saponara@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (John Saponara) (05/12/88)
Here's an updated version of an article I wrote for some people a few months ago. There have been many more articles which have appeared since then, so don't consider the following as comprehensive. I'm interested in anyone's opinions of this rendering package. Dore' ----- There is a new rendering software package by Ardent called Dore' (rhymes with "moray" - there should be an up-accent over that "e" in Dore). Ardent is the new name for Dana Computer Inc (i.e. the "single-user supercomputer/supergraphics" people. Their "Titan" minisupercomputer is due out realsoonnow). Dore' stands for "Dynamic Object-Rendering Environment". The thrust of their marketing approach is "sell it cheap and make it a defacto standard," similar to Sun's NFS (Network File System) strategy. The places I've seen articles so far is "Electronics", February 4, 1988, on pages 69-70, and "Mini-Micro Systems", February 1988, pages 22-23. The first article offers more detail. I don't really want to rehash either article in full. The salient points (to me) about Dore' are: (1) Toolkit approach. (2) Can render using vectors, hidden surface, or ray tracing. (3) Hierarchical, object oriented system. (4) Five object classes: (a) primitives (including points, curves, polygons, meshes, quadrics, and NURBS (non-uniform rational B-splines), (b) appearance attributes (material properties, inc. solid texture maps and environmental reflection maps), (c) geometric attributes (modeling matrices), (d) studio objects (camera, lights) (I like this term!), (e) organizational objects (hierarchy, and evidentally the ability to define function calls inside the environment which call routines in the application program. No idea how this works). (5) Quoted times: 0.1 second for vector, 10 seconds for hidden surface, 100 seconds ray-traced (I assume on the Titan. No idea what kind of scene complexity or resolution). (6) Written in C. (7) "Open" system - source code sold in hopes of selling Dore' on other systems. The best part (for universities and research labs) is the price: $250 for a source code license - not sure what the cost is for source code maintenance (vs. $15000 for commercial users plus $5000/year after the first year). Per copy binary license is $200. Presently the Dore' Programmer's Guide and Reference Manual are being sold by Ardent for $25 each (as draft versions). They hope to start shipping the software package in June, last I heard. I am teaching the ray-tracing section of "A Consumer's and Developer's Guide to Image Synthesis" at SIGGRAPH this year, so definitely want to know more. I would also like more information just out of curiosity. So, you university people, please go out there and get one - seems like a real bargain. The contact info for Ardent is (no, I don't work for them): Ardent Computer Corp 550 Del Rey Ave Sunnyvale, CA 94086 408-732-2806 p.s. In case you have not been able to track down the two articles previously mentioned about Dore', there's now a third (that I know of): it's in "Computer Design", Feb 15, 1988, pages 30-31. Pretty much like the other articles (i.e. cast from the same press release).
mec@ardent.UUCP (Michael Chastain) (05/14/88)
In article <4781@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>, saponara@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (John Saponara) writes: > (Good description of Dore' rendering package) > The contact info for Ardent is (no, I don't work for them): > > Ardent Computer Corp > 550 Del Rey Ave > Sunnyvale, CA 94086 > 408-732-2806 > Ardent Computer has moved. Our new address/phone is: Ardent Computer 880 Maude Ave Sunnyvale, CA 94086 408-732-0400 Michael Chastain 785 N Fair Oaks #5 mec@ardent.com Sunnyvale, 94086 "She who dies with the most *friends* wins." 408-720-1242 -- Michael Chastain 785 N Fair Oaks #5 mec@ardent.com Sunnyvale, 94086 "She who dies with the most *friends* wins." 408-720-1242