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From: monsoon@bill.ucsc.edu (Monsoon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Spectrum/3-D/animation
Message-ID: <14160@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Date: 5 Apr 91 09:09:07 GMT
References: <1991Apr4.190424.13189@milton.u.washington.edu>
Sender: usenet@darkstar.ucsc.edu
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Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz Open Access Computing
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In article <1991Apr4.190424.13189@milton.u.washington.edu> alexd@milton.u.washington.edu (Alex Danilchik) writes:
>Can this be done:
>
>Create a 3-D model in Sculpt 3-D, paint/render it with
>Spectrum, then animate the frames?
>
>Is there any software pacakge/integration of packages,
>that can do this for me using Spectrum?  I do want the
>advantage of all those colors on the screen at once...
>
>Thanks
>
>gunnar
>alexd@milton.u.washington.edu

	There are several ways to do this.  First of all, to get animation
using Spectrum 512, there is a program called Unispec, which is actually an
upgrade module to Spectrum, which turns it into a desk accessory and adds
many new features (including animation.)  The new additions alone merit
recommendation for anyone who uses Spectrum, such as better anti-alised(sp)
functions, and an improved dithered blur, just to name a scad few.

	As for rendering it in spectrum, there is a painful way, and some
other not so painful ways...

	First of all, you could always just use Cad 3-D (I believe you are
referring to CyberSculpt, if not, then the rest of these techniques do not
apply...) and do a straight degas import into Spectrum, frame by frame (also,
Cyber Control, an animation scripting language, is recommended for this) and
tweak the colors using spectrums global color commands.

	There is also a program from the magazine STart, called RezRender.
This program can use Cad 3-D objects, and raytrace them using various styles
(flat polygons, gourad shading, off the top of my head), BUT can only render
in 16 shades (yes you can make 16 psuedo-shades, on most colors except some
such as grey).  It does, however have many excellent features like shadowing,
chekerboard plane backgrounds, gradient backgrounds, and limited animation.
I believe this can be founds in the February 1989 or 1990 issue of STart.

	Another program, called GFA Raytrace (which is VERY hard to find, but
one source would be on the British-mag ST Format, not sure which issue) which
will raytrace objects in full, glorious 512 colors, BUT it is not compatible
with Spectrum 512, and the tools are quite limited.

	Also, there is news of a new program from a company called Lexicorp,
which is creating a 3-D rendering system far superior to the Cyber series.

	In summary, it is a bit of a pain to do 3-D animation in Spectrum.
Like any system, you need gobs of memory (even at 8 Megs you run out of room!),
and things like an accelerator are VERY handy to have (it took me at least
12 hours to render 16 frames of a rotating object on a stock 1040 using
RezRender).