LANDSCAPE SIMULATORS: A SECOND GENERATION[0 . SCENERY ANIMATOR & VISTAPRO_2.0 Reviewed by Bob Eason,Auckland.March 1992. ******************************************* INTRODUCTION & HARDWARE CAVEATS  ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| In sharing experiences with the new round of landscape generators - Scenery Animator (National Graphics) and Vistapro2.0 (Virtual Reality Laboratories, both available for US$70.00 direct) it is only fair to start with some caveats regarding hardware requirements. Landscape generation is a very maths-intensive task and software floating point libraries can be notoriously slow so that a maths coprocessor is advised to perform these computations in the hardware for which the programs have been optimised. In my own enthusiasm for the whole genre of fractal graphics I have learned the need for patience having spent many evenings setting up an A500 for an overnight brew of MathVisions' math stew or lengthy computation of the fractalising Mandel boundaries of the complex plane. Both programs do provide the good preview facilities that are required to facilitate this approach so that a 68030 is a sure reliever of angst but falls short of being a prerequisite. Similar comments apply to hard drive needs. However, avoid Vista's proprietary format without one - my first "Vanim" file ran out of space on frame 80 having devoured all of the 17MB on my largest and sparsest partition! Minimum RAM requirements are immodest! - 3 to 4MB for Vistapro which renders into a high resolution 24 bit virtual screen from which it may condescend to release images in more conventional video modes! A further consequence of this is that there is no speed to be gained in specifying a low resolution at the outset. Scenery Animator,by contrast, paints on to the screen as it renders and can survive with 2MB. NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A CAMERA With regard to graphic output,Vistapro is increasingly targetted at systems equipped with video enhancement hardware. Not only does it render in 24 bits, but it also provides direct support for DCTV,HAM-E & Firecracker.  (Incidentally Impulse's Feb92 newsletter firmly erases any hopes of a PAL compatible version of Firecracker). Scenery Animator supports DCTV and both programs can save in 24 bit IFF format. Video upgrades remain out of my financial reach so that my experience is limited to the output obtainable in native Amigan mode. This immediately precludes reproduction of the quality prevalent in promotional material and photographic realism is never approached. That said, there remains tremendous scope for enjoyment and interest in the exploration of unfamiliar terrain, whether real or imaginary. Whilst I must confess to a limited penchant for endless views of the Western United States, whence cometh most of the geological data, the true simulation of the surface of Mars or the imaginary undulations of one's own seeded fracscapes, is fascinating indeed. I won't buy the educational claims but would endorse the potential provision of a prestigious variety of images and backgrounds for importation into other graphic applications such as DPaint or Imagine. SCENE GENERATOR Historically,Brett Casbolt's public domain program 'Scenery', later enhanced as the commercial 'Scene Generator', pioneered the fractal techniques for the generation of landscape imagery and this ultimately friendly program retains a place of special affection on my harddisk. Enter any of 120,000 available seed numbers, adjust direction of light source, add water, beaches and/or cloud, and the fine dithering routines involved in the rendering process swiftly yield beautiful images of snowcapped mountain ranges or lagooned islands. It can still be hard to better the quality of its output, despite all the bells and whistles of the successors. VISTA & DEM FILES VRLI's Vista took the next step in accessing Digital Elevation Data to simulate real rather than fantasy terrain. Such DEM files have been produced by the United States Geological Survey for wide areas of this and other planets. This exploitation of real cartographical data made available techniques that were previously possible only on very high end systems. Real places could now be explored from an almost limitless number of viewpoints. A vista -a mental view or image- could now be obtained of places that will never witness our physical footprints. The intrinsic structure of the DEM file format, comprised of sets of elevation data set 30 metres apart, is such that it imposes limits on the resolution of scenes rendered from it. This was especially evident in areas close to the observer and resulted in the coarse polygonal results that marred the output of Vista in its earliest incarnation, but has been largely overcome by the enhanced algorithms of more recent versions. Vistapro includes 20 DEM files ranging from the earthly volcano of Mount St.Helens to its Martian couterpart - Olympus Mons. Scenery Animator bundles in a more limited selection from the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Grand Teton national parks, but can also load any Vista files! Dozens of additional scenery discs are available to those with a morbid fascination for American topography. No sign yet of Ruapehu or the Eiger, Manukau Heads or the Matterhorn! BIGDEMS & LITTLEDEMS ! A conventional 'small' DEM file contains an array of 256 * 256 (rows * columns) = 65,000 16 bit integers (130,000 bytes of data) or elevation points that generate 130,000 polygons in simulating an area 4 miles wide by 4 miles long. Large or Huge scape sizes are alternative choices for Vista, and respectively comprise 250 to 1000 thousand elevation points, render one half to two million polygons, require 4 or 8 MB RAM, and are of principal interest to the poweruser who wishes to load and join contiguous scapes in order to construct humungous animations! The landscape size option can also be used for the purpose of loading a small scape into a large area and then selecting the 'Enlarge' function to expand it fourfold by interpolating additional points and hence detail. Having acquired a two disc set of contiguous data sampled from the surface of planet Mars, my 6 MB system allows Vistapro to simultaneously load a foursome of files which it builds into a single larger area. Eighty files containing nearly 8MB of data have been compressed on to this software which includes an extraction script to decompress them on to ten(!) floppy discs! I parked them temporarily on a hard disc partition, whilst sorting out, with the aid of the minimap photocopied on to the single documentation sheet, a few more interesting areas worthy of longer storage. Scenery Animator's has a more modest 'Append' feature capable of joining up to four datafiles. A group of four such contiguous scapes is included with the program and is just accomodatable within my 6MB of memory,to provide an extended wide angle shot of the Grand Teton range. MAKE-YOU'RE-OWN DEMS For additional, less obvious, sources of Vista DEM files, I had previously exploited the ability of Daniel Wolf's (MegageM) two programs - Fractalpro and ScapeMaker - to save and/or convert into this format. In frivolous mood I had startled a young son by demifying his coloured-in Teddy Bear and rerendering it as a snowcovered plateau, replete with lakes, rivers and forests! Vistapro2.0, however, now boasts its own new option-'Col_to_Alt' -that,whilst scantily documented, is admirably capable of transforming any Amiga graphic into a digital elevation map. Iterative fractal algorithms that map colour values to specific outcomes -the number of computations needed to increase a pixel's arithmetic value above that corresponding to the fractal boundary of a Juliaset, for example- lend themselves particularly well to this type of image manipulation. Successful processing of other image types requires palette editing such that areas to be elevated reference one extreme of colour registers e.g. 12-16, whilst those parts destined to a more lowly future correspond with numbers at the opposite pole e.g. 2-4.I have had a lot of fun from this field of experimentation and would commend it! MAKE 3D OBJECTS TOO Yet a further unique Vistapro function, is its ability to save all or part of a scape file in Turbo Silver format. Fellow sufferers of Imagine's magnetise tool will appreciate the benefit thus imparted and I have deployed a surface mapped Mount St.Helens to good advantage! FRACSCAPES Scenery Animator and Vistapro both provide for fractal landscape generation, based upon user-defined or randomly chosen seed numbers, and capable of yielding a limitless source of terrain the appearance of which is often more impressive and realistic than that which is truly real! Such fracscapes can be saved in DEM format or recreated on reinvocation of their seed. Vistapro now boasts a battery of fine tuneing buttons with which an aspiring fractologist may tweak fractal dimension (tall, rough Alps vs flat,smooth planes), fractal divisor (a handful of respectable peaks vs a bevy of miserable mounds), fractaliser (additional fractal 'noise' or detail), and stretcher (vertically -up and down!). The complexity of this is such that it is often quite difficult to work out which parameter is responsible for which alteration and it can be restful to return to the simplicity of Scenery Animator, in which fractal dimension (height) only requires user input. For the all-singing, rivers flowing, forests growing fulfillment of your imagination, however, Vistapro reigns supreme. This more comprehensive nature of Vistapro's interface is a theme that recurs in every facet of landscaping and is reflected in the length of its 110 page indexed manual. Scenery Animator's 44 page equivalent is strong on clarity and brevity principally by virtue of fewer features to describe! SET THE SCENE Both manuals provide quickstart tutorials to swiftly initiate the new comer in the fundamental techniques of viewing any scape from any combination of height, distance and zoom, of adjusting the intensity, angle and direction of lighting ,of adding rivers and lakes and adjusting sea levels, of moving tree and snow lines, editing land and sky colors and applying smoothing, shading and blending algorithms prior to the final render. Let us dwell a while on the contrasting methodology used by the two programs in achieving these ends! Load or generate a terrain and Vistapro will represent it in the form of a 2-dimensional topographical map (simple map reading skills are assumed) upon which to mouse-position a tiny box -the camera-, and a tiny cross -the target in terms of their horizontal (X coordinate) and vertical (Y coordinate) distances from the south-east corner. A less intuitive numerical gadget may be used to set altitude,and corresponding boxes may also be used to directly enter x,y coordinate data if extra precision is required. Independent coordinate locks facilitate movement in one plane only. PREVIEW A choice of two methods is now available to preview the results of these initial placements. Whilst a quick (5-10 second) render may be performed using the lowest possible detail, real time feedback is attainable only in the new preview window mode in which the camera may be redirected by pointing at its new target-to-be, and zoomed using the up-and-down keyboard arrow keys. This is actually much harder than it sounds as wireframes, without hidden line removal, are not particularly intuitive, and I have had occasion to burrow through ridges rather than soar effortlessly aloft over the tops of them! Once again Scenery Animator uses a simpler but particularly friendly approach, utilising a camera object only -the target is that part of the scape at which it is aimed- and a filled polygon preview window on the main control screen that is constantly available for clear and immediately updated feedback. A topographical map is still available but is positioned on a second screen, flippable-to but underneath the first. Camera adjustments can be effected on either screen, but are most imaginatively implemented using a point-and-click approach in the preview window which supports axis locking and a well patronised Undo function! LIGHTS Having set up the camera we now need a little lighting,the direction and angle of which is easily determined with similarly intuitive control panels in either program. Additional facilities unique to Vistapro include Exposure and Contrast sliders and an Exaggeration button for supershadows! TERRAFORM Camera-lights...action? Well,our first need is to impart some features to our virgin vista which, as yet, comprises no more than a display of elevation points. A new verb has been created to describe this feat of 'Terraforming', and a powerful suite of landscaping controls is provided to control the level at which the jungle ends and snowfields begin, to determine the level of the oceans and the turbulence of their waves, and to add lakes, build rivers and substitute cliffs for areas where slopes exceed a definable steepness. This is the fun part and is aided and assisted by internal algorithms which lead snow down into the gulleys, clear windswept ridges of their vegetation and gently dither (automatically in Scenery, but user controllable in Vista) between the various zones. Rivers are available only in Vistapro and are sorely missed in Scenery Animator when lush green valleys, winding down into a foreground lake,cry out for the addition of a brook. Another niggle with Scenery Animator concerns its waves option. The manual understates the potential difficulties when it cautions that these may not appear in certain combinations of lighting. In my experience this is the rule rather than the exception and I find the implementation of this feature better in the original SceneGenerator than with this, its successor. The lack of any transition zone between water and vegetation further detracts from realism and is a problem addressed by Vistapro which inserts a beach transition. TREES A further novel option, unique to Vistapro, concerns its so-called 'Iterative Function Vegetation' - for which tongue-twister read trees! The capacity to render lifelike flowers, bushes and trees from recursive fractal seeds or affine transformations has been available for some time in public domain software, but has now also been incorporated into Vistapro's fractal mathematical algorithm enabling it to generate trees from an assortment of polygons. Variously shaped groupings of these are likened to the outlines of pines, oaks, cacti and palms of adjustable size and density. A realistic forest requires a nearby camera position and is best rendered in high resolution graphic mode when individual trunks, branches and foliage may be recognised. Trees displayed within the constraints of HAM mode become downright bloboid! Such a result is not necessarily unattractive, and may be a positive asset if an 'oil painting' look is desired! The principal downside of trees is a 2 to 20 fold increment in rendering time. Avoid them like the plague whilst previewing! TOWN PLANNING Additional features such as houses,roads and dams,can be added using Vistapro's obtuse and circuitous Col-to-IFF function. This exercise involves saving out a copy of the program's internal table of polygon colours as an IFF file, editing it in DPaint and then returning it to Vista for translation of whatever squiggles and blobs you may have added, into 'houses'(rectangular blocks), rows of trees etc. This is not a challenge for the faint-hearted, and, discouraged by my early efforts, I have not persevered! Having acquired Terraform (US$ 25.00) with VistaPro, I have had a little more joy using this DEMfile edit/create tool, and, having conscientously worked through its two tutorials, am now adept at placing large dams on rivers! SET THE PALETTE With regard to colour control,ranges for sky,cliffs,snow,bare earth, vegetation and water can be easily edited in either program. A helpful touch in Scenery Animator is the availability of a on-screen palette that can be accessed from the current picture being viewed and thus modified with immediate feedback. Only Vistapro permits the loading and saving of separate colourmaps and this is a facility that I miss in Scenery Animator. PAINT THE SKY Terraforming completed,attention must now be paid to the sky above. Vistapro gives the option of setting user definable density and colour for land and sky haze to enable a colour gradient of sorts. This looks superb in examples of 24 bit images,but I find it difficult to avoid broader and more pixey bands of somewhat discordant colour in standard video mode. An esoteric alternative involves preloading a separate 24 bit IFF background file and I have obtained some pleasing sunset effects by importing an appropriate red-orange-blue gradient. A 'View-to-RGB' function is available to load standard non-HAM pictures for conversion to, and saving in, the IFF24 format required to implement this funtion. If fractal cloud generation is preferred this option is described in a readme file and involves initial generation ofa fractal landscape for subsequent conversion into cloud format. Having tweaked its density and fluffiness, a second DEM file is loaded or created from which to render the underlying landscape. Whew!! It is something of a relief to return to Scenery Animator which requires only to be told the altitude and density to render an acceptably realistic layer of fractal cirrhous. The charm of simplicity! SMOOTH THE POLYGONS Camera,lights,earth and sky are all ready,but what about those awful polygons that dogged the early landscape generators? Both programs offer a number of neat solutions. Scenery Animator has a 'Detail' function which, if selected, fills in its own fractal detail up to a resolution of every 0.1 meter with a superbly smooth result obtainable with minimum fuss or effort. Vistapro proffers a similar facility, entitled 'Texturising', and available in four levels. You may additionally choose to render a level of every 1,2,4 or 8 polygons. The latter low detail option generates only 2048 (1 in 64) of the 130,000 polygons in the scape, and is equivalent to the filled polygon image in Scenery Animator's preview window. Further options in VistaPro include Garaud shading, which blends polygon edges to create a blurry oil painting quality, and Blend,which removes coarse texture and jaggies from the more distant part of the scape. A repeatable Smooth button does exactly that, and, whilst it is billed as the answer to those who hanker for flawless, rockless snowfields, it achieves this at the expense of washing away most of the detail. KEY THE FRAMES Whilst, for many users, the animation facilities offered by these programs may be of paramount importance, I must confess to a strong personal preference for landscape 'stills' and have a limited experience in the creation of innovative flight paths. Even for a reluctant novice, however, Scenery Animator is a 'snip'. Having specified camera and other settings in half a dozen keyframes, I created a 90 frame voyage up an approach valley tothe Grand Teton range with a couple of button clicks, a 6 hour wait and 2.5MB of diskspace. This kind, helpful software interpolates between the key frames and does all the hard work quietely and automatically for you. Vistapro scripting is simple in theory - create a list of camera and target coordinates by moving them slightly, saving their new positions, moving them again, and so on. The difficulty I experienced was in using the wireframe previwer and my flightpaths were characterised by frequent crash landings! Mercifully, each of the 20 scape files, included with the program, is matched with an appropriate readywritten 200 frame scriptfile. I have enjoyed experimenting with truncated versions of these to get the feel of trips up the Grand Canyon and around the Martian craters. Virtual Realities, proprietary 'Vanim' format enables playback from harddisk, at the expense of a twofold increase in file size in comparison with IFF anim mode. A 50 frame section of high resolution laced vanim file takes 10 hours to render and occupies 10 MB of disc space! For those endowed with more storage space than I am currently able to access this looks to be a powerful option. New in Vistapro2.0 is an extended scripting language capable of specifying every conceivable option. As this requires up to 150 lines of data for each frame, the expenditure of the US$25 necessary to purchase the accessory 'MakePath' software may be a time saveing investment! Mark Smiddy, writing in last November's Amiga Shopper, fantasises the production of an animated flight down the 4000km long Martian grand canyon. Moving at a leisurely 1 meter per frame,and 5 frames per second,would take 9days to play and require a 200 gigabyte hard disk from which it could be played back in vanim format. IN CONCLUSION Vistapro certainly impresses with its exceedingly powerful potential. I have become a little wary of the cliched claim for results that are limited only by the "user's imagination". As a novitiate of 3D rendering I have increasingly found that other variables, such as the clarity of the manual or the local availability of a fellow sharer-toiler, offer more mundane restraints! In the case of Vistapro, an insatiable appetite for exceedingly high end hardware is a major concern. My imagination feels significantly more titillated at the prospect of what could be achieved with a video enhancer and unlimited storage than it does at the suggestion that it should apply itself to more industrious imagining! However, even within the limitations imposed by my own modest abilities and equipment, VistaPro has, and will continue, to provide me with a fascinating forum of interest and exploration. Scenery Animator, by contrast, is pure fun. The easy friendliness of its interface, speedy rendering, and smooth natural images make this a program for relaxed rendering. In its propensity to determine, within its own internal algorithms, many of the functions that require user interraction with VistaPro, it takes away much of the effort, albeit at the cost of less control. Whilst it also supports 24 bit colour, its finely dithered images display prettily in standard graphic modes, though HAM is not supported. For the user who has the time and motivation to tackle the early learning curve then I would commend Vistapro. For a swift and painless source of alpine backdrops then Scenery Animator might be the better option. By virtue of these differences,both programs are, to some extent, complementary, and I, for one, succumbed without regret, to the temptation to acquire and enjoy both. Bob Eason, 19 Colum Place, Bucklands Beach, Auckland.  ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 ||| 28 |||