Lightwave in a standart A1200 ....?

[Tiago]

Can i run Light wave in a standart A1200? (only 2mb ram)

Maybe an older version?

If i render a scene with 10 objects at +/- 1000 total frames at 320x200 will it take the a week ??

Will it be much slower then Autodesk 3DStudio for ms-dos back in the 90s ?
I would like to create some pics or animated scenes but i dont have yet any expansion board.....

Is there any older version that i could run?
I dont have problems with disk space, so it could have many adf files...

[Harrison]

As far as I know you can't run Lightwave on a standard Amiga (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). The Amiga version of Lightwave came as part of the Newtek Video Toaster Video production Zorro Hardware and required the Video Toaster Hardware to work as it utilised the hardware for much faster rendering.

There are many other 3D packages on the Amiga that you could use and they will work on an unexpanded A1200, but if the Amiga had some fast ram and a FPU (floating point unit) as part of an accelerator card it would make a huge speed boost when rendering frames.

I originally started out on the Amiga using Caligari 3D which while good at the time wasn't the easiest to use (later became Truespace on the PC), and over the years I also used Aladdin4D, Cinema4D and Imagine on the Amiga and they worked very well.

You will probably recognise the name of Cinema 4D as it is still one of the leading PC/Mac 3D applications with version 10 just being released, and it started life on the Amiga, just like Lightwave did.

Out of these I would recommend you give Cinema4D or Imagine 3 a try as they are probably the most advanced 3D apps released on the Amiga. But Aladdin4D was also good with a quite nice WB style interface.

[Tiago]

I remember "Imagine". I think i used it in A600 with 2mb ram. I remember the name of the software.
For simple 3D scenes, like creating a boing ball with textures, some spot lights it should be enough right?
What about animation? I dont remember what what the file format in Amiga? Last time i used a old 3D software, 3DStudio for ms-dos, anim files were *.flc and *.fli if i am not wrong. Can i create a anim/intro with "Imagine" saves as animation.file and run in on a CLI ? Something like "playanim filename.anim" ? That would be great.

[Harrison]

Your really testing my memory now!

It's been a very long time since I had anything to do with animation formats on the Amiga. You are right about the PC formats. FLC and FLI were the two most popular at the time (there were even players for those formats on the Amiga).

As for Amiga animation formats. .anim as you mentioned was the most used and most Amiga players could run that format. It is the Animation part of the IFF image format. The ANIM-5 format is the most compatible as it was introduced with Deluxe Paint. But there is also the AGA ANIM-7 which supports 256 colours.

I think some 3D applications could also output AVI or FLC files in later versions too.

All 3D packages can also output animations as a series of rendered images, so they can be assembled later using whatever format you like in your favourite animation or video editing package.

[TiredOfLife]

Used Imagine a fair bit years ago.
That was in the days when I just had fast ram, no accelerator.
Seem to remember it took forever then to render anything.

[Harrison]

Amiga renderers took a long time to render, whatever the application, but then the same was true on the PC at the time too. It was amazingly fast if a frame rendered in a couple of minutes! Same scene these days would render in a couple of seconds at most on a PC!

[TiredOfLife]

Think I will have to test Imagine with my system as it is today.
Should be a lot quicker.

[Khephren]

Can i run Light wave in a standart A1200? (only 2mb ram)

Maybe an older version?

If i render a scene with 10 objects at +/- 1000 total frames at 320x200 will it take the a week ??

Lightwave won't run on a standard A1200 without fastram, as far as I remember (Although mine was lightrave, the version without a dongle).

Hi, I used to use Imagine 2 and 3 on such a set up. It was very limited in the complexity of the scene, and render time was attrocious. Render speed wise, your probably not even comparable to a 386. But it was still fun! And it was my Amiga low poly stuff that got me a job in the Games industry- not my hi poly PC stuff. (The basic A1200 certainly teaches you to be frugal with polys, texture size, and bit depths!)

Make sure you get an RGB scart cable, 'cos imagine 3 runs best hires interlaced (I didn't and my eyes used to pulse to the flicker after i'd come off the machine!)

To be honest, if you really want to do this, ann extra 2mb of fast ram and a HDD will not only give you memory for bigger scenes, but double the speed of your renders as well. And the HDD will cut down on disk swapping, and allow your to store bigger scenes (of course without a HDD, you could always load Imagine into RAD). Also, you won't fit 1000+ frames on floppy, you will have to have a hard disk. I was quite happy with an 030/50 +FPU and 8MB fast ram back in the day, but this still didn't compete with 486's and 3D studio ,but of course it quality, not quantity

And hello everyone, I normally nose around Lemon Amiga and Amiga.org, but this site looks really good!

[Buleste]

Welcome Kephren.
I've never run Lightwave on my Ami so couldn't tell you but as Kephren says low poly is all right on a basic 1200 but as with everything i'd recommend extra RAM and a beefier CPU. I just wish that Imagine would use my PPC although imagine 5 is supposed to it costs a lot and only worth it if you ar edoing it proffesionally and then if you are it's cheaper to use a PC.

[Harrison]

For anyone still interesting in Imagine have a look at the site http://www.imagine3d.org/ They have loads about it, as well as Organica, which was also from Impulse Inc. And also worth visiting is the CAD Technologies site, who are the company still supporting and distributing Imagine for the Amiga.