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Author Topic: Aladdin4D is not totally useless  (Read 4859 times)

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Offline Ral-ClanTopic starter

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Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« on: March 13, 2013, 06:51:24 PM »
I just posted a message and some images on this forum about how I am making a video project using Aladdin4d.  I posted it in the Aladdin 4d section, but it appears that messages posted to that section don't show up on the main page of A.org.  So rather than have no one see that posting, I'm just redirecting from here. For those who are interested, see this thread:

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=64434

Is there any way for the owner of A.org to fix that, so messages posted to that section DO show up where all A.org members can actually see them?
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Offline Ral-ClanTopic starter

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Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #1 on: May 05, 2013, 10:25:49 PM »
I'm almost finished one of the interior "sets" of my moonbase rendered in Aladdin4d.  The only thing missing from this render is shadows (which will take a bit of time as I haven't used shadows very much yet).

The original image was rendered in 1920 x 1080 but I've downscaled this to 1280 x 720 for this posting:



(click to enlarge)
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Offline amiman99

Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #2 on: May 06, 2013, 01:17:22 AM »
Looks nice. Are you rendering on real Amiga or using emulator?
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Offline giZmo350

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Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #3 on: May 06, 2013, 01:54:05 AM »
@amiman99
Great question....

@ral-clan
Was ALL of this done in Aladdin4D?

I recently got a new Aladdin4D package from a member here and I have an A1200 with FPU and would really like to put it to use such as this... I'll certainly be following this project. Awesome work! Thanks!

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Offline Ral-ClanTopic starter

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Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #4 on: May 06, 2013, 03:46:55 AM »
This was all done in Aladdin4d, no other software (well, ImageFX to make some textures for use on Aladdin4d objects).

I just rendered a version with shadows. No other differences in this picture other than the shadows, but it does give it a higher degree of realism.



Also, yes, I do use it in WinUAE.  But I see no reason why you couldn't do it in a hardware Amiga with a good amount of RAM.  It would be slower, or you'd have to work in lower resolutions than 1920 x 1080, that's all.  When I first started I used Aladdin4d on my real A2000.

Texturing the exterior of the moonbase is going to take some time.  I've "only" done the non-textured exteriors at the moment.





« Last Edit: May 06, 2013, 03:51:23 AM by ral-clan »
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Offline Pyromania

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Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #5 on: May 06, 2013, 11:16:33 AM »
Very cool!

I'm exploring my future options with Aladdin4D. The current programmer is just too hard to reach and does not communicate enough. I've invested a bunch to have this product further developed and am sad by the delay caused by him.

:(
 

Offline Ral-ClanTopic starter

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Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #6 on: May 06, 2013, 12:17:37 PM »
Quote from: Pyromania;733887
Very cool!

I'm exploring my future options with Aladdin4D. The current programmer is just too hard to reach and does not communicate enough. I've invested a bunch to have this product further developed and am sad by the delay caused by him.

:(


That's too bad.  I really hope that the ball gets rolling again on Aladdin4d development.  It's very stable, but I've been pushing it REALLY hard and have dug up a few things which might be bugs - most people wouldn't encounter these in normal use but it would be nice to have them squashed.

Also, there are a few things that I would really like to see added to Aladdin4d in order to tempt me to stay with it in the long run.

- Boolean operations on objects
- a real multi-step undo function
- The ability to name groups and list all the groups in a selectable menu.
- a fix for the slightly squashed vertical dimension in the editor when using RTG (square pixel) screenmodes.

If these things were added (plus the bug-fixes) I would not constantly be tempted to move over to Lightwave.  Aladdin is really capable, very good and worth the price.  The addition of the above things would make it no-brainer for me to stay with Aladdin4d.
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Offline stefcep2

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Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #7 on: May 06, 2013, 03:40:10 PM »
I still think Cinema 4 D V 4 was the best and easiest to use on Amiga.  Style guide compliant interface, fast renders, lots of modelling tools, RTG support, nice material editor, animation is a doddle, quality renders with different lighting effects, refractions, shadows, built in special effects.

I also V5 on PC and its better still.
 

Offline Aegis

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Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #8 on: May 06, 2013, 04:56:10 PM »
Ah, I used LightWave on the Amiga up to and including v5 - still have fond memories of using my miggy for indie film work.

These days I'm still using LightWave (11.5) but increasingly I'm using MODO - by Amiga LW's original devs :)

Here's some stuff from 1999 :D





« Last Edit: May 06, 2013, 05:03:20 PM by Aegis »
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Offline Ral-ClanTopic starter

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Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #9 on: May 06, 2013, 09:16:43 PM »
That's good stuff, Aegis.  I have only recently (in the past three years) taught myself 3D modelling, so the moonbase project is the most complex thing I have attempted.  Aladdin4d is what I learned on, so that's what I am continuing to use for the moment.

I have also been learning Lightwave 5 on the Amiga (reading books and watching tutorial videos), but have not yet attempted a complete project on it.  I do like the workflow though.  The use of keyframes, cameras and lights in the layout view is very intuitive.

I know Lightwave 5 is old by today's standards, but am I wrong in thinking that someone could still turn out some respectable work in it?  Your renders look pretty good (I especially like the middle one of the buildings), and with what you know now, you could probably improve on them.
« Last Edit: May 06, 2013, 09:21:07 PM by ral-clan »
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Offline Aegis

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Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #10 on: May 07, 2013, 03:19:59 AM »
Quote from: ral-clan;733923
I know Lightwave 5 is old by today's standards, but am I wrong in thinking that someone could still turn out some respectable work in it?  Your renders look pretty good (I especially like the middle one of the buildings), and with what you know now, you could probably improve on them.


Oh, absolutely - whilst LW5 is lacking some some of the more recent advances in 3D modeling and rendering (global illumination, HDRI, UV mapping, normal maps, displacements and sub-division surfaces being the most noticeable) - it still does 90% of what most 3D jobs are - modeling, surfacing, lighting and rendering - in fact, it'd be interesting to do something in Amiga LightWave just to see what it's still capable of :D

A lot of it just comes down to tricks you learn over the years using these tools - there's ways of faking global illumination using spinning light setups - volume effects (like the smoke in the lights from that police car thing) can be faked with procedural textures.

LightWave's biggest limitation on the Amiga is render times though - I remember rendering the Bladerunner animation that came with the LW content - on my 68060 it took a week - it takes less than an hour on my i7 :)
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Offline magnetic

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Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #11 on: May 07, 2013, 03:50:34 AM »
Really nice work man! This shows many 68k amiga graphics apps are viable today.

Aegis

Nice job. Pretty impressive.

Nowadays if you have a Next Gen Amiga that can run os4 you can run LW5 damn fast!
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Offline Aegis

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Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #12 on: May 07, 2013, 04:02:26 AM »
Some more stuff done in LW5:



This was done for a Discovery Channel show called 'The Unexplained' - each of us in the studio had a letter from 'Unexplained' to do - I got 'X' :D



Goofing around with a sci-fi style radar dish - wasn't for any specific job but I think we ended up using it in the background of something - uses Ron Thornton's infamous 'generic panels' :D



Simon Percy (now at Darkside Animation) modeled this Spitfire but I did the surfacing for it - that cable always bothered me though - too thick :)

These were all done in the PC version of LW5 since that was what the studio (AMGFX) was using - functionally the Amiga and PC versions were identical though (I preferred using the Amiga though obviously ;))
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Offline magnetic

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Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #13 on: May 07, 2013, 04:09:51 AM »
Quote from: Aegis;733959


These were all done in the PC version of LW5 since that was what the studio (AMGFX) was using - functionally the Amiga and PC versions were identical though (I preferred using the Amiga though obviously ;))



thats not true AFAIK. The Pc version is more feature rich. Especially the fact that your object stays in its real shape on PC version and doesnt turn into a weird rectangle box when moved like in Amiga version...
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Offline Aegis

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Re: Aladdin4D is not totally useless
« Reply #14 on: May 07, 2013, 04:15:49 AM »
Quote from: magnetic;733960
thats not true AFAIK. The Pc version is more feature rich. Especially the fact that your object stays in its real shape on PC version and doesnt turn into a weird rectangle box when moved like in Amiga version...

Not version 5 - they were identical (in fact, the Amiga version was slightly ahead since it had its 'wobbly' backface-culled perspective view in Modeler).

*Edit* Actually, my bad - the PC version had solid 3D - that was nice :) Still the same functionality though - it was LW4 where the Amiga still (sorta) had the jump on the PC (not in render times though) - I used LW4 on Dec Alphas at Digital Integration whilst working on 'Hind' :)

LW5.5 never got an Amiga release and added some new functionality and a new UI but it wasn't until LW6 that the software distanced itself considerably from the last Amiga version (GI, sub-division surfaces, HDRI, UV-mapping etc.)

http://www.lightwiki.com/wiki/LightWave_History
« Last Edit: May 07, 2013, 04:18:48 AM by Aegis »
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