OK, Amiga animation is not state-of-the-art

[Crom00]

What they're trying to say is that the graphics look dated.
And using a computer made by a manufacturer that went out of buisness 14 years ago as an example of dated graphics is good way to do it...

if the statment read "The graphics look like they were made on a Mac" That would not have driven then point across becuase you can actually buy a new Mac, in a real store (not ebay).

I'd still rather have produced 3d graphcis on lightwave 3.5 on my A2000 then Strata studio on a mac, any day...

But I can garuntee the person who penned that review hasn't used either.

[Crom00]

Star Trek and the Amiga...
(rolls eyes in disgust...)

Had a Commodore person tell me about how the Amiga was supposed to be used as the LCARS displays on Star Trek the NEXT generation. Was told Paramount called commodore and Commodore just never followed up on the matter. Paramount went to apple who happily supplied them with the support needed to create the LCARS (Library computer) digital video graphics on set displays and output the graphics to expensive Beta Tape playback machines...

Originally...

They wanted to use Amigas since they were compatible with NTSC video out of the box, but the big C= couldn't be bothered...

Even unti the last Star Trek TV show (Enterprise) the mac was still used to do the on set displays. They were G4 Cubes connected to Flatscreens.

The same workflow was used on the Paramount show Threshold, but by that time they used Mac Mini's.

Back to the amiga though...
Amigas were used towards the end of the Next Generation to do some paintbox FX using toaster paint.

Also Voyager was modeled in Lightwave on Amigas and SGI's running lightwave by Amblin Imaging.

The instant lightwave was available to run on Intel other platforms the amiga was dropped in favor of those more mainstream systems.

Historically you can't ignore the AMIGA contribution to CGI.

Does anyone remember how much an SGI cost back in the day?
Compare that cost to a fully loaded Amiga2000/4000 toaster with lightwave and adpro....

The SGI, despite it's sky high price tag still crashed...!

The Amiga crashed now and then, but I can at least play a game, run Mac software and buy software at reasonable prices.

At School of Visual Arts there was a complete and utter disdain for the platform. When the Mac was a single task black and white system educators actually called the Ami archaic and outdated...yet had never used one.

Adobe's embracing of the mac as THE print production platform of choice sealed Amiga's fate.

The Amiga could have been an AI contruct with dual holographic displays the size of a shoebox and it would'nt have mattered to the graphics community.

 Even then Apple's ability to "spin" was a force to be reckoned with.

How do I know all this? Worked on "Star Trek" related projects for 5 years...

[Crom00]

The street cred gained by having a major cultural franchise attached to the Commodore Amiga brand was worth the cost of having one or two CATS or special products division guys onboard full time with paramount for a couple of months to get them started.

A modern day example of this...Today...NewTek flies folks all over the country and demos their Tricaster to get the box into the major Networks. It's a proven strategy. The result? Most every Major network uses Tricaster for online content delivery. Tricaster is a market leader. Granted it's a niche market, but it's the leader, despite the "Video Toaster" and the "oh...yea...I remember that company" stigma you often hear when you metnion NewTek in industry circles.

[Crom00]

Also, Avid was adopted as the non linear edit system for Trek becuase Avid emulated Paramounts tape loggin system in a digital workflow.

 Avid realized having a popluar "evergreen" Show like Star Trek on board as a client was great for credibility.

The Amiga was used under the radar for other takss too, on other shows. I remember a fellow sold me his sunrize 12bit soundcard, he told me how he worked on the set of Cheers recording on set audio directly into an Amiga 3000. He was able to multitask and cut the audio on set where his competitors couldn't touch him in terms of speed.

Told me how the stars were amazed how he was able to clean up the onset vocal audio so well.

Wasn't unitl the late 90's that pc's caught up (in his opinion) for this one special task. He told me there were no latency issues or lag with the Amiga, where the PC wasn't able to reliably handle the task... Until then (late 90's) he hadn't thought about replacing his 3000.

[Crom00]

Vlabguy1 wrote:
I disagree ..If they really wanted to drive it home that the graphics look dated then they should have said
"the graphics look like they were made on a Atari"..hehehe..

LOL! Yep, but as we're aware, some folks like to bash the Amiga. Atari has a soft spot with pop culture...

"The graphics look like they were made on an Atari2600"

was always a good jab when dissing graphics.

[Crom00]

The clunky characater designs are the real crime here. Looks like something that'd be cool back in 2000/2001 when the project was started.

The character designs look like their creators weren't even sure what they were designing.