thompson@savax.UUCP (thompson mark) (11/05/88)
First impressions of Sculpt Animate 4D: I was initially displeased with the program because the feature I was most looking forward to (scanline rendering) ran so horribly slow. I had expected about a magnitude speed improvement (since scanline methods are easily 10 times faster than ray tracing providing you don't get to exotic). Unfortunately, a simple shiny sphere with two light sources took about 9 minutes to scanline render and about 13 or 14 minutes to ray trace. I AM NOT IMPRESSED! However, since it does use Phong lighting and interpolation, image quality is quite similar. I will post detailed benchmarks later (including tests against Sculpt 3D). Where SA4D does shine is the added extra liitle features to make life easier. My favorite by far is SNAP which allows you to: SNAP CURSOR TO VERTEX SNAP CURSOR TO GRID SNAP SELECTED VERTICES TO GRID SNAP CONNECTED VERTICES TO SPHERE SNAP SELECTED VERTICES TO PLANE SNAP CURSOR TO CENTER or CENTROID these have been extremely useful when modeling complex objects. Another great feature is user definable HOT-KEYS and MACROS. Any set of complex commands can be strung together into a macro and set to its own hot-key. These are defined in a start-up file that is read by SA4D. Putting together hierarchichal objects and animations has been made much easier by the addition of CUT and PASTE selections in the NAME SELECTED VERTICES requester. I might add that the requesters are improved also. Adding 3D fonts is now a totally painless job. Just select the font directory, place your cursor, and start typing. Also worth mentioning are the HELIX tool, METAL texture, motion blur, scripting language, and documentation on the file formats. Might I also add that the image quality is definately improved!! Besides correcting some of the rounding errors, HAM image generation is now a post-processing step which yeilds a much better 16 color pallete selection. The bottom line: Would I pay $499 for it? NO Should you upgrade from SA3D? If 3D animation is more than just a hobby, YES. My personal gripe. WHERE IS TEXTURE MAPPING!!???! Byte By Byte says it will be released as an additional module to compliment SA4D. They said the program is going to take a more "professional" stance and become very modular. ie. milk the consumer dry just like in the Macintosh market. Benchmarks to come soon... Disclaimer: I don't work for nobody talked about above. ^ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Mark Thompson | | decvax!savax!thompson Designing high performance graphics | | (603)885-9229 silicon today for a better tomorrow. | --------------------------------------------------------------------------