jimm@amiga.UUCP (Jim Mackraz) (08/01/89)
There are some things I've been thinking about for 3D applications.
I don't own any 3D tools, and wonder which would be most applicable.
I also wonder how the low-end 3D we have so well developed is
playing a big role in new application areas. Seems it should.
Application 1: Low-end architectural walk-throughs.
I'm sure you can do this, and I suspect that there is a market out
for affordable low-end tools.
Take this scenario: Interior contractor/designer is trying to help
Joe Schmoe decide on some big changes to his kitchen. (I guess that
should be Jim Mschmoe, in this case.) Contractor shows Joe rough
plans, points at the would-be-vaulted ceiling and says things like "Light,"
"Space," "Open," "Unified." Joe, is thinking dollars.
Contractor takes copy of rough plans, on Friday, over to Self-Employed
Amiga Person (or, Seap). Seap takes the plans, fires up his modeller,
opens his "Kitchen" collection of shapes, defines the room shape
with the vaulted ceiling, and then tosses some cupboards around,
fridge, and stove as specified in the plans. A little work on the
windows and walls, ...
Monday, the contractor picks up a video tape (a key point) and shuttles
it over to Joe Schmoe's home, which certainly has a VCR. Tape has
some animated rendering of the kitchen, at different times of day,
with a moving camera. Renderings are rough, since there was only a weekend.
At a few points in the tape the camera freezes, and a ray-trace/texture mapped
still-shot replaces the freeze frame.
Are the tools there? Are the economies there? How much would the
SEAP need to charge for the service, and who pops for it? Does the
contractor do it to be cool and help the client decide? Does the
contractor offer it as an extra-cost service to the curious client?
Is it realistic to hope that the model setup time could be short,
but the rendering and subsequent recording might go on all weekend?
I think that it should be TRIVIAL to lay out most rooms, esp.
living rooms, once a healthy collection of objects is in place.
The SEAP might even strike a deal for a contractor to help subsidize
building a shape/color/texture database for their standard lines
of cabinets, appliances and furniture.
I'd say that a standard, morphable set of chairs/tables/sofas would
be great objects to include with a 3D modeler. Could you design
a table to real physical inches in today's modelers, or is that
too much a CAD thing? I'd like to be able to grab a simple table
and stretch it to precisely the right dimensions, if not the exactly
right style, for playing with furniture layout.
The impact of a video tape would be prominent. A furniture dealer
had somebody make us a sketch of a chair with a particular fabric.
If both fabric and chair shape were in a database (or easy to
generate), why wouldn't it have been just as easy (cheap) to
hand us a video tape of a various views of the chair with several
different fabrics? And for a room with lighting issues, it would
be even more dramatic.
It seems to me that a person could at least pay for a nice 030 Amiga
and a hot-shit VCR doing this stuff on the side.
Application 2: Presentations and Tutorials
Is there a simple business graphics package that can feed the rendering/ray-
tracing tools?
Has anybody ever drawn a picture of an Exec List using a 3D tool? How about
a 3D tutorial animation, such as for, say, a 3D modeler? I saw something
Leo made of a camera moving around an object with a moving light source.
Little coordinate system, etc.
How about simple mathematics tutorials? Anyone ever try to teach a
roomful of students that mixed partials commute? How about what
it means when they do NOT commute? What would you use to draw some
surfaces and tangents, and work up an animation with a moving
camera? Maybe if Doug's Math Aquarium spit out polygons for a rendering
and animation tool. (Yeah, I know, Mathematica.)
What are the applications that Amiga 3D stuff is getting, REAL WORLD,
besides TV, logos, and 3D text? Any of it paying off?
Anyway, I've been wondering about the walk-throughs for a while, and
I just noticed that my little reminder diagram of an Exec list could
use improvements.
jimm
PS: Evaluation copies of 3D tools are most welcome.
--
Jim Mackraz, I and I Computing "... the signs are very ominous,
{cbmvax,well,oliveb}!amiga!jimm and a chill wind blows."
- Justice Blackmun
Opinions are my own. Comments are not to be taken as Commodore official policy.sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) (08/03/89)
In article <4288@amiga.UUCP> jimm@amiga.UUCP (Jim Mackraz) writes: >Application 1: Low-end architectural walk-throughs. > >I'm sure you can do this, and I suspect that there is a market out >for affordable low-end tools. Hmm thanks for the idea ;-) >Are the tools there? Are the economies there? How much would the >SEAP need to charge for the service, and who pops for it? Does the >contractor do it to be cool and help the client decide? Does the >contractor offer it as an extra-cost service to the curious client? >Is it realistic to hope that the model setup time could be short, >but the rendering and subsequent recording might go on all weekend? The hard part is making the objects, and having enough memory to render them all. I do CAD at work all the time. But trying to make these objects on an Amiga is a real pain. We need something like AutoCAD for designing 3D objects. >I'd say that a standard, morphable set of chairs/tables/sofas would >be great objects to include with a 3D modeler. Could you design >a table to real physical inches in today's modelers, or is that >too much a CAD thing? I'd like to be able to grab a simple table >and stretch it to precisely the right dimensions, if not the exactly >right style, for playing with furniture layout. You can do it with a program such as 3Demon, but it is difficult. I use AutoCAD at work to design the objects, then dump them to a .DXF file and convert them to sculpt animate objects with a program called ACAD Translator. It works great. My only problem is that I only have 512K so I can't make complex objects. Once the object is in sculpt-animate you can move them around, stretch them, bend them whatever. Then you can specify a path for motion of objects and camera and output a animation. Again, memory is a major limitation, and so is the processor. A 68020 would be nessesary for any professional work, in order to get it done on time. Getting HAM to work in 640x400 would be a GREAT boost. 320x400 is ok, but a bit hard to see any details. I made a model of my attic that I converted into an office, I put in a desk and chair and played around with it a bit. looked ok. nothing spectacular. > >The impact of a video tape would be prominent. A furniture dealer >had somebody make us a sketch of a chair with a particular fabric. >If both fabric and chair shape were in a database (or easy to >generate), why wouldn't it have been just as easy (cheap) to >hand us a video tape of a various views of the chair with several >different fabrics? And for a room with lighting issues, it would >be even more dramatic. I haven't seen anything other than DBW render that could handle surface mapping such as placing different fabrics on a chair. And DBW render can't do objects such as a chair. Or rather, to do a chair would be so difficult that it wouldn't be worth the trouble. Again, the 320 x 400 HAM resolution is a barrier to this, because you wouldn't get much detail of the fabric at low res. > >It seems to me that a person could at least pay for a nice 030 Amiga >and a hot-shit VCR doing this stuff on the side. at least a 020 amiga. With at least 8 meg and a large hard drive. But to do it correctly you would need it to begin with. Maybe a loan, buy the equipment and HOPE you make enough to pay off the loan. And maybe the AT bridgeboard so you can run Autocad on the same machine, to produce the 3d shapes. But we are talking big bucks now! $3500 for amiga 2500 with hard drive $1300 for At bridge card $2500 for AutoCAD $ 500 for Amiga software -------- $7800 Whew!!! -- John Sparks | {rutgers|uunet}!ukma!corpane!sparks | D.I.S.K. 24hrs 1200bps ||||||||||||||| sparks@corpane.UUCP | 502/968-5401 thru -5406 As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson) (08/07/89)
+---- Jimm Mackraz says: | There are some things I've been thinking about for 3D applications. | I don't own any 3D tools, and wonder which would be most applicable. Interesting ideas here, Jimm. I'll respond, since I know a little about 3D on the Amiga. | Application 1: Low-end architectural walk-throughs. [ ... ] | Take this scenario: Interior contractor/designer is trying to help | Joe Schmoe decide on some big changes to his kitchen. [ ... ] | | Contractor takes copy of rough plans, on Friday, over to Self-Employed | Amiga Person (or, Seap). [ ... ] | Monday, the contractor picks up a video tape (a key point) and shuttles | it over to Joe Schmoe's home, which certainly has a VCR. Tape has | some animated rendering of the kitchen, at different times of day, | with a moving camera. Renderings are rough, since there was only a weekend. | At a few points in the tape the camera freezes, and a ray-trace/texture mapped | still-shot replaces the freeze frame. [ ... ] | Is it realistic to hope that the model setup time could be short, | but the rendering and subsequent recording might go on all weekend? A weekend might be pushing it a bit. First of all, making models is a time consuming process no matter how you go about it. Blueprints help, but the layout could easily take a day or more. And how much detail do you want? Getting the rough shape right might only take a few hours, but getting enough detail to make it look good could take much longer. In general, detail is what takes the most time when modeling, and is what makes the most difference to how good something looks when rendered. Of course, the other part of the equation is that the more detail you add, the longer it takes to render. Ray tracer rendering times are usually measured in hours, sometimes days, depending on the detail of the model, number and type of lightsources, and the speed of the processor. The nice thing about the Amiga is that you can render while you continue to model, which can save a lot in terms of clock time. The only program with a hope of generating enough animation to be useful with the detail required would be VideoScape 3D (plug, plug), whose frame rendering times are measured in minutes, not hours. With a frame time of 10-15 minutes, you could get 200-300 frames in 48 hours. This would be 7-10 seconds of full video animation (30 fps), or maybe a minute or two at a lower (but still respectable) frame rate. Another problem, which could make the process a lot more expensive and time consuming, is how to get the Amiga animation on videotape. Single frame videotape equipment costs $6-10K and will substantially increase preparation time. Videodisc equipment will record faster, but the quality is not as good and the machine will set you back $12-15K. (These my personal observations from a few years ago. The technology may have changed since then, but I'll bet I'm still in the ballpark.) A much less expensive way to transfer the animation would just be to record it as an ANIM and play it back with the VCR running. This works pretty well and with a good VCR you can do decent cuts without getting too much snow. The problem is that since these are interior views with a moving camera, there will be a lot of change from frame to frame and ANIM compression will not do much good. The ANIM may tend to play back rather jerkily, although an '020 and 32-bit ram will help a lot. | I think that it should be TRIVIAL to lay out most rooms, esp. | living rooms, once a healthy collection of objects is in place. | The SEAP might even strike a deal for a contractor to help subsidize | building a shape/color/texture database for their standard lines | of cabinets, appliances and furniture. Yes, this kind of preparatory work will save a lot of time when the heat's on. | [ ... ] Could you design | a table to real physical inches in today's modelers, or is that | too much a CAD thing? Not at all. In Modeler 3D (plug, plug) you can construct scale models very easily, provided you can work in metric units. I know of some users who have entered blueprints almost directly into Modeler. In fact, for his Siggraph film "Rush Hour," Allen Hastings encoded the entire Golden Gate Bridge at three different levels of detail (for viewing at different distances), using the original engineering diagrams. I don't know how long it took him, but the main model is accurate to centimeters. | The impact of a video tape would be prominent. A furniture dealer | had somebody make us a sketch of a chair with a particular fabric. | If both fabric and chair shape were in a database (or easy to | generate), why wouldn't it have been just as easy (cheap) to | hand us a video tape of a various views of the chair with several | different fabrics? It would certainly be cheaper and quicker to make a series of stills rather than an animation. What might be more expensive, but more useful, would be to allow the customer to interact with the designer and the SEAP to do some real-time "what if" scenarios. With rendering times on the order of 10-15 minutes, this might be realistic, although it would really put the pressure on the SEAP, and a Guru or two would really kill the momentum. The other option is as you suggest, to do the "what if's" in batches and let the customer interact with those to come up with another batch for the next weekend. | And for a room with lighting issues, it would | be even more dramatic. This is another problem. Rendering software for the Amiga today (or for any machine, for that matter) does not do a great job modeling lighting effects. You can get interesting looking results with the current crop, but they are not necessarily realistic. To make images with even a hope of capturing the subtle lighting effects of real room interiors, you would need something more like radiosity. Since there aren't any radiosity programs for the Amiga, I can't guess how long it would take to run one. | Application 2: Presentations and Tutorials | | Is there a simple business graphics package that can feed the rendering/ray- | tracing tools? Don't know. If the BGP's format is public, it would probably not be much effort to convert it to one of the documented 3D formats. | [ ... ] How about | a 3D tutorial animation, such as for, say, a 3D modeler? I saw something | Leo made of a camera moving around an object with a moving light source. | Little coordinate system, etc. Yeah, that was cute. Leo was trying to show how he made the lightsource APPEAR to move (since VideoScape doesn't provide moving lights) by moving both the object and the camera and using a static background. It would be much nicer, again, if there were interactive tools that let you design your motions that way. | What are the applications that Amiga 3D stuff is getting, REAL WORLD, | besides TV, logos, and 3D text? Any of it paying off? "T.V." is a big category to exclude. I know that flying logos aren't very exciting, but I've seen some Amiga stuff used in inovative ways. There was a guy using VideoScape for a bass fishing program on a cable channel. His did the titles with it, but also animated some sequences showing where people would be fishing by flying over a lake model with trees and cabins around the edge. Bob Petersen uses VS/Modeler in his work to recreate traffic accidents. He constructs intersections (probably using a set of generic parts) and then moves the cars through them at different speeds and locations, and makes animations showing both bird's eye views and views from within each of the vehicles. There was one really inpressive sequence where he had recorded a real view out the window of a car and then faded from that to a VideoScape view out the same window with the scenery going by at the same speed. That was quite cool. He has a whole video studio behind him, however. I'm not trying to say it would be impossible to do what you suggest, just that it wouldn't be trivial. The set of 3D graphics tools for the Amiga appear, at least for now, to be superior to the equally priced tools for other computers. Hopefully we can keep that edge and hone it fine. | I just noticed that my little reminder diagram of an Exec list could | use improvements. Do it. -- Stuart Ferguson (shf@well.UUCP) Action by HAVOC
vinsci@ra.abo.fi (Leonard Norrgard) (08/07/89)
In article <4288@amiga.UUCP>, jimm@amiga.UUCP (Jim Mackraz) writes: >[about two 3D project ideas] People who'd like to develop some such software may want to read the article "Mass Market Applications for Real Time 3D Graphics" by Michael Plummer and David Penna in volume 8, no. 2, June 1989 of Computer Graphics Forum (ISSN 0167-7055). The article abstract is below. In the article are also four pages of color screen photos. Abstract This paper discusses the applicability of real time 3D image synthesis to mass market products. Likely application areas are covered. There is a discussion of the man machine interface problems arising in systems where it has to be assumed that little or no training will be provided. A research prototype package, a kitchen designer which allows a user to design and view a kitchen in real time, is described in some detail. Emphasis is given to aspects of the user interface design such as 3D navigational aids. Finally there is consideration of the system performance level required. Well, go for it! -- Leonard Norrgard, vinsci@abo.fi, vinsci@finabo.bitnet, +358-21-654474, EET.
jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) (08/10/89)
In article <13042@well.UUCP> shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson) writes: >| Application 1: Low-end architectural walk-throughs. ... >A weekend might be pushing it a bit. First of all, making models is a time >consuming process no matter how you go about it. Blueprints help, but the >layout could easily take a day or more. And how much detail do you want? >Getting the rough shape right might only take a few hours, but getting enough >detail to make it look good could take much longer. In general, detail >is what takes the most time when modeling, and is what makes the most >difference to how good something looks when rendered. This might be a good place to use Caligari (though it might be a bit expensive). Solid-modeling with shading (if I remember correctly), not ray-traced - but for this application ray-tracing isn't very important. It's easy to design objects quickly in Caligari, from what I've seen. -- Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering. {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com BIX: rjesup Common phrase heard at Amiga Devcon '89: "It's in there!"
shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson) (08/16/89)
+-- jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) writes: | In article <13042@well.UUCP> shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson) writes: | >A weekend might be pushing it a bit. First of all, making models is a time | >consuming process no matter how you go about it. Blueprints help, but the | | This might be a good place to use Caligari (though it might be a bit | expensive). Solid-modeling with shading (if I remember correctly), not | ray-traced - but for this application ray-tracing isn't very important. It's | easy to design objects quickly in Caligari, from what I've seen. Ah, Caligari. Someone handed me a demo disk dated December '88 of the Caligari program. It looked like a nice idea, poorly executed. The central concept, that of using the mouse to fly around the scene you are building, to move and stretch objects, to change the camera, etc., was quite nice. The actual program that did this looked pretty badly designed, however. You would expect the "flying eyepoint" stuff to move at a good frame rate to get a nice 3D feel, but the authors insisted on using an overscan, hires, interlace, 16 color screen during the animations. So much bandwidth gets used up displaying the colorful pixels that the models have to be simplified all the way down to rectangular boxes, and even then you only get about two frames per second. The controls were unlike anything I've seen anywhere in the world. Intuition was nowhere to be found. It would also have been useless for modeling anything realistic, at least in the state it was when I saw it. Everything had to be composed of solid primatives (block, wedge, ball, cylinder, etc.), and the only Constructive Solid Geometry operation provided was union. You could not intersect or subtract solids. The models provided with the demo were little more than toys, possessing none of the subtleties people are used to in the Amiga rendering world. The demo had no animation facilities, so I can't comment on that. Again, this was all from looking at a demo version of the program from almost a year ago. It's bound to have changed some. If anyone can give more up to date info on Caligari's capabilities, I'd be interested to hear. -- Stuart Ferguson (shf@well.UUCP) Action by HAVOC (ferguson@metaphor.com)
peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) (08/27/89)
[ animation of flythroughs of remodelled interiors ] There's a guy here in Houston using Videoscape to sell mall space. He does a fly-through of the mall leading to the slot where the prospect's store would go. -- Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva `-_-' ...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.hackercorp.com 'U` "before making up your mind, please read the book." -- sherry.mann "This is contrary to the spirit of rec.arts.sf-lovers" -- Jim Winer