Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uhccux!ames!think!masscomp!calvin!mark From: mark@calvin..westford.ccur.com (Mark Thompson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: RENDITION Message-ID: <31310@masscomp.ccur.com> Date: 1 Jun 90 20:14:02 GMT References: <2913@crash.cts.com> Sender: news@masscomp.ccur.com Reply-To: mark@calvin.westford.ccur.com (Mark Thompson) Organization: Concurrent Computer Corp. Westford MA. Lines: 43 In article <2913@crash.cts.com> seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) writes: >Is there ANYONE out there with ANY information WHAT-SO-EVER on this new 3D >rendering package called " RENDITION "? Rendition is image synthesis software created by Numerical Design Limited in Chapel Hill. It runs on Sun 3/4/386i, PC/AT's, Mac's, Amigas, and Definicon DSI-780's. Its features include: Scanline based rendering, hidden surface removal, anti-aliasing, smooth shading, highlights, environment maps, transparency, shadows, up to 8K x 8K resolution, 32 bit color (8 bits of alpha for compositing), and a variety of surface properties such as wood, metal, plastic, and 2D and 3D textures. It appears that there is only one kind of light source but you can change its color and intensity. There is a wireframe preview mode and final images can be compressed to 7, 8, 9, or 10 bits as well as run- length encoded. The impression I got was that this is a PC clone product that will run with a bridgeboard and a Targa frame buffer. The images I have seen it create are reasonable but I tend to yawn at Targa products on an Amiga. Some sample render times are below. These were an image of a nearly empty room (chair, window, vase, and lamp). The increase in polygon count is due to the introduction of shadows. polygons time(sec) method ---------------------------------------------------------- 236 67 flat shading 236 84 Gouraud shading 236 100 Gouraud shading w/ transparency 589 1166 Gouraud with shadows 589 1252 Gouraud, shadows, and transparency These were rendered on a PC-AT w/640K ram and 80287 at 512x485. This is not very impessive, especially for simple Gouraud shading! Numerical Design can be contacted at (919)929-2917 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Mark Thompson | | masscomp!mark Designing high performance graphics | | (508)392-2480 engines today for a better tomorrow. | --------------------------------------------------------------------------