you are missing a basic point of both our packages and the others
on the market for the Amiga. All of us, with the exception of Caligari,
are really pushing it on the Amiga to get the results we currently are. It
is IMPOSSIBLE to acurately time HAM animations on the Amiga as the amount
of screen that is changed is directly related to how fast you can do it.
We are testing the 1MG Agnes chips and there is some hope. I'm sure that
when videoscape and Caligari were first designed they used a limited number
of colors for that specific reason. The Amiga version of Turbo Silver was
and is being developed less than 10 feet from our Silicon Graphics 4D 70T,
soon to be replaced by the new Eclipse on Oct 1st, so we have some
experience.
We would love someone to explain just how to unpack and shovel the stuff in
any faster on current Amiga technology. At Siggraph a month or so ago, the
comments from users of Pixar, Wavefront, etc. were basically the same.
Their systems cost 50+ times that of the Amiga, but were not 50 times
better than Amiga results. We still think the Amiga has a legitmate place
as a front end for some of these type of systems.