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From: mark@calvin..westford.ccur.com (Mark Thompson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Imagine
Message-ID: <61558@masscomp.ccur.com>
Date: 17 Dec 90 21:11:55 GMT
References: <15449@ddnvx1.afwl.af.mil> <1990Dec3.220339.6699@wam.umd.edu> <36704@cup.portal.com> <10747@helios.TAMU.EDU> <86758@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <61534@masscomp.ccur.com> <1990Dec13.201243.4265@wam.umd.edu> <61542@masscomp.ccur.com> <1990Dec14.180817.5224@wam.
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Reply-To: mark@calvin.westford.ccur.com (Mark Thompson)
Organization: Concurrent Computer Corp. Westford MA.
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In article <1990Dec14.180817.5224@wam.umd.edu> walrus@wam.umd.edu (Udo K Schuermann) writes:
>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"?

Except for Journeyman, all the other 3D animation programs out there for the
Amiga use polygonally based objects. This makes animating there movements
blocky and awkward. Take for example the ripple effect in Imagine. This is
a special chunk of software to do a series of displacements on all the
vertices in your object (something you would hardly think of doing by hand).
The operations like ripple are conceptually simple, but because you are dealing
with polygons, they are very tedious to perform manually. Imagine's
ripple effect is a tool to help get around that fact for one special case.
Journeyman replaces polygons with spline patches which allows you to move
a single control point and cause the entire object (or portions of the
object) to deform accordingly. A single spline surface patch can do the work
of many polygons. This concept of just moving control points makes for
very simple and fluid character (organic) animation. By appling a spline
path to the control points of a spline surface object, very realistic
character (human, animal,...organic) movements can be created with very
little effort. This is Journeymans greatest strength.

>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.

Thanxs!!! I got it.

>>FINAL BIG QUESTION!!! Can Imagine render to devices other than the
>>Firecracker, ie. the Toaster? 
>Negative.  No direct support except for Impulse's own FireCracker/24.

What a shame. Supposedly NewTek is planning on releasing libraries for
the Toaster in the not to distant future. Maybe enough letters to Impulse
will get them to allow some sort of device independance.

> ._.  Udo Schuermann        "How is American beer similar to making love in
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|  Mark Thompson                                                           |
|  mark@westford.ccur.com                                                  |
|  ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!mark   Designing high performance graphics  |
|  (508)392-2480                      engines today for a better tomorrow. |
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