Conference hydra::amiga_v1

I bought this package awhile back. I went to The Memory Location looking to buy
Vista Pro with the intent of creating some animations. Roy pointed me to
Scenery Animator and save me lot's of money and time!

This program is a must for anyone looking to fly around fractal landscapes.
It also allows you to load US Geological Survey data (preprocessed by
Natural Graphics - makers of Scenery Animator).

Nothing like a trip through the Grand Caynon at F16 speeds, or a nice
slow flight across Yosemitee National Park...

The program has a very easy to use interface (all WB 2.0 looking) and on
my 28mhz 68030/882 generates a 100 frame animation in about 8-10 hours
(and about 4 MB of memory!)

john

    How much disk space does a 100 frame take up?
    									Ed
    

I'll check again, but it wa son the order of 4MB or more.

john

    Re .1:
    
>   It also allows you to load US Geological Survey data (preprocessed by
>   Natural Graphics - makers of Scenery Animator).
    
    I've been considering getting Vista or Vista Pro, but what I *really*
    want to do is to create 3D models of places from USGS topographic data
    and insert mock-ups of buildings in/near them to determine the impact. 
    (An example would be to model Walden Pond and then add the proposed
    building that has so many people up in arms.)  "Flying" through them is
    a secondary goal.
    
    Now that Virtual Realities has released a scenery generator for Vista
    and Vista Pro, I've been tempted to buy it.  I have two questions:
    1.	How does one input USGS map data to Natural Graphics and what kind
    	of output (IFF, TurboSilver ...) does it create?
    2.	What's the better (match to need/match to budget) combiniation of
    	products for my purposes?
    
    Thanks in advance.
                     

    Supposedly, you can import or export Vista pro/Sculpt  files with it....
    I can't remember wich.
     John can you confirm this?
    As for the real world landscapes... There done at Natural Graphics, and
    you buy them from em.
     I'm not shure if you could do you're own or not... I don't believe
    this is an option in the program, but perhaps you could edit a file :')?
     The landscapes ofered are:
     Grand Canyon
     Yosemite
     Yosemite East
     Lake Tahoe
     Mt. Whitney
     Crater Lake
     Grand Teton
     Glacier National Park/Mt. St. Helens
     
     With more being added to the list every day.
     
 Also you can generate random fractal landscapes, with control over land
    hieght, water level, color, vegetation, snow and soil.
    
    I recieved mine as a forty dollar upgrade from Natural Graphics,
     I'm not shure what it lists for.
    
                                                          Ed
    

    The list in .5 is very much along the lines of that offered by Virtual
    Realities(Vista Pro). I plan on getting the animation tool that is made
    for Vista Pro. You can then select cruise missle,plane, motercycle like
    motions for the Animations. I have rendered Images saved in Impulse
    format in Imagine,and then displayed them on the toaster with great
    results. Another thing I did was to generate a screen of water, with
    waves. The camera was pointing down at 90 degrees. When rendered in
    Vista pro, and dumped to the toaster it made a very nice graphic
    background screen. I haven't set for the DEM format from virtual
    realities yet, so I don't know what the input files look like.
    								bill

I'm not sure on formats it inputs/outputs, I can check.

As Ed said, Natural Graphics preprocesses raw USGS data and sells you the
landscapes (for around $15.00 a set I think).

I paid $80.00 at memory location. Vista Pro without animation was over 
$130.00 so that plus upgrade is Vista cost...

john

    
    I have been using Vista Pro for a while but, was not aware that a 
    motion generator was available !!!.
    
    Can you post more info about that please ?.
    
    Thank You
    Hubert.

     Scenery Generator stuff....
    
     I started a 100 frame animation on Saturday morning at about 6:30,
    7:00.
     It's Sunday and it's still in the 60's frame range.
      Wow, I think it's time to upgrade my stock 68000 :')
      Thank goodness for multi-tasking...
      Hopefully the demo will get uploaded tommorrow.
    									Ed
      

    Here are some excerpts from the flier I received from Virtual Reality
    labs:
    
    Makepath, the motion editor for Vista and Vistapro is now available for
    shipment.  Terraform, the terrain editor for Vista & VP is also
    complete and available.  They both retail from VRI at $39.95 or $69.95
    for the pair.
    
    With makepath vista and vistapro owners having hard drive space can
    produce sophisticated scripts with push button ease.  Different motion
    models allow scripting glider, jet, cruise missle, helicopter,
    dunebuggy or motorcycle movement through the landscapes.  Full flight
    controls are included - pitch, roll, etc.  Frame by frame editing and
    partial path editing is supported.  
    
    With Terraform Vista and VP owners can modify existing scapes or create
    new ones...  Make a DEM of your backyard...  The USGS gives us data in
    30 meter increments, but you can do a piece of your own property at 1
    foot increments if you can sketch out a topography of that surface!  If
    it doesn't come out looking the way it should the first time through,
    then you can go back in and fix it until it does...  
    
    I haven't seen either product, just showing excerpts of the flier :-)
    
    mark
    

    re:-1 sounds pretty nice...
      Doesn't Vista Pro support trees and stuff? How does it look close up?
    
    On the Scenery Animator Demo.... I was into frame 88 yesterday at about
    4:00, went to check again around 6:00 at night, turned on the monitor,
    Oh No!!!
     GURU!
    "#@$%!!!"
     Since I was saving it in ANIM5 format, all I ended up with was a file
    with "0" blocks attached.
     I started it again this morning at about 6, it should be done at
    around 6 tommorrow night.... Maybe Wednsday I'll have an example ULed.
    
    									Ed
     

   My 100 frame animation finnished last night at around 8:00.
   I figure a little over 48hrs to render a 100 frame lowres, interlace 
   animation on my stock 68000.
   (does using hires=96hrs?)
   Anyhow, I'm quite happy with the results.
   Now all I've got to do is figure out how to get a 3.6 meg Anim on a 740k
   disk :'). 
    A couple of questions.... is there a public domain program to read 
   animations off a disk, instead of memory? Antic had one, but they went under
   so I doubt I could order a back issue from them.
    Also is there a way I can read the above animation off of four floppies?

                                                             Thanks
									Ed

>   (does using hires=96hrs?)

Probably!

>    A couple of questions.... is there a public domain program to read 
>   animations off a disk, instead of memory? Antic had one, but they went under
>   so I doubt I could order a back issue from them.
>    Also is there a way I can read the above animation off of four floppies?

I remember seeing this awhile back, but couldn't find it. With the animations
SA is capable of producing, It would be a great program to have. I searched
the fish list but didn't come up with anything...

john

    re .12
    
    	I'd be willing to put the animation on video tape if you want ?
    I've been looking for a good test subject.
    
    		Steve P.
    

    Okay, but I'll have to break it up into 4 animations, you'll ave to put
    it back together once down-loaded, okay?
     								Ed
    

    
    re .15
    
    	Can do ...
    
    		Steve P.