Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!well!shf
From: shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Modular rendering software musings
Message-ID: <14398@well.UUCP>
Date: 1 Nov 89 07:50:21 GMT
References: <5065@cbnewsm.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson)
Organization: The Blue Planet
Lines: 51

+-- nsw@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (Neil Weinstock) writes:
| Hi ho.  I was discussing with someone the other day about rendering software,
| and began to consider the notion of modular 3D software.
  [ ... ]
| I have heard that the renderer in Turbo Silver is great, but the user 
| interface is sub-par.  Can I just buy the Turbo Silver rendering module?
| If not, why not?  The Caligari user interface (non-Intuitionness
| notwithstanding) is really neat, but the renderer is not great, at least
| not the last time I checked.  Can I buy the Caligari object design module
| separately?  Nope.

| I think you see what I'm getting at.  Am I really off in the woods?

Yes, I see what you're getting at, and no, you're not off in the woods.
It would be a nice thing, modular rendering systems.  Some of the parts
already exist, namely the programs that deal with ILBM's and ANIM's.
There are tools for touching up ANIM's, cutting them up, splicing them
together and doing post-processing effects such as wipes and mattes.

The problem is with the modeling, scene design, animation design and
rendering.  These components don't work well together because there
is no medium for shared data such as exists with the IFF standard
ILBM and ANIM formats.  The best that can be done currently is to use
a translator like "Interchange" to convert formats, but this doesn't
work very well since the formats are so different.

I don't think we'll be seeing standard 3-D object data formats very
soon, either.  The differences between the different rendering and
modeling packages are not simply syntatic, but rather the whole
philosophys are often totally incompatible.  Any standard format
at this stage would make one package look bad because it was not
designed to render things of that type, and make unavailable some
of the special features of a different package.  There have been
people in the Amiga animation and rendering fields working on the
problem since as long as I can remember, and I don't see anyone
getting closer to a solution.  Of course, I could be wrong.

RenderMan.  I know you're thinking RenderMan.  I don't think RenderMan
is going to be it.

Scene layout and animation might be done with a suitable standard
IPC interface.  An animation program could send keyframe information
to a rendering program through a message port or call-back.  I don't
think the animation aspect of the picture has been well-addressed
at all at this stage, however.

Yes, I agree it would be nice, and we're not the only ones who think
that, but I'm not holding my breath.
-- 
		Stuart Ferguson		(shf@well.UUCP)
		Action by HAVOC		(ferguson@metaphor.com)