cmcmanis@stpeter.Eng.Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (06/15/90)
I'm trying to figure out what the format of the "Combat Films" are
that the game "Their Finest Hour : The Battle of Britain" uses.
The goal is simple, given such a file I would like to write a converter
that generated object motion files for a set of VideoScape 3D objects.
(Spitfires, Messerschmidts, etc) That way, I could take the film of
my amazing dogfight where I take out 10 Dornier bombers, and convert
it into an amazing Videoscape 3D anim which looks a lot better.
Even if I could just take a "snapshot" and feed that into a ray
tracer to get a whizzy still frame of the engagement that would
be enough.
Any, I didn't come up with this idea, a guy by the name of Wes Witte
did. But I really like it and think the Amiga would be an excellent
platform for it.
--
--Chuck McManis Sun Microsystems
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: <none> Internet: cmcmanis@Eng.Sun.COM
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
"I tell you this parrot is bleeding deceased!"jcs@crash.cts.com (John Schultz) (06/16/90)
In article <137344@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> cmcmanis@stpeter.Eng.Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) writes: >I'm trying to figure out what the format of the "Combat Films" are >that the game "Their Finest Hour : The Battle of Britain" uses. > >The goal is simple, given such a file I would like to write a converter >that generated object motion files for a set of VideoScape 3D objects. I've seen BoB on the PC: great simulation (best of its kind). As you have probably noticed, the aircraft appear to be tabled bitmaps, and not 3D generated objects. Further, it would take a great deal of storage (depending on frame rate and scene complexity) to save each frame to memory. Not the bitmaps, but the transformed points. Since you can replay from different views, it would appear that at least 3D position points and table indices are being stored, as well as frame to frame deltas, perhaps similar to run length encoding. If this is the case, then using the output for VideoScape input won't work. Of course you could write a second program to generate the necessary info...Perhaps suggest the idea to LucasFilm Games. If you want to save your dogfights for posterity, just video tape the output, digitize it, delta compress (etc), make an anim from the resulting frames. There you go :-). Actually, just leaving it on video would be best. John
a976@mindlink.UUCP (Ron Tarrant) (06/16/90)
> jcs@crash.cts.com writes: > > Msg-ID: <3174@crash.cts.com> > Posted: 15 Jun 90 17:31:46 GMT > > Org. : Crash TimeSharing, El Cajon, CA > Person: John Schultz > > I've seen BoB on the PC: great simulation (best of its kind). As you > have probably noticed, the aircraft appear to be tabled bitmaps, and not > 3D generated objects. Further, it would take a great deal of storage > (depending on frame rate and scene complexity) to save each frame to > memory. Not the bitmaps, but the transformed points. Since you can > replay from different views, it would appear that at least 3D position > points and table indices are being stored, as well as frame to frame > deltas, perhaps similar to run length encoding. If this is the case, > > John It's also possible that the planes, landscape, etc. were all generated as 4D objects and what you actually see on the screen are the 3D _shadows_ of the 4D objects. A friend of mine did some experimenting with this type of thing at university. The math was a real pain, apparently. The advantage of doing everything in 4D was that once the objects were generated, near real time playback was possible if you only wanted to see the 3D shadows. He actually _got_ real time playback on a 68000-based Amiga by using 8-colour screens. The original 4D file for the starship Enterprise took many hours to render and even longer to type in (a week, I think he said). -Ron Tarrant a976@Mindlink.UUCP