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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMeSw00n3Ac
I have to say the interface -- rotating dials and pen for data input -- were
quite advanced for the time.
It also goes on to show that computers were quite able to do some wireframe
computations like that in realtime at the time. It's also amusing to see that
back then it was used just to give a futuristic "computerized look" for the
regular hand-constructed, photographed models, while today much is produced on
the computer first and then made into production.
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nemesis wrote:
> I have to say the interface -- rotating dials and pen for data input -- were
> quite advanced for the time.
It still looks easier than Blender! ;-)
Two minutes a frame? Wow. And "Asteroids" was just a couple years later.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Is God willing to prevent naglams, but unable?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing, to prevent naglams?
Then he is malevolent.
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Darren New <dne### [at] san rrcom> wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
> > I have to say the interface -- rotating dials and pen for data input -- were
> > quite advanced for the time.
>
> It still looks easier than Blender! ;-)
I could use a real dial around rather than just the mouse with alt or ctrl for
everything. At least the tablet I got alright. :)
> Two minutes a frame? Wow. And "Asteroids" was just a couple years later.
Now this is something I didn't quite get: the video shows a complete (though
"lowpoly") wireframe deathstar and the guy says it's rotating it with the dial
in real time. Then he says each frame of the "trenches", which do not look that
much more complex than the deathstar model, took 2 minutes to render...
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On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:36:26 +0100, nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>
> Now this is something I didn't quite get: the video shows a complete
> (though "lowpoly") wireframe deathstar and the guy says it's rotating
> it with the dial in real time. Then he says each frame of the
> "trenches", which do not look that much more complex than the
> deathstar model, took 2 minutes to render...
Possibly because the trench is rendered in perspective.
--
FE
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Fredrik Eriksson <fe79}--at--{yahoo}--dot--{com> wrote:
> Possibly because the trench is rendered in perspective.
I don't think making a perspective transformation to a set of vertex
points is any more expensive than rotating that same set of vertex points.
--
- Warp
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On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:21:27 +0100, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>
> I don't think making a perspective transformation to a set of vertex
> points is any more expensive than rotating that same set of vertex
> points.
It think it was. A single division probably took at least several hundred
cycles on hardware from that time.
From the YouTube comments, it also seems that rotation and translation was
hardware accelerated.
crimblue wrote:
"I actually worked for Larry Cuba. He drew the lines, I did the animation
of the pieces. We used a PDP 11/45 computer (a 16-bit processor with 16KB
of RAM) and a Vector General Graphics Display Unit. The VG could do the
motion and rotation of the image in real time, but we could not do the
perspective adjustments in real time. That's what took so much time. We
had to move the image one frame at a time and do the perspective
adjustment."
"The VG (display unit) had hardware to do movement on the screen and
rotation. The PDP11 only had to assemble a list of the original endpoints
of the vectors and the desired motion and the VG hardware would do the
rotation/motion for display on the screen. The VG had no hardware to do
3-D perspective. This meant we had to rebuild the vector endpoints for
each shot and redownload them to the VG.
That meant for every frame, the PDP11 had to recalculate the rotated/moved
endpoints and then do all the divisions necessary to create the
perspective depth effects. I don't know why the VG didn't have perspective
hardware, it just didn't.
Also remember, motion and rotation can be done with addition and
multiplication. Perspective required division. Division is a very slow
operation compared to the others. Back then we had to add up the
milliseconds each operation took!"
--
FE
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On 11/19/2009 7:36 PM, nemesis wrote:
> I could use a real dial around rather than just the mouse with alt or ctrl for
> everything. At least the tablet I got alright. :)
Yeah. Having a bunch of dials and knobs laying around also makes sound
editing easier.
Mike
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Fredrik Eriksson <fe79}--at--{yahoo}--dot--{com> wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:21:27 +0100, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> >
> > I don't think making a perspective transformation to a set of vertex
> > points is any more expensive than rotating that same set of vertex
> > points.
> It think it was. A single division probably took at least several hundred
> cycles on hardware from that time.
I don't understand why calculating a few hundreds of divisions would
take 2 minutes, even in the 70's.
Perhaps if they used a completely naive division algorithm implemented in
an interpreted language like BASIC...
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> I don't understand why calculating a few hundreds of divisions would
> take 2 minutes, even in the 70's.
It took 2 minutes to do four sets of shots.
The computer would construct one set of props, send them to the display
hardware, and signal the camera to take a snapshot of it. Rinse &
repeat with 3 more sets of props to get a complete frame, all in about 2
minutes.
So, 30 seconds to build the model & send it to the screen. It still
seems ridiculously slow, but this *was* 1976 :)
...Chambers
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Chambers <Ben### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> So, 30 seconds to build the model & send it to the screen. It still
> seems ridiculously slow, but this *was* 1976 :)
Well, one should consider that nowadays when they make computerized images
for movies, one single frame can take up to 48 hours to render, and even more,
so in fact it seems we have gone backwards... ;)
--
- Warp
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