Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!menudo.uh.edu!karazm.math.uh.edu!jet
From: jet@karazm.math.uh.edu (J Eric Townsend)
Subject: Re: Animating images on PC's and Workstations
Message-ID: <1991Jun10.225934.9985@menudo.uh.edu>
Sender: usenet@menudo.uh.edu (USENET News System)
Nntp-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
Organization: University of Houston -- Department of Mathematics
References: <1991Jun10.185556.10123@news.nd.edu>
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1991 22:59:34 GMT



In article <1991Jun10.185556.10123@news.nd.edu> jkellow@bach.helios.nd.edu (John Kellow) writes:
>Whats
>the current state of the art in animating images on PCs and Workstations?
>I'm not talking about special multimedia hardware, just ordinary
>PC's, Macs, Sparcstations, Amigas, etc.

On the Amiga, there are at least a dozen packages for doing 2D and
3D animation.  Everything from "give me a list of images and I'll
make a delta-compressed anim" to "give me a set of objects and
movement instructions and I'll generate an anim".  There are also
a half-dozen or so 3D modeling programs that can generate single images
for building into anims with a 2D packages.

The IBM language REXX is available for the Amiga (comes with release
2.0 of AmigaOS).  This is a powerful language when used for writing
macros to drive packages which support it (1/2 of all professional
packages?  Something like that.).

>of my experimental data and these programs work well when all of the
>images are loaded into memory, but I work with small images (105x68,

I've generated 320x200x4096 color frames on a Sparcstation and
animated them on a 68000 based amiga with no problem.  Playback in
realtime for images under 100 frames on a 4Mb system.  There are
also Sony Control-L and Control-M video tape controllers for the
Amiga to drive VCRs.  (I've got a Sony SLV-R5UC (<$1000) that I just
bought for this purpose.)

>So where are the bottlenecks for doing TV quality animation on a PC 
>or Workstation (what is TV quality anyway 640x480x24bit? 16bit?).

I've played with 740x400 anims on a 68000 Amiga, but big anims stall.
I've just bought a 68030 Amiga, however. :-).  At a recent Amiga
shows, several 3rd party people were showing off real-time playback
of digitized videos (3 minutes from "The Terminator" (I think) was
one such video).  The rule is: get at least a 68030 @ 25Mhz and
a fast hard drive.  NTSC is something on the order of 740*400+
(many tvs and vcrs only deal with about 250 lines anyway) pixels,
with 24bit color being overkill.  4096 colors isn't enough, but
it's close.  I'm in the market for 24bit color on the Amiga...

Some costs: Amiga A3000: 25Mhz 68030, 68882, 2Mb RAM, 50Mb hard
drive, multisync monitor, around $3000-4500 depending on who you
are/work-for.

Check out comp.sys.amiga.[multimedia,graphics] and see what
others tell you.  I'm a hack, not a professional.

--
J. Eric Townsend - jet@uh.edu - bitnet: jet@UHOU - vox: (713) 749-2126
Skate UNIX! (curb fault: skater dumped)

   --  If you're hacking PowerGloves and Amigas, drop me a line. --