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From: yba@athena.mit.edu (Mark H Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Amgia World Ray-tracing article...
Message-ID: <477@bacchus.MIT.EDU>
Date: Sat, 25-Apr-87 03:24:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: bacchus.477
Posted: Sat Apr 25 03:24:23 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Apr-87 06:43:10 EDT
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Reply-To: yba@athena.mit.edu (Mark H Levine)
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Xref: mnetor comp.sys.amiga:4213 comp.graphics:564

In article <448@applix.UUCP> scott@applix.UUCP (Scott Evernden) writes:
>
>The animation "Andre and Wally B." was produced on a VAX11/780, and the time
>per frame was 1-2 hours.  It is true, frames from that film regularly contain
>several thousand objects.  I think if you do any amount of investigating, you
>will find that the CG folks are quite used to tying up their machines in this
>fashion.
>
>An Amiga is roughly equivalent in power to an 11/750, and I know that 750s
>(being the most popular of VAXen) have been used to do this sort of thing,
>as well.
>

I think these statements are misleading.  If someone who worked on the film
cares to insert particulars, it will be more accurate than I can be (Sam?), but
we loaned 40 or 50 Vax/750s for 30 days every night to the filmmakers, and that
was just for the BACKGROUNDS of "Andre and Wally B.," which is a fairly short
piece.

It is probably also important to consider the system throughput, not the MPU
speed, when estimating how much your computer will produce.  Unless you can
get 64Gb of primary memory on your Amiga.  (Was it 10 Meg per frame?  I don't
recall).

I agree that one should never underestimate the power of ingenuity and a new
approach.  Overestimating the power of new technology is just as dangerous.