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From: walrus@wam.umd.edu (Udo K Schuermann)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Imagine
Message-ID: <1990Dec14.180817.5224@wam.umd.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 90 18:08:17 GMT
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In article <61542@masscomp.ccur.com> mark@calvin.westford.ccur.com (Mark Thompson) writes:
>...
>Definately check out JourneyMan, it is the only 3D
>package to use spline surface objects for fantastic organic animation
>control.

Could you elaborate on this?  I won't have a chance to check out
JourneyMan until perhaps early next year.  What are "spline surface
objects" and what is "organic animation control"?

>Booleans huh, as in CSG (constuctive solid geometry)?! This one of the
>reasons I really like Imagine as a modeler. I also would like to really
>see the capabilities of the forms editor.

Correct.  This is power that I haven't even begun to tap yet.  It's
*easy* to cut holes into objects in the shape of lettering, for example.
	The forms editor is one of those things that I'm not entirely
sure how to handle.  It's easy to make some "twisted mutant hypercube
from the eights dimension" then make a few more and morph between them
for some very interesting transformations, but it requires a lot of
restraint to produce something coherent.  In the right hands it can be
very impressive, I'm sure.

>>Imagine reads/writes only TDDD format which is read by at least one PD
>>(or is it Shareware?) program named TTDDD can read/write this format
>>...
>>I am working on one to convert from decwrl OFF format to TTDDD.
>
>Are you willing to make your converters publically availble?

Naturally!  At this time I'm too busy with some other project that
has priority, but I'll finish "off2ttddd" sometime early january.

>I will look into writing one for Lightwave if you have info
>on the format.

TTDDD should be on abcfd20 (/incoming/amiga/3d/ directory) which
contains information on the textual Three Dimension Data Description;
that's the docs I'm working from.

[benchmarks removed]

It looks as if LightWave may be faster than Imagine.  I'll post
results when I find the time (perhaps next week).

>FINAL BIG QUESTION!!! Can Imagine render to devices other than the
>Firecracker, ie. the Toaster? I know the output files are compatible
>but I am looking for more direct support like a device library.

Negative.  No direct support except for Impulse's own FireCracker/24.

>|  Mark Thompson                                                           |

 ._.  Udo Schuermann        "How is American beer similar to making love in
 ( )  walrus@wam.umd.edu    a canoe?" -- "Both are f***ing close to water."