adh@well.UUCP (Allen D. Hastings) (06/30/87)
yphon.CTS.COM> Sender: Reply-To: adh@well.UUCP (Allen D. Hastings) Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA Keywords: I have noticed many misconceptions about VideoScape 3D while reading messages on the net, so I will try to clear up some of the confusion. First of all, Aegis did not write the program (I wrote it over the last 18 months and they are publishing it for me). Secondly, it is a 3D animation program, not a CAD program. It accepts object geometry files as input, and doesn't care where they came from. This means that there are many ways of creating objects. I personally prefer to draw objects on graph paper and type them in (this is how I made most of the objects for my "Infinite Loop" video - it's easier than it sounds). I also use some utility programs to transform and combine objects and to generate regular objects like spheres, lathed shapes, fractal mountains, etc. (these utilities are included with the package). A third way to make objects is to use a new version of the well-known ROT program (customized by the original author for use with VideoScape and called "Designer 3D"). This is for people who want to interactively draw objects with the mouse and who can't wait for the full-featured design programs under development. Finally, many complex objects are included with the package for immediate use, and many more will be available once the program is released. Also, the file formats are explained in detail in the manual (as are all the above creation techniques), so public-domain object generators are likely (current ideas include programs to translate object formats from other 3D products and even 3D Mandelbrot Set generators). There has also been some discussion about the real-time RAM playback animation compression format used by VideoScape 3D (what a mouthful), better known as ANIM files. This is a newly-registered IFF standard for animation, and the details have been uploaded to several on-line services (contact Bill Volk at Aegis for more information - maybe they will post the format on the net). Anyway, the format is great for people like me who don't have single-frame VCR's, since videos can be assembled scene by scene using real-time playback. An example ANIM file that has been distributed consists of 120 frames showing a circling Red Baron-type triplane. The file plays at 30 frames/sec and the entire animation takes up only 241K. These files are automatically recorded by VideoScape 3D (the triplane demo took less than half an hour to generate) and you can multitask while the recording is in progress. Please forgive me if the above sounds too commercial, but I just couldn't stand by with all the speculation going on.