First ever render (Aladdin4d)

[Ral-Clan]

Hi folks.  After many years of wanting to learn rendering software, I am finally sitting down and doing it.  I bought Aladdin4d from Nova Design / DiscreetFX a few years ago.  Just for hoots I posted very first 3 second test render:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRkZXzrGkGs

Nothing too much to get excited about - just your standard space flyby like everyone learning rendering does.  YouTube's video algorithms really darken the picture more than should look.  Anyway, I'm just scratching the surface - Aladdin4d is capable of so much more - although the learning curve is a little steep.

The planet is just a lo-res quickie done in Deluxe Paint 5.  Anyway, like I said, not much to get excited about but it's pure Amiga - and there are few examples of Aladdin4d renders out there so I thought I'd post it.

[Ral-Clan]

Gorgeous! I have a copy of Aladdin, but haven't really messed with it too much. What model Amiga and processor are you using?

Well....until August 2009 I was using it on an A2000/040/32MB/OS3.9 with Picasso II+ card.  It was actually pretty speedy rendering single frames (I never got to animation on it).  Aladdin is one of the faster renderers out there.

Then the SCSI card in my A2000 died and I switched over to using UAE on a 2.8GHz Pentium 4.  I must say...Aladdin really smokes on it!  It's fast.  Plus under UAE I have access to higher resolution screenmodes and the 1GB of RAM in my PC - so I can make much larger and longer animations more easily.  I know some people are against emulated Amigas, but I am mainly an apps person, not a gamer - and I find all the apps I used to use (ImageFX, Lightwave, PageStream, DeluxePaint, OctaMED, Bars&Pipes, etc.) run just fine - and even better because they are faster - under UAE.  For instance, yesterday I just worked on a 130MB TIFF file (10,000 x 10,000 pixels) under ImageFX on my UAE emulated Amiga.  I could never have done that on my real hardware Amiga.

How long did it take to render? That's not the Amiga's native output, is it or do you have a video card?

It actually is rendered in an Amiga RTG screenmode (sort of).  YouTube conversion of course reduces the quality & sharpness of the video quite a bit.  Aladdin4d will render to any screenmode your Amiga has installed.  The original animation was rendered in 640x480 16-bit RTG (Picasso96).  This looks awesome and sharp on screen (pretty much DVD quality).  I can render to even higher screenmodes (like 1024x768 or higher for HD/Blu-Ray) quality.  So there is no reason why you couldn't do totally "modern" hi-definition animations with the Amiga and Aladdin4d.  

All "Amigas" under UAE can use the PC's graphics chips for their own RTG display.  But if you have a real Amiga without a graphics card, Aladdin4d can render stills or animations to HAM6 or HAM8 (the latter of which actually look pretty darned good) or to 16-bit or 24-bit IFF frames directly to your hard drive (which you can then assemble into animations with software).  There really are no limitations to rendering resolution with Aladdin4d.

The only thing I'm trying to figure out is how to create a screenmode for rendering which will result in a 16:9 aspect ratio animation.

As for how long it took - this short animation took about half an hour on the PC/UAE setup described above.  Although I should say I had all the shading/smoothing and anti-aliasing algorithms set to the max, which really increased rendering time.

[Ral-Clan]

Hopefully there will be an upgrade option to 6.0 for those of us who purchased (or are about to purchase) Alladin4d 5.0 for our Amigas?

[Ral-Clan]

Hi,

@ral-clan

"Not much to get excited about"

LIKE WOW WOW WOW!!!

Dude this was great, brought back the old days when I had my vid toast and was rendering with it. Just working on something like this and learning, maybe that is what we all miss on the Amiga.

Keep going and keep learning, you are doing fantastic.

It is great to see someone doing something with the Amiga and having fun with it.

Keep going and have fun.

smerf

Thanks very much.  I have to admit it's lots of fun.  I've always been an artistic person and wanted to learn to do rendering, but for some reason the software always seemed to complex to me.  I finally (after years) sat down determined to learn how to use rendering software.  I bought Aladdin...and it did take a few readings through the manual to learn it (it's very, very powerful, but the learning curve is a little high).  I also bought a Lightwave tutorial video off the internet and I can't believe how easy it is to use.  I just needed someone to explain the interface to me.  I wish I had seen this years ago.

Seriously, both these pieces of software, even though older, are still capable of some very nice results.  

Lots of fun.

[Ral-Clan]

Well, I was running the same setup on my Amiga 2000 up until August 2008.  When it broke I "cloned" my A2000's setup under UAE.  So yes it's running emulated on a PC now, but it's done in AmigaOS.

There's no reason though that someone couldn't do this on a real A2000 if he or she had one that was still working.

[Ral-Clan]

Yes, but they are mostly more exercises to familiarize myself with Aladdin's basic functions....like gases, fountains, particles, moving cameras....etc.  Everything can be combined in so many ways it's a little overwhelming, but powerful.

But since you guys liked that little rocket animation I'll post here again when I come up with something worthwhile (and hopefully longer).

The only thing Aladdin doesn't seem to do is movable parts - like a figure with moving arms and legs, or a moving face.  You can do them with "deforms" and "translating" the axes of the parts of the object, but it's not like the "bones" system in other 3D software.  So Aladdin excels at some things, while Lightwave is probably good for others.  Fortunately, you can use them together to combine their strengths.

[Ral-Clan]

How do you like the response and engine of Aladdin on UAE? Pyromania gave me a  copy of it and I lost my laptop on  Thanksgiving, so I haven't installed it on my new box yet. I hear the particle effects engine in Aladdin are quite spiffy. I wanna check them out.

Aladdin runs VERY well under UAE.  It's extremely stable and has never given me any problems at all, whereas some of the older rendering apps like Lightwave, VistaPRO, Pixel3d, etc. don't like the RTG modes that really make UAE fly.  I have to play around with screen filter settings and revert to older native screenmodes to get those to work.  But with Aladdin I can use a high-res 16-bit UAE RTG screenmode like 1024x768 (or higher) and Aladdin doesn't complain at all and has never crashed.

Aladdin also really is quick when rendering under UAE as I mentioned before.  It's older and simpler than the newer software like Maya or Blender, so I suppose that's why it renders so quickly (that and the fact that it was pretty fast even compared to other Amiga rendering software - or so I have read).

The interface is a little less intuitive than something like Lightwave.  But once you can get past that you can see the power underneath.  It's almost like it was programmed by German engineers or something!  Highly functional, great quality, but slightly "analytical" and no-nonsense in its user interface.  You're definitely going to need the manual or the quirks of the interface can be very frustrating.  It's a pretty cheap piece of software (I think DiscreetFX puts it on sale for $69 or something like that quite often).

[Ral-Clan]

Hi,

I've made a little more progress with Aladdin 4d over the past few months.  Here are some more basic renders.  Please remember, I'm just beginning to learn 3d modelling!

(you can click on any of these images to enlarge them)







...more to come later.