hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP (06/24/87)
I don't know whether it's changed recently (care to comment, Alan?) but as of a few short months ago, the object definition file format for VideoScape 3D was simply a human-readable file, consisting of 1) a point definition section, and 2) a polygon definition section. Each point was defined by a series of decimal numbers on a line by itself. Each polygon was defined by a list of point indices (referring to the original list of points/vertices), which are also decimal numbers, plus a numeric color value for that polygon. This was just before the definition of the new IFF splat files (delta compressed images) was finished, and therefore obviously before support for them was added to VideoScape 3D. So everything may have changed by now; I don't know. To avoid confusion, I'd better explain: the new IFF file is *not* a videoscape 3D object definition file, it is simply a way of storing a series of frames (for animation) in a nice compressed way. So VideoScape 3D (and other programs) will generate this new IFF type on *output*. You'd then use some nice display program to show the animation (there are several rumored to have been written, possibly included with V. 3D, and possibly P.D.) V. 3D can also show animation as it generates it, but at a slower rate than you can display one of these IFF sequences. Would someone out there be so kind as to post the definition of these new IFF files? If nothing else, I'd like to recognize them in "filetype". Doug Merritt ucbvax!unisoft!certes!doug