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From: page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: IFF for 3D packages?
Message-ID: <2077@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu>
Date: Mon, 30-Nov-87 12:28:52 EST
Article-I.D.: ulowell.2077
Posted: Mon Nov 30 12:28:52 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Dec-87 06:29:47 EST
References: <4VfpM8y00WAKzW005j@andrew.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Organization: University of Lowell, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 39

mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) wrote:
>format for describing three-dimensional objects has not surfaced.

I asked Harriet Tolly (of Syndesis, the people who have Interchange)
why they didn't publish their internal format as an IFF 3D spec.  She
said their format is "memory based" and contains all kinds of hairy
graphs, trees, networks, linked lists, etc, all interconnected in
funny ways, and trying to describe it in a text file would be really
hard.

I don't know how much I believe this (they have to define C structures
in Interchange, right?); I suspect the real reason is they want to
make a buck out of the lack of 3D standards.  I don't blame them, but
I think somebody is eventually going to come up with a IFF 3d format.

She also mentioned some new avenues for Interchange; they wanted it to
be more than a format converter, and were thinking about having it do
some manipulations the 3D packages don't do now.  I didn't get the
whole gist of the idea, but something like: Now, you have a Sculpt-3D
file, want to do something to it that Sculpt doesn't let you do, so
you convert it to Videoscape format, change it, then convert it back
to Sculpt format.  With the "new and improved" Interchange, you'd just
say "do this transformation to this file" and it gets done without
having to convert it many times.

Anyway, that was just my impression; I may have totally misunderstood
what she was talking about.  She *did* say they wanted Interchange to
be more than a converter, but didn't commit to anything.

BIX is discussing IFF formats and standards in amiga.dev/iff -- where
most of the developers are, and probably where any decisions get made,
so if you're really interested in IFF standards, you should put in
your 2c over there.

..Bob
-- 
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept.  page@ulowell.edu  ulowell!page
"I've never liked reality all that much, but I haven't found a
better solution."		--Dave Haynie, Commodore-Amiga