antunes@astro.psu.edu (Sandy Antunes) (10/17/90)
Hi! Well, I just got my copy of Imagine (yea yea yea!)
Now, I just have an A500 with old agnus and 1 Meg... when I try to
mount my hard drive and run Imagine, it never appears. It seems
to need 840,000K or so minimum to just load.
My question is, is this a bug or a feaature? Does it really need all
that memory, or is it asking for more then it needs, or does it just
need two large contiguous blocks... I'd like to be able to run it when
I have my normal configurations going (memory checker, workbench loaded,
qmouse going...) but that leaves only 760,000K. Is it possible to get
Imagine to work under these conditions?
And a second somewhat related question. Since I have the old 1/2meg
agnus, if I got, say, one of those A501-slot expansion boards with 1.5
or 2 or 3 meg on it, would it help with running Imagine and its animations
or would it be useless because I'd still be limited to 1/2meg Chip Ram?
thanks! sandy
------------
Sandy Antunes "the Waupelani Kid" 'cause that's where I live...
antunes@ASTROD.psu.edu Penn State Astronomy Dept
------------ "que sera c'est la via" -------------n350bq@tamuts.tamu.edu (Duane Fields) (10/18/90)
Will imagine let you use old Turbo scenes, textures, etc.??? -Duane
walrus@wam.umd.edu (Udo K Schuermann) (10/19/90)
In article <9231@helios.TAMU.EDU> n350bq@tamuts.tamu.edu (Duane Fields) writes: >Will imagine let you use old Turbo scenes, textures, etc.??? I got imagine last night (First, second, and third impressions: AWESOME!) imagine will load Turbo Silver objects (I haven't tried scenes). It will NOT be able to use Silver's algorithmic textures (i.e. Wood, Marble, etc) but it supports these -- you'll have to write new ones, or wait for version 1.0 of imagine. I thought that some of you may be interested to find out a bit about the features of imagine, so I'll do some rambling below. Press "n" to skip ._. Udo Schuermann "How is American beer similar to making love in ( ) walrus@cscwam.umd.edu a canoe?" -- "Both are f***ing close to water." Warning: unstructured rambling ahead (I was up all night playing with imagine) Noteworthy improvements over TS: can render up to 8000x8000; specify aspect ratio; save rendered images in a variety of format, including 12bit IFF (HAM etc) and separate R,G,B planes; VERY impressive editing environment; conform objects onto spheres or tubes (think of the TV News program, where the letters orbit around the Earth), up to four brushes and four textures per object (no more limit of 8 per scene!). Brushes can serve to map elevation, color, filter, and (oh, what was the forth? :-( I forgot). The stage editor where a scene is put together will let you "morph" one object into another, and do all the things (and more) that Silver's story commands would do. This list goes on ... The version shipping right now is 0.9 -- those who got 0.9 will get 1.0 free. A number of advanced features are still missing from 0.9, but 1.0 should be shipping within a few weeks. The reference manual is an improvement over the TS manual, and it even points out unexpected results that some combina- tions of effects can have. A full tutorial will ship with 1.0 imagine makes Turbo Silver look downright primitive, and TS wasn't really all that bad. The executable is fairly close to 500K, so you'll need at least 1 Meg to run this beast, if not more. Disclaimer: I have no association with Impulse Inc. except as a happy user of Turbo Silver SV and a totally thrilled new user of imagine (does it show?) Three cheers for imagine! -Udo
bobl@pro-graphics.cts.com (System Administrator) (10/20/90)
In-Reply-To: message from antunes@astro.psu.edu > Hi! Well, I just got my copy of Imagine (yea yea yea!) > Now, I just have an A500 with old agnus and 1 Meg... when I try to > mount my hard drive and run Imagine, it never appears. It seems > to need 840,000K or so minimum to just load. > My question is, is this a bug or a feaature? Does it really need all > that memory, or is it asking for more then it needs, or does it just > need two large contiguous blocks... I'd like to be able to run it when > I have my normal configurations going (memory checker, workbench loaded, > qmouse going...) but that leaves only 760,000K. Is it possible to get > Imagine to work under these conditions? What do you guys expect. If you are serious about any reasonable animation and especially a good 3D animation program, you are going to have to realize that it takes memory and peripherals to run it. It's a fact of life. Just because you don't have enough memory doesn't mean the program has a bug. I think that everyone that does any work with animation realizes that you should , and in alot of cases MUST have a minimum of 3 meg to work with. I don't care if you are a struggling student or whatever, the requirements do NOT change. It takes memory to run complex, feature laden graphics applications and expecting them to run on a 1 meg machine is just rediculous. And then you expect to be multitasking 3 other programs! I suggest that you and anyone else considering Imagine or another reasonable graphics package do a reality check. You will find that you'd best get some additional hardware. -- 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
bobl@pro-graphics.cts.com (System Administrator) (10/20/90)
In-Reply-To: message from walrus@wam.umd.edu
I've seen alot of talk about the features of Imagine but nothing about the
user interface. Isn't there a new user interface? I found the old TS
interface to be the worst out of all the packages. I hope that has changed.
The Lightwave 3D interface is what I would expect..much like Caligari.
-- 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 walrus@wam.umd.edu (Udo K Schuermann) (10/22/90)
In article <5168@crash.cts.com> bobl@pro-graphics.cts.com (System Administrator) writes: >In-Reply-To: message from walrus@wam.umd.edu > >I've seen alot of talk about the features of Imagine but nothing about the >user interface. Isn't there a new user interface? I found the old TS >interface to be the worst out of all the packages. I hope that has changed. > >The Lightwave 3D interface is what I would expect..much like Caligari. > >-- Bob The program represents 3D space with a Quad View: Four windows, one each for TOP, FRONT, and RIGHT view. The fourth is handled by a sub-task to display a 3D view of your object. Each of these four windows can be expanded to full screen size, to another view, or back to quad view with a single mouse click. The perspective can display in either wireframe or solid (hidden lines removed). The perspective in full-screen can also display in a 16-level gray, flat-shaded view. There is no more World Size. The axes are now large enough for just about any job. Pointer coordinates can be displayed in the title bar. Interlace can be turned on and off at any time. A user-sizable grid can be laid into the 3D space to help placing objects. Existing points (when selected) can be made to snap to their nearest grid locations, or the snapping can be done interactively as points are moved or new ones added. The zoom factor can be entered manually. Objects can be moved, rotated, and scaled interactively at the press of a key. A bounding box (with hidden lines dotted) will represent the object and mouse moves apply the motion, rotation, or scaling changes. Anything can be selected in several ways: Turbo Silver's method is still available; added are: DragBox to select all that fall within this box; and Lasso to drag around points that aren't easily reached through DragBox. Options in requesters that aren't available are ghosted, and sliding gadgets will display the current value as the knob is moved. Textures and Brushes are applied to objects from the Attributes requester. The disassociated and limited brush and texture menus are gone. The limit of 8 textures and 8 brushes per scene is gone (yeah!) Four textures can be applied to any object (and optionally its children). The filename is selected as soon as you press on the [X] Texture boolean, from where you can enter the familiar 16 parameters for the texture, as well as interactively edit or numerically transform the texture axes. Four brushes can be applied to any object. A brush can be used for any of the following four functions: Color Map (just as in TS), Reflect Map (different reflectivity for different portions of the object), Altitude Map (map a contoured surface onto an object), and Filter Map (different filter values for different portions of the object). Wrapping around any combination of the X and Z axes is also available. Brushes can also be applied to all child objects. A magnetism function is one of the neatest things I've seen in a while. Depending how you define the magnet, you can drag long "noses", flat mesas or blobs out of an object, or raise random mountains; all just by grabbing a point and dragging it along, the others follow according to the way you've configured the magnet. The Stage editor is the place where all objects are assembled to play their part in the final animation. The Project and the Stage's Action editor provide the equivalent of the old Turbo Silver "film-strip" except that now it is packed so that up to 50 elements are visible on the screen at any one time. The Action screen produces something that looks not unlike a spread sheet. The columns are Object name and 50 columns of movie frames. The rows are the objects with every object having 6 rows for the Actor (object), Position, Alignment, Size, Hinging (tying by distance to another object) and F/X (algorithmic) special effects such as exploding an object into its parts and sending them off, reeling into deep space. It should be noted that sliders are available to scroll the movie frame columns to display any 50 frames in the animation. The Action editor is used to specify initial positions and changes over time of particular attributes (Position, Alignment, Size, etc). This replaces Turbo Silver's Key-Cell with Stories, and it makes it possible to make an object change size in the first 10 frames, then rotate over 25 frames, then change color while spinning backward and shrink back to original size. Other changes that are possible are morphing one object to another (red sphere changes to a blue cube). I have not gotten to play with the Forms and the Cycle editor. Disclaimer: I am not connected to Impulse Inc. except by virtue of being one of their customers. I provide the information above as a service to the Amiga community. If you have specific questions, please email me. ._. Udo Schuermann "How is American beer similar to making love in ( ) walrus@cscwam.umd.edu a canoe?" -- "Both are f***ing close to water."