baer@qiclab.uucp (Ken Baer) (12/16/90)
In article <1990Dec14.180817.5224@wam.umd.edu> walrus@wam.umd.edu (Udo K Schuermann) writes: >>Definately check out JourneyMan, it is the only 3D >>package to use spline surface objects for fantastic organic animation >>control. > >Could you elaborate on this? I won't have a chance to check out >JourneyMan until perhaps early next year. What are "spline surface >objects" and what is "organic animation control"? We call this 'Patch based modeling.' This means 3D objects are created with curved surfaces, and not polygons, though a patch can be flat and have sharp edges, so mechanical objects can also be modeled. The Journeyman interfaces use a special kind of spline curve that has control points on the curve (unlike B-splines), with tension and bias control. What does this mean, it means that complex objects (with organic curves) like faces and muscle-bound chests etc. are much easier to make. And since they are made out of true curves, closeup shots don't reveal unsightly polygon edges. :-) It also means that objects take up much less disk space, and memory. For motion control, there are two level, relative and absolute motion. Relative motion is for character motions like walks, jumps and is handled by the Action module. It does 3 kinds of motion, skeletal actions, muscle morphs, and spine morphs (which can be combined). And, in Version 1.1 (which is now shipping), are controlled by channels (time graphs) and not keyframes. In plain English, this means that you can bend, twist, and morph with very smooth and natural motion control. For absolute motion, the Direction module is used to set up the final animation. It uses spline based paths, also with channel control (instead of keyframes). In short, Journeyman goes beyond what you can do with simple keyframed animation. > ._. Udo Schuermann "How is American beer similar to making love in > ( ) walrus@wam.umd.edu a canoe?" -- "Both are f***ing close to water." -- // -Ken Baer. Programmer/Animator, Hash Enterprises / Earthling \X/ Usenet: baer@qiclab.UUCP or PLink: KEN BAER "What?!? Sore again?" -- Bugs Bunny to Yosemity Sam
greer@fmeed1.UUCP (Mike Greer) (12/19/90)
You state that Journeyman is the only spline based Amiga 3D package. This is not true. The new release of Caligari also uses splines. Granted, there is a quantum leap in price from Journeyman ($500 ?) to Caligari (>$2500), but we mustbe accurate. Since you are obviously familar with Journeyman, tell me about it's interface, it's ease of object creation, it's ablity to import objects created else where, it's rendering scheme(s) (ray tracing, phong shading, etc.) I basically know nothing about Journeyman. It sounds very interesting. Is the format in which the objects and scenes are saved documented by Hash? In other words, if I have polygonal objects and want to convert them to spline based objects, a) will Journeyman do this? b)does Hash provide a utility program that does this? c) does Hash provide the format the data must be stored in if I wanted to write my own converter? Lastly, what exactly is the price? And it is my understanding that Journeyman can only be ordered directly from Hash. Is this correct? Mike G.
bobl@pro-graphics.cts.com (Bob Lindabury, SysAdmin) (12/20/90)
In-Reply-To: message from baer@qiclab.uucp
Ken,
What about a demo version of Journeyman? Most of us are VERY interested in
your product but we don't want to plunk down $500 of hard earned cash on a
product we've never seen and can't get a demo on. In fact, we haven't even
seen a single animation or rendered image from your product. I'm sure there
must be SOMETHING around now that you guys are at version 1.1.
We will seriously consider Journeyman and even recommend it if we can get some
paper literature, demo of the software and sample images/animations. BTW, do
you have a dealer program?
-- Bob
______ Pro-Graphics BBS "It's better than a sharp stick in the eye!" ________
UUCP: crash!pro-graphics!bobl | Pro-Graphics: 908/469-0049
ARPA/DDN: pro-graphics!bobl@nosc.mil | America Online: Graphics3d
Internet: bobl@pro-graphics.cts.com | CompuServe: RIP
_________ ___________
Raven Enterprises 25 Raven Avenue Piscataway, NJ 08854 seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) (12/20/90)
In-Reply-To: message from baer@qiclab.uucp Interested parties should be watching for my review of ANIMATION:Journeyman v1.1 shortly. I hope to have it done by Monday evening. I've had my copy since last Friday (now Wed.), and all I'll say right now is that it's nothing short of fantastic. Sorry to leave you hanging like this, but I want to do the package justice (as best I can :) Sean >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> .SIG v2.5 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< UUCP: ...!crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc RealWorld: Sean Cunningham ARPA: !crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc@nosc.mil Voice: (512) 992-2810 INET: seanc@pro-party.cts.com ____________________________________ // | * All opinions expressed herein | HELP KEEP THE COMPETITION UNDER \X/ | Copyright 1990 VISION GRAPHICS | >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
mark@calvin..westford.ccur.com (Mark Thompson) (12/21/90)
In article <6420@crash.cts.com> bobl@pro-graphics.cts.com (Bob Lindabury, SysAdmin) writes: >In-Reply-To: message from baer@qiclab.uucp >Ken, >What about a demo version of Journeyman? Most of us are VERY interested in >your product but we don't want to plunk down $500 of hard earned cash on a >product we've never seen and can't get a demo on. I couldn't agree more! Well I just got off the phone with someone at Hash Enterprises so here is the latest I know about Journeyman. It has already been discussed that Jman uses spline patches rather than polygons. But the latest version directly renders these patches rather than internally converting to polygons. This allows for scene complexity not achieveable with any other 3D package as well as eliminating the rough silohette produced by polygonally interpolated surfaces. Scenes that would require 300,000 polygons are easily handled by Jman without the normally associated memory burden. Also, as Ken Baer mentioned, the animation capabilities have been greatly expanded. In the rendering realm, both scanline and ray-tracing are possible. Surface textures that are available include wave, fractal noise, algorithmic (bricks, check, etc), bump, and image mapping. You can also add specular reflection, shadows, and transparency. These are all available regardless of rendering mode. When ray-tracing, you add true reflections, crisper shadow generation, hairy surfaces, transparency mapping, and other features. I don't know why you can't do transparency mapping in scanline mode, but the hairy surfaces sounds great. A demo disk is supposedly in the making but not yet available and there is still no printed literature. I was told that if you have access to P-LINK they have many demo images and animations as well as a product description. Would someone like to grab these and either post them or upload them to an ftp site? The program costs $500 and it is still only available through Hash Enterprises (rather annoying). Hash can be reached at (206) 573-9427 +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Mark Thompson | | mark@westford.ccur.com | | ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark Designing high performance graphics | | (508)392-2480 engines today for a better tomorrow. | +------------------------------------------------------------------------- +
baer@qiclab.uucp (Ken Baer) (12/22/90)
In article <6420@crash.cts.com> bobl@pro-graphics.cts.com (Bob Lindabury, SysAdmin) writes: >In-Reply-To: message from baer@qiclab.uucp > >Ken, > >What about a demo version of Journeyman? Most of us are VERY interested in >your product but we don't want to plunk down $500 of hard earned cash on a >product we've never seen and can't get a demo on. Yes, we're still planning a demo version, probably of the Direction module with built in objects. We just finished V1.1 last week, which was consuming 100% of our time. I agree, a demo version is important, but making the program rock solid is more important (and it is now). There are however some Journeyman users on the net who could tell you about it, Sean Cunningham is one of them. > In fact, we haven't even >seen a single animation or rendered image from your product. I'm sure there >must be SOMETHING around now that you guys are at version 1.1. Most of the stuff we've done is related to the film we're doing, and won't be released until the project is done. The rendering has improved dramaticly with V1.1, and since it's only been out for a week, there aren't many ANIMs from it in circulation. However, there should be soon. And we should start seeing some JMan animation from CalArts soon, since they are planning to teach a course with it. >We will seriously consider Journeyman and even recommend it if we can get some >paper literature, demo of the software and sample images/animations. BTW, do >you have a dealer program? We only sell direct. The only dealers we would consider for Journeyman are dedicated video solutions dealers. We personalize the software for every customer, if we went through dealers we would have to use key disk copy protection (and we really don't want to do that). It works best when we can deal direct with customers. >-- Bob > UUCP: crash!pro-graphics!bobl | Pro-Graphics: 908/469-0049 -- // -Ken Baer. Programmer/Animator, Hash Enterprises / Earthling \X/ Usenet: baer@qiclab.UUCP or PLink: KEN BAER "What?!? Sore again?" -- Bugs Bunny to Yosemity Sam
jet@karazm.math.uh.edu (J. Eric Townsend) (12/22/90)
In article <1990Dec21.183353.13714@qiclab.uucp> baer@qiclab.uucp (Ken Baer) writes: >And we should start seeing some JMan animation from CalArts soon, since >they are planning to teach a course with it. Great. CalArts is about *the* school for animation... >We personalize the software for >every customer, What does this mean in reality? (Here's a chance for free publicity on the net. :-) I have a Polaroid Palette and a Mimetics FrameBuffer/Grabber for video/hardcopy output. Would I get a copy of Journeyman that would write directly to my framebuffer? I'm kinda pissed since newer products are magically bound to the framebuffer their owning company makes. Impulse only generates IFF and Firecracker images, for example. Mimetics claims that Sculpt supports their product, but SA4D Jr. certainly doesn't, and I can't get S3D (ver 1.0d?) to do anything with it either. (If I'm doing something wrong, somebody please tell me.) I'd be almost willing to cough up $500 based on a quickie demo at SIGGRAPH and a promise of Mimetics support. One more question -- how free are you with the description of the object format? I'm trying to decide what format to finalize my raytracer on (I use NFF currently, quick and dirty :-). S3D formats don't seem to support parametrics or beziers, what about Journeyman? Again, this message is based soley on my experiences. If anybody thinks I'm saying something wrong, feel free to correct me. -- J. Eric Townsend Internet: jet@uh.edu Bitnet: jet@UHOU Systems Mangler - UH Dept. of Mathematics - (713) 749-2120 "If you are the system administrator and this is the first time you are logging into your system, use the login name root." -- IBM RS/6000 docs
baer@qiclab.uucp (Ken Baer) (12/23/90)
In article <1990Dec22.035100.12065@lavaca.uh.edu> jet@karazm.math.uh.edu (J. Eric Townsend) writes: >In article <1990Dec21.183353.13714@qiclab.uucp> baer@qiclab.uucp (Ken Baer) writes: >>And we should start seeing some JMan animation from CalArts soon, since >>they are planning to teach a course with it. > >Great. CalArts is about *the* school for animation... You know it! This has even greater significance, since most of the animation studios in Hollywood (and elsewhere) are grabbing animators from CalArts these days. They aren't just going to Disney now. Having the feedback from a productive group of talented animators like this means great things for the future incarnations of Journeyman. > >>We personalize the software for >>every customer, > >What does this mean in reality? When one of our programs has been personalized, it means that a window with the user's name and address comes up before the program starts. The program is then copyable to any device etc. It frees all of us from the confines of key disk copy protection. It's one of the reasons we sell Journeyman directly. > (Here's a chance for free publicity >on the net. :-) I have a Polaroid Palette and a Mimetics FrameBuffer/Grabber >for video/hardcopy output. Would I get a copy of Journeyman that would >write directly to my framebuffer?] We save in IFF24 now, which currently seems to be the best way to support everything that's out there (TAD from ASDG should be able to convert to the older buffers that don't do IFF24). > I'm kinda pissed since newer products >are magically bound to the framebuffer their owning company makes. It's hard to know what to support. The 24bit hardware market on the Amiga is so chaotic and there just isn't time to support everything. At this point we would prefer to support the Toaster, since it's what we have, and it has the best NTSC output of all the buffers. But, so far, NewTek hasn't provided anything to developers to deal with the hardware directly. Their approach seems to be to wait till they provide developers with functions that access all of the Toaster's features, rather than provide some lower level support (like writing to the buffer) now, and the fancy stuff later. >Impulse only generates IFF and Firecracker images, for example. Currently, Imagine doesn't support the Firecracker (suprisingly). I'm sure they'll add it though. > I'd be almost >willing to cough up $500 based on a quickie demo at SIGGRAPH and a >promise of Mimetics support. The first version of Journeyman did support the RGB file format that Sculpt4D uses. But IFF24 seems to be generally accepted as the standard now, and it compresses much smaller, and we got 5 calls a day asking for it. My suggestion would be to check out TAD from ASDG. Then you'd get the best of both. > >One more question -- how free are you with the description of the >object format? I'm trying to decide what format to finalize my raytracer >on (I use NFF currently, quick and dirty :-). S3D formats don't seem >to support parametrics or beziers, what about Journeyman? The Journeyman object format wouldn't be much good for you unless your ray tracer is patch based (as opposed to polygon based). We convert our object to bezier patches at rendertime. Before that, they are made up of 3D splines, which are our own mutation of the Catmul-Rom splines. Our spline is worth some major money, so I don't think we're going to give our format away for now. It's such a different animal than polygonal objects that it's not really compatable with them. >J. Eric Townsend Internet: jet@uh.edu Bitnet: jet@UHOU >Systems Mangler - UH Dept. of Mathematics - (713) 749-2120 -- // -Ken Baer. Programmer/Animator, Hash Enterprises / Earthling \X/ Usenet: baer@qiclab.UUCP or PLink: KEN BAER "What?!? Sore again?" -- Bugs Bunny to Yosemity Sam
baer@qiclab.uucp (Ken Baer) (12/23/90)
In article <9069@fmeed1.UUCP> greer@fmeed1.UUCP (Mike Greer) writes: > >You state that Journeyman is the only spline based Amiga 3D package. This is >not true. The new release of Caligari also uses splines. Caligari is NOT patch based modeling. The subructure is polygons. I am not familiar with any spline features in Caligari, but I would assume it's one of two things. Either they have some spline path creation (all they had were text scripts for animation the last time I looked), or they have some spline curve options in their modeler, which are then converted to polygons when they save (many CAD programs do this). > Granted, there is a >quantum leap in price from Journeyman ($500 ?) to Caligari (>$2500), but we mustbe accurate. Since you are obviously familar with Journeyman, tell me about >it's interface, it's ease of object creation, it's ablity to import objects >created else where, it's rendering scheme(s) (ray tracing, phong shading, etc.) Journeyman uses an interface designed for an artist to create 3D organic and mechanical objects and characters for animation. Building objects out of 3D splines hardly compares to building them out of polygons, it's a different world. And since it renders real patches, a curve stays a curve no matter how close you get the camera to it. I started writing the code to import Sculpt4D objects into Journeyman, but there's a fundamental problem doing that. Complex objects are best served using true patches, not polygons (unless that object has NO curves). You would end up with an object where 8 out of 10 control points were unnecessary, which would slow down all of the interfaces, and especially the rendering. As hard as it is for people who spent 3 weeks making one object out of polygons hate to hear this, it's easier to start over, and whip out a new patch based object in a couple of hours. >I basically know nothing about Journeyman. It sounds very interesting. Is the >format in which the objects and scenes are saved documented by Hash? In other >words, if I have polygonal objects and want to convert them to spline based >objects, a) will Journeyman do this? b)does Hash provide a utility program >that does this? c) does Hash provide the format the data must be stored in if I >wanted to write my own converter? You could call and ask Martin about it, but as I stated above, it's not as useful as it seems. Polygons and patches are 2 different beasts. > Lastly, what exactly is the price? And it is >my understanding that Journeyman can only be ordered directly from Hash. Is >this correct? Animation:Journeyman is $500, and is only available direct from us. But, you get a copy with your name and address imbedded in the program, instead of key disk copy protection. Journeyman also requires either an A2500 or an A3000 with 3Meg minimum. It comes with a full featured patch based modeler, medium featured paint program, relative motion editor (Action) which supports armature motion, muscle motion, and spine motion (these last 2 would be REAL hard with polygons!), armature modeler (Character) with algorithmic texture interface, absolute animation editor (Direction) with channel based motion and lighting attributes (animation can be ptted over time rather than key framed), and finally a ray tracer and a z-buffer renderer. Look for a Usenet review from Sean Cunningham in the near future, I hope he can give you more detail. > >Mike G. > -- // -Ken Baer. Programmer/Animator, Hash Enterprises / Earthling \X/ Usenet: baer@qiclab.UUCP or PLink: KEN BAER "What?!? Sore again?" -- Bugs Bunny to Yosemity Sam
bobl@pro-graphics.cts.com (Bob Lindabury, SysAdmin) (12/23/90)
In-Reply-To: message from mark@calvin..westford.ccur.com
Well, that article was quite informative Mark. Thanks. Now that I just
purchased Imagine, I'm drooling for Journeyman...ah, the trials and
tribulations of 3D. <grin>
The biggest problem I'm having now is that I constantly run out of memory when
trying to slice my extruded continents object in Imagine. I have 5 megs and I
don't load anything but Imagine and it still chokes on it..ARGH! Jman sounds
like the ticket if you don't want to go to the poorhouse purchasing RAM.
One thing you don't find out about products such as Imagine are the memory
constraints until AFTER you purchase it and try doing a real project. I
thought it would be a simple matter to take a flat hi-res dpaintIII image of
the continents, convert it to an ILBM, extrude it and face it with Imagine. I
find that 5 megs of memory doesn't cut it however. If and when I ever get
faces on my object, I will then conform it to a sphere, add a blue sphere
inside of the continents and spin the sucker! Of course my project involves
quite a bit more than that. I am somewhat stuck at this point until I can
beg, borrow or steal another couple of megs. I suppose I can just fill up my
8-up with 1-meg simms and go but it seems odd that I can't do the above with 5
megs of memory.
I also wonder why more developers do not have connections to the Internet. I
don't see that it is very difficult to do at all. The developers have all
the required equipment if they can be online with such services as Plink or
C$erve. I hate having to subscribe to every $$$ service in the world to get
to talk to developers. The latest craze seems to be PLINK. Now this may be a
great service but that means I have to join another one and pay more $$$.
Why can't these developers setup a single machine with AmigaUUCP and get on
the net? It baffles me. If Plink at least supported a gateway as C$erve
does, then we could at least exchange mail with some of these developers.
Kudos to Ken Baer who seems to keep up with the talk here and Allan Hastings
who occaisionally makes an appearance. How about you guys talking to some of
the others to get setup on the net so that we may all pass information, tips
and ideas with a free flow (Yeah, I pay for my connection, dearly!).
-- Bob
______ Pro-Graphics BBS "It's better than a sharp stick in the eye!" ________
UUCP: crash!pro-graphics!bobl | Pro-Graphics: 908/469-0049
ARPA/DDN: pro-graphics!bobl@nosc.mil | America Online: Graphics3d
Internet: bobl@pro-graphics.cts.com | CompuServe: RIP
_________ ___________
Raven Enterprises 25 Raven Avenue Piscataway, NJ 08854 menzies@CAM.ORG (Stephen Menzies) (12/25/90)
bobl@pro-graphics.cts.com (Bob Lindabury, SysAdmin) writes: >In-Reply-To: message from mark@calvin..westford.ccur.com >One thing you don't find out about products such as Imagine are the memory >constraints until AFTER you purchase it and try doing a real project. I >thought it would be a simple matter to take a flat hi-res dpaintIII image of >the continents, convert it to an ILBM, extrude it and face it with Imagine. I >find that 5 megs of memory doesn't cut it however. If and when I ever get >faces on my object, I will then conform it to a sphere, add a blue sphere >inside of the continents and spin the sucker! Of course my project involves >quite a bit more than that. I am somewhat stuck at this point until I can >beg, borrow or steal another couple of megs. I suppose I can just fill up my >8-up with 1-meg simms and go but it seems odd that I can't do the above with 5 >megs of memory. When does the problem arise? When you're converting or when you use the boolean function? I would assume it's when you use the booleans. 5megs isn't alot and until you can beg borrow or steal more, why not start with a lower resolution DPIII pic? I remember speaking to Mike Halvorson some time back. I was begging for more powerful features similar to these and he expressed concern at that time that most users wouldn't be able to use them as they didn't have loads of ram and fpu's.(at that time I, myself, only had 3megs and no fpu). But times have changed. Loads of ram, 030's and fpu's are becoming the norm. If you want to work with the more powerful features you really, really need ram. cya -steve >-- Bob >______ Pro-Graphics BBS "It's better than a sharp stick in the eye!" ________ > UUCP: crash!pro-graphics!bobl | Pro-Graphics: 908/469-0049 >ARPA/DDN: pro-graphics!bobl@nosc.mil | America Online: Graphics3d >Internet: bobl@pro-graphics.cts.com | CompuServe: RIP >_________ ___________ > Raven Enterprises 25 Raven Avenue Piscataway, NJ 08854 -- Stephen Menzies Email: S.Menzies@CAM.ORG
plouff@kali.enet.dec.com (Wes Plouff) (12/25/90)
In article <1990Dec21.183353.13714@qiclab.uucp>, baer@qiclab.uucp (Ken Baer) writes... >We personalize the software for >every customer, if we went through dealers we would have to use key disk >copy protection (and we really don't want to do that). > Sigh... With all due respect to Ken Baer's talent, it's sad to see yet another piece of excellent software sold with the assumption that customers are willing to pay good money to be treated with suspicion and distrust. Best wishes as daylight waxes, Wes Plouff plouff%kali.enet.dec@decwrl.dec.com
seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) (12/25/90)
In-Reply-To: message from greer@fmeed1.UUCP Does Caligari support splines for objects, or motion files like most other packages? The data sent to me by Octree doesn't jive with this, but they might have added this since I inquired (about 4-5 months ago), but their most recent advertisements didn't speak of anything new. The rest of your questions would probubly be best answered by Ken Baer. I'm pretty sure Hash would cooperate with anyone writing JMan supporting code. And I don't see why a utility couldn't be written to turn a vector/polygon based object from another package into PEAKED (straight and flat-faced) Jman segments. But I'm no programmer :) Sean PS> I got behind gearing up for Christmas this week, but I hope to have a JMan article for the net written soon. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> .SIG v2.5 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< UUCP: ...!crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc RealWorld: Sean Cunningham ARPA: !crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc@nosc.mil Voice: (512) 992-2810 INET: seanc@pro-party.cts.com ____________________________________ // | * All opinions expressed herein | HELP KEEP THE COMPETITION UNDER \X/ | Copyright 1990 VISION GRAPHICS | >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
jamiep@NCoast.ORG (Jamie Purdon) (12/26/90)
> > I'm kinda pissed since newer products > >are magically bound to the framebuffer their owning company makes. > > It's hard to know what to support. The 24bit hardware market on the > Amiga is so chaotic and there just isn't time to support everything. > At this point we would prefer to support the Toaster, since it's what > we have, and it has the best NTSC output of all the buffers. But, so > far, NewTek hasn't provided anything to developers to deal with the > hardware directly. Their approach seems to be to wait till they > provide developers with functions that access all of the Toaster's > features, rather than provide some lower level support (like writing > to the buffer) now, and the fancy stuff later. "Writing to a buffer" is available, now, to every Toaster owner. ARexx lets you access the hardware through ToasterPaint. ToasterPaint (software, which is bundled with the Toaster,) can be very easily used for Toaster rendering, through it's ARexx interface. ToasterPaint lets you use ARexx (or just a DOS script) to write to the Toaster's framebuffers. This interface is handled by low-level code that executes very quickly. The "Dlvb" ToasterPaint/ARexx command (action code) puts an entire scan line of pixels into ToasterPaint's rgb buffers. Another command renders the (changed lines in the) rgb buffers "out" to a Toaster framebuffer. The ToasterPaint/Arexx interface is an extended version of the DigiPaint3.0/Arexx interface. The "Dlvb" action code functions identically in both programs. You can use DigiPaint3.0 to test ToasterPaint/Arexx scripts. DigiView software uses this interface to send it's working image into DigiPaint's (ham) buffer. Anybody can make use of both (Toaster) frame buffers in a similar manner. The ToasterPaint/ARexx interface is documented in an appendix to the ToasterPaint section of the Toaster manual. -- Jamie Purdon, Author of DigiPaint1/3.0, ToasterPaint bix: jamiep quote: "Immediate neccessity makes many thing convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions." - Thomas Paine, writing anonymously in "Common Sense", 1776 "If they don't understand English, talk louder." - Common Sense ;-)
baer@qiclab.uucp (Ken Baer) (12/27/90)
In article <1990Dec26.005959.4068@NCoast.ORG> jamiep@NCoast.ORG (Jamie Purdon) writes: || | I'm kinda pissed since newer products || |are magically bound to the framebuffer their owning company makes. || At this point we would prefer to support the Toaster, since it's what || we have, and it has the best NTSC output of all the buffers. But, so || far, NewTek hasn't provided anything to developers to deal with the || hardware directly. Their approach seems to be to wait till they || provide developers with functions that access all of the Toaster's || features, rather than provide some lower level support (like writing || to the buffer) now, and the fancy stuff later. |"Writing to a buffer" is available, now, to every Toaster owner. |ARexx lets you access the hardware through ToasterPaint. | |ToasterPaint (software, which is bundled with the Toaster,) can be |very easily used for Toaster rendering, through it's ARexx interface. Sounds good in theory, but there are major problems with this. The big one is memory! I takes 7Megs just to run ToasterPaint. Add on top of that the memory it takes for a renderer to do it's thing (for us it's 3 to 5 Megs, and it's a LOT more for polygon based systems). I'm sorry, but going through ToasterPaint is not a solution. NewTek needs to provide a more direct path to the hardware if they want any other developers to support the Toaster (which we very much want to do!). >Jamie Purdon, Author of DigiPaint1/3.0, ToasterPaint >bix: jamiep -- // -Ken Baer. Programmer/Animator, Hash Enterprises / Earthling \X/ Usenet: baer@qiclab.UUCP or PLink: KEN BAER "What?!? Sore again?" -- Bugs Bunny to Yosemity Sam
jamiep@NCoast.ORG (Jamie Purdon) (12/30/90)
||"Writing to a buffer" is available, now, to every Toaster owner. ||ARexx lets you access the hardware through ToasterPaint. ||... |Sounds good in theory, but there are major problems with this. The big |one is memory! I takes 7Megs just to run ToasterPaint. Add on top of that |the memory it takes for a renderer to do it's thing (for us it's 3 to 5 Megs, |and it's a LOT more for polygon based systems). ToasterPaint (with Switcher) will run on a machine with about 4.2Megs (not 7Megs) of free memory. This "minimal memory" setup is not the default. You need to ensure that the CG and LIGHTWAVE "slices" are not "loaded", and that you're using the Switcher's "GetSmall" (1 effect) project. Also, you can force ToasterPaint to free up (approx.) an additional 1Meg by sending the "Clsc" Arexx command (action code). This effectively kills the "rgb undo" buffer....which is not used for "scan line rendering" and saving of files. In a "low memory" situation, not many features are available to 'Paint. However, the basic features that an "outside application" (renderer) would use are operable: writing to a framebuffer and saving (both formats, framestore and 24bit rgb iff) files. -- Jamie Purdon, (bix: jamiep) author of DigiPaint, ToasterPaint quote: "Immediate neccessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions." - Thomas Paine, writing anonymously in "Common Sense", 1776 "If they don't understand English, talk louder." - Common Sense ;-)