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From: sarrel@dulcimer.cis.ohio-state.edu (Marc Sarrel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Siggraph88 and a deal
Message-ID: <19761@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 11 Aug 88 17:33:05 GMT
References: <3551@cadnetix.COM>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer and Information Science
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In article <3551@cadnetix.COM> childs@cadnetix.COM (David Childs) writes:
>Apple had a animation called Pencil Test.  It was very good.  It was basically
>a cartoon, done entirely on a MAC II.  (so they said)

What do you mean "so they said"?  I was at SIGGRAPH as well.  I also
thought "Pencil Test" was very good.  Is Apple going to _lie_ about
something like that?  I went to the animation screening Tuesday night
and just about everyone cheered when the graphic came up that said
that "Pencil Test" had been done on a Mac II.  Also, I'm not sure what
you mean by saying that it was a cartoon.  It was a computer
animation, just like all the other computer animations there.

Actually, I heard that the software they used to make it was a version
of Twixt ported to the Mac II.  For those who don't know, Twixt was
done here at Ohio State as a PhD dissertation by a guy named Julian
Gomez.  It is a fancy keyframe system.  Instead of just allowing you
to keyframe whole frames at one time, it allows you to put splines
through key points on tracks.  A track would be something like the x
or y coordinate of a object over time.  Tracks also are used for such
things a scale, rotation, color, and (if you don't mind getting fancy)
shape.

I would say that "Pencil Test" was certainly better than IBM's sole
entry into the animation show.  All they did was a fly-through of a
3-d Julia Set.  They didn't put any fancy colors on it.  They didn't
do any dramatic changes of scale.  Just a simple, silent (it didn't
have _any_ sound track at all) fly-through.  I think the response that
the audience gave it was the very definition of a smattering of
applause.  I guess that the only reason it got into the show in the
first place was that the theme of this year's SIGGRAPH was scientific
visualization.
-=-
 Marc Sarrel, Department of Computer and Information Science
 The Ohio State University; 2036 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH USA 43210-1277
 sarrel@cis.ohio-state.edu
 "If you wanna have fun, go to Washington.  Spokane!"  -- Cleric Apton