General questions and answers: ------------------------------ My system crashes as soon as I start the program. What is going wrong? There are three major possibilities: 1) The 68020/68881 version of the program will crash immediately if run on a standard 68000 based machine or a machine with an accelerator without a 68881 math coprocessor. 2) If the memory Stack is insufficient, the program will crash. The Stack should be set to 60000. (Rule of thumb: the larger the scene, the higher you should set your the stack.) [CLI command: STACK 60000 ] 3) You may have a faulty machine or improperly installed cards. To the best of our knowledge, there is no program for the Amiga that excercises the CPU and memory harder than a ray-tracing and animation program. Several accelerator card manufacturors use Sculpt-Animate 4D to verify the stability of their cards and peripherals. Programs that work on one machine model but not another of the same model generally indicate the machine is not up to specifications. My images and animations don't look as good as your images or demo animations. The images on the front covers of our packages are generally screenshots of undithered 24 bit images displayed on a frame-buffer. Our product has had the capability of generating 24 bit files since the inception of Sculpt 3D. Until recently, the Amiga has been completely barren of frame-buffers claiming 24-bit capabilities. We merely generate 24 bit data and displayed the data on whatever platform had the capability. The capacity to display16 million colors eliminates any graininess in an image. To improve the quality of your HAM image, try reducing the dithering value below 100%. The HAM limitation (three pixels are required to change from one RGB value to another) is basically equivalent to dividing the horizontal resolution by one third. In many cases, a 16 color high resolution non-HAM image can be more attractive than the same image in HAM. As for demo animations... All of our demo animations have been generated within the standard Amiga display limitations by artists in the field. Any animation there may be produced by anyone pocessing as much RAM, patience, and talent as the artist who submitted it to us. We hope to continue to include as many of the tips and shortcuts in our newsletter as space allows. Frankly, some of these artists have informed us that the single, most regularly made mistake they see is misplaced, incorrectly colored, or insufficient lighting. Images may be made more dramatic by adding high lighting. They may be made more intimate by reducing the brightness of the closer lights and coloring the fill lamps. Try spending more time experimenting with reduced brightness lamps (as low as 1 or 2 watts) of varying color and placement. In fact, one of the convienient applications of the animation module is to animate only the position and color of lights, then set RAM ANIMATION to NO, SAVE IMAGES to YES to generate a series of proofs with experimental lighting. The same technique may be applied to the Observer location. This technique is known as bracketing in the photography world. How can I take the IFF images produced in the SA4D into a paint program? Does it supports 16, 32 color? A: Sculpt products create standard IFF images. Images created in WireFrame, Sketch, Paint, and Scanline Paint have 32 colors or less (WireFrame only uses 2 colors) and can be used in any normal paint package. Snapshot, Scanline Snapshot, and Photo modes require programs with HAM capabilities. Note that the Amiga can not allow HAM mode to be used in Hi Resolution. They are mutually incompatible. If fact, High Resolution limits you to 16 colors, period. Half-Brite would allow up to 16 additional half-tones of the first 16 colors. 2) Which programs can SA4D be used with in the above manner? DPaint? Digipaint? Photon Paint? Do I need to be aware of size of resolution? Why? A: Almost all the various paint packages can work be used with at least some of the Sculpt images. The limitations are in the size and color capabilities of the paint package. Size is a consideration in that the paint package must be able to load the size image created. There are three categories of image sizes. Smaller than screensize images Tiny, Small, and Medium images are loaded by some programs as brushes and then are 'rubber stamped' where needed. Other programs allow them to be loaded as pictures and leave blank space around the left and bottom edges. Screensize images Full image size is the normal picture size for the resolution mode you selected when you had it generated. Larger than screensize images Jumbo mode is what most Amigans describe as Overscan. Video is even larger than normal overscan. It expands out to the full NTSC capacity. It was basically designed to satisfy people who have video equipment that is incorrectly adjusted. In properly adjusted equipment, Jumbo is perfectly adequate. It is also much faster. If you use Video mode, the paint package must be able to handle 'larger than screen area' images. Normal image modes in 'Full' are: 320 x 200 Low Resolution nonInterlaced 320 x 400 Low Resolution Interlaced 640 x 200 High Resolution nonInterlaced 640 x 400 High Resolution Interlaced Why will SA4D not work with certain paint programs? A: To the best of our knowledge, our images work with everybody's paint package within the restrictions of the paint programs designs. 2 to 32 color images (WireFrame to Scanline Paint images) can be used in nonHAM paint packages. HAM paint programs handle Snapshot to Photo images. Please note that some HAM paint packages automatically convert all the images loaded into HAM mode. In most cases, this conversion makes the image look extremely bad. When will Video size playback of movies be ready on SA4D Amiga? Are we doing it? A: Most users can run into serious memory constraints while attempt to generate Video size animations. We almost regret including the Video mode. It is usually unnecessary to generate in Video mode for video work. Try using Jumbo. It is more economical both in time and memory usage. We are thinking of renaming Video as Severe Overscan or NTSC (or PAL on PAL equipment) and Jumbo as OverScan. Generally speaking, if your video equipment is in proper adjustment, the Video size is overly extravagant compared to Jumbo. Currently, both SA4D (versions 2.03 and up) and Movie (version 2.0) support the Video mode. The Jaggies: Are they due to our software limitations or to hardware capabilities? How do you minimize them? (video quality uses) A: The 'jaggies' effect is known as Aliasing. It exists on all raster based display equipment and the degree of severity bears a direct relationship to resolution. The severity can be artificially reduced by blending colors along sharp lines. This function is known as Anti- Aliasing. SA4D has an Anti-Aliasing function with adjustable levels of blending. The downside is that Anti-Aliasing gives a blurry impression and requires additional time to calculate the blending. Can SA4D-Amiga output to ASCII files? A: No. Our image files are IFF. Our RGB files follow IFF specifications. And our object, scene, and take files are in our own proprietary file format to allow better efficiency in storage and operation. These file formats are documented in the SA4D manual so that anyone can convert them to their own preferred format. Note the File Formats are laid out for the 'C' programmer. Driver info for the BCD driver. What else do you need? What will drive our program? A: Our driver software gives commands to the BCD controller and coordinates Amiga ouput. The driver is almost transparent after you invoke it in our program. Instead of having a finished animation on disk, you end up with one on video tape. (Provided the controller doesn't call a timeout.) The BCD is a brandname 'Single Frame controller' videolink interface. This implies that it needs a video device that has capability to be interfaced to and be able to be controlled to the point of recording a single frame. This is usually an industrial quality video tape recorder. The Amiga is hooked through the serial port to the controller and talks to it in much the same way as it talks to a Modem. So you need a serial cable. The controller is hooked to the recorder. So you need a custom cable from the controller to the recorder. (Consult the manufacturer of the controller.) The big item is a device that converts the Amigas RGB signal to broadcast quality NTSC video. Arguments will probably persist to what is or is not broadcast quality and which devices provide acceptable quality. Can I translate existing IFF files from other programs into files to be used with the SA4D Amiga program? For example, Video Effects 3D allows you to digitize another file into the program. A: The background, foreground options allow you to use IFF images with you SA4D renderings. These functions are based strictly on the existence of the color 0 register in the foreground and rendered image. Anyplace that there is color0 on the foreground, that area is transparent and shows the rendering and the background image. Likewise, anyplace that is color 0 in the rendered image becomes transparent and show the background image. How can I use an existing logo in IFF as a base for my creations in SA4D on the Amiga? A: Two tedious ways, one jury-rigged way, and one easy way that isn't available just yet. One, go into a paint package that has a coordinate readout and write down the coordinates and use those to recreate the object in our modeler. Two, use a genlock to underlay the image in our Tri-View, then trace the outlines in the modeler. Three, use the IFF image as a background or foreground. This is a strictly two dimensional effect and difficult to animate. Is BbB working on conversion modules to port objects to high-end systems? We are working with a third party developer who is creating a conversion program to go between SA4D and Wavefront. We are open to assist in other such projects if interest warrants it. Please submit suggestions in writing, ATTN: Brian McCullough. Can you use any 3D fonts with SA4D? SA4D font character objects are simply 3D scene files that have been saved in a specific manner, with the files named in a specific way. If the font characters have not been saved properly, then SA4D's type-in font feature will not know how to find, size, and position the character object. If the character is in a SA3D scene file, however, you may load and manipulate it like other objects. The SA4D manual (Chapter 14) contains a complete specification of how font scene files should be saved and named to be compatible with the type-in font feature. What sort of support do you have for hooking up SA4D on the Amiga to a film recorder such as the Matrix QCR-D? Any specific setup would require: A) a connection through which the Amiga can control the recorder precisely--this could be as simple as an RS-232 cable, depending on what the recorder supports, and B) a custom driver which knows how to control the recorder. We are not able to write drivers for all hardware, but in some cases we can provide specifications and example sourcecode to interested parties, either under a signed non- disclosure agreement or for a flat fee of $300. What accelerator card, frame buffer, & video controller works "perfectly" with SA4D? The best accelerator card configuration is one that provides no-wait-state 32-bit RAM expansion, preferably running at a high clock rate (20-30 MHz). The accelerator MUST employ a 68020 or '030 microprocessor to work with our Turbo versions. Having Kickstart relocated into 32-bit memory (RAM or ROM) is a great advantage, so long as it doesn't push the program or data out into slower 16-bit RAM. We cannot recommend a particular brand, or guarantee that any specific hardware configuration will work. The only video controller we have used is the BCD VideoLink RS-232 controller, from BCD Associates (405) 843-4574. We have an updated driver which is needed to use this device with SA4D versions 2.03 or 2.04. Please call us for this driver before you try to use the BCD with these versions. We have not yet had a chance to test any commercial frame buffers, although the frame buffer facility has been tested thoroughly using a test setup based on file conversions rather than direct interconnection. 24-bit RGB image files may be easily generated for special-purpose uses. Does SA4D coordinate frame buffer and single-frame VTR recording, or does the user or the hardware have to do this? This coordination is done by one or more pieces of custom software called "drivers". The driver adapts the specific hardware to SA4D, so that, to the program, all hardware looks alike (except for image size and resolution, which the driver feeds back to SA4D). How much additional memory is required to render images to a frame buffer? This depends on the frame buffer driver, since there may be a need to buffer 24-bit data. Our test drivers just write out files, so they actually use a little bit less RAM than screen renders, but they can use hard disk space at a rate of 1/3 to 1.5 Megabytes per image. 24-bit images get big. What is the color resolution (i.e., number of colors possible) in a frame buffer image? Do I need a higher resolution monitor to display the images? 16.7 Million colors. Any analog RGB monitor can display standard Amiga SA4D images, but framebuffers may require special higher quality (multisync) monitors.