3DS vs Lightwave
23 messages in this thread
Recently there's been some conversation, which I think I had something to
do with, about Lightwave 3D on the Amiga and 3D Studio on the PC. Just out
of curiosity, I went back to an Amiga World magazine I had purchased in May
1991, when I was first making decisions on which platform to choose. There
was a comparison of 4 different 3D products for the Amiga, one of which was
Lightwave 3D. For the fun of it I did my best to set up the same scene.
For the purpose of the article, they weren't using ray tracing, just
mapping, so I feel I was able to get a pretty fair comparison. I rendered
the same scene at the same resolution. He was using an Amiga 2000 with an
A2620 accelerator and I was using my 486/33. The Lightwave 3D rendering
was said to take 29 minutes, and my 3D Studio comparables took from 7 min.
19 sec. to 10 min. 51 sec. I understand there is a new release of
Lightwave and I really don't know that much about the Amiga's architecture
to know if that board is state of the art or not. I know there's a few
people with some curiosity on this issue. I got some inquiries via email.
So I thought others might find this interesting.
Roger D.
On any platform, it's the CAD and 3D people who push the envelope and buy
all that "bleeding edge" hardware, like the fastest accellerator boards,
etc. I run a 33 Mhz '030 with eight megs of 32 bit memory in my A2000. I
don't remember what the math chip is clocked at. The A2620 board is pretty
slow in comparison, it's a 68020 at 16 Mhz, I think, and 16 bit memory. I
too have a 486/33 and 3DS. There are LW fanatics out there who have 50 Mhz
030s and 040s, too, getting four times the performance that I get. I don't
trust benchmarks. They are very hard to create and verify. For final
results, there's a new file in one of the Amiga libraries that duplicates
someone's reproduction of a "hurricane lamp" scene that was part of a
recent Mac head-to-head competition. I haven't seen it, but if you're
curious, you could check it out.
I wrote the 3D Studio import routines that are now part of LightWave v2.0.
If you've got a scene, I'd be glad to test it and upload the results.
Again, I stress that I don't like benchmarks – "damned lies," usually. Or
just plain benchmarketing. 🙂
John,
I went over and played with one of those things, and now I understand why
you wrote the conversion utility. That modeler is terrible, but the
machine has a lot of things to be said for it, and truly has some uses.
Roger D.
I agree, I've never been a big fan of Modeler, the modeler part of
LightWave. My brain doesn't work that way. For the life of me, I can
never remember how to do the simplest things in it, like making a polygon.
🙂
I'm a big fan of the ten-minute rule: If I can't get a program to do
something useful within ten minutes without the manual, there are interface
problems. I think program designers should spend half their time thinking
about the user interface, nowhere near the keyboard. I'm fortunate to have
been part of the six-person team who developed the illustration program now
known as Harvard Draw for Windows from Software Publishing Corporation.
The project restored my belief in these thoughts. It's gotten rave reviews
for ease of use. We wrote a manual before we wrote the program. (Not
"the" manual, as it turned out, but "a" manual.)
I'm dying to talk with 3D Studio users who are using my 3DS-to-LightWave
translation software. That's why I've added the ASOFT forum to my daily
run through Compuserve.
Well…in fairness to LW, I like the modeler a lot … applying a
ten minute limit to learning a program doesn't seem fair to me. The manual
for the 1.0 modeler wasn't the best thing, (and I wrote the 2.0 tutorials
for the new manual, so I'm not that 'objective' on 'em.) but look at the
results…
Allen Hastings and Todd Rundgren and Ron Thornton have done some
great models – in modeler…
Actually, Todd had to hire Jamie Clay to build models with 3D Studio for
his last Lightwave project. That's how JohnF came to write the
3DS->Lightwave converter.
– G
Some of the models for Theology were done with 3DS, and some were
created with Amiga program called Imagine…the majority of models were
created in LightWave's Modeler, however…
LW's modeler is very powerful, and can create complex objects (like
the spaceships on NewTek's free demo video tape) very easily…the key with
any Modeler, I suppose, is using tools that you're comfortable with.
Thousands of LW owners use it's modeler…
I'll give it another shot with the new manual. Have you worked with 3D
Studio, Lee?
I don't use anything but LW – mainly because I don't have time to
devote to another learning the conventions of another program with
everything else I do…
I really do LW modeler is vastly underated – it's pretty darn easy
to use, too. I really like the layers features, for instance…and the new
twist and bend tools are pretty awesome as well.
Lee, Being a developer and user, I would agree with J. Foust. With some
exceptions, I think that if I can't get the program to do something
"meaningful" WITHOUT reading the manual FIRST *or* I can't find something
cognizant in the manual…the software will probably gather dust in the
corner.
Yes, I do apply the same test to my own software by giving it to a neophyte
(usually in sales <g>). if they can't get a general idea of what it
does…it needs work
Greg Moore Software Development Engineer SPEA, Inc
Roger, you obviously didn't use any shadows in that comparison. Try
turning them on and seeing what happens. You'll be flabbergasted.
– G
Gary,
They weren't real clear how they produced that image in the article. I
just tried to reproduce it as best I could. There was a lot of disparity
in the four programs they talked about.
Did you see the murder trial on CNN where 3D Studio was used and quite
prominently mentioned in the news spot today? You can't buy that kind of
advertising.
Roger D.
Yeah, the press is usually pretty vague. You should see how naive most of
these general-interest magazine journalists are! (but that's another
story)
I just missed seeing our stuff mentioned on CNN today. I recorded the
"World News Tonight" segment from 3:00-3:45, and the piece about us came on
at 3:50. Ack. However, it'll be on again in the "Science & Tech Week"
report this Saturday morning.
I heard that it was a very positive piece. Glad you saw it! You're
right… you sure can't buy publicity like that. The UPI wire picked it up
this weekend, and it looks like AP will be picking it up next week. This
sure ain't the last you'll hear about Alec and 3DS.
– G
How did you find out that your stuff would be on "Science & Tech Week"? I
did a crash animation job for use on NASA Select's "Today in Space" during
the last shuttle mission and was told by somebody that they saw it on CNN.
Nobody that **I** knew ever heard that it was going to be on.
My stuff was simple (bordering on crude, actually) 2D animation done in Ani
Pro over a long weekend. They lengthened one of the scenes and ended up
making it look real jumpy, but the others were OK. I'm not ashamed of it
but I **do** look at it and think about what I could have done with more
notice (And more information! They didn't tell me how long the animations
had to run, so I had to guess).
Chris
The journalist from CNN (Bob Knapp, I think was his name) told Alec that
the piece about 3DS would run about a half-dozen times on Tuesday and then
again on Science & Tech Week this Saturday morning.
It sounds like you're doing some interesting stuff!
– G
Must be nice. The NASA Select people in Huntsville might have known about
it being shown on CNN (if it really was) but all **I** heard about was the
"Today in Space" show.
About half of the time that I spent on the animation was in figuring how to
make things work right. I had all four short sequences down as "rough
drafts" after the first day (about 6 hours of work). The rest of the time
was spent fixing problems and including suggestions from the people that
looked at the rough work. I got bit once by doing the preliminary work at
home. I ended up with a nice looking animation that had thin horizontal
lines that flickered like mad when I saw them on the VGA Producer at work.
I **did** get to do something that I've always wanted to do because of this
project. I was getting calls from a place that wanted to sell me some home
improvements. I wanted to talk to them, but they were getting kind of
obnoxious, so we (truthfully!) told them that "I have a rush project at
work and won't be able to meet with them until after the next Space Shuttle
mission." They just about hurt themselves trying to promise that they
wouldn't call for a couple of weeks. I just wish that I could use that line
more often…
Chris
Gary, I say the news clip which mentioned 3ds. I think Bigger congrats go
to the Yost Group because Beauty & the Beast was the 1st EVER animated film
to be nominated for an Oscar (academy award ?)
Greg < "I'd rather fight then switch"> Moore SPEA, Inc.
They used 3D Studio in "Beauty and the Beast"? Obviously, some of it was
augmented by computer generated animation… did they really use a PC?
John, I think Greg was kidding. The 3D stuff in BATB was done on a
combination of Alias and custom Disney software.
– G
Well, as far as I know 3ds only runs on a PC. <gd&r> I didn't mean to imply
that the entire movie was created by 3ds <NOW there is a concept> just the
Ballroom scenes.
Greg Moore SPEA, Inc
Really? I heard they were going to port to the … never mind. 🙂 Yes,
the ballroom scenes were certainly computer-augmented. Gary Yost said they
probably used Alias, not 3D Studio.
Check out the December Issue of Computer Graphics World mag. It has the
complete low down on the Ballroom scene.
-MM