SCULPT ANIMATE 4D MANUAL ADDENDA Have you ever tried to shoot an antelope from the back of a running camel? Well, neither have I (since I prefer antelopes un-perforated). But the concept may give you some idea of what it's like to document a product as complex as Sculpt Animate as it evolves. Unfortunately, even as the manual has been being printed, new changes were being made to the code. There have also been some errors and omissions found in the interim. These addenda provide the latest updates and errata for Revision 1 of the Sculpt Animate manual and for the 2.09 and 2.09c releases of the software. Installing SA4D on Mass Storage devices --------------------------------------- Sculpt Animate 4D has been designed so that the software may be moved to a mass storage device (hard drive, Removable Media, RAM disk, etc.) with a minimal amount of work. Generally, all that is necessary is to drag the icon for the program ('020 or regular version) to a drawer of the mass storage device. The program does require certain portions of the normal operating system to be available. Particularly needed are: the math libraries of the Libs directory, the Stack command (used by the icon) from the C directory, and the S directory. If some or all of these directories are not available, the program may not function correctly. If the device that contains these directories is not write enabled, the system may crash upon quitting the program. All these files may be set up automatically with the batch file found on the 'Program' disk. If you have an accelerator machine, drag the 68020/68881 version from the 'Data' disk to the appropriate directory and discard the 68000 version. There are some additional files that are not native the operating system that the program may request. Users creating 24 bit images will need to have a frame-buffer conversion routine in the Devs: directory and a default parameters file in the S: directory. The conversion routine name must end with '-fb.device' and and default parameters file must be called 'rgbuff.init' (neither needs the quote marks). Users of single frame controllers must have a translation routine, ending with the extension '-fc.device'. The last file the program looks for is completely optional and user created. This is the 'startup.script'. If this file exists in the directory from which SA4D was started or in the directory in which SA4D resides, the script will be executed automatically. There are a number of support files on the SA4D disks designed to give you the option of not loading SA4D every time you want to look an image or animation. The two most important files are 'Movie' and 'VILBM'. Movie is a freely distributable program to view animations. It must be located either in the path described in the animation's icon in the 'Tool Type' field or, if called from the CLI, in a directory in the system path. (See 'Path' in your AmigaDOS manual.) Likewise, VILBM (View Inter Leaved Bit Map) is a freely distributable image viewer. Both these programs require sufficient Stack to be allocated before they can be run. If you use the Workbench environment, this is done automatically everytime you click on the icon for the file. Tri-View GenLock compatibility ------------------------------ Sculpt Animate automatically supports the use of a GenLock to overlay the Tri-View editing environment onto an NTSC video source. If a GenLock is connected to the system, the Tri-View's background will be color zero (the "transparent" color). This facility can be useful for digitizing shapes, but is naturally limited to the screen's resolution. There may be times when you want the normal Tri-View screen to appear, even if a GenLock is attached to the system. A program entitled "GenLockToggler" is present in the "Misc" subdirectory of your "68020/68881 VERSION" distribution disk. You can run this program to "hide" your GenLock before you run Sculpt Animate. Run GenLockToggler again to reveal the GenLock again. Image GenLock compatibility --------------------------- Sculpt Animate images can be created which may be overlaid on an external video source. To achieve this, set the WORLD SKY requester's Sky Color gadget to NONE before rendering an image or animation. Any "sky" areas of the animation will be "color zero", the transparent color. Since extreme shadows will also be "color zero", increase the WORLD ILLUMINATION to lessen the shadows. Transparent color "holes" may be created by genlocking objects made of black LUMINOUS faces. (Luminous objects made be intrepreted as made of PURE COLOR rather than an object that gives off light. Usually a pure black may be considered "color zero.") As with any hardware peripheral, be sure to consult your GenLock's documentation for specific information and cautions about connecting and using the GenLock. International video compatibility --------------------------------- The manual briefly mentions the fact that the European and U.S. video standards, PAL and NTSC, differ. In most cases, you will not need to worry about this, since Sculpt Animate will automatically size it's Tri-View and images to the video standard being used by your Amiga. If your system uses one video standard but you are creating for the other, you can specify which standard will be used for rendering by setting a parameter named TVTYPE in Sculpt Animate's icon. To do this, click on the Sculpt Animate icon and execute the Workbench screen's Info menu command. A window will appear displaying information about the program file. Click ADD in the Tool Types string gadget, then click in the gadget itself and type in TVTYPE=PAL or TVTYPE=NTSC. This must be in all uppercase and without any spaces. Hit RETURN and click SAVE; the change will take effect the next time you run the program from the Workbench. To make the video setting "automatic" again, go into the Info screen for the Sculpt Animate icon and click DEL in Tool Types to erase the TVTYPE setting, then click SAVE. EXPAND function enhancement --------------------------- The EXPAND function's behavior has changed (again) since the manual went to press. By default, it now expands the selected vertices about their center (as defined in appendix B). A gadget has been added to the requester which allows you to toggle the center of expansion from the object's CENTER to its CENTROID, then to the CURSOR and back. This provides the added functionality of having a cursor-based sizing function, while remaining "compatible" with users of the older packages. Animation image size playback limitation ---------------------------------------- The majority of Amigas being used at this writing cannot use more than 512K of graphics simultaneously, since this is the current hard-wired limit to "chip" (graphics) RAM in the Amiga. Playing a given double buffered RAM animation requires a specific amount of this chip RAM, roughly twice the amount needed to display a single image. Playing back animations in HI-RES, INTERLACED, NTSC JUMBO size or larger (non-HAM modes) will probably demand more of the Amiga's chip RAM than is available while Sculpt Animate's screen is open. Smaller animations may also fail to play if any other screens are present (including the Workbench screen),or if there is not enough "fast" expansion RAM to hold all non-graphics data. Large-screen animations rendered in the HI-RES INTERLACE mode may be played back with the freely-distributable program MOVIE, which may be found on the DATA disk included with this release. MOVIE can play these animations because it does not need its own screen. Note that this is an older version of MOVIE (1.3) which does not support VIDEO sized images. A newer version of this freeware program has been released. Currently, VIDEO sized animations done in HI-RES INTERLACE (16 color non-HAM) can only be viewed by recording single frames directly to video tape or by Amigas with the Enhanced Chip Set. Script mode enhancement ----------------------- Scripts now support relative movement of the cursor. This is achieved by specifying a position triplet in square brackets. For instance, the line: [0,0,25] ... will move the cursor 25 units in the up direction, whereas the line: (0,0,25) ... will move the cursor to the position which is 25 units above the absolute origin. Scripts now support comments. If an asterisk (*) or semicolon (;) is found where the first word of a command should be (i.e., the first thing on a line, or on a line after a completed command), then the remainder of the line is ignored by the program. Note that Sculpt Animate takes the linefeed ($0A) as an end-of-line character in scripts. Rendering workspace options --------------------------- In the HAM rendering modes, Sculpt Animate will maintain 12 bit planes of image resolution (4096 "pure" colors) until the image is complete, then analyze the image to find the best possible HAM color map. This yields higher quality, but requires more memory than the older method of finding the color map "on the fly". If there is not enough RAM available for the 12-bit image, then Sculpt Animate will see if there is room to save it in a temporary disk file, either in the program's current directory or on a device or disk named "SATEMP:". This device may either be a blank floppy disk or an "assigned" directory. A requester will inform you if there is not enough memory or disk space available to render the image. Manual errata ------------- The following are corrections to some omissions and misleading errors in the manual that have been detected since it went to press. Chapter 3, page 3-19 -- The "time remaining" status display has been removed. It had been made redundant by the addition of a rendering status window which is present on the Sculpt Animate screen while an image is being rendered. The new window displays the current rendering phase with a "percentage complete" value. Chapter 9, page 9-5 -- The illustration is incorrect. The requester shown now has a "RENAME" gadget. Chapter 10, page 10-5 -- The illustration is incorrect. It should show the Modify Tumble requester. Chapter 12, page 12-4 -- It should be emphasized that objects saved with the SAVE OBJECT and SAVE NAMED OBJECT commands are saved in ".scene" files. There is no special file for objects. Chapter 13, pages 13-5 and 13-8 -- The manual incorrectly warns that the the Grabber tool will be dropped if the SNAP CURSOR commands are executed from the menus. The Grabber will now survive these commands. Other use of the right mouse button will drop the Grabber as usual. Chapter 14, fonts -- Free, unconnected vertices may be placed in a character's scene file to define the character's dimensions in the scene. These vertices will not be loaded in when the character is typed. Chapter 14, scripts -- The following commands are missing: ADD EDGes SET INDicated LAMp COLor SET INDicated LAMp BRIghtness SET COLor of ALL LAMps SET BRIghtness of ALL LAMps The following script commands are printed incorrectly: ANTi aliasing BESt COOrdinates LOAd IMAge "filename" LOAd OBJect "filename" [SELECTED] [DESELECTED] LOAd ANImation "filename" MODify WIRe-frame colors [] EXPAnd [NS] [EW] [UD] ADD TUBe ADD CONe MAGnet REPel EXPOsure MANual TUMble SPEcified ILLumination Appendix B, page B-7 -- The glossary entry for SCENE is incorrect. Scenes must be saved in files whose names end in ".scene", not ".image". The command which saves scenes is PROJECT SAVE SCENE.