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From: bard@jessica.stanford.edu (David Hopper)
Subject: Re: Amiga Video Toaster for the MAC
Message-ID: <1991Apr25.021201.3168@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@leland.Stanford.EDU (Mr News)
Organization: Academic Information Resources, Stanford University
References: <1991Apr20.021658.22070@sbcs.sunysb.edu> <5967@pbhyb.PacBell.COM> <1991Apr23.031929.16324@cs.dal.ca> <1195@mdavcr.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 91 02:12:01 GMT
Lines: 51

In article <1195@mdavcr.UUCP> ewm@mdavcr.UUCP (Eric W. Mitchell) writes:
>In article <1991Apr23.031929.16324@cs.dal.ca> graham@ug.cs.dal.ca (Michael Graham) writes:
>> Luckily I'm a Mac owner. An Amiga owner would laugh his head off at this
>>idea. Do you have any idea of what the toaster can do? If not try and catch
>>Tod Rundgren's latest video. It *easily* rivals what I have seen from Pixar
>>and SGI. It could easily do the Lifesaver ad.

>>mike
>
>I think you may have the facts a little messed up here.  The Video Toaster 
>is a video production device, not a renderer.  It is designed to give you 
>near commercial quality transition effects and some limited graphics (titling,
>etc).

Not quite.  The toaster, both the $1600 Amiga version and the proposed
$4000 Mac version, includes

	A) Transition effects master program
	B) Character generator
	C) Lightwave, the 3-D Modeler/Renderer/Animator (truly *amazing*)
	D) ToasterPaint, a 24-bit paint program (much like Digi-Paint
	   3.0, if you've ever seen it)
	E) ChromaFX, a color tweaker/special effects program

Lightwave is not a true renderer, granted (it uses Phong shading to
achieve shadowed effects), but the output is terrific, and it is *fast*.
The animation capabilities and output is quite up to par with what Pixar
has been putting out.  Indeed, check out Todd Rundgren's video.  It was
done *entirely* with the Video Toaster, from start to finish.

>In the version of the toaster I have seen (which was demonstrated to our
>company), there were no significant rendering functions.  This means
>you cannot create anything even resembling the "lifesaver commercial" with
>the toaster - it is intended for an entirely different purpose.
>
>The toaster could be used to take existing video of the lifesavers and
>combine segments in interesting ways, but could not produce the graphics
>themselves.  To compare it to Pixar or SGI products is like comparing
>Apples and screwdrivers.

Lightwave is actually the most interesting part of the package.  I
cannot understand why it was not demonstrated to you, as it is an
integral part of the Toaster.

>Eric Mitchell                      |   "We're Screwed!!!"

Peace,
Dave Hopper      |     /// Anthro Creep  | Academic Info Resources, Stanford
                 |__  ///     .   .      | Macincrap/UNIX Consultant
bard@jessica.    |\\\///     Ia! Ia!     | -- Just remember: love is life, and
   Stanford.EDU  | \XX/  Shub-Niggurath! | hate is living death. :Black Sabbath