cstaqdc@warwick.ac.uk (10/30/90)
I am about to purchase an A5000 accelerator board (68020 + FPU) for my humble A500, and I was wondering which is the best (or best-value-for-money) ray tracing program available. Animation is not really necessary, I am only really interested in stills. I have already tried DBW Render (PD ray tracer) but I it always GURUs out on me (#5 - divide by zero). So I was wondering if anyone could give me any info on PD/commercial software - the cheaper the better (as I am only just starting), but I am willing to be persuaded to splash out a bit !! Thanx in advance. Mark Jackson Remember - Amiga owners do it on the Workbench !!
Frank.Neumann@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de (Frank Neumann) (10/31/90)
Hi there, cstaqdc@warwick.ac.uk writes: >I am about to purchase an A5000 accelerator board (68020 + FPU) for my humble >A500, and I was wondering which is the best (or best-value-for-money) ray >tracing program available. Animation is not really necessary, I am only really >interested in stills. I have already tried DBW Render (PD ray tracer) but I it >always GURUs out on me (#5 - divide by zero). Well, as I think this is a quite common error to a lot of DBW_Render users, here is what I have experienced: When creating attributes that are in some way TRANSPARENT (say transparency 0.2 0 0.1 ; this concerns DBW_Render V2.0, btw), the INDEX value _MUST_ be non-zero! Otherwise the program does a division by zero somewhere else, and Guru's with a #00000005 .. I've seen this a lot before I found out 8-) ...hope this helps (at least partially) >So I was wondering if anyone could give me any info on PD/commercial software >- the cheaper the better (as I am only just starting), but I am willing to be >persuaded to splash out a bit !! The Raytracing package that I can _REALLY_ recommend is DKBTrace - it's PD (or at least Freeware - correct me if I'm wrong, Mr Papa ;-)) It's got quite a bunch of new ideas for Raytracers - like clouds, 'bozo' type textures, 'damaged' surfaces, and lots more... although this goodie requires some RAM... You can ftp DKBTrace from alfred.ccs.carleton.ca (134.117.1.1) as /pub/dkbtrace/DKBAmiga.tar.Z and /pub/dkbtrace/DKBIFFPics.tar [...] >Remember - Amiga owners do it on the Workbench !! Well.. not particularly all - I don't know when I ran loadwb last time - so I'd rather say 'Amiga owners (sometimes) do it without mouse' !?! ;^) So long, Frank -- + Frank Neumann, Hauptstr. 107, 2900 Oldenburg, FRG The Amiga is it. + + Frank.Neumann@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de InHouse: amigo@faramir + + Zerberus: neumann@uniol.zer BitNet:295391@DOLUNI1.BITNET IRC: Franky +