carlos@io.UUCP (Carlos Smith) (08/21/87)
I have been happily playing with Sculpt 3D for the last two weeks. It is a wonderful program (already one of my favorites on the Amiga) and Eric Graham has done a wonderful job of taking something inherently difficult (3D design on a 2D display) and made it easy to use, but powerful. I recommend this program to anyone interested in 3D design and ray-tracing. It is NOT an animation program, but is meant as a modeling and rendering package. A companion animation package may be done "in a few months" (Byte-by-Byte rep at Siggraph). One of the nice things about Sculpt 3D is that it is easy to learn, and well-documented. The user interface is very well thought out: it seems to have a minimal number of tools (some important ones seem to be missing at first), but with use one finds that almost anything can be accomplished fairly easily. Colors and surface properties of faces are selectable. Color is set with sliders (no fixed palette), among the surface properties are dull, shiny, mirror, transparent. Light sources can be colored. Viewing is easily set up with a target and observer. "Lenses" are selected to alter viewing of the scene (normal, wide angle, telephoto and selectable). Smoothing of planar facets is selectable on a face by face basis. The imaging modes include wireframe (no hidden line removal, good for fast scene setting), paint (flat shaded faces, much faster than ray-tracing), snapshot (ray-tracing without shadowing, HAM output) and photo (shadowing, HAM output). Anti-aliasing is also selectable, as well as interlace and high-res (for non-HAM modes - HAM is 320 only, right?). There are also several image sizes for very fast ray-tracing just to get a feel for whether lighting and camera postion are correct. One nice thing is that rendering is a background process, you can continue to work on a model while it or another is being rendered. A couple of warnings though. I have found destructive interference between Sculpt 3D and Morerows, as well as with Screenblanker (from Charlie Heaths FastFonts package). Morerows seems to confuse it as to the image size of the rendered image, to the point where if the image is saved and immediately reloaded, it is shifted to the right and wraps around to the left, and a requester tells you "Error loading image". It also does not load correctly into DigiPaint (a great companion, since it allows you to touch up and/or work with the results of the ray-tracing, since they are in HAM mode). This is solved by eliminating morerows. Oh well. The interference caused by screenblanker is very bizarre. In HAM mode large images take a LONG time (I have had them go overnight easily, especially with mirrors). At some point screenblanker kicks in, dimming the colors in the screen used for the ray-traced image. Apparently the HAM algorithm looks at the brightness of the preceding "real" pixel, decides how bright it wants this one and sets the color accordingly. The result is that the HAM colors are fine with the screen dimmed, but when you move the mouse and the colors go back to full brightness, there are garish bright streaks across the image emanating from the leftmost "real" pixels. Its kind of neat to see the HAM interaction, if it didn't take ten hours to do it! So no more screenblanker either... Thanks to Jim Shook for warning me about morerows... It is not copy protected. I hope this doesn't mean it will be heavily pirated, the guy did a hell of a job. One Meg or more is recommended for complex scenes. Speaking of copyrights, I got a real shock today at the NCGA CAD expo in Boston. While passing the Intergraph booth, a friend said "Hey, that looks familiar!" There was the Juggler, running in a window on an Intergraph workstation! Is the workstation really an Amiga?! Is it the first Amiga clone?! No, actually it seems to be another case of a stunning Amiga demo finding its way onto other machines, this time a very high end workstation. Is the juggler copyrighted by Eric Graham? It is certainly as readily identifiable as Red the unicycle. I get the feeling that Mr. Graham is more likely to be flattered than to break out the lawyers. I could be wrong... By the way, many Amigans are taking the wrong tack in the "Mac multitasking" war. Everyone is pointing out that they can do ray-traces in the background while accomplishing real work (certainly true). But Mac people will not comprehend this. Ray traced images are just not very impressive on a tiny black-and-white display. Tell them they can have multiple copies of the talking moose arguing with each other. This they will appreciate. -- Carlos Smith uucp:...!harvard!umb!ileaf!carlos Bix: carlosmith
kpmancus@phoenix.PRINCETON.EDU (Keith P. Mancus) (08/21/87)
Subject: 3D design programs Hello again. I bought my Amiga primarily because I thought it would be an excellent system to do design (blueprint) work on. I am a student majoring in aerospace engineering, just about to enter junior year. Since my courses in aeronautical design are about to start, I figured I'd buy it now and get used to it on the school projects. Now, to the question: are there any engineers out there who have been using Amigas as design (CAD) tools? I've used AutoCAD on the PC, and I thought it was useful but was disappointed that it didn't support "true" 3D (i.e., it only handles linear extensions of 2D objects). I'd like an easy-to-use program that lets me do true 3D design, then rotate the image to see it from all angles. It has to support a complex shape, like a tapered wing or a fuselage with compound curves. Any program names (Sculpt 3D, perhaps?) with short reviews, plus comments on how much memory I should get, would be appreciated. Thanks! -Keith Mancus <kpmancus@phoenix.princeton.edu>
jdow@gryphon.CTS.COM (Joanne Dow) (08/25/87)
In article <362@io.UUCP> carlos (Carlos Smith) writes: > >I have been happily playing with Sculpt 3D for the last two weeks. It is a >wonderful program (already one of my favorites on the Amiga) and Eric Graham >has done a wonderful job of taking something inherently difficult (3D design >on a 2D display) and made it easy to use, but powerful. > >A couple of warnings though. I have found destructive interference between >Sculpt 3D and Morerows, as well as with Screenblanker (from Charlie Heaths >FastFonts package). Morerows seems to confuse it as to the image size of the >rendered image, to the point where if the image is saved and immediately >reloaded, it is shifted to the right and wraps around to the left, and a >requester tells you "Error loading image". It also does not load correctly >into DigiPaint (a great companion, since it allows you to touch up and/or >work with the results of the ray-tracing, since they are in HAM mode). This is >solved by eliminating morerows. Oh well. The interference caused by > >-- > Carlos Smith > uucp:...!harvard!umb!ileaf!carlos > Bix: carlosmith As you may have read already, Carlos, the problem resides in the Digi-whatever products. Alas, Tim has not set them up to handle overscan. So overscan images in ham mode produced by ANY program won't load into them correctly. It appears Sculpt-3D is clean on this issue. (It may be slowish; but, Hoo Boy are the images it produces NICE!) (Check out the Byte by Byte vendor support conference on Bix. Scott and Eric are checking in there these days, bless them!) -- <@_@> BIX:jdow INTERNET:jdow@gryphon.CTS.COM UUCP:{akgua, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, ihnp4, nosc}!crash!gryphon!jdow Remember - A bird in the hand often leaves a sticky deposit. Perhaps it was better you left it in the bush with the other one.
carlos@io.UUCP (Carlos Smith) (08/25/87)
in article <606@phoenix.PRINCETON.EDU>kmancus@phoenix.PRINCETON.EDU (Keith P. Mancus) asked: >I'd like an easy-to-use program that lets me do true 3D >design, then rotate the image to see it from all angles. It has >to support a complex shape, like a tapered wing or a fuselage with >compound curves. Any program names (Sculpt 3D, perhaps?) with short >reviews, plus comments on how much memory I should get, would >be appreciated. Sculpt 3D is more of an artists tool than an engineering tool. This is its weakness and its strength. It is very easy to learn, and to use. But everything is done by eyeball. A coordinate read out window is available, but it cannot be used to enter coordinates. I sometimes find it very frustrating lining things up by eye, trying to move the mouse oh-so-carefully up one pixel without moving it over... Two things this program could really use are constraints (horizontal, vertical and diagonal) and a grid. Also, only three orthogonal views are available. It is not possible to define an arbitrary working plane, other than (by eye) selecting an object and rotating it until a face is paralell to a view. Rotation effects OBJECTS not VIEWS, so if you just want a better angle to work on something you have to move it and then move it back. For VIEWING ONLY you can view the object flexibly by changing the target point, observer point and lens. But the object cannot be edited in this mode. Smooth curves and surfaces exist only to the extent that they can be approximated by triangular faces. Cylinders, spheres, hemispheres, cones and tubes exist as primitives, they are all approximated by triangular facets. The number of subdivisions is selectable by the user at the time of creation. There is also the provision for subdividing existing faces, manually recursively subdividing and adjusting vertices is the only way to approximate an arbitrary curved surface. At rendering time (ray-tracing modes only) a surface smoothing attribute applies what seems to be either Phong or Giroud shading to the faces, making them appear much smoother than they are. Forms-in-Flight takes a different approach. I have not yet worked with it as much, but I can say it also is not an engineering tool. Both of these programs lack critical features required to make them engineering tools (layers, flexible referencing of existing geometry, arbitrary view definition, constraints). But Sculpt 3D is still one of my favorite Amiga programs. Hopefully one or both of these will grow into an engineering tool without losing their ease of use and flexibility. I hope this has helped give you an idea of the capabilities of Sculpt 3D at least. I will say more about Forms-in-Flight when I have worked with it more. -- Carlos Smith uucp:...!harvard!umb!ileaf!carlos Bix: carlosmith
carlos@io.UUCP (Carlos Smith) (08/26/87)
In article <1320@gryphon.CTS.COM. jdow@gryphon.CTS.COM (Joanne Dow) writes: .In article <362@io.UUCP. carlos (Carlos Smith) writes: . ..A couple of warnings though. I have found destructive interference between ..Sculpt 3D and Morerows, as well as with Screenblanker (from Charlie Heaths ..FastFonts package). Morerows seems to confuse it as to the image size of the ..rendered image, to the point where if the image is saved and immediately ..reloaded, it is shifted to the right and wraps around to the left, and a ..requester tells you "Error loading image". It also does not load correctly ..into DigiPaint (a great companion, since it allows you to touch up and/or ..work with the results of the ray-tracing, since they are in HAM mode). .. This is ..solved by eliminating morerows. Oh well. The interference caused by .As you may have read already, Carlos, the problem resides in the .Digi-whatever products. Alas, Tim has not set them up to handle overscan. . So overscan images in ham mode produced by ANY program won't load into them . correctly. It appears Sculpt-3D is clean on this issue. (It may be slowish; . but, Hoo Boy are the images it produces NICE!) Uh, I appreciate your response, but the problem also occurs without any use of Digi-anything products. If I am using morerows, I can create a full (not jumbo) sized HAM image in Sculpt 3D, save it and then load it, all in one session. The screw up happens entirely in Sculpt 3D. If it also happens in DigiPaint, well then DigiPaint has a problem too. I can't really blame Sculpt 3D for either problem, it seems to me that overscan support is a grey area. But then, if the Amiga 3000 comes out with 1kx1k graphics, I suppose it won't work then either. So it ought to be supported now, 'cause its going to have to be supported later. -- Carlos Smith uucp:...!harvard!umb!ileaf!carlos Bix: carlosmith
peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (08/28/87)
In article <365@io.UUCP>, carlos@io.UUCP (Carlos Smith) writes: > an arbitrary curved surface. At rendering time (ray-tracing modes only) a > surface smoothing attribute applies what seems to be either Phong or Giroud > shading to the faces, making them appear much smoother than they are. If the faces are shaded (either flat or via Phong or Giroud shading) then it's not doing ray tracing. Phong shading, where you average the normals to the surface across the face, is similar to what you do to smooth ray traced objects. Unless I'm completely wet, though, Giroud shading is done by averaging the colors of the corners across the face... which is completely alien to what you do with ray tracing. That's not to say I'm not completely wet... but I don't think so. Also, is "Giroud" the correct spelling? Have you seen the recent issue of Science News with the incredible ray-traced image in it? -- -- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!seismo!soma!uhnix1!sugar!peter -- U <--- not a copyrighted cartoon :->