milo@ndmath.uucp (Greg Corson) (09/07/86)
I am currently seeking funding for a project who's eventual object is to
produce an artists/photographers computer workstation. The goal of the
project is to create a workstation with the capabilities of color painting,
digitized image editing/retouching and compositing of high resolution images.
Another major goal is to attempt to keep the price down through the use of
stock microcomputers (ie: AT's with frame buffers, Sun workstations or something
similar).
The workstation will allow artists to capture art with a camera/scanner store
it, edit/retouch it and create composite pictures. It will also offer the
capability of freehand drawing/retouching similar to Macpaint or Deluxe Paint.
An existing 3D graphics program may also be ported and made part of the system
so it will be possible to generate shaded, hidden surface objects to be used
as image components or painting guides.
In general the system will allow sophisticated manipulation of both captured
and hand drawn images for eventual output to film or other printing systems.
The system could be used for artwork as well as to create sophisticated
business presentation graphics. The system will have sufficient color
resolution to reproduce photo or TV quality images.
If funding permits, a still-frame video recorder may also become part of the
project, allowing the creation of animation sequences or the editing/
rotoscoping of live action video.
Needed for the project are:
A base computer system (with at least the power of a 80286 or 68000)
A floating point unit (80287 or similar, depending on the computer)
A frame buffer (512x512 with minimum 32000 simutanious colors)
A frame grabber and camera (with resolution equal to the frame buffer)
Digitizer tablet
Color printer or optical slide/printmaker
(optionally) a video recorder capable of still-frame recording
Great pains will be taken to insure the software is as portable as possible
so it can be used on a variety of computer/frame buffer combinations. The
results (software) of this project will be copyrighted and distributed at
no charge to anyone who is interested (unless the sponser(s) wish otherwise).
Of course, the names of all the sponsors will appear on the software, so it
should be good advertising/pr for commercial sponsors.
In addition to the equipment previously mentioned, funding for utilities,
saleries...etc will be required. Sponsors may donate equipment, funding or
both. Sponsers will receive pre-release copies of the software as it is
being written for use as trade-show demos, showing off of their equipment
...etc.
If you are interested in sponsoring this project, donating equipment or
providing support of any kind (or if you know of someone who would be
interested) please contact me at the address/phone below.
Greg Corson
19141 Summers Drive
South Bend, IN 46637
(219) 277-5306 (weekdays till 6:00 pm)
(219) 272-2136 (weekends or after 6:00 pm)
{pur-ee,seismo}!iuvax!kangaro!milo
P.S. I am NOT affiliated with the University of Notre Dame, my postings
to the net just happen to go through there. Please use the net address
listed above when contacting me.jon@msunix.UUCP (09/10/86)
In article <136@ndmath.uucp>, milo@ndmath.uucp (Greg Corson) writes: > I am currently seeking funding for a project who's eventual object is to > produce an artists/photographers computer workstation. The goal of the > project is to create a workstation with the capabilities of color painting, > digitized image editing/retouching and compositing of high resolution images. > Another major goal is to attempt to keep the price down through the use of > stock microcomputers (ie: AT's with frame buffers, Sun workstations or something > similar). An admirable goal. Many companies build such machines already. Genigraphics, Dicomed, Lightspeed, and CGL come to mind, and the company I work for, Via Visuals. Generally, these systems include a video camera to scan in images, and a paint system to mix graphics and text, and allow electronic touchup of scanned in pictures. We and Lightspeed are on 68K UNIX boxes, Geni and Dicomed are on PDP-11/73s running RSX-11, and I believe CGL is on a PC-AT. The items you want to provide are exactly what these companies sell. > The workstation will allow artists to capture art with a camera/scanner store > it, edit/retouch it and create composite pictures. It will also offer the > capability of freehand drawing/retouching similar to Macpaint or Deluxe Paint. ...deleted > In general the system will allow sophisticated manipulation of both captured > and hand drawn images for eventual output to film or other printing systems. > The system could be used for artwork as well as to create sophisticated > business presentation graphics. The system will have sufficient color > resolution to reproduce photo or TV quality images. These systems are typically used for presentation graphics. But you're going to need a *lot* more resolution for output. I think Dicomed and Geni put out 8K by 8K to their film recorders. It's easy for them because they are vector systems. You need a minimum of 2K resolution, anti-aliased for good looking slides. TV requirements are way lower, about 656 x 485 for NTSC encoded RGB. For retouching photos for prepress, you're going to need 1000 dots per inch, or 8500 x 11000 for a full page, or over 240 megabytes for full color, full page picture. And that's a raster system, not a vector system. You may be interested in contacting the companies I mentioned above, to find out what their boxes are capable of doing. Don't expect to get rich selling your box. There are a lot of people out there selling machines, and they've been doing it for a lot of years. If you want to see some intense picture retouching at about 8.5K x 11K, full color, check out a Scitex Response 300 system, made in Israel. About $500K. I don't mean this to be a plug for my company; I know it's against the spirit of the net. I tried to mention our competitors more than ourselves. "If we did it like everyone else, Jonathan Hue what would distinguish us from Via Visuals Inc. every other company in Silicon Valley?" sun!sunncal\ >!leadsv!msunix!jon "A profit?" amdcad!cae780/
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (09/11/86)
> ... But you're going to need a *lot* more resolution for output... > You need a minimum of 2K resolution, anti-aliased > for good looking slides. TV requirements are way lower, about 656 x 485 > for NTSC encoded RGB. For retouching photos for prepress, you're going > to need 1000 dots per inch... It should be mentioned that there is a tradeoff here: better anti-aliasing can give satisfactory results with lower resolution. Many of the people doing movie animation will tell you that, say, 2K resolution is vital. The computer graphics group at Lucasfilm consistently produces high-quality images using only TV resolution, by doing *good* anti-aliasing. Likewise for the people at NYIT. It should be understood that this sort of anti- aliasing is the kind that eats Crays alive, at least when done in bulk. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) (09/12/86)
I'd like to expand a bit on Johnathan's well-made points: In article <265@msunix.UUCP> jon@msunix.UUCP (Jonathan Hue) writes: >In article <136@ndmath.uucp>, milo@ndmath.uucp (Greg Corson) writes: >> I am currently seeking funding for a project who's eventual object is to >> produce an artists/photographers computer workstation. The goal of the >> project is to create a workstation with the capabilities of color painting, >> digitized image editing/retouching and compositing of high resolution images. >> Another major goal is to attempt to keep the price down through the use of >> stock microcomputers (ie: AT's with frame buffers, Sun workstations or something >> similar). > >But you're going >to need a *lot* more resolution for output. I think Dicomed and Geni put >out 8K by 8K to their film recorders. It's easy for them because they are >vector systems. You need a minimum of 2K resolution, anti-aliased >for good looking slides. TV requirements are way lower, about 656 x 485 >for NTSC encoded RGB. For retouching photos for prepress, you're going >to need 1000 dots per inch, or 8500 x 11000 for a full page, or over 240 >megabytes for full color, full page picture. And that's a raster system, >not a vector system. > The original poster is concerned with making the system cheap by using stock microcomputers. That *isn't* where the cost is. If you're going to be producing high-quality slides, and thus using a high-resolution CRT-based film recorder, the output hardware will cost you anywhere from about $25K (US) for a Matrix QCR, up to well above $100K for a Dicomed or Celco, the fastest and sharpest of the film recorders. If you want to do input at video resolution, you just need a good video camera and a frame grabber. But to work at 2048 or 4096 pixels, about the only thing available is an Eikonix scanner that will cost you at least $30K. > If you want >to see some intense picture retouching at about 8.5K x 11K, full color, >check out a Scitex Response 300 system, made in Israel. About $500K. To get the resolution that you need for doing publishing-type work, and writing onto the large pieces of film used to make printing plates, none of the above-mentioned hardware is good enough. The Scitex system uses a large rotating-drum laser scanner for its output device, and I believe uses another similar mechanism for input. Regardless of what computer hardware is used in the Scitex system, those scanners are going to be a large chunk of the cost. Dave Martindale
jon@msunix.UUCP (Jonathan Hue) (09/15/86)
To further expand on Dave's well-made points... In article <14918@onfcanim.UUCP>, dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) writes: > > If you want to do input at video resolution, you just need a good > video camera and a frame grabber. But to work at 2048 or 4096 pixels, > about the only thing available is an Eikonix scanner that will cost you > at least $30K. Someone is selling a video camera that does 2600 x 2048 for about $30K also, if you need a camera instead of a scanner. I can't recall the company's name. I was under the impression the Eikonix scanner was much more expensive. For that price, people wouldn't mind taking a picture of the image they want to scan in, then scan the film on the scanner. Jim Dunn of Dunn Instruments in San Rafael, CA builds an 8K x 8K film recorder also. I have seen some 8 x 10 transparencies from it, and to my untrained eye, it looked pretty good. From talking to Jim Dunn, it sounds like this film recorder is a real screamer. His literature mentions a "proprietary bicubic interpolation scheme" for interpolating any size input up to the full 8K x 8K resolution of the tube. > To get the resolution that you need for doing publishing-type work, and > writing onto the large pieces of film used to make printing plates, > none of the above-mentioned hardware is good enough. The Scitex system > uses a large rotating-drum laser scanner for its output device, and I > believe uses another similar mechanism for input. Regardless of what > computer hardware is used in the Scitex system, those scanners are > going to be a large chunk of the cost. Scitex doesn't build a scanner, so most color separation houses seem to be using Hell scanners from West Germany. The Hell scanners I've seen sort of look like lathes, you put the film in the transparent plastic cylinder and it spins. I'm pretty sure Crosfield builds scanners also. Scitex looks like they're based on HP1000s (A-[69]00s ?). I would guess that the low-end slide making market will be taken over by PC-ATs with TARGA boards, if it hasn't already. Next year's NCGA should tell us if this is happening. If you're going to compete at the high end, you've got to have a hook to position yourself above the PCs, something to distinguish yourself from the low-end. Being able to do friskets (masks) with any object, hardware cylinder wrap (for people designing soda cans), and transparency are a few of the things that seem to distinguish the high-end from the low-end currently. TV resolution slides with *good* anti-aliasing may look as good as 2K x 2K with standard anti-aliasing, but 1) 656 x 486 doesn't look good in your company's brochures, 2) if your output device doesn't interpolate, you've got to output in some fixed size, usually 2K, 4K, or 8K. Unrelated to the discussion of the quality of a TV resolution slide is the amount of resolution required by the graphic artist. Often, the sale of a system comes down to the artist staring through a loupe at a few slides on a light table, intensely examining each one. I don't know of any other field that has an output resolution as high as that required by artists. "If we did it like everyone else, Jonathan Hue what would distinguish us from Via Visuals Inc. every other company in Silicon Valley?" sun!sunncal\ >!leadsv!msunix!jon "A profit?" amdcad!cae780/