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From: baer@qiclab.uucp (Ken Baer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Journeyman V1.1 (was Re: Imagine)
Message-ID: <1990Dec23.062224.10652@qiclab.uucp>
Date: 23 Dec 90 06:22:24 GMT
References: <6420@crash.cts.com> <1990Dec21.183353.13714@qiclab.uucp> <1990Dec22.035100.12065@lavaca.uh.edu>
Organization: Animators Anonymous, Portland, OR.
Lines: 81

In article <1990Dec22.035100.12065@lavaca.uh.edu> jet@karazm.math.uh.edu (J. Eric Townsend) writes:
>In article <1990Dec21.183353.13714@qiclab.uucp> baer@qiclab.uucp (Ken Baer) writes:
>>And we should start seeing some JMan animation from CalArts soon, since
>>they are planning to teach a course with it.
>
>Great.  CalArts is about *the* school for animation...

You know it!  This has even greater significance, since most of the 
animation studios in Hollywood (and elsewhere) are grabbing animators
from CalArts these days.  They aren't just going to Disney now.  Having
the feedback from a productive group of talented animators like this
means great things for the future incarnations of Journeyman.

>
>>We personalize the software for
>>every customer,
>
>What does this mean in reality?

When one of our programs has been personalized, it means that a window
with the user's name and address comes up before the program starts.  The
program is then copyable to any device etc.  It frees all of us from the
confines of key disk copy protection.  It's one of the reasons we sell
Journeyman directly.

>  (Here's a chance for free publicity
>on the net. :-)  I have a Polaroid Palette and a Mimetics FrameBuffer/Grabber
>for video/hardcopy output.  Would I get a copy of Journeyman that would
>write directly to my framebuffer?]

We save in IFF24 now, which currently seems to be the best way to support
everything that's out there (TAD from ASDG should be able to convert to
the older buffers that don't do IFF24).  

>  I'm kinda pissed since newer products
>are magically bound to the framebuffer their owning company makes.

It's hard to know what to support. The 24bit hardware market on the Amiga
is so chaotic and there just isn't time to support everything.  At this
point we would prefer to support the Toaster, since it's what we have,
and it has the best NTSC output of all the buffers.  But, so far, NewTek
hasn't provided anything to developers to deal with the hardware directly.
Their approach seems to be to wait till they provide developers with functions
that access all of the Toaster's features, rather than provide some lower
level support (like writing to the buffer) now, and the fancy stuff later.

>Impulse only generates IFF and Firecracker images, for example.
Currently, Imagine doesn't support the Firecracker (suprisingly).  I'm
sure they'll add it though.
> I'd be almost
>willing to cough up $500 based on a quickie demo at SIGGRAPH and a
>promise of Mimetics support.

The first version of Journeyman did support the RGB file format that
Sculpt4D uses.  But IFF24 seems to be generally accepted as the standard
now, and it compresses much smaller, and we got 5 calls a day asking for it.
My suggestion would be to check out TAD from ASDG.  Then you'd get the 
best of both.

>
>One more question -- how free are you with the description of the
>object format?  I'm trying to decide what format to finalize my raytracer
>on (I use NFF currently, quick and dirty :-).  S3D formats don't seem
>to support parametrics or beziers, what about Journeyman?

The Journeyman object format wouldn't be much good for you unless your
ray tracer is patch based (as opposed to polygon based).  We convert our
object to bezier patches at rendertime.  Before that, they are made up of
3D splines, which are our own mutation of the Catmul-Rom splines.  Our
spline is worth some major money, so I don't think we're going to give
our format away for now.  It's such a different animal than polygonal objects
that it's not really compatable with them.

>J. Eric Townsend     Internet: jet@uh.edu    Bitnet: jet@UHOU
>Systems Mangler - UH Dept. of Mathematics - (713) 749-2120


-- 
    //    -Ken Baer.  Programmer/Animator, Hash Enterprises / Earthling
  \X/     Usenet: baer@qiclab.UUCP  or  PLink: KEN BAER
         "What?!? Sore again?" -- Bugs Bunny to Yosemity Sam