#Buy Altamira Composer?
21 messages in this thread
David,
Annoyingly, Photoshop 3.0 still lacks batch file/macro capability, unlike
Debabelizer. John Knoll wanted to put it in 2.5 (and then 3.0), and Adobe
dragged their feet on it. I've been bugging the Debabelizer guys (including
Dave Theurer — sp?) to port it to the PC; it's an incredibly useful tool.
It'll be on the SGI soon; no word yet on the PC version.
Another great Mac program that needs to be ported to the PC is CoSA
Aftereffects, which lets you composite both still images and animations
together in layers. We had a half-day demonstration down at Sega a few weeks
ago, and it was great. (I rendered a spaceship against a white background [with
alpha], with a shadow cast onto a white plane below; we knocked out the white
and antialiased the edges of the foreground imagery against a digitized lake
and mountain background plate. It looked dynamite.) CoSA does imagery scaling
in X, Y and Z across time; you can also arrange as many layers as you want in a
Macromedia Director-style spreadsheet/timeline interface. Since Aldus bought
CoSA, and Adobe bought Aldus, we'll probably see it on the PC.
Now, if Altamira would throw in the ability to work on animated sequences
(along with other compositing special effects), they would really get the jump
on CoSA. OTOH, I just saw an ad for Elastic Reality's new Windows compositing
program, which does morphs, as well. Any of these programs would be amazingly
useful with 3DS.
— Jon
P.S. Your whale was incredible, BTW; I'm looking forward to seeing exactly how
you did it. (I contributed some effects to the 3DS Effects book, and am
anxiously awaiting getting my copies.)
>>Annoyingly, Photoshop 3.0 still lacks batch file/macro capability…
Yup, that's pretty annoying all right. I spoke to Adobe a while back on
this, and they said that the next version of Premiere will input, process
through Pshop, and write out sequencial targas (the present version will only
spit out AVI's). Fractal Design's Painter 3.0 is supposed to have some nice
animation support, which I believe will include batch processing of some sort.
Hopefully it will write out frames. One thing that bugs me is that when alot of
windows programs deal with animation, they seem to think that people will ONLY
want to output to AVI or FLICs… argh.
>>Elastic Reality's new Windows compositing program, which does morphs, as
well.
It's really a morph/warp program that does compositing as well (at
least that's what it seems). I just got Elastic Reality, but can't really
comment on it yet because I have yet to use it. I was going to wait until I
actually needed it before I bought it, but decided to go for the special price
they had if you ordered it early. (I have no willpower <g>)
I'm getting anxious to see the 3DS FX book too. Should be pretty
cool… (I hope they're still on schedule)
David
Picture Publisher will let you record macros and then apply them to multiple
files. I've used it to batch process a bunch of files that were loaded,
processed, and saved — all automatically. I haven't tried generating new
sequentially numbered files, so I'm not sure it can be done. Picture Publisher
is an image-processing program, like PShop. It's got a lot of effects, but I
don't know if it'll take plug-ins.
– Jack
Jack,
PP4 takes plug in's. But you need the 4.0ak fix to use them. (ask for it on
their forum- it's free.)
JNJ
Good to know. Thanks, John.
– J
David,
When you get around to playing with ER, please keep us informed as to its
coolness factor. Thanks!
— Jon
Will do.
David
Hey, Jon.
I got ER for Windows, started playing with it. Very cool, in fact I'm >this<
close to buying my P5/90+PAR system so I can start doing some video tricks with
ER.
RE: Altimira and animation, Alvy wanted to support animation at the getgo but
they had decided to 'do that later' and deliver 1.0, first. If they could link
Composer to the I/O of a PAR type device, that would be killa'.
J-me
Jamie,
Sorry for the delay — just insouciant, I guess.
When and if you get Elastic Reality, I'd love to know what you think of it.
We're supposed to get a couple of copies of CoSA Aftereffects soon at Sega, so
that'll be fun to play with.
BTW, I'm wondering when Lightwave PC is supposed to be coming out. I'd like to
see if Sega will also spring for an evaluation copy of that; I'd like to pick
it apart and see what features might be useful to, um, improve upon (and which
should be avoided) by other 3D software developers. <g>
— Jon
>Now, if Altamira would throw in the ability to work on animated sequences
(along with other compositing special effects), they would really get the jump
on CoSA.<
I "told" them they should do this at Siggraph, but didn't commit. Mabe they'll
keep it in mind. I agree that that would be very nice. It'd give me a reason
to buy it.
JNJ
John,
I believe that our comments have been given _serious_ consideration. Cross your
fingers.
— Jon
Great. Fingers crossed!
JNJ
A company called in:sync put out a product called RAZOR recently, that will do
compositing and other effects. It's windoze software, uses graphical
representations of one's images (or text if that's your pleasure), and best of
all: does photoshop plug ins!
While there are some things I would like to see changed in RAZOR, it is a
really nice program with good audio support. Worth checking out, and I think
they've got an intro price of $99 right now.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie, inc)
Will Razor output sequencial targas? I've got som lit about it here
somewhere, but I can't seem to find it right now.
David
Yes it'll put out sequential targas. This software has a lot of promise, but
right now I think it's still a little raw: I find renders a bit too slow
(windoze, I suspect), and I've managed to crash the system quite a bit.
Apparently there's a new version I haven't gotten yet, and also they're working
on a 32bit version which I think will solve all Razor's current problems
working with larger images. It was really intended for mulitmedia – does a
wonderful job editing, audio-ing, and DVE-ing .avi's and flics, but the
sequential targa support is definitely there. I'll check out the next version
ASAP and post a report.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie, inc)
Thanks for the info on Razor, it does sound interesting. If the need arises,
I'll check into it further.
>> I find renders a bit too slow (windoze, I suspect), and I've managed to
crash the system quite a bit.
Do you have Blackbelt's Winimages/FX? I got the new version a little
while back, but although the feature list is impressive, I've pretty much given
up on it. It is the only Win program I use that that will crash out on me, and
some operations are PAINFULLY slow. I ran the blur filter and motion blur
filters on a selection of an image (one frame) and it took a minute or more to
calculate, while the same type of filters on the same image and selection in
Photoshop took LESS than a second! So I wouldn't be so quick to blame Windoze.
Anyway, I hope they (In:Sync) are quick to fix the shortcomings in the program
because it does sound like it could be useful.
BTW, have you got (and used) ER for Win yet? I've got it but haven't
had a chance to use it yet.
David
I've been planning on getting elastic reality, but I'm not sure if I'll get the
SGI or the Windoze version. I want to try both and see which fits my needs
better.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie, inc)
John,
>> I'm not sure if I'll get the SGI or the Windoze version.
Ya mean you finally got an SGI over there…?
John
John,
Thanks for the infor on Razor. BTW, I saw you (or at least your name tag) walk
by at Siggraph, and I spent half a day trying to remember where I'd seen
"Tissavary" before. Too much monitor radiation interfering with my normal
brainal functions, I suppose.
— Jon
Wow. I was hoping to meet you at Siggraph, but it didn't happen. You're in
the south bay area, right? Maybe we can get together some time, since I travel
down there from SF quite a bit.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie, inc)
John,
I work in Redwood City at Sega full-time, but I live in SF. I'm going to be
gone until Monday; I'll drop you a note when I get back and we can swap 3D
stories ("Oh yeah? Well, I once rendered a scene THIS big. . .!")
— Jon