millerjv@lishakill.crd.ge.com (Jim V Miller) (07/24/90)
#1 I am looking for a program that will render BYU files. Anything along the lines of Sculpt or Turbo Silver will do fine. Actually I would prefer that the BYU reader does not adhere strictly to the BYU file format. Typically the number of objects, vertices, faces, edges, and edge list are held in a field of 5 in the text file. This unfortunately limits the number of vertices to 9999 (in the edge list the last vertex for a face is preceded by a "-", thus eating up a valuable place holder.) The program I wrote to generate these files can use as many vertices as it see fit (my current record is 72000 edges). What I would really like to do is to be able to load up a series of BYU files as an animation (I have an object that deforms itself). It would also be terribly useful if I rotate the objects as part of an animation script. A final nicety would be to place a scalar value at each vertex which will be used as a color code. (I use this option to show curvature at each vertex as the object deforms). Gouraud shading preferred, flat shading acceptable, wireframe only if it back-clips. Are there any systems that fits these needs, any that come close? I could change the format of the objects to something other than BYU, but I would need a complete discription of the format. #2 A friend mine will be purchasing a Mac system to do some freelance animations for Disney etc. He has been told from inside Disney that they would prefer Mac and Renderman as the tools used to generate the animations. Plus he wants to use Renderman to be portable across several platforms. Someone once told me that an implementation of Renderman was developed for the Amiga far before a Mac version. Is this true? How does one go about getting it? His basic requirements are: Generate the objects and their paths (kinematics, dynamics) off line. Generate a wireframe animation to debug the paths. Generate a 24 bit production quality animation. Can these needs be meet by an Amiga? Personally, I am interested in any Commodore supported 24 bit boards and a Renderman implementation. I would hate to see my friend spend $10,000 (educational discount) for an over-priced Mac system. I have already suggested a low-end Sparc or HP system, but he would have to add an external disk for either of these setups and learn alot about maintaining a UNIX system. (By the by, another reason he wants a Mac system is because someone is developing an i860 accelerator board). -- Jimmy Miller General Electric Corporate Research and Developement: millerjv@crd.ge.com Rensselaer Design Research Center (RPI): jvmiller@rdrc.rpi.edu "All I need is room to play."