3D Tips

Subj:  Place your tips here...
Date:  93-03-25 20:28:45 EDT
From:  AFC Carter
Posted on:  America Online

Welcome to the 3D Sig! This folder will be for users to place information
regarding shortcuts, tricks and any techniques anyone may want to share with
everyone. This folder covers all programs as well as any general advice you
may want to pass on. AFC John and I will begin a series of articles on the
basics of 3D modeling, rendering, surface creation, animation and topics
concerning the 3D world on the desktop. These will be found in one of the
software areas-yet to be decided so watch this space for details.

Also, we are available to answer any questions you may have about any 3D
topic, program or technique. If we don't have the answer right off the bat-we
can find out for you or at least put you in touch with the right people who
can answer your question.

So watch this folder for tips and if you have general questions please do not
post them here-use the "General Q & A" folder-you'll get a faster response to
your questions.

Again...Welcome to the 3D Sig!
Take your shoes off and stay a while-but be sure to have clean socks:)

AFC Carter/Chuck CarterSubj:  3D Solutions #1
Date:  93-03-31 22:39:30 EDT
From:  AFC John
Posted on:  America Online

Chuck has posted the first 3D Solutions tip! Be sure to check out this
informative document...this issue, chuck addresses how to do sports balls and
spherical mapping! Check it out

AFC JohnSubj:  Ray-trace Discussion?
Date:  93-04-10 21:57:45 EDT
From:  Armieri
Posted on:  America Online

I've been interested in ray tracing for a while, but haven't really had the
time to sit down with a textbook to read in-depth about how the algorithms
work.  I bought a couple of computer graphics texts, but they usually get to
ray tracing in the last few chapters somewhere between B-splines and
fractals.  (The few texts I've seen devoted to ray-tracing, e.g. series by
Windcrest "Ray-tracing in C", "Ray-tracing in C++", go too far in the other
extreme: all code examples, little basic discussion.)

What I would like to see is a down-to earth, nuts-and bolts intro to
ray-tracing.  Ideally, there would be both code examples AND textbook-like
discussion. 

Would people be willing to start a discussion group devoted to introductory
ray-tracing?  If not, what would be the BEST text for me to buy to learn
about this?Subj:  Speed up your Pics 2 tape
Date:  93-05-05 00:00:20 EDT
From:  Fiji Mike
Posted on:  America Online


Anyone using CoSA After Effects, Adobe Premier, Video Fusion, Movie Pac,
Video Vision, Digital Film, etc  that wants to do serious animation and
Quicktime to tape, needs to contact DiaQuest inc. Tell them that Michael
McGuire refered you to them. Their number is 510-526-7073

Their products are a must for anyone using the MAC, IBM, or SGI. Be Sure to
tell them Michael McGuire refered you and they will take real good care of
you. If you have any questions just E-Mail me.
I do a lot of videos for non-profits, individuals and schools that have great
ideas or events and little to no cash. Fun but not to profitable.Subj:
number correction
Date:  93-05-18 21:38:55 EDT
From:  Fiji Mike
Posted on:  America Online

DiaQuest inc. Tell them that Michael McGuire refered you to them. Their
number is 510-526-7167
Subj:  Fiji Mike..
Date:  93-05-19 11:10:55 EDT
From:  AFA EveE
Posted on:  America Online

& other multiple posters
READ THIS....

It is necessary to post a message ONLY ONCE. Repeat after me....ONLY ONCE!!!!

Thank you.

Eve Elberg
AOL Forum Ass't
Graphics, Multimedia & CADSubj:  Hey Eve...
Date:  93-05-19 21:20:57 EDT
From:  Joe Sculpt
Posted on:  America Online

You're right about those multiple postings.  You should leave a copy of that
message in every folder to make sure everyone reads it.

:             o


- JSubj:  Good Idea Joe...
Date:  93-05-20 15:23:12 EDT
From:  AFC Carter
Posted on:  America Online

We could start with the Sculpt Folder!

;-)

ChuckSubj:  duplicate, redundant messages
Date:  93-05-27 21:17:11 EDT
From:  VideVirgin
Posted on:  America Online

It is necessary to post a message ONLY ONCE. Repeat after me....ONLY ONCE!!!!

Thank you.Subj:  RDD Animation...
Date:  93-06-10 13:40:37 EDT
From:  KELTER
Posted on:  America Online

OK so its not the easiest thing to do but if you *REALLY* have to...Check out
the "RDD animation" file in the RayDream sub. It includes the PICS animation
(72 frames) and a description of how it was done.
KELTERSubj:  Render bigger than your screen
Date:  93-10-10 17:02:53 EDT
From:  Artifice
Posted on:  America Online

The object-based shadow casting in DesignWorkshop(TM) makes it easy to create
resolution-independent shadowed renderings.  Here's a tip for putting these
renderings to work.

For many uses, it may be helpful to turn the DesignWorkshop image into a high
resolution bitmap-type image in Adobe Photoshop.  This is useful for
compositing a rendering with a scanned photograph, or to do color corrections
and produce an EPS or TIFF file for page layout and printing.  The new
Photoshop versions 2.5 and 2.5.1 include a plug-in function which handles
this really well. 

To use this, first calculate the rendering in DesignWorkshop, then export it
as a PICT file.  Then use the Photoshop File menu "Acquire > Anti-aliased
PICT" function, to open the PICT file.  With this function, you can set
whatever bitmap resolution you want to read the object PICT into.  This means
you can create large image files with smooth object images even when you're
working on a small monitor.
Subj:  Space curves?
Date:  93-11-19 14:59:15 EDT
From:  Skeevy
Posted on:  America Online

Does anyone know of a good, fairly painless technique for approximating,
representing and rendering bezier space curves?  Or can anyone point me
towards a book?  I'm looking for something that's as sofware-independent as
possible.  Subj:  space curve?
Date:  93-11-19 15:55:32 EDT
From:  Vanzo
Posted on:  America Online

I may be new to this, but what exactly is a bezier space curve? I've heard of
bezier splines & various spline-patches, but never a curve. It sounds like a
temporal distortion in the time-space continuum to me..

-s.vanzoSubj:  Bezier space curves
Date:  93-11-19 20:15:28 EDT
From:  AMANNING
Posted on:  America Online

I thought that's what you got when an overloaded cargo ship passes to close
to a planet's gravity well . . .Subj:  Bez Space Curves
Date:  93-11-21 22:49:16 EDT
From:  KABjorke
Posted on:  America Online

Okay, it's simple. A cubic-order bezier space curve is a curve segment based
on four points, A B C D in xyz space. The solution for the curve, along a
paramter T what ranges from 0 to 1, is three simultaneous equations (x, y,
and z) on the compnents of A B C D: A*(1-T)^3+B*(1-T)^2*T+C*(1-T)*T^2+D*T^3.
Conversion into a simple cubic based on T is left as an exercise. Display of
cubic curves varies -- most people just display a bunch of conected points,
based on uniform distributions of T (0, .1, .2,....) but SOME can actually
reduce the number of points by filtering for curve flatness. And of course,
there's the fast way of uniform-delta-T display: incremental forward
differencing.

F U Cnt Rd Ths, I recommed the Foley/VanDam/et al "Computer Graphics:
Principles and Practice"

kbSubj:  Gee....
Date:  93-11-22 10:18:40 EDT
From:  Rendererer
Posted on:  America Online

Gee, that IS simple!

I think you've singlehandedly scared off every novice who might venture into
this forum in the next couple of days!  ;-)

R (J)Subj:  more space..
Date:  93-11-22 20:18:15 EDT
From:  Vanzo
Posted on:  America Online

Thanks KAB, I needed that. I had better hit the books once again! Now, what
about space folds or wrinkles?;)

s.vanzoSubj:  Skeevy's simple problem
Date:  93-12-01 02:52:06 EDT
From:  KABjorke
Posted on:  America Online

I answered the question in the most straightforward way I could.
    Personally, I agree with Alvy Ray Smith, who I think first proposed that
splines be included in regularl high school math curricula. They are SO handy
and actually are pretty simple. Pretty close to quadratic formula-type stuff,
so I guess at my old high school, that would put them somewhere in the
textbook-sequence neighborhood of Algebra II and Trig (?). You might want to
know about derivatives when doing fancier stuff like b-splines and
higher-order smoothing, but that's getting beyond the range of "bezier."
   As for the factoring on T and stuff, if you have a program like
Mathematica or MathCad around it can do all the hard symbolic work in 20-30
seconds or less. I use MathCad for such purposes all the time, and got it
during a promo for $79.Subj:  Uhhh...back to 3D?
Date:  93-12-16 01:05:28 EDT
From:  GraphLink
Posted on:  America Online

Just to digress for a moment and talk about--3D!

Any input up here about animation *cheating*. What I mean is that 640x480 dpi
at 30 fps is just not possible on a non risk system with any sort of serious
imagery (at least not without Elec Image Studio's speed).

So where do you cheat, in the SIZE of the render-I lean to 320x240 and use
the resize filter in Premiere to bump it up (the Resize forces an
interpolated enlargment instead of QT's course pixel bump up.)

But I still go 30 fps, some say it's not needed, after all movies are only 24
and they play on TV well enough.

Thoughts, and experiences folks?

Lance EvansSubj:  Re:Uhhh...back to 3D?
Date:  93-12-30 11:10:41 EDT
From:  DaveTeich
Posted on:  America Online

There's something I remember reading, in Honolulu (?) there's an outfit
called FreezeByte graphics... they're probably online. They do some sort of
resize/interpolation that's supposed to be good quality...Subj:
Interpolation
Date:  94-01-09 23:37:53 EDT
From:  GraphLink
Posted on:  America Online

Dave,

You have the idea. But I think that very good upload from the Freezbyte folks
was written a year or more before Premiere and Vid Vision came out-so at the
time the choices for such options wwere limited. According to Freezbyte it
should give very good results-according to others, well? That's why i'm
asking.

LanceSubj:  Cones of light
Date:  94-02-09 03:52:44 EDT
From:  JHeikeB
Posted on:  America Online

I have owned Strata Studio Pro for about a week now and I want to try to
create an underwater scene (somewhat like SeaQuest) with visible beams of
light etc. Studio Pro is my first 3-D program so I may be missing something
obvious out of ignorance but I can't find anything in the manual which
addresses this issue. I have tried placing a semi-transparent cone object in
front on a light source but that did not work. I also am using the fog effect
but from what I understand, that does not actually reflect light. I am
raytracing and using all effects that seem pertainent. Any suggestions?  I
would also appreciate it if someone could recommend a book which addresses
advanced modeling and rendering techniques.
Thanks,
Jason BestSubj:  Re:Cones of light
Date:  94-02-09 12:56:43 EDT
From:  PDC Markus
Posted on:  America Online

There isn't a setting that will give you a cone of light.  However, you can
use a cone object and some glow maps to acheive a similar effect.  Chech out
the visible light demo in the Strata library.

As for fog, the fog in Strata in linear, and SeaQuest uses non-linear fog.
That's the first problem.  The second is that SeaQuest uses lens flare
effects to achieve the glow around lights and the glow behind objects.
StrataPro does not have lens flare built in, and I'm not sure how to get
around this.  I suppose you might be able to post process the image in
photoshop to add lens flare, but I'm not sure if its of the type you need.

MarkusSubj:  Re:Cones of light/Flaremaker
Date:  94-02-09 20:09:33 EDT
From:  AFC John
Posted on:  America Online

There is a utility here online from John Knoll called Flaremaker, which will
create animated lens flares which can be keyed over video or animation.
Although its interface is a bit arcane, its the only shareware item ive seen
for this sort of thing. I believe its in the photoshop SIG libraries

AFC John
3DSIG/MGRSubj:  Re:Cones of light
Date:  94-02-10 04:01:52 EDT
From:  JKnoll
Posted on:  America Online

Just wanted to throw in my two cents here:

The lens flare in LightWave is a pretty direct copy of the 50-300mm zoom lens
flare I included with Photoshop 2.0, so I don't think you'd have any trouble
duplicating the look flares from Lightwave.  Sincerest form of flattery, I
guess.

I wrote FlareMaker before the Photoshop plugin for use on "Hook" and "Star
Trek 6".  TinkerBell is a FlareMaker flare in about a dozen shots.  The
Praxis explosion in Trek 6 (the first shot in the film) is another.  It's
arcane interface comes from it's birth as a production tool at ILM.  I posted
it in response to dozens of requests for a version of the Lens Flare plugin
that could render animations.  Kind of ironic, since the original version DID
do animations.Subj:  Re:Cones of light
Date:  94-02-11 05:09:14 EDT
From:  Stranahan
Posted on:  America Online

Try to find a copy of Video Toaster User magazine from a couple of months ago
- they had a cover story on animating seaQuest, and many of the techniques
could probably apply to any program.

Subj:  Re:Algorithms
Date:  94-02-28 22:15:26 EDT
From:  Piranesi
Posted on:  America Online

This is addressed to Mr KABjorke. Sir, I've bought Foley and Van Damms book
and find it very interesting. However I'm not a true student of mathematics
and find the reasoning a little difficult to follow. Let me elaborate. When I
require the use of a afine transformation to rotate a square about a point
I'd don't really want to know whats going on. All I want is the formula that
I can include in my code and bingo! my texture map revolves about the surface
of my 3D model. What I need is a kind of "Boys Own Book of Wonder Algorithms"
that endlessly lists useful formula without wretched reasoning. Does such a
book exist do you know? I use PIXAR's MacRenderMan on a mac with a couple of
YARCS and I'm dying to escape the clutches of MacroModel by generating my own
RIB files using Think's C. Any suggestions.

George Snow
(Piranesi)Subj:  Re:Algorithms
Date:  94-03-01 01:54:21 EDT
From:  PDC Markus
Posted on:  America Online

Your best bet for straight out code might actually be a book on game
programming.  There is a new book out called "Flights of Fancy" (or was it
Fantasy?) that describes the writing of flight simulator game in C (for the
PC, but much of the code applies anywhere). 

Markus

P.S.  Foley and Van Dam have a trimmed down version of their "bible" that
also includes much C code...forgot the name of it at the moment though.Subj:
PDC Markus
Date:  94-03-01 19:55:29 EDT
From:  Piranesi
Posted on:  America Online

Thanks Markus. I'll check out the NYU computer bookshop this SaturdaySubj:
Re:Helpful books
Date:  94-03-02 03:20:27 EDT
From:  JKnoll
Posted on:  America Online

I'd highly reccommend the Graphic Gems series (I, II, and III).  Lots of
"nuts and bolts" how to do stuff discussions with source code. 

BTW, much of this code is downloadable in the Developer's forum.Subj:
Re:Helpful books
Date:  94-03-02 05:59:58 EDT
From:  KABjorke
Posted on:  America Online

For RIB-writing, obviously THE RENDERMAN COMPANION is your first choice. For
3D rotations etc, just yank the Graphics Gems vector library and off you go.
I'm not sure what you mean by "my texture map revolves about the surface of
my 3D model" you mean rotate on the surface in [s,t] space?Subj:  Re:Helpful
books
Date:  94-03-02 20:37:59 EDT
From:  Piranesi
Posted on:  America Online

Dear Mr KABjorke,
Thanks for the tip. Answer to question. Yes, around S and T (2D) space.
Another question. What is 'Graphic Gems vector library'?
Yours
George SnowSubj:  3D String.
Date:  94-03-03 02:04:31 EDT
From:  KELTER
Posted on:  America Online

Anyone know of a way to model excelsior <SP>-or the stringy packing material?
I need to bury transparent objects in it too. Is there a RM shader to do
this?

Any ideas?

JKelterSubj:  Rotating RMan Texture in [s,t]
Date:  94-03-03 05:48:53 EDT
From:  KABjorke
Posted on:  America Online

Oy. You can do it in the shader (more accurate) or in the RIB file (probably
faster execution and better filtering). Either way it is not for the timid
but you won't have to do anything except remember variations on the stock
rotation formulae, based on a center at (p,q):
   x' = p + (x-p) cos(t) - (y-q) sin(t)
   y' = q + (y-q) cos(t) + (x-p) sin(t)
in the shader, you would calculate this for the input (s,t) to get new values
which you drop into the texture() call, e.g.
texture("myTexture_t",myRotatedS,myRotatedT)....

in the RIB file, you do roughly the same thing but only for the "st"
parameter points you are passing at the primitive vertices. The RMan
internals handle the rest and interpolate the values across the various
micropolygons. You have less control over odd shapes and large NURBs this
way, but I'd be willing to bet that the filtering will be better and simple
shapes will be indistinguioshable.

A third way, I suppose, would be to generate multiple texture maps rotated
with, say, Photosjop -- you could even add-in some nice PS motion blur to the
texture.Subj:  Re:3D String.
Date:  94-03-03 05:50:07 EDT
From:  KABjorke
Posted on:  America Online

What is "excelsior"?

I think you have chosen a worst-case scenario. Be prepared to make very,
very, large RIB files.Subj:  Long Post/ Video In For Game Q.
Date:  94-03-03 07:22:46 EDT
From:  TimFogarty
Posted on:  America Online

     I appreciate any insights or experiences that others can share about my
questions.
     I want to shoot a moving actor who will be ultimately turned into a low
bit depth (probably less than 256 colors, maybe even as low as 16 colors,
worst case scenario) character in a home video game. I have questions about
the best way to do this.
************************************************      My thinking on how to
do this was, based on conversations with a very few post houses,  motion
picture lighting rental houses, a software company, and a video game
developer, the following:
     Have a post house shoot on BETA SP with a painted cyc(lorama) which is
painted an Ultimatte blue color (as opposed to the "weatherman" chroma key
paint).
     Light the cyc (curved backdrop) hotter than the actor by aproximately
one stop (twice as much light as measured in footcandles) to ensure the
saturation or color "presence" of the to-be-stripped-away background color.
     Digitize the tape at the post house in real time? or frame by frame? to
a numbered PICT file format?
     Once in computer, try Ultimatte's software product (Photoshop acquire
module) which allows for no-less-than-perfect compositing of stills (only) to
strip away the background and to composite an interim "dummy" background such
as a black screen until the bit depth and size of the character can be
reduced for proper game display.
 ************************************************    My questions involve
advice about the best way to get a clean looking final sprite-based character
in the TV video game environment.
     ? Should I digitize the video at a bit depth which is closer to the
final very low bit depth or is it better to start with a more resolute
original computer image(s)?
     ? Should my actor be in similar colors or colors which are far apart
from each other (in terms of hue) to be best displayed in his ultimate very
low bit depth?
     ? Just how good of an edge can I get with the native Photoshop
masking/image manipulation tools rather than the state of the art ultimatte
treatment?
     ?Should I digitize the video as Quicktime or is its quality not good
enough  --  and if it's good enough, then can QT movies be successfully
painted over with available software?
     ?My goal is to get the best possible, most believable characters on the
TV game screen. They are, incidentally, only a very few dozen pixels tall by
a very few dozen pixels wide at the very largest. Any insights about ANY of
the process by those more experienced than I is greatly appreciated!

 THANK YOU!     THANK YOU!     THANK YOU!     THANK YOU!
Whew!...Subj:  NURBs
Date:  94-03-03 15:30:22 EDT
From:  WillisM620
Posted on:  America Online

This looks like the place to ask about NURBs.

I have Van Dam, RenderMan Companion, etc, but I need MORE about NURBs. I
really need to get a handle on things like inserting knots and converting
between basis. I believe the text I am looking for is Wayne Tiller's article
"Rational B-Splines for Curve and Surface Representation", published by in
"Computer Graphics and Applications" by IEEE.

I am not a member of IEEE (yet). Does anyone know how I can get a reprint of
this article (or any other ones you could recommend)?

-- Thanks
-- Will Morse
-- paradigmSubj:  Re:excelsior
Date:  94-03-03 23:04:19 EDT
From:  KELTER
Posted on:  America Online

Hmm, May have an incorrect spelling. Basicly a packing material of a stingy
twine type nature.

Thanks,
-KelterSubj:  Re:NURBs
Date:  94-03-04 04:26:05 EDT
From:  KABjorke
Posted on:  America Online

Try any large University... or even a small one, if they teach engineering,
and they should have  IEEE publications.Subj:  3D model resource
Date:  94-03-04 23:17:02 EDT
From:  AFC John
Posted on:  America Online

A good database of 3d models of all descriptions, all platforms, on
internet...address is

avalon.chinalake.navy.mil (cd:pub>objects)

they have libraries for dxf, nurbs, iges, strata, infini-D, inventor, pov,
and many others. There are also many useful display and conversion utilities.

AFC John
3DSIG/MGRSubj:  Re:3D model resource
Date:  94-03-06 20:46:07 EDT
From:  Piranesi
Posted on:  America Online

As I fumble around the AOL world I'm gradually getting to know how things
fit. I resd your message on the 3D models and I'd like to check them out. I
did a keyword search and found the Internet section but, tell me, how do I
get to avalon.chinalake etc.

By the way, I have a few shaders that I've written for RenderMan. Would you
be interested in me uploading them?

PiranesiSubj:  Re:RenderMan Shaders
Date:  94-03-06 23:51:01 EDT
From:  Vanzo
Posted on:  America Online

Piranesi-

Upload your shaders'  for one would love to see 'em...Make a post in the
"renderMan Techniques" folder after you do.

Thanks
s.vanzoSubj:  Hey Vanzo
Date:  94-03-07 23:00:18 EDT
From:  Piranesi
Posted on:  America Online

This is Piranesi. I have a shader that animates 12 frame Muybridge sequences
and a Word file that describes how to use it. Can you assist me in uploading
it. As I'm a new kid on the block I've no idea how to upload. Your help
appreciated.Subj:  Re:Hey Vanzo again!
Date:  94-03-07 23:39:05 EDT
From:  Piranesi
Posted on:  America Online

Dear Vanzo,

I sussed it out. I put the shader Muybridge_12_Maps into Pixar's Software
library under RIB Files. Don't forget to read the file Muybridge _12_Notes
that tells you how to use the shader.Subj:  Re:Hey Vanzo again!
Date:  94-03-08 02:35:08 EDT
From:  Vanzo
Posted on:  America Online

great! I'll take a look see..

s..vSubj:  Trees, in 3d
Date:  94-03-15 01:01:46 EDT
From:  BenSpazz
Posted on:  America Online

Can someone recommend a good technique to model trees that look realistic
without being too complex (rendering-time-wise)? BESIDES buying a program
like Tree Professional. I'm thinking of pine trees and dedicuous trees.
Please help.
Thanks,

BenSubj:  Panoramic Rendering?
Date:  94-03-15 02:44:52 EDT
From:  JHeikeB
Posted on:  America Online

I have a question about making panoramic images of scenes. I have tried
rendering eight cameras rotated 45 degrees from each other but none of the
objects lined up in the final images. I know that panoramic images are
usually extremely distorted but I was wondering if there was a way around
this in 3-D programs. I am using Strata Studio Pro. Any suggestions are
appreciated.
Jason BestSubj:  Re:Panoramic Rendering?
Date:  94-03-15 04:09:50 EDT
From:  Rendererer
Posted on:  America Online

I haven't used Studio Pro, but one thing that should work in any program is
this:  Move the camera VERY far from the scene, and use a long telephoto lens
setting.  A telephoto lens, or certainly an orthographic view,  will minimize
distortion.  Then just set the aspect ratio of the rendering to something
wide and panoramic. 

This goes against the obvious idea of using a fisheye-type perspective, but
in my brain it sounds like it would produce less distorted, if perhaps less
exciting, results. 

- JoeSubj:  Panoramic? (again)
Date:  94-03-15 13:57:43 EDT
From:  JHeikeB
Posted on:  America Online

Thanks, Joe, for your suggestion but I wasn't very clear about what I wanted.
I would like to get a 360 degree image. For instance , I would like to have a
360 degree perspective of a room from the center which could be used in a
interactive game in which the player could "turn" around in the space
(effectively the PICT would be displaced to the left or right in depending on
the user's input. Any more suggestions?
Thanks, Jason BestSubj:  Re:Panoramic? (again)
Date:  94-03-15 15:50:44 EDT
From:  Rendererer
Posted on:  America Online

Oh.  That's ugly.  In that case I might just do an animation with the camera
rotating around 360 degrees, and then painstakingly splice the undistorted
centers of each picture together to create a long strip. I have no idea if
that would work, but hey.

- JoeSubj:  Re:Panoramic? (again)
Date:  94-03-15 19:56:52 EDT
From:  Vanzo
Posted on:  America Online

regarding Rendererer's last comment:

Why cut the distorted parts of your frames? Why not just narrow your aspect
ratio to diminish perspectival distortions about the edges. This would save
you more time in rendering due to less redundancy.

How accurate is SSPro's camera anyway?


Regarding JHeikeB's dilemma:

Why pan a "seamless" PICT drawing when you could just playback an animation
of a panning camera? Want to pan backwards? just play the animation in
reverse...Subj:  360 panoramic
Date:  94-03-16 03:15:27 EDT
From:  KABjorke
Posted on:  America Online

What you need is a distorted image. I recommend a visit to Disneyland --
check out circle-vision images. They do NOT line up in a rectilinear way!
Instead, the perspectives are matched along the frame edges only.

If you were really, really into it, I suppose you could create a fake lens
distortion with photoshop.Subj:  Trees, in 3d
Date:  94-03-16 15:20:43 EDT
From:  Sweaz
Posted on:  America Online

I don't know how tight you intend to be,  but for backgrounds, try using
primitives like cones and spheres, make them transparent, (no gloss) and map
branches and leaves (created in a paint program) around  them.  All you will
see are the maps and not much memory used.Subj:  Re:Trees, in 3d
Date:  94-03-19 19:10:51 EDT
From:  TylerSte
Posted on:  America Online

I asked the sam question on the Strata board--here's one of the replies I
got:

"A neat trick is to create a sheet of glass with total transparency and no
reflectivity, then apply a pict map of a tree to the glass with a repetition
of 1 H and 1 V.  Then replicate the object at a 90 degree rotation.  Then you
can fly around your 2d tree and save a ton of polygons."Subj:  Re:Trees, in
3d
Date:  94-03-20 14:15:47 EDT
From:  AMANNING
Posted on:  America Online

I've told many people the same trick, and it works well. However, it dosen't
hold a candle to the effect of a real 3d object. I would still use that same
effect in the distance, out in the fog, etc, to save polys, but close to
medium, there is no competition between a 3d tree and textured  planes. I've
done both.

Allen ManningSubj:  Re:Trees, in 3d
Date:  94-03-20 19:25:39 EDT
From:  SaurianC
Posted on:  America Online

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here...

But wouldn't another vatiation of the same idea be to paste a tree onto the
glass cube and just have the cube "look at" the camera where ever it goes, if
your program allos this?Subj:  Re:Trees, in 3d
Date:  94-03-20 20:27:46 EDT
From:  RayDunakin
Posted on:  America Online

Speaking of trees, I'd sure like to know how they made the trees in that new
Listerine "Robin Hood" commercial. Anyone care to speculate?Subj:  Re:Trees,
in 3d
Date:  94-03-20 21:23:01 EDT
From:  Vanzo
Posted on:  America Online

Saurian-

No, it wouldn't. I believe the "glass plane" transparency method requires two
orthogonal clear planes to intersect at their centerlines, so your texture
maps intersect at the center(trunk). This way, you have an approximation of
foliage(albeit crude) that will be represented from any ground level
position.Subj:  Re:Trees, in 3d
Date:  94-03-20 23:12:50 EDT
From:  Rendererer
Posted on:  America Online

Re:  Listerine

The trees in the Listerine ads were done with RenderMan shaders, I'm
sure.Subj:  Re:Trees, in 3d
Date:  94-03-20 23:17:10 EDT
From:  Rendererer
Posted on:  America Online

By the way, I recently did a model of a Christmas tree, all modeled, and I
assure you it beats whatever one could achieve with transparency maps, etc.
The sucker had over 100,000 needles.  Painful to work with, but it made for
an amazing rendering.

'tis true.  Nothing beats a real model.  On the other hand, check out the
trees in the CD-ROM game MYST.  They're done with textures, and look quite
good.  And because they're 'cheated' that way, Cyan was able to plant dozens
of them all over the place. 

- JoeSubj:  Re:Trees, in 3d
Date:  94-03-21 00:57:30 EDT
From:  Artifice
Posted on:  America Online

I've seen an interesting variation in tree tricks used by Greg Ward at the
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (author of Radiance).  It's pretty down and
dirty, but gives impressive results. 

A procedurally modeled chunk of tree branch is procedurally instanced around
the model with slightly randomized parameters.  The result is a small forest
of fully branched 3D trees, without any polygons to load and sort. 

This requires a renderer that can handle that kind of model, and the
rendering is still massive.  Also, it doesn't come from anything like
intuitive interactive modeling.  But really good trees.

No free lunch, but lots of ways to slice it.

KevinSubj:  Re:Panoramic Rendering?
Date:  94-03-21 02:27:37 EDT
From:  JKnoll
Posted on:  America Online

What you really want to do is simulate a curved focal plane, which is not
supported by any package I know of.

There's a pretty sneaky cheat you can do, however...

Let's say you want to render a 2000 pixel wide by 500 pixel high panorama
spanning 180 degrees.  Start by making a camera that's one pixel wide by 500
high.   Point the camera at one end of the panorama, and render 2000 frames
of animation panning the camera accross to the other end.

The trick then is to assemble the 2000 vertical scanlines into one picture.
There are a couple of ways to do this.  I have written a Photoshop plugin
that can do this.  Mail me if you want to persue this.Subj:  Re:Panoramic
Rendering?
Date:  94-03-21 02:34:33 EDT
From:  JKnoll
Posted on:  America Online

Another way to assemble the frames would be to use Macromedia Director.  Open
the movie, and in a 2000 pixel wide canvas,  do an animation of the movie
moving from one side of the canvas to the other in one pixel increments.  Set
the movie to "leave trails", go to the last frame, and save the result as a
PICT....Subj:  Re:Panoramic Rendering?
Date:  94-03-21 04:34:17 EDT
From:  KABjorke
Posted on:  America Online

Or you could just warp the image using some sort of morpher or two-pass
alogrithm,  oversampling it to get the detail you need in the most-distorted
regions. This is the technique used by Disney on the projectors in at least
one ride -- they painstakingly measured the lenses projections onto the
screen and came up with a lengthy (8th-order equation, as I recall) curve
that fit their data in Mathematica, and then warped flat 3D graphics to
conform to that curve. Unfun.

Another route, which I almost pursued for a ride up in Canada, which I
*think* would have worked, is to distort all the objects in the scene via
FFDs (or some similar unpatented technology) so that they APPEAR to have
non-planar projections. The trick is getting this to shade properly, and
special RenderMan light shaders were to be used, along with the caveat
(acceptable to the client) that nothing near screen-edge would cause
shadows... the ride was 86'd however. *sigh*Subj:  Re:Trees, in 3d (Robin
Hood)
Date:  94-03-21 04:41:54 EDT
From:  KABjorke
Posted on:  America Online

The trees were cleverly rendered with RenderMan, to be sure. They had
GEOMETRIC leaves, however. The RIB files were pretty impressively huge.Subj:
Re:Panoramic Views
Date:  94-03-21 09:22:46 EDT
From:  Rendererer
Posted on:  America Online

Hey, you know, in addition to the nice trees in MYST, there are a few
panoramic renderings in there as well:  in the telescope on the mountain, and
in the 'barbecue ATM'.  They seem to have achieved the exact effect we're all
talking about. 

Wonder how they did it?

- RenderererererSubj:  Re:Trees, in 3d
Date:  94-03-21 09:58:26 EDT
From:  SaurianC
Posted on:  America Online

Vanzo-

Going along with the galss plane transparency method: Could you then have say
12(!) orthogonal clear planes intersecting at their centerlines to give a
more realistic effect from whatever angle you look at, or would this not
work?

Also, would the tree texture on the glass planes be visible though the back
side so when you are around the back you could see it there?Subj:  Re:Trees,
in 3d
Date:  94-03-21 14:02:47 EDT
From:  Vanzo
Posted on:  America Online

You could have, say- 12(!) texture maps, but it begins to defeat the cost
effectiveness of this solution, Do some tests to see...

Providing that the plane your projecting onto is clear, a texture map should
look just fine forward or back. Again, do some tests to make sure...

There is really no replacement for modelling trees close up. I noticed that
Pixar's Robin hood commercial (which is my favorite of the series, btw)
rarily if never shows the joint of one bow to another: the connection is
always on the side away from the viewer. Also, there are no small branches:
There are trunks, tapering bows and leaves. Looks great nonetheless....

scott vanzoSubj:  Re:Trees, in 3d (Robin Hood)
Date:  94-03-21 19:27:37 EDT
From:  RayDunakin
Posted on:  America Online

The leaves in particular were very impressive.Subj:  A tree grows in AOL!
Date:  94-03-24 14:18:17 EDT
From:  AFC John
Posted on:  America Online

There is a DXF model of a maple tree now available in the Models Library of
the 3DSIG, generated from Onyx Corp's TREE3D program. Enjoy!

AFC John
3DSIG/MGRSubj:  rendering a spring?
Date:  94-04-12 02:42:04 EDT
From:  EranA
Posted on:  America Online

Does anybody out there know how to draw a 3-d spring (spiral) on Alias
Sketch! version 1.5. I have been trying for two days with no progress.
help!Subj:  Re:rendering a spring?
Date:  94-04-12 13:44:12 EDT
From:  SWAGSTAFF
Posted on:  America Online

Yes and no (you can do it, but it ain't easy)

You start with a cross-section of your spring wire on the drawing plane and
alternately hold and release the shift key while extruding the shape (when
you hold the shift key, you extrude perpendicular to the drawing plane). With
some practice, you can learn to approximate a helical path while you do this.
You can then go back and tweak the cross sections to fine tune the model.
The good news is that version 2.0 will let you create an absolutely perfect
helix, nautilus, or whatever, in about 10 seconds using the new duplicate and
Loft tools -  very cool.
- swagstaff   Subj:  Re: rendering a spring.
Date:  94-04-24 04:24:06 EDT
From:  EranA
Posted on:  America Online

That's a tough one. I got another answer in the Alias Sketch! board. Its
easier by extruding over diagonaly touching planes. something like an
acordion fold out. anyway I will check out the new version.
Thanks for the answer

ERan.
Subj:  How Model & Anim Water?
Date:  94-04-27 09:00:58 EDT
From:  MConsultng
Posted on:  America Online

I need to model and animate water pouring out of a large diameter pipe. Any
suggestions on how to do this? I work in Strata 3D but could upgrade to
Strata Studio Pro if I needed to. The water must first be contained in the
pipe and then pour out. Thanks for your suggestions!Subj:  Re:How Model &
Anim Water?
Date:  94-04-27 14:04:40 EDT
From:  Fargo Wild
Posted on:  America Online

I have had some success with creating an amorhous shape and rotoscoping a
quicktime movie of flowing water on the shape.  Has the appearance of
fluidity even though th general shape of the oject doesn't change.Subj:
Re:How Model & Anim Water?
Date:  94-04-28 11:39:10 EDT
From:  SWAGSTAFF
Posted on:  America Online

Yeah, you could create an animated texture with white washing over black from
top to bottom. Apply this to your undulating shape as a  transparency map.
The shape will "appear" from top to bottom  and look as if it's falling out
of the pipe. You might want to mix this with a similar, but different,
refraction map.
-sWagstaffSubj:  Re:How Model & Anim Water?
Date:  94-05-03 15:11:47 EDT
From:  TylerSte
Posted on:  America Online

Strata has a nice extension called Ripples that allows the user to set
different wave attributes to a surface. It works very well with water
(several water textures are included) or any other surface. The attributes
change over time, which means that they can be used in a still image or they
move in an animation. I have the extension and am impressed by it, but of
course you need StudioPro for it to work...Subj:  Discussion MOVED
Date:  94-05-06 09:31:16 EDT
From:  AFA EveE
Posted on:  America Online

The discussion on drop shadows in Illustrator was moved to the Postscript
folder. Let's try to keep the content matched with the folders for the
benefit of all our users...:)

Thanks!

Eve Elberg
AOL Forum Ass't
Graphics & CADSubj:  Mathmatica Models?
Date:  94-08-08 04:32:57 EDT
From:  Old Tire
Posted on:  America Online

Does anybody know how to export a 3d dxf from Mathmatica?  I read the brief
section on it in the Packages manual, but still don't see how to do this.
Any ideas?Subj:  Re:Mathmatica Models?
Date:  94-08-13 06:42:27 EDT
From:  DaveTeich
Posted on:  America Online

I tried Mathematica, but found that I had to know math to use the program.
Bummer.Subj:  water effects
Date:  94-09-01 23:57:04 EDT
From:  Rick May
Posted on:  America Online

Im trying to create some watery type effects..  When you go swimming and your
under water looking at the side of a pool, you see shimmering light on the
wall..  I want to re-create this in an animation..

Does anyone have any ideas..   I was thinking of taking real footage of this
and throwing it on my 3d wall..  as possibly a projection light or
something..    But if someone knows an entirely computer way to create this-
please elaborate..

Using RMan.. So if you know how to do it with that, then great!  Other than
that- im using SGI software for animation, and ofcourse theres no shimmering
water button..

Thanks-   RickSubj:  Re:water effects
Date:  94-09-02 05:17:26 EDT
From:  KABjorke
Posted on:  America Online

Those lights are called "caustics." The Watt Bros. wrote a paper for
Siggraph, it's in the Proceedingsa or in their "Advance Animation & Rendering
Techniques" book.

The "Inside a Cell" image here also is full of fake caustics via RMan -- I
needed the caustics to loop over a held background plate, so they were summed
sine waves, rather than noise-based or random. I highlighted a narrow range
of the total bandwidth, something like:

   s = lots of 3D sine waves summed from various centers
   h = abs(s-.3);
   v = smoothstep(0,.3,h);

or something like that. I remember that this was done inside an illuminace{ }
block, so it affected the amount of light received from some diffections, not
just the surface color.Subj:  Re:water effects
Date:  94-09-03 01:42:54 EDT
From:  Vanzo
Posted on:  America Online

Rick-

..and if that doesn't work, I have a kidney-shaped pool that you can film...
;) amazing caustics I might add...

Seriously, Alias PowerAnimator may give me the opti-fx tools to produce that
effect(they even have a flipbook example of sorts...) If you find a Renderman
solution, I'd love to see it. When I get some time away from my other duties
here, I'll try some things out toward that end...

-scottSubj:  Re:water effects
Date:  94-09-08 23:58:22 EDT
From:  Rick May
Posted on:  America Online

thanks for the help guys..

I ended up getting some actual shot footage from a friend at Boss films..
They shot it for that Airline commercial with the killer whales..  Im gonna
take the footage and project it on the needed objects..

Thanks guys..

rickSubj:  Public DXF's?
Date:  94-09-20 00:48:15 EDT
From:  Old Tire
Posted on:  America Online

Are the DXF files in the library public domain?  If I use one of the ones
that AFC John uploaded in a commercial animation (as opposed to private), do
I need to pay any kind of royalty?  Thanks in advance...Subj:  Re:Public
DXF's?
Date:  94-09-20 01:28:49 EDT
From:  AFC John
Posted on:  America Online

Old tire-

Most of those recent models I've been scouring from the
avalon.chinalake.navy.mil Wavefront.obj library and converting for AOL
distribution. All the models from that site are public domain as far as I
know, and not subject to any royalties. Some of the others from that site are
Viewpoint give-away sets of the same type. And the remainders are models made
by aol users and uploaded as DXF's. So you should be free and clear on any
model in the 3DSIG Models lib. unless otherwise specified by the uploader.

AFC John
John Goodman
3DSIG/MGRSubj:  3d Mags..
Date:  94-09-20 03:20:44 EDT
From:  Gary 3000
Posted on:  America Online

Does anyone have the phone numbers to any of the industry 3-d magazines?
I don't get out from work too often.

ThanksSubj:  Re:3d Mags..
Date:  94-09-20 17:31:54 EDT
From:  TIMETECH2
Posted on:  America Online

3D Artist (Columbine, Inc.)
505-982-3532

Computer Graphics World
918-835-3161 ext 400(for subscription inquiries)

Happy Reading. -pknSubj:  Re:Public DXF's?
Date:  94-09-21 00:29:13 EDT
From:  Old Tire
Posted on:  America Online

Thanks for the answer.Subj:  Re:3d Mags..
Date:  94-09-21 03:01:41 EDT
From:  Gary 3000
Posted on:  America Online

Thanks TIMETECH2,

I'll give both Mags  a buzz tommorow.
Subj:  Who is the 3-D Hayden author?
Date:  94-10-07 12:02:56 EDT
From:  SSteuer
Posted on:  America Online

Hi.

I got (and lost) e-mail from an author/artist doing a 3-d book for Hayden --
does anyone know who that might be???? I might have work for him.
Thanks,
Sharon SteuerSubj:  Re:Who is the 3-D Hayden author?
Date:  94-10-07 14:35:07 EDT
From:  Eagle37342
Posted on:  America Online

Could be SWAGSTAF?Subj:  cad software?
Date:  94-10-16 14:18:27 EDT
From:  LUCEIRA
Posted on:  America Online

Hi

I just discovered this forum and I'm hoping you could help me.  I'm an
Industrial Design student and am searching for cad sotware.

I do not have a Mac.  I have a Gateway 4dx2-66V.  Could anyone recommend a
software that is capable of both 2D/3D?

Thanks
LuceiraSubj:  Re:cad software?
Date:  94-10-17 11:01:14 EDT
From:  Old Tire
Posted on:  America Online

The only one I know of is AutoCAD.  It's not very good on the Mac, but I've
been told by PC users that it is very nice.Subj:  Re:cad software?
Date:  94-10-17 16:06:06 EDT
From:  Born2Sleep
Posted on:  America Online

I learned a bit of AutoCAD on the PC, and I hated it. Then again, I AM a Mac
loyalist...

BenSubj:  Re:cad software?
Date:  94-10-18 00:04:38 EDT
From:  Old Tire
Posted on:  America Online

The PC version of AutoCAD is supposed to be much better than the Mac's as
well.  Have you looked at Studio3D?  Subj:  DWLD Photos
Date:  94-12-02 08:42:21 EDT
From:  For56GT
Posted on:  America Online

Get"Not enough memory"...Whatis the minimum Needed? For56gtSubj:  High
pixel-width images?
Date:  95-02-10 12:23:02 EDT
From:  RayDuke
Posted on:  America Online

I've been running into some limitations when trying to generate very high
pixel-width images (5300 pixels wide) for a two-page magazine spread. I
figured out a workaround (imaging onto a tranparency, using that
conventionally) but I am still curious: can I ever get a rendering above 5000
pixels wide?

Ray Doeksen
Subj:  Re:High pixel-width images?
Date:  95-02-10 12:40:52 EDT
From:  RandyWyan
Posted on:  America Online

Ray Dream Designer and EIAS are 2 programs which I'm aware of which will let
you render images up to 16,000 x 16,000

RandyWyanSubj:  Re:High pixel-width images?
Date:  95-02-10 19:23:38 EDT
From:  PixelsSD
Posted on:  America Online

RenderMan too can handle extremely large images, though I'm not exactly sure
just how high. I personally have rendered images in excess of 8k x 8k.Subj:
Re:High pixel-width images?
Date:  95-02-18 22:50:47 EDT
From:  D Grahame
Posted on:  America Online

The pict file format has a problem with very long skinny images, which can
cause problems with large Renderman renders.

Although renderman will render huge images, when you use RenderApp to start
the render (and it is a very long skinny image)  it automatically writes the
image to disk, as a PICT file, naturally enough, as it is the native Mac
image format, and you end up with a blank file.

If you render to the screen, if you try and save the image to a pict, it
saves a blank file, or sometimes crashes, losing the render, unless you
choose TIFF as the file format.

Photoshop gives you a warning when you try and save an illegal pict - I then
generally save it as a Photoshop file,

Donald G.Subj:  Historic Blueprints
Date:  95-03-30 13:46:19 EDT
From:  Bob Negri
Posted on:  America Online

I am interested in learning how one goes about getting access to blueprints
of historic buildings, ie an English castle or a medieval cathedral.  I am
thinking of the job Chuch Carter did for National Geographic on the Step
Pyramid at Saqqara.  Would plans of the sight be provided by National
Geographic?  Suppose I wanted to model a cathedral.  Do I contact the
director of the cathedral and as him for a copy of the blueprints under
whatever business contract he wants, or is there another source I could use
where foreign language skills are not required.

Any information would be appreciated.
Thanks

Bob NegriSubj:  Re:Historic Blueprints
Date:  95-03-31 13:26:18 EDT
From:  ItoOgami
Posted on:  America Online

Bob...A lot of times sources are hard to find.   You can check with your
local library, university or college for professional journals...these
journals (such as amco) Are catered towards the members of the particular
field ... they tend to have good line art (architectural...layed out on a
meter grid)  these are especially usefull when working with excavation type
or restoration type designs.   The journals have the fresco's drawn in line
art so that you can the scan (if it isn't a copywrite violation) and then
colorize in photoshop or better yet painter to get that textured look.

hope this helps.Subj:  Texture maps for curved surfaces
Date:  95-06-14 23:08:03 EDT
From:  MarkCarrel
Posted on:  America Online

Hi,

Can aynone give me some pointers on how to create texture maps that will look
right when they are mapped onto a curved surface? For example, a bump map to
create the dimples on a golf ball must be distorted at the top and bottom so
that when it is wrapped around the ball  the dimples at the equator will be
the same size as those at the poles.

Is there a trick or technique to figuring out just how much to distort the
texture map? Thanks!Subj:  Re:Texture maps for curved surfa
Date:  95-06-15 01:02:09 EDT
From:  Old Tire
Posted on:  America Online

Try a test grid and use that as a guide.Subj:  Re:Texture maps for curved
surfa
Date:  95-06-15 15:34:28 EDT
From:  DaveTeich
Posted on:  America Online

I believe there is actually a tutorial file online in the Strata forum which
has to do with golf ball mapping--Subj:  I Gotta Know....
Date:  95-08-10 20:24:54 EDT
From:  DheDesign
Posted on:  America Online

What is THE best modeler and rendering software for the PC. I am presently
running StudioPro on a  68K MAC and have found that the new versions and
versions to follow will require a PowerPC. SORRY! I am not going to invest in
the upgrade when I can buy a new (and stable ) PC for less money. SO....is
there any software out there that will do what Studio Pro does in a Windows
environment? Photorealistic rendering is absolutely neccessary. I'd like
Boolean, Spline modeling and maybe some animation. I've seen demos on True
Space and it looked promising. If anyone can help me find some answers, I
would sincerely appreciate it. Thanks!

DHESubj:  Re:I Gotta Know....
Date:  95-08-10 23:10:57 EDT
From:  K Lango
Posted on:  America Online

Well, if you're really serious about getting an PC box, I'd suggest
LightWave 3D for Windows.  It's still in pre-release version and will hit a
final gold release in about another month or so. But there's a reason why the
Hollywood types choose LightWave 3D. For about $700-800, it does everything
that Strata does, and more. But be warned, it is not anything at all like
Strata in the Interface department. But once you learn it, and there is a
healthy sized learning curve, you can do some very cool things with it.
Luminance, Physics Plug-In modules, IK, bones, flares, visible light rays,
volumetric fog, volumetric lighting and shadows. And there are quite a few
plug-ins available. Check it out if you can.

Keith
Zombie 3DSubj:  Re:I Gotta Know....
Date:  95-08-11 04:47:56 EDT
From:  ThreeFnD
Posted on:  America Online

3D Studio is a staple in the mulitmedia and game developing industries, but
it's expensive and has the steepest learning curve of any 3D program on pc's.
Makes some great images and animations, though.

 I thought there was a Windows version of Strata Studio Pro, too.

-3Subj:  Re:I Gotta Know....
Date:  95-08-11 13:54:27 EDT
From:  PixelsSD
Posted on:  America Online

>>>What is THE best modeler and rendering software for the PC. I am presently
running StudioPro on a  68K MAC and have found that the new versions and
versions to follow will require a PowerPC. SORRY! I am not going to invest in
the upgrade when I can buy a new (and stable ) PC for less money. SO....is
there any software out there that will do what Studio Pro does in a Windows
environment? Photorealistic rendering is absolutely neccessary. I'd like
Boolean, Spline modeling and maybe some animation. I've seen demos on True
Space and it looked promising. If anyone can help me find some answers, I
would sincerely appreciate it. Thanks!<<<

Upgrade to a PowerMac and buy PixelPutty/Mac RenderMan.

-AndrewSubj:  Re:I Gotta Know....
Date:  95-08-11 21:33:39 EDT
From:  Creep311
Posted on:  America Online

Why not buy a Power Mac 9500 or a PM 8500?   They are just as fast if not
faster than any Pentium.   And with Quickdraw 3d coming out, the Power Macs
are awesome.    The only reason that most people use a PC is because PCs are
generally cheaper. <--- Maybe I'm wrong , but that's my theory.Subj:  Re:I
Gotta Know....
Date:  95-08-12 15:18:16 EDT
From:  AC4UF
Posted on:  America Online

>Why not buy a Power Mac 9500 or a PM 8500?

Speaking of this, let me throw outr a few tidbits.  The 8500:

beat a dual P100 system in Photoshop gaussian blur

performs floating point operations at approximately 2x the rate of a P100.
Isn't floating point performance what 3D hardware is all about anyway?
Rendering is basically an FPU thing, provided you don't use RayDream. <g>

/\/\attSubj:  Re:I Gotta Know....
Date:  95-08-12 16:55:45 EDT
From:  PixelsSD
Posted on:  America Online

>>>The only reason that most people use a PC is because PCs are generally
cheaper.<<<

But when you add in down time trying to get your 'ACME super-duper video
card' to work with your 'Genric, Inc. sound board' (I could go on, and on)
you ALWAYS come out ahead with a Mac! I've watched developers I consider
brilliant agonize for days on end to get a PC to work.

-AndrewSubj:  Re:PC Working
Date:  95-08-12 19:37:22 EDT
From:  RenderNUT
Posted on:  America Online

     But Andrew I always use the "stand on your head, point to the east with
your big toe and press the boot key with your nose" trick...

DaveSubj:  Re:PC Working
Date:  95-08-13 08:24:04 EDT
From:  DaveTeich
Posted on:  America Online

That's where I've been making my mistake. So it's to the EAST...Subj:  Re:I
Gotta Know....
Date:  95-08-13 15:57:26 EDT
From:  MACROMED
Posted on:  America Online

Hi, "DHE"....

If you wish, then the demo version of Caligari's trueSpace is readily
available on the CDs included with many books. This would allow you to get
hands-on with it. Their main forums are in the "Animation Vendors A" and
"Graphic User's Group A" sections of CompuServe, if memory serves correctly.

In a similar price range are Hash's Animation Master and NewTek's LightWave.
To my knowledge neither have demo versions. Hash has a wonderful demo reel,
but you may have read of the interface, modules, and multiplicity of files in
its reviews. Custom versions of Lightwave have been used for some TV shows,
and the port for the PC, originally due last December, is said to be "Real
Soon Now."

I don't know if you've heard of Macromedia's Extreme 3D yet... it was
revealed at SIGGRAPH last week and will be available this autumn. It runs on
Win NT, Win 95, and Win 3.1 w/32s, as well as Mac and PowerMac. (The above
tools handle various subsets of these, so please check.) I believe it will
match the description of what you're looking for, but that's for others to
judge, not me.

(Hmm, if you're mainly modeling and rendering, then the current MacroModel
1.5 for Windows uses Bezier-based modeling right in the world, and ships with
Pixar's Photorealistic RenderMan for Windows. It doesn't have the trim curves
of Extreme 3D, although a tech note explains how you can manipulate the
RenderMan file to subtract and intersect shapes and stuff. It only runs under
Win 3.1 and WfW 3.11 -- no 95 nor NT -- but the price is very good in the
catalogs, and I believe you'll then get a deal on Extreme.)

Sorry no categorical opinions here, but I hope the above info is of use. Good
luck!

Regards,
John Dowdell
Macromedia Tech SupportSubj:  Re:Co-incident verticies
Date:  95-08-13 19:14:02 EDT
From:  CREATE 3D
Posted on:  America Online

John D,
Have you folks corrected the co-incident verticies problem that I had a
way-back-when?  A better explanation  to refersh your memory:
open splines that automatically close themselvs when enpoints are co-incident
in a specific view or plane.  Remember the helicopter nose I was trying to
model from 3 splines, 2 of the open splines kept closing when I would look or
manipulate them from a specific view where their enpoints became co-incident.
Later
Evan Pontoriero
Albathion SoftwareSubj:  Re:Co-incident verticies
Date:  95-08-15 00:20:36 EDT
From:  MACROMED
Posted on:  America Online

Hey Evan, nice to see you again....

Yes, that was the single biggest issue we had with MacroModel 1.5... it edged
ahead of the PC issue where if you had a dot-matrix printer driver installed
as the default then the lower portion of the monitor would not refresh.

(I kid you not... and you woouldn't *believe* how long it took to nail that
unlikely PC conflict! ;-)

The "spontaneous snaps" issue got through QA because everyone there was
manipulating the camera and snapping to construction objects instead of
looking edge-on in a modified quadview and trying to do visual alignments...
we missed it because we didn't apply old-style techniques to the new
environment.

Your case was a little different, because (as I recall) you wanted to keep
the profiles of a complex skin open while turning the object around and
manipulating it from various angles. I can understand why you would want to
do it that way... I usually open and close geometry as I need it rather than
keep it open, myself.

But yes, you're right, this was one of the issues that both Rix and I pushed.
I've been trying to break it along those lines and the old recipes just won't
do it... even if I jiggle an open endpoint and cause it to really snap to the
other endpoint, they don't join to make a smooth curve. I think the dev team
has nailed it.

Regards,
John Dowdell
Macromedia Tech SupportSubj:  Re:I Gotta Know....
Date:  95-08-15 01:49:04 EDT
From:  TMichels
Posted on:  America Online

I have a 7100/66 and PPS, Strata, ID etc...  However, after attending
SIGGRAPH I decided to make the move to Windows NT.  I love the Mac, but 95 is
pretty darn close, and the prices on an equivalent PC are on average $1000
less.  The final blow comes when you consider SoftImage and Lightwave, as
well as (you're not supposed to know this...) "rumors" that ElectroGig is
being ported to NT, and "will probably never be ported to Mac".  Many of the
high-end developers I tried to finesse info out of expressed interest in
making NT versions, but could make no official say so.


I tell you, it's enough to make me drool...

AdamSubj:  Re:Co-incident verticies
Date:  95-08-15 17:14:54 EDT
From:  CREATE 3D
Posted on:  America Online

John,
It's nice to know that these bugs have been fixed.  I really didn't get a
good chance to E3D in detail.  I was originally a Daffy person, but didn't
get called back as the development progressed.  I wasn't using MM that much
anyway at that time.  What I would like to know is if you all will be showing
it in SF soon so that I could get a closer, more concentrated look.
Thanks
EvanSubj:  Re:Co-incident verticies
Date:  95-08-16 02:48:54 EDT
From:  MACROMED
Posted on:  America Online

No sooner said that done, Mr. E... Jim Chen at Audio Images in SF will have
the premiere Bay Area showing of Extreme 3D this Friday, August 18, at 2 pm
in their shop on Oak Grove St (SOMA). There's a notice posted in the
Macromedia Forum.

Also, Rix Kramlich will be doin' the Extreme at the SF Macromedia User Forum,
Tue Sept 5, 600 Townsend at 7th, SF. There's general Q&A at 6, announcements
at 7, and the whole show generally runs until 9-10. There will also be an
artist who's used it during its alpha days... we had a few seed sites who fed
things back to the engineering team during work (and some of these focus
groups gave such hot insights that we actually went back and re-spec'd the
tool during alpha). One of these folks (I'm not sure who yet) will be at the
9/5 meeting.

I've heard of one or two more... believe it's already been at SF State...
Extreme 3D is a joy to show, I can tell you that from my experiences at
SIGGRAPH and my partners' experiences at MacWorld. You'll have fun! <g>

Regards,
John Dowdell
Macromedia Tech SupportSubj:  Re:I Gotta Know....
Date:  95-08-16 02:58:43 EDT
From:  MACROMED
Posted on:  America Online

Hi T,

Interesting. I like both platforms, each in different ways. Most of my time
has been on WfW 3.11, but I've enjoyed the NT Pentiums used at SIGGRAPH, and
really dug the pre-release P6 that was used to show Extreme 3D at the press
release and the party at the House of Blues... nice box!

But then again, I've worked with a lot of Director developers and see that
there are definitely hidden costs in a PC... it's more labor-intensive. The
Adobe forum on CompuServe splits their tools up by platform, and the
Photoshop area has posts in a 4:1 PC/Mac ratio, and this is exceeded by the
platform ratio for Premiere, and further, most of the Maccies are talking
about technique and such while the PC folk are trying to get their boxes
configured to work like other peoples' machines. No value judgments on anyone
or anything here, just that the initial price is not the total price.

Hey, but if you've got such a nice PowerMac already, why not get a good
Pentium running NT or 95 and network them both together? With E3D at list
$695 you should be able to get both Mac/Win versions at street $1K or less,
and that gives you your own little renderfarm all set up. Work on one
machine, have the other one slave away for you. If you ever get a third
machine you can hook it right in, install the same copy of E3D, and bingo.

This plan is really helpful for multimedia studios who are multiplatform
already... leverages the investment, because machines are not idle, no matter
the platform.

fwiw, I'm firmly convinced that it's good to know both platforms these
days... if this sounds good to you, too, then why not leverage your skills
out this way?

Regards,
John Dowdell
Macromedia Tech SupportSubj:  Re:I Gotta Know....
Date:  95-08-16 23:58:40 EDT
From:  K Lango
Posted on:  America Online


>>fwiw, I'm firmly convinced that it's good to know both platforms these
days... if this sounds good to you, too, then why not leverage your skills
out this way?<<<

Well said. The days of Mac or PC advocacy and "my OS is better than your OS"
are dead. Learn them, use them. Make money.

Keith
Zombie 3DSubj:  Re:I Gotta Know....
Date:  95-08-17 01:25:16 EDT
From:  MACROMED
Posted on:  America Online

Yeah, the fun sort of went out of it when it was just a two-way instead of a
three-way, anyway....  ;-)

jdSubj:  FlareMaker
Date:  95-09-06 14:08:42 EDT
From:  NateMLS
Posted on:  America Online

I downloaded FlareMaker from AOL and it is missing a README file.  I was
wondering how to feed an animation in as text.  Can anybody help?

NateMLS
Subj:  Re:FlareMaker
Date:  95-09-06 16:28:35 EDT
From:  RG4Troy
Posted on:  America Online

there is no readme file. John Knoll sent the application to a few of us
because we were interested. It was never meant for mass distribution. E-mail
me directly and give me more detail and I can help you.
e-mail me at: RG4Troy@aol.com
Subj:  Help: drill bit
Date:  95-09-30 19:49:17 EDT
From:  CBSP
Posted on:  America Online

I'm a self-taught beginner struggling with an ancient version of StrataStudio
(1.0) - I'm trying to make a drill to accompany some old images from Marathon
Man - the drill body looks great but I'm having a hell of a time
with the drill bit.  I think I should be sweeping this -maybe I'm just having
a mental block but it's just not working out.

Any help is greatly appreciated!  Thanks.

Cindy
Subj:  Re:Help: drill bit
Date:  95-10-01 18:37:49 EDT
From:  DKim 009
Posted on:  America Online

>>I'm a self-taught beginner struggling with an ancient version of
StrataStudio (1.0) - I'm trying to make a drill to accompany some old images
from Marathon Man - the drill body looks great but I'm having a hell of a
time
with the drill bit.  I think I should be sweeping this -maybe I'm just having
a mental block but it's just not working out.<<

Can you get away with using a bump map for the drillbit?  That would be one
of the easiest ways, but if you do need the detail for tight shots, the sweep
is indeed the way.  BTW, Renderman has a shader that will give you threaded
geometry from a cylinder.

DongSubj:  Re:Help: drill bit
Date:  95-10-01 23:52:37 EDT
From:  ACrawfish
Posted on:  America Online

A possibility might be to model the cross section of the bit, then duplicate
it a number of times rotating and translating (and perhaps scaling) along the
length of the bit, and then skinning the profiles.  Subj:  Re:Help: drill bit
Date:  95-10-02 04:31:21 EDT
From:  AdobeSmudg
Posted on:  America Online

What a good thought, AC!Subj:  Re:Help: drill bit
Date:  95-10-05 12:05:08 EDT
From:  CBSP
Posted on:  America Online

Thanks for your suggestions - I'm going to try them out as soon as my yearly
fall cold allows me to focus on my monitor again....

CindySubj:  Re:Quicktime converter
Date:  95-10-31 15:54:22 EDT
From:  La Vardera     
Posted on:  America Online

Can anyone recommend a QuickTime utility that will perform the conversion
required to use a QuickTime movie with Windows. This involves converting the
double fork file format to a single fork file. You would see some sort of
indication for single fork under the save or save as dialog box of a program
capable of doing the conversion. Apple does make a conversion utility, but it
is distributed as part of the QuickTime Developer Toolkit - I want to see if
there is smething from a shareware developer before going that route.

Greg La VarderaSubj:  Re:Quicktime converter
Date:  95-10-31 16:52:54 EDT
From:  RandyWyan     
Posted on:  America Online

Movie Player 2.1 will do this. Comes with QT 2.1 - downloadable from the new
Apple Forum here on AOL - Keyword: Apple Computer.

Best,
RandyWyanSubj:  Re:Quicktime converter
Date:  95-10-31 23:18:14 EDT
From:  Todd 4ta       
Posted on:  America Online

<<Can anyone recommend a QuickTime utility that will perform the conversion
required to use a QuickTime movie with Windows>>

<<Movie Player 2.1 will do this. Comes with QT 2.1 - downloadable from the
new Apple Forum here on AOL - Keyword: Apple Computer.>>

Just click the box in the 'Save' Dialog that says 'make movie playable on
other platforms', you also have to make it self-contained.Subj:  Re:Quicktime
converter
Date:  95-11-01 18:28:57 EDT
From:  La Vardera     
Posted on:  America Online

Thanks a lot - I had seen Movieplayer 2.1 when looking in Apples forum, but I
did not know it made the conversion. Thanks!

Greg La VarderaSubj:  Re:Quicktime converter
Date:  95-11-07 13:26:50 EDT
From:  La Vardera     
Posted on:  America Online

I have installed the QuickTime update and the new MoviePlayer with the
conversion option in the Save As dialog box. I have tried convereting some
movies and have sent them over AOL to a friend with Windows QuickTime. He is
unable to play them. He gets and error message saying that QuickTime does not
recognize the file. I have saved the converted movies as self contained,
playable on Non-Macintosh computers, and used an 8 digit dos type file name
with a .mov extentension. Does anyone have more experience with this? Have I
missed something?

Greg La VarderaSubj:  Explosion
Date:  95-11-09 20:37:09 EDT
From:  Dmitri 2       
Posted on:  America Online

I'm doing a self-satisfaction animation with a space battle scene. I need an
explosion in in two parts. Wondering if any body has advice. I'm using Strata
Vision 4.0 on a Mac Sub-Quadra 460, actually a Performa :-( with FPU and 20MB
RAM. I was thinking of a growing sphere with a partly transparent texture,
but wanted to here from the experts.
---J.M.Subj:  Re:Explosion
Date:  95-11-09 21:45:35 EDT
From:  Sric           
Posted on:  America Online

You could buy the Pyromania cd from Educorp. I think about $100.00. These are
real explosions filmed in 35mm and then scanned.  A wide variety of different
explosions. They also have a new cd out called Pyromania 2 that has
explosions, fireworks and smoke. All the backgrounds are shot against black.
Then just apply them as a tex map. Be forwarned they don't have alpha
channels( the first cd I don't know about #2) , so you have to make your own.

Cheers
Fred S.Subj:  renderman shaders
Date:  96-05-25 22:03:37 EDT
From:  GLOBE DC       
Posted on:  America Online

maybe someone can help me. I'm not a programmer. I copied the blue marble
shader out of the Musgrave, Peachy book "Texturing a procedural approach"
book. I copied it exactly and tried to compile it with pixar shader app and
kept getting syntax error notices....what should I do? Subj:  Re:renderman
shaders
Date:  96-05-26 21:49:14 EDT
From:  PixelsSD       
Posted on:  America Online

>>>maybe someone can help me. I'm not a programmer. I copied the blue marble
shader out of the Musgrave, Peachy book "Texturing a procedural approach"
book. I copied it exactly and tried to compile it with pixar shader app and
kept getting syntax error notices....what should I do? <<<

The ShaderApp compiler should return a line number along with that error
code. Check that line or post it here and I'll check it for you.

-AndrewSubj:  Re:renderman shaders
Date:  96-05-28 12:37:17 EDT
From:  DarkPrints     
Posted on:  America Online

>>The ShaderApp compiler should return a line number along with that error
code. Check that line or post it here and I'll check it for you.<<

When it returns the line number, where does it reference the first line. Is
it from the very first line of text, even if it's an annotation? Or is it
from the first line of code that actually begins the program?

DarkPrintsSubj:  Re:renderman shaders
Date:  96-05-28 13:59:30 EDT
From:  MarshRoss     
Posted on:  America Online

There's some headers at the top of the file you need to nuke.  The first line
should read...


surface
blue_marble(....etc.....

Marshall RossSubj:  Re:renderman shaders
Date:  96-05-28 17:26:01 EDT
From:  PixelsSD       
Posted on:  America Online

>>>When it returns the line number, where does it reference the first line.
Is it from the very first line of text, even if it's an annotation? Or is it
from the first line of code that actually begins the program?<<<

The very first line -- whether its a comment or whatever.

-AndrewSubj:  Re:renderman shaders
Date:  96-05-28 17:29:30 EDT
From:  PixelsSD       
Posted on:  America Online

I looked in the T&M book and the only references to marble in the index
(pages 165 - 167) are c code -- not shader code. If these are the 'shaders'
you are typing in they will return errors.

-AndrewSubj:  Torch technique
Date:  96-06-05 08:50:16 EDT
From:  Media Ho       
Posted on:  America Online

Hey all,
   I'm currently working on an animation (MAC) in which the only light
sources are torches. Almost everything looks great, but the ambient lighting
is too steady for the look I'm going for. I'd like to "randomly" fluctuate
the brightness of the piece in post, but really don't have any efficient
ideas for how to go about it. The reason I didn't do it in the animation is
there's a live actor in the piece and I would have a hell of a time matching
random fluctuations at the video shoot. I have MediaPaint and Premiere for
post. Would I need After Effects stock or with some plug in, or does anyone
have any better ideas I may have overlooked?

TIA,
ed
Magik Icon ProductionsSubj:  Torch lighting help
Date:  96-06-24 01:10:57 EDT
From:  Media Ho       
Posted on:  America Online

Hey all,
   I'm working on an animation (on a Mac) which composites a live actor
within a torch-lit room. The problem is, the ambient lighting is too steady
for a realistic effect. I couldn't fluctuate the ambience in the animation
because it would never have matched the video of the actor. Could anyone
please help me out with some techniques for fluctuating the brightness in
post? Any and all suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks and regards,
ed
Magik Icon ProductionsSubj:  Re:Torch lighting help
Date:  96-06-24 02:05:40 EDT
From:  ErikTek1       
Posted on:  America Online

First off, what Mac App are you using?  Sometimes you can cheat by
rotoscoping the actual film to a flat plane and use it as a reflection behind
the camera.  That together with a little smoke, very little, should get that
ambience you are looking for.Subj:  Re:Torch lighting help
Date:  96-06-24 14:06:39 EDT
From:  Media Ho       
Posted on:  America Online

All the animation was created in Animation Master and so far all the post has
been done with Premiere and MediaPaint, although I do have access to After
Effects.
I'm not really looking for a smoky effect, more like a random flickering with
the brightness.

Thanks,
ed
Magik Icon ProductionsSubj:  Re:Torch lighting help
Date:  96-06-25 01:18:26 EDT
From:  Gatzz         
Posted on:  America Online

I've used one of VCE's flame clips and overlayed with channel ops a AE to get
a torch light effect. I can't remember the particulars, basically messed
around with the methods and filters until it looked right.
You can pick VCE Effects up from Educorp.Subj:  Re:Torch lighting help
Date:  96-06-25 12:04:28 EDT
From:  MagikMusik     
Posted on:  America Online

>>I've used one of VCE's flame clips and overlayed with channel ops a AE to
get a torch light effect.

Any idea how I can contact them?

ed
Magik Icon ProductionsSubj:  Re:Torch lighting help
Date:  96-06-26 01:31:52 EDT
From:  Gatzz         
Posted on:  America Online

Educorp carries VCE Movie Effects Vol1. They're at 800-3843-9497.Subj:
Simulating Geese Flying
Date:  97-01-07 04:31:53 EDT
From:  VIDIshawn     
Posted on:  America Online

Want to see how to simulate a flight of geese. Take a look at the technical
report created by Perry Marks. You can find it under Animators at
www.webnation.com/vidi/Subj:  re:lcd game
Date:  97-01-08 01:53:58 EDT
From:  Pthooy         
Posted on:  America Online

trying to create a handheld game with lcd graphics.  I know its low res. but
would like any suggestions on the type of modeler and animator and the
quickest process.  Mac based with lots of programs at my disposal, know most
of them.....just looking for hints on technique please e-mailSubj:  Cool
Exploding Text Trick
Date:  97-01-16 19:04:35 EDT
From:  SpecAdmin     
Posted on:  America Online

Hey Folks:

This is a tip Drew sent me which gives you a great exploding text effect
(shatter-style) in Infini-D.  Check it out!

 -- Adam


I did an experiment today and I was able to break each character up into
about 30 pieces.  Looks really good.

Here's what I did:

1.  I created a text object, Infini-D, with a bevel.
2.  I broke this up into characters.
3.  I linked this to an invisible cube.
4.  I reordered the hierarchy such that all of the characters in Infini-D
were
indented one level under the invisible cube.
5.  I switched the entire scene to High patch detail.
6.  I selected the invisible cube and exported as DXF.
7.  I reimported this DXF into a new scene (gave Infini-D lots of RAM, too)
 with the One Object Per Layer option TURNED OFF.
8.  I went to the sequencer and saw that each character had about
30 pieces to it.
9.  I selected every event for each object (except for the DXF parent) and
applied the explode AA to it (time 4, distance 100).

Hope that works out for you.

Best,

Drew Cohan
Quality Assurance Manager
Specular AOL Sysop
Specular International
drew@specular.com
http://www.specular.com
Subj:  Could use some helpful advic
Date:  97-01-23 19:31:26 EDT
From:  AldersJ       
Posted on:  America Online

I need to know what is the easiest way to take a 3d object using infiniD or
another app, and rotate or animate it besides doing frame by frame... is
there a way to do real time spinning etc!? I could really use some friendly
advice...
Please be so kind to send me email or IM...to:    Aldersj

Thanks so much
Jay

http://users.aol.com/aldersjSubj:  Published 3D Tips
Date:  97-01-24 16:35:11 EDT
From:  VIDInick       
Posted on:  America Online

Check out the February issue of 3D Design Magazine. There is a nice series of
tips for 3D on the Mac. Included were tips for Ray Dream, Infini-D, Form-Z,
Electric Image, and VIDI's Presenter 3D.Subj:  Re:Published 3D Tips
Date:  97-01-24 19:56:09 EDT
From:  Gatzz         
Posted on:  America Online

>>Check out the February issue of 3D Design Magazine. There is a nice series
of tips for 3D on the Mac.

Damn. Pick the wrong month to let the subscription lapse...Subj:  Making a
Movie
Date:  97-02-03 01:55:34 EDT
From:  Dr ZIK         
Posted on:  America Online

Hi Folks!
     I am a communications professional with "prosumer" experience in
computer graphics, desktop publishing and multimedia, both as a freelance
consultant and as a college-level instructor. I'm seeking advice on a major
personal creative challenge.
    In 1976 I produced a 3-minute animated film as part of my college thesis,
using traditional tools (flip cards, cels, dissolves. etc.)I am now
attempting to produce a computer-generated version of the film.   
    The new version consists of a movie (continuous action in a 328 x 238
window representing a "monitor") within a movie (a 640 x 480 "control panel"
with animated knobs, glowing LEDs, and still images). The new scenes will be
rendered as a series of QuickTime movies, composited and output to run as a
single presentation on home video. 
    My hardware is a Power Mac 8500/132 with 32Mb of RAM, and an 850 Mb
external drive.  I plan to add an additional 32 MB and a Jazz drive before
summer. I have the following software to use for producing my presentation:
Claris Works, Illustrator, PageMaker, Animation Works, Infini-D, Ray Dream
Studio, Poser, Cinemation, Photoshop, KPT Bryce, Kai's Power Tools, After
Effects, Videoshop, and Stuffit Deluxe. I also plan to purchase Debabelizer.
     
 Here are my questions:
1. What additional hardware, if any, will I need to ensure smooth 30 fps
playback at 640 x 480 for output to video?
2. Will I be able to output to video accurately if my playback speed is 15 or
20 fps?
3. How do keep my movie files to reasonable sizes without excessively lossy
compression? (an 8-second test clip weighed in at 13Mb)
4. What are the quality trade-offs in rendering the scenes at thousands vs.
millions of colors? (only a few of my images will need to be rendered with
alpha-channels)
5. What's a good color formula for a "black" background that is readable in
most video formats?
6. At what stage should I do the field renderings on the movies, and at what
suggested settings?
7. What's my best options--single frame, etc.-- for recording to video?

I would appreciate advice on any single question or all of them. You can post
them here or send me e-mail messages. Thanx in advance to all who respond!

Peter(Dr Zik)