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Offline SysAdminTopic starter

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Where Are They Now?
« on: June 18, 2010, 02:14:00 AM »
http://aladdin4d.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-are-they-now.html


We have had a lot of fun bashing Windows on the Aladdin 4D forums in the past. Most people mentioned they loved it but a few of you have not enjoyed it and we hurt  Microsoft's feelings. So we are moving on to something a lot more  constructive.

We are researching and starting a series covering 3D animation programs  that started out on the Amiga and finding out where are they now. We  will try to cover all of them minus programs that did not start out on  Amiga and will conclude the series with the release of Aladdin 4D 6.0. Yes it's getting closer!

The first program we will be discussing is Imagine from Impulse Inc. Feel free to chime in and discuss your favorite Amiga 3D animation programs and where they have gone.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2010, 07:01:19 PM by SysAdmin »
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Offline jsixis

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #1 on: June 20, 2010, 04:57:25 AM »
Imagine 2.0 was my first program, even bought the bookj Understanding Imagine 2.0 and had all of the extras, it never worked, couldn't render the cow, paid 100 bucks for the upgrade, same problem.

As for 3d animations that actually worked for me Magic Lantern was the best
 

Offline stefcep2

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #2 on: July 22, 2010, 07:10:02 AM »
My first 3D program was Real3d V1.4 off Amiga Format.  I ran it on A500 with 1 MB RAM floppy only.  I left it on overnight to render the demo teapot and fruit bowl scene.  I was amazed in the morning by the resulting ham-6 PAL interlaced image on the 1084.   I found the interface easy to use and dabbled with mainly shiny ball renders, as i wasn't a very good modeller and I had no manual.  The render speed of the 7 mhz 68000 was all the justification I needed to buy an A1200 with 40 meg hard drive and 40 mhz 68030 and FPU and 16 MB ram.

I wanted to upgrade to real 3D v2 but the price was just ridiculous and never did.  Eventually it was on one of the cover cd's, but the interface was too complicated.  Real 3d Amiga stopped at version 3 and then became Realsoft 3D for Win, MaOS, Linux and SGI (http://www.realsoft.com/).  The interface is still complicated but the program is extremely powerful.  I ended up getting Realsoft 3D v4 for Win off a cover disc, but don't use it much at all.

I eventually tired of Real 3d v 1.4, but ended up buying Cinema 4D V 4.  The Amiga-style guide compliant interface is just a joy to use.  Within half an hour I had set up a textured rolling beach ball animation, complete with shadows!  Being able to model, stage and animate with key frames in the one window is so much more intuitive.  The materials editor with preview render is such a time saver.  Render quality is great and render speed is unsurpasssed.  I ran this on an A1200 with an Apollo 68040 and 32 mb ram.  

The bottleneck was AGA running in 128-256 color Dbl-scan modes, which is necessary to  make use of the material manager in decent color depth and res.  Ofcourse that meant I HAD to get an A4000 with a graphics card.  When one came up-68060, 128 Mb RAM, CV64 for $800 Aus- I was in heaven.  With that hardware, PAL renders/animations all happened in reasonable time.

One of the really annoying oversights of this software was its inability to cubic map a texture.  It sounds like a minor thing but its a HUGE handicap when you render and the material mapping just looks wrong if you have cuboid objects, And lets face it a lot of objects are cuboids.  And as there was no v5 for Amiga, this has never been fixed.  You can work around this, by applying the texture to each face, but its not fun!

So when I spied v5 for Win on a cover disc I grabbed it!!  Proper cubic mapping, built in .avi, quicktime and mpeg animations and the interface is near-enough to the Amiga v4 it was no problem moving across.  The render speed of my P3 was phenomenal in comparison to the 68060.  Cinema 4D is now available on PC (http://www.maxon.com) and its up to version 11, and whilst I've played with the demo, its just too complicated for an amateur like me. Not to mention the price.  Version 5.5 is all I need to have fun.

I have also used Imagine and Lightwave but IMO the most intuitive package is Cinema 4D.
 

Offline jd997uk

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #3 on: July 28, 2010, 03:37:45 PM »
My start off in 3D was Imagine v3.x from an Amiga Format cover disk. I paid for the upgrade (inc manual), which, iirc, was delayed for ages. Worth it in the end (if only for the manual). The best thing about Imagine was the stuff that Steve Worley upped to Aminet etc - proper tutorials that the likes of me could get their head round. Even so, never could get my head round the D.O.F (depth of field) thing correctly.
Did look at the cover disks of Cinema and Caligari, but couldn't be bothered to learn a new interface.
Looking forward to seeing how Aladdin turns out. I have to admit when I bought it from Nova, I really struggled to get to grips with it and gave up. With render times reasonable these days, it'll be worth a look
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Offline jsixis

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #4 on: July 28, 2010, 07:07:27 PM »
Caligari I remember that from a coverdisk, could never find a proper version to buy here in the states.
 

Offline IslDreamer

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #5 on: August 12, 2010, 11:56:33 PM »
@jsixis, Caligari became Truespace on the PC and was acquired by Microsoft in 2008.  A year later, they decided to shut down Caligari and released the last version 7.6 for free. You can download it here: http://download.cnet.com/TrueSpace/3000-6677_4-10187286.html?tag=mncol

The Caligari website is still operational, but may be shut down at any time: http://www.caligari.com/

And this is a fan-run forum dedicated to keeping Truespace alive: http://www.united3dartists.com/
 

Offline IslDreamer

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #6 on: August 13, 2010, 12:01:53 AM »
Quote from: Transition;565293
http://aladdin4d.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-are-they-now.html
The first program we will be discussing is Imagine from Impulse Inc.


When will you begin posting some of your Imagine coverage? There is an active group of Imagine for PC users here: http://www.imagine3d.org/

And Martin McKenzie has kept the Imagine for Amiga flame burning for many years here: http://www.imaginefa.com/

Look forward to what else you can come up with.
 

Offline SysAdminTopic starter

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #7 on: August 18, 2010, 06:41:11 PM »
Our, "where are they now" coverage about Imagine is on hold since we were unable to reach the original developer Impulse. Thanks for your suggestion to contact Martin, we will try that route.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2010, 07:08:47 PM by SysAdmin »
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Offline IslDreamer

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #8 on: August 18, 2010, 07:30:45 PM »
Impulse is in Vegas. They mostly do software for slot machines. Someone on Imagine.org recently found their (mostly broken) website: http://www.igtco.com/html/apps.html
 

Offline klx300r

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #9 on: August 20, 2010, 03:36:53 AM »
I use AutoCad regularly for my work and would love to be able to edit/draw some 2D stuff only on my AmigaOS 4.1 system...can Imagine or any other CAD software that runs on AmigaOS do this right now ?...saving/loading dxf files would be a bonus
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Offline klx300r

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #10 on: August 20, 2010, 04:22:02 AM »
hehe..look what I found after a quick search....hope to see this in v6:afro:

http://www.amiga.org/forumns/showthread.php?t=54100
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Offline IslDreamer

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #11 on: August 20, 2010, 02:45:59 PM »
@klx300r, Imagine is not a CAD program by any stretch, but I believe it was able to import and export DXF files.
 

Offline klx300r

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #12 on: August 21, 2010, 04:32:28 AM »
@ IslDreamer
well I'm looking for a 2D CAD program that I can run under AmigaOS4.1u2 so that I can edit dxf files on my miggy...I can boot up my Samflex under Debian and use XCad but I'd prefer to stay in AmigaOS if possible....maybe Alladin4D v6 will surprise us :-)
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Offline SysAdminTopic starter

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #13 on: August 21, 2010, 11:28:35 PM »
Quote from: IslDreamer;574541
When will you begin posting some of your Imagine coverage? There is an active group of Imagine for PC users here: http://www.imagine3d.org/

And Martin McKenzie has kept the Imagine for Amiga flame burning for many years here: http://www.imaginefa.com/

Look forward to what else you can come up with.


We sent a message to Martin requesting help in getting more info and possibly and article about the current status of Imagine 3D for Amiga.
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Offline jsixis

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Re: Where Are They Now?
« Reply #14 on: September 13, 2010, 09:10:04 PM »
Quote from: IslDreamer;574539
@jsixis, Caligari became Truespace on the PC and was acquired by Microsoft in 2008.  A year later, they decided to shut down Caligari and released the last version 7.6 for free. You can download it here: http://download.cnet.com/TrueSpace/3000-6677_4-10187286.html?tag=mncol

The Caligari website is still operational, but may be shut down at any time: http://www.caligari.com/

And this is a fan-run forum dedicated to keeping Truespace alive: http://www.united3dartists.com/


 Thanks!! As always I'm a system and 10 upgrades behind the curve.
 I did finally get Caligari up and running on my 3000T, can't promote the screens yet but I can't figure it out yet either so screen promoting can wait.