Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Max Headroom
Message-ID: <7027@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 31 May 89 20:17:21 GMT
References: <540@corona.pb>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 30

in article <540@corona.pb>, db2@pbinfo.UUCP (Vorl. Informationssysteme) says:
> Keywords: How was he done?
> In article <7724@saturn.ucsc.edu> odin@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Jon Granrose) writes:
>>All I know for sure about the animation techniques used for Max is that they
>>used a Commodore Amiga.  I was reading an article about how the Amiga was being
>>Jon

> No no no NO! ...
> Seriously: You can't do things like Max Headroom with anything smaller
> than Pixar or Cray or such. But actually it wasn't done with computers...

I guess you've never run into the NewTek "Maxine Headroom" video, which was done
on a Commodore-Amiga.  Seriously, you don't need anything like a Pixar or a
Cray if all you're going to do is display the thing on television.  That's
expecially true if you're not trying to artificially render entire scenes, but 
instead use video sampling and standard animation techniques.  Several minutes
worth of pure raytraced video is going to take awhile to produce on even a fast
68030 based Amiga, fer shure.

Pixars, Crays, and machines of that ilk are certainly required for rendering 
anything of movie quality, but going from the roughly 320x400x8 pixel display 
that's fine for TV to something like 2000x2000x24, or whatever those Lucasfilm
people use these days is quite a severe step in terms of the processing power
required to artifically create a frame.

> 	D. Aedal
-- 
Dave Haynie  "The 32 Bit Guy"     Commodore-Amiga  "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: D-DAVE H     BIX: hazy
              Amiga -- It's not just a job, it's an obsession