seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) (05/18/91)
Well, here it is, my long-awaited ANIMATION:Journeyman review.
My apologies go out to Ken Baer and everyone who expected the review
earlier. I ran behind due to final exams, and final projects for
both my TV Production class and my Speaking for RTV class. Now, with
that out of the way, let's get on with it...
First off, it should be appreciated that ANIMATION:Journeyman's
predecessor was, what else, ANIMATION:Apprentice which served as a
thesis for Martin Hash's Masters degree in Computer Science. It is
unique from all other three dimensional modeling/rendering packages
available for the Amiga in that it's spline/cubic patch based rather
than vector/polygon based.
ANIMATION:Journeyman (I'll refer to it as JMan for the rest of
the review) uses a proprietary type of spline (Catmull Rom) developed
by Hash Enterprises. In many respects, it's superior to the more
conventional Bezier or NURBS (Non Uniform Rational B-Spline). The
JMan interface gives you three dimensional control over the curves
that represent your object, giving you unprecedented control over
surface contours.
Instead of defining surfaces as polygons, JMan uses cubic
patches, which can be thought of as sheets of rubber stretched over a
smoothly curving wireframe. You'll see no tell-tale facets that are
so common in vector/polygon based renderers, even when you get close
to the edge of a surface.
JMan was designed expressly for three-dimensional character
animation, so popular with advertisers these days. And with this in
mind, it's the only package available for the Amiga to provide all
the tools necessary for such a task.
Since JMan is modular, I've decided to break this review down
into review "modules," one for each piece that makes up JMan:
SCULPTURE, CHARACTER, ACTION, DIRECTION, and RENDER. This also helps
me out since the editor on Pro-Party only allows messages of 100
lines or less :)
JMan is $500, and can only be purchased from Hash Enterprises
(206-693-7443). It requires an A2500/20 or equivalent (the splines
require an FPU for the realtime interaction). It comes with two
disks and a full-size three-ring binder. The manual is pretty good,
as software manuals go, and although it lacks an index the table of
contents is pretty thorough.
The machine I used for this review was my very own Amiga
3000-25/50 with two megabytes of ChipRAM, and two megabytes of Fast
SCRAM. Although I run almost exclusively under AmigaDOS v2.03,
anytime something unexpected happened I would check it out under
v1.3.2. Under all but a few instances, there was no difference in the
way JMan performed. I run with both instruction and data caches
turned on, using CPU under v2.03 and SetCPU under v1.3.2. Nothing
else was running in the background to conflict with JMan.
I'll also be uploading a copy of this review to STUDIO AMIGA
along with several screenshots, fully rendered images, and some
sample animation. Unlike what you've probably seen sofar from JMan's
output, everything I'm uploading is fully shaded. Studio Amiga is in
the Dallas/FtWorth area, and its number is 817-467-3658.
On with the review...
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// | * All opinions expressed herein |
HELP KEEP THE COMPETITION UNDER \X/ | Copyright 1991 VISION GRAPHICS |
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