rnollman@maxzilla.encore.com (Richard Nollman) (03/06/91)
Surface Master for IMAGINE by Louis Markoya I received my copy of Surface Master on Monday and within minutes it paid for itself in time saved and frustration avoided. Unless you are a master Turbo and/or Imagine user, this program will save you hours (days, months, years?) of experimentation. For those of you who might not have read the initial advertisement posted last week, Surface Master is described as "a comprehensive collection of Attribute and Texture settings which allows you to master your renderings and achieve professional results." The software makes good on the promise. I am a novice 3D modeling, Imagine, and Amiga user (bought my 3000 at the end of October). Within ten minutes I created an animation with a gorgeous wood grain chesspiece and four reflective spheres with varying reflection values on a blue highly reflective plane. I have been concentrating my time on just learning how to set the basic attributes (to do things like glass, chrome, etc). I thought that things like texture mapping would have to wait. Well, I loaded up Surface Master, wrote down the values for the wood texture of a Surface Master object (textures, unlike attributes, cannot be loaded directly because they are not saved in the same way) and applied these values to my chesspiece. I was astounded at the quality of the rendered image. The first thing that struck me was the prompt arrival of the software. I sent in a money order last week and received my copy on Monday. The software has a simple program that consists of two levels of menus. The first contains a matrix of windows with attributes and textures that correspond to the ones found in the Imagine Attribute requestor. Click on an attribute or texture and next level menu appears with 4 sets of 4 objects (spheres or cubes) rendered with various settings for that attribute or texture. Sometimes a window will have several attributes described. Each object has a value assigned to it (R,G,and B values or a single value) that you can write down on paper. In most cases you do not have to; the objects that appear in the Surface Master menus come in Surface Master directories. When you are working in Imagine, simply load in the object or the attribute from the Surface Master directory. Markoya used them to create the Menu screens. To get the texture values, load in the objects with the texture values you want, invoke the Attribute requestor for the object, choose texture, and write down the values. Just one texture, wood, is worth the price of the package. Surface Master includes 16 different samples of wood grain combined with linear, random and radiance(?). In addition, there are 16 samples of different types of wood (mahogony, ash, pine, oak, zebrawood, etc.). In a few minutes, without having to puzzle over Imagine documentation (which usually ends up providing little or no help), I understood how to use the linear texture to create my wooden chesspiece. For the color attribute, Surface Master includes a color wheel of spheres. Load these spheres individually as objects to your rendering project or the attributes associated with them. Very helpful in getting just the right color for an object without having to diddle around (or at least get a close approximation). Color and wood are only a few examples. Finally, the documentation. The manual is very small, but clearly and thoroughly presented. Each attribute and texture is described in detail. Impulse could learn alot about documentation from this manual. It packed so much information in such a small space that I need to go back and read it several times to really get the meat of it (mostly I was just eager to try out the software). From many it will probably become a standard text on Imagine attributes and textures. And all for just $30. Amazing... My hats off to Louis Markoya. I hope that he is going to continue to enhance Surface Master. I would love to see a disk of objects and other attributes. Maybe an entire disk concentrating on reflection or chrome. If he has more Imagine-related software coming out, put me on the top of the list. I do have one complaint. It comes with what appears to be a projector program. But it is not documented and I cannot figure out how it works. If anyone knows how to contact Louis, please pass this on. Rich Nollman