vle@pnet01.cts.com (Vinh Le) (08/27/90)
Has anyone purchased DBW Render 2.1 (raytracer) and its companion World 3D
(scene/object editor)? How is its ease of use? Speed? (relative to Turbo
Silver or Sculpt) Price/performance? Where can one order it? For how much?
Thanks...
Vinh Le
UUCP: {hplabs!hp-sdd ucsd nosc}!crash!pnet01!vle
ARPA: crash!pnet01!vle@nosc.mil
INET: vle@pnet01.cts.comsdl@linus.mitre.org (Steven D. Litvinchouk) (08/28/90)
In article <4142@crash.cts.com> vle@pnet01.cts.com (Vinh Le) writes: > Has anyone purchased DBW Render 2.1 (raytracer) and its companion World 3D > (scene/object editor)? How is its ease of use? Speed? (relative to Turbo > Silver or Sculpt) Price/performance? Where can one order it? > For how much? DBW_Render is a public domain raytracer that has been around for several years. I believe that a version exists somewhere that utilizes floating point coprocessors. It has a lot of nice features, such as superquadrics, solid texturing, IFF image mapping, antialiasing, fractal objects, global haze, photographic depth-of-field, etc. Unfortunately, DBW_Render does not include a scene editor; scenes must be specified with DBW_Render's scripting language. World_3D is a commercial scene editor for DBW_Render. World_3D gives you access to most (but not all) of the DBW_Render features, via an interactive user interface. The user interface is the old-fashioned "tri-view with perspective preview" kind. World_3D does what it is claimed to do, but won't win any prizes for user-friendliness. It has multiple modes, and various commands are only available in certain modes. Each time you click on an object via the mouse, it changes to a different color, and the color determines what operations you can apply to the object (move, delete, etc.) Even though you can define your own attributes and give them descriptive names (e.g. "gold", "chalk", etc.), if you want to assign an attribute to an object you must reference the attribute via its *number*, rather than via its descriptive name. That's a real pain. World_3D also has some rough edges. It doesn't seem to work well with ConMan. If ConMan is in effect when World_3D is started, then some World_3D inputs don't always work (the author told me these inputs use RAW mode). Superquadrics also don't seem to work well; incorrect or out-of-range inputs can crash the program, rather than being rejected by the program with an appropriate error message. Finally, I find that some ILBM picture files generated by DBW_Render cannot be displayed by such viewer programs as ViewILBM and Mostra; they can only be displayed by DBW_Render's own included view program. World_3D costs $65, and was developed by: Synthetic Reality P. O. Box 6066 St. Cloud, MN 56302 612-259-9499 One other annoyance: I bought World_3D from Synthetic Reality, and charged the purchase to a credit card. A month or two later, the credit card bill I received listed a $65 purchase from a clothing store (which I didn't recognize). I finally ascertained that this was the bill for World_3D. The owner of Synthetic Reality didn't have a franking machine to take the imprint for the credit card slip, and so he borrowed his mother's (she runs the clothing store). -- Steven Litvintchouk MITRE Corporation Burlington Road Bedford, MA 01730 (617)271-7753 ARPA: sdl@mbunix.mitre.org UUCP: ...{att,decvax,genrad,ll-xn,philabs,utzoo}!linus!sdl "Where does he get those wonderful toys?" -- J. Napier (a.k.a. "The Joker")
a976@mindlink.UUCP (Ron Tarrant) (08/28/90)
> sdl@linus.mitre.org writes: > > Msg-ID: <SDL.90Aug27205143@d74sun.linus.mitre.org> > Posted: 28 Aug 90 00:51:43 GMT > > Org. : The Mitre Corporation, Bedford, MA > Person: Steven D. Litvinchouk > > > > DBW_Render is a public domain raytracer that has been around for > > I believe the term you are looking for is either "freely-redistributable" or > "shareware". This is not a public domain > program. I've read the copyright notice. > -Ron Tarrant
bradm@pro-grouch.cts.com (Brad Martin) (08/29/90)
In-Reply-To: message from vle@pnet01.cts.com Vinh, DBW Render is PD, so there is no need to purchase it, and I believe that it comes with World 3D. DBW has a really nice rendering engine, the picture quality is VERY good. But, World 3D, IMHO, is very limited. If it had come out 2 years ago I would be jumping for joy. But packages, such as 3D Pro, and the soon to be released Imagine and Hash's Journyman are much better, and much more powerful. .>Brad Martin<. Cute tag lines on request.