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The TriCaster is the direct descendant of the Video Toaster. The last hardware product called "Video Toaster" was the Video Toaster Screamer, a MIPS-based machine sold in 1993.

What's a Google? Around 10^100
What's a Yahoo!? A crude or boorish person.
What's a WinAmp? Some sort of political blog.
What's a Slashdot? HALTING ERROR
What's a Firefox? A group of crop circle enthusiasts.
What's an eBay? An employment agency.
What's a NewEgg? Another political forum, this one invite only.
What's a Lightwave? Some sort of fan-fic blog.
What's a Nero? Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar) was born in 37 A.D. and died in 68 A.D. (pp. 154)
What's an Outlook Express? Some sort of torture device.
What's a Visual Studio? A far more subtle tourture device.
What's an AutoCAD? An employment agency.

Really, you're on the net, there's no excuse for not knowing this stuff.

"...ray tracing and rasterization debate"

I don't think there is any debate at all, RayTracing is by far superior, there is just the problem of computing power.

Anyone (perhaps ask the modelers for the games) who deals with 3D software, knows the benefits of RayTracing for simulating reality (Reflections, Ambient Occlusion, Sub-Surface Scattering, etc)

And once computing power reaches that level it will even speed up the process of creating games because you can let the RayTracing take care of shadows, reflections, highlights, etc instead of manually mapping them.

Take a look at anything LightWave, Maya, 3Dsmax, Softimage, Blender, etc spits out of its render engines, or visual effects in recent movies... granted, that's (as stated a few times in the discussion) years away... but, I don't think anyone is arguing against RayTracing.

(-1 Bastard) ...but...whatever, ive been waiting for real-time RayTracing for years even just within my own 3D applications, nevermind games...

Lightwave?

For $895 - $995 it should be able to make what I want based on what I'm thinking.

http://shop.newtek.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=7

Blender's UI is internally consistent, but it is by nature not consistent with much of anything else, because everything else is about 2d stuff

Lightwave, Maya, and 3D Max are 2D? There are no 3D apps besides Blender?

Alas, where is Kiki Stockhammer when you need her.

According to this she is back at NewTek and in a sci-fi punk rock band, called Warp 11.

If it is just a budgetary concern consider a VT[4], a great product that's very affordable.

This is only tangentially related, but I thought /.ers would enjoy seeing this space elevator concept video, made by my friend Alan Chan. He's done special effects for LOTR and Harry Potter, so the production values on this video are much nicer than your standard NASA flick.

There is also a very good companion article on IEEE Spectrum, and a fun interview explaining how it was made (short answer: lots and lots of Lightwave).

No, I'm not getting paid to promote this or anything, I just enjoy sharing it with friends/family, and thought a few of you would like it as well. Alan Chan's a ridiculously cool guy, I mean anyone who could make a short film entitled 12 Hot Women and get people to play it at pretentious movie festivals... wow.

if bugginess were the measure of corporate size, then Newtek must be almost as big as Microsoft.

I wonder how many "mainstream" programs still read Amiga IFF files (for common types like Deluxe Paint/ILBM, WP files, etc) ... Sort of a more-efficient (binary) predecessor to XML; highly extensible with some basic functionalities you could extend (FORM, BODY, etc)

I know Gimp supports it via a plugin. Here's a Newtek/Lightwave link:
http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/developer /LW80/8lwsdk/docs/filefmts/ilbm.html

Damnit, I looked that up. http://www.newtek.com/vt/ I am such a sucker.

Taking a look at the System Requirments for the more well known 3D Animation apps we see Alias's Maya and Softimage's XSI run natively under Linux. Which when you are dealing with animations that can take literally days to render for production it's no wonder they'd want to use a Linux machine instead of a Windows machine, I'm sure it cuts the time by at least 30% (totally grabbed that number out of my ass)

So is it news that the big animation companies also use OS X instead of XP too? I think the only big name 3d animation company that is Windows only is Discreet with their 3ds Max software, which I think is really only used for games, can't think of a movie that it was used for.

Sys Requirements:
http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/requirements.php
http://www.alias.com/eng/products-services/maya/sy stem_requirements.shtml
http://www4.discreet.com/3dsmax/3dsmax.php?id=966
http://www.softimage.com/products/xsi/v42/SysReqs/

Other good programs are Light Wave, Cinema 4D, and Modo.

All of these programs can be used at the professional level and are relatively cheap.

Yes, you probably are. In all seriousness, there are quite a few applications that cost significantly more than the OS: Lightwave3D is $1695.00, Maya 6.5 Unlimited is $6999.00, Cinema 4D R9 Studio is $2995.00, Coldfusion MX 7 is $2999.00. And those are just a few from one field. Just take a look at CAD software, high-end video and audio editing software, not to mention prioretary enterprise-wide business solution software.

I understand that when your computer world consists of bittorrent, w4R3z, and the one legitimate game you bought for $29.95, $150.00 seems like alot. However, for professionals $150.00 is practically nothing.

Direct link to the trailer, in case it ever comes back up.

ftp://ftp.newtek.com/multimedia/movies/Batman_Net. mov

How about an Amiga?

Many network stations in non-major [not NYC/LA/etc] markets still use NewTek's Amiga-based Video Toaster and Toaster/Flyer systems (The Toaster is a 4-input digital switcher/SEG, the Flyer is the NLE addition) for editing and effects. The Toaster comes with Lightwave (it is a bit slow on the Amiga systems, but it is still a great 3D package). You can pick up full Toaster/Flyer systems on ebay for cheap, and they do wonders. Then, you can transfer flyclips (the Flyer's video clip format) to your PC or Mac and do compositing/rotoscoping/insertion work on it using Mirage and/or Lightwave 3D if you need to.

--
The Amiga may well outlive us all.

How about an Amiga?

Many network stations in non-major [not NYC/LA/etc] markets still use NewTek's Amiga-based Video Toaster and Toaster/Flyer systems (The Toaster is a 4-input digital switcher/SEG, the Flyer is the NLE addition) for editing and effects. The Toaster comes with Lightwave (it is a bit slow on the Amiga systems, but it is still a great 3D package). You can pick up full Toaster/Flyer systems on ebay for cheap, and they do wonders. Then, you can transfer flyclips (the Flyer's video clip format) to your PC or Mac and do compositing/rotoscoping/insertion work on it using Mirage and/or Lightwave 3D if you need to.

--
The Amiga may well outlive us all.

...This is!

There's a nifty interview with a supervisor at Zoic Studios on Rendernode magazine, and a smaller interview with the CG supervisor.

And it's all done with Lightwave 7.5... Now I have no excuse for not producing better stuff myself.

http://www.newtek.com/ -- look at their VT[4] (Video Toaster NT 4) -- tell me how to get that in USB form, heck, tell me how to get that data throughput in USB form
Gigabit LAN (please correct me if I'm wrong on this one, I'd love one, but I don't think USB can handle it)
TRUE Parallel Port -- Not just ECP, not just IEEE 1284, but TRUE PC Parallel, 8 data lines each way
Video Card
Professional Sound Card (like the Lynx-One)

Lightwave, Maya, Bauhaus Software's Mirage, NewTek's Video Toaster (up until recently when the source was released), shall I continue?

VT[4] system requirements

VT[4] system requirements

I should also mention lightwave (which most people seem to ignore - even though its almost always ahead of the curve feature wise) has had this feature since 94 (at least thats when I first saw it) - Check it out (under rendering)

http://vbulletin.newtek.com/archive/index.php/t-17 798.html
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=104 701&cid=8914630

apparently newtek has opened their source code, spawning open video toaster previously mentioned on slashdot

The best Mac live-video-switching-with-effects product I've heard of is VDMX.

You want this although you're probably not willing to pay for it.

If you're ultra-low budget, dig into the QuickTime docs. It's not tremendously hard to write a C app that pulls a live DV stream and adds some QT text or effect tracks.

Coding: Hisoft Devpac Assembler, Aztec C, SAS/C, Storm C, Hisoft C, Hisoft pascal, AMOS and Microsoft Amiga Basic(!).

Creating art/gfx: Digital Creation's Brilliance, Deluxe paint, Real 3D, Imagine 3D and Lightwave.

Creating Music: Soundtracker, Noisetracker, Startrekker, Protracker, MED, OctaMED, Bars and Pipes, Super Jam, etc.

Desktop Publishing: Pagestream, Professional page.

Text editing / Word processing: Cygnus ED, Wordsworth, Final writer and Pro Write.

At that time most of the applications mentioned (with the the OS/HW combo) were much superior to anything you could find on "professional" PCs and Macs at the time, in some ways some of them still are. But sadly, most of the applications mentioned are now dead or only available for Windows/Linux/Mac.

Funny thing is, as far I can remeber it was not superior or cheap PC hardware that killed Amiga. It was not even the mistreatment it was subjected to by Commodore. It was iD software's "Doom" that put the final nail in the coffin. As no acceptable Doom clone appered for the Amiga in reasonable time, every kid around begged their parents to buy PCs instead of Amigas, which in turn led to the decline of the mass market for Amiga hardware and following that, the loss of most software houses.

i work with LightWave 7.5 and it has Over 320 bit IEEE floating point rendering pipeline and can render to 24, 32, 48 or 64-bit RGB files.

After reading many of the comments it seems that people are under the impression that VT and lightwave are dead products and of "historical" value, they aren't dead at all, still sold check out NewTeks' web site
They still kick ass and i still want one (damned lottery not picking the right numbers)

here is Lightwave Project List. in that huge list is Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III.

This is a significant development because Newtek brought to the desktop level what used to take hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment only broadcast stations could afford. It was an Amiga 2000 based box, which is why a reference exists to the Amiga in the first place. The original price was around $5000, and that didn't include the price of time-base correctors, frame-by-frame editing decks, cameras, etc.. But any professional videographer or low-end filmmaker suddenly had the most amazing set of tools to create what was in the hands of only the big players or the well funded. Their original promo video, called "Revolution," was an amazing demo. If you can find a copy, I suggest you view it and see that in 1991 terms this was a truly revolutionary concept.

Beyond that, Amigas with Newtek's Lightwave software were used in the production of series like Babylon 5 and Seaquest DSV. Huge render farms with 10^3 computers were generating graphics for major television series. You had better believe that it's significant from a historical perspective.

Today, Newtek's online editing setups are pretty interesting but vastly different. It's no skin off their backs to release the source because it's not really commercially valuable. That's because in the last couple of years editing come to the point where it is really accessible by the average person. I do technical consultation for video editors, and know for certain that the seed for desktop editing today was planted by Newtek's Video Toaster over 12 years ago.

One last note: the Amiga technology back in 1984 was being bid upon by two companies. The company that won was Commodore, and we know what a debacle of excess and poor marketing they were. The other was International Business Machines, who decided it wasn't valuable. Had IBM purchased the Amiga technology, it's very likely the computing landscape and development of multimedia technologies would have been a lot different and IMO advanced much further for the average person than history as it stands today shows.

You might be farf better off spending your money on a license for Lightwave or Maya.

I use and prefer Lightwave, it also has a far better renderer than Maya included. In fact the renderer is the feature film league, and is routinely used on highly visible productions.

Both of these products are available for Windows and OS X.

Also, you can find a very large selcetion of models, textures tutorials and experienced help for these packages if you need them.

If you are going to be doing this regularly then I have to say, using a professional toolset is the very best choice, in the end it will save both time and money.

Lightwave info

by NewTek. Even though it has been ported to PCs the original (and the one that won an Emmy no less) was the Amiga version. The company is still going strong and Lightwave is now 3D.

It's interesting reading the posts bewailing software bloat, I wonder how many of these posts are submitted by media creation professionals? Have you taken a look at Newtek's VideoToaster lately? Or how about Final Cut Pro? Granted, both are more NLE video editors (Although VideoToaster comes with Aura and Lightwave) but both of these products are chock full of "bloat" and causing the industry leaders like Avid take notice. I'd much rather have a production suite with some "bloat" in order to curtail some of the endless Render -> Export -> Import/convert -> re-sync -> export -> encode -> master -> blah -> blah -> blah process..... I for one can't wait to try out the new blender features, nice work and full steam ahead!

It's interesting reading the posts bewailing software bloat, I wonder how many of these posts are submitted by media creation professionals? Have you taken a look at Newtek's VideoToaster lately? Or how about Final Cut Pro? Granted, both are more NLE video editors (Although VideoToaster comes with Aura and Lightwave) but both of these products are chock full of "bloat" and causing the industry leaders like Avid take notice. I'd much rather have a production suite with some "bloat" in order to curtail some of the endless Render -> Export -> Import/convert -> re-sync -> export -> encode -> master -> blah -> blah -> blah process..... I for one can't wait to try out the new blender features, nice work and full steam ahead!

Others have mentioned Maya PLE but there are free / learning editions of most of the top commercial 3D apps these days:

SoftImage XSI|EXP

Lightwave Discovery Edition (takes a while for them to mail it, though)

Houdini Apprentice (a lesser known but very powerful 3D app used by major studios.)

• Crewmember on the USS Enterprise
• Codes and maintains his own website
• Uses Linux instead of Windows on his home machines
• Worked on the Video Toaster
• Obsessive blogger
• Posts on Slashdot
• Free Speech activist
• Frequent (but not frequent enough) guest and sometimes guest host of The Screen Savers
• Host of Arena on G4
• Gamer, both video and role-playing

The realtime images aren't -final- renders of the scene. They're just rough drafts. The scene still has to be rendered in full res/texture, which still takes hours per frame.

What ILM has is a supercharged 'preview' button. Just like when you switch to wireframe mode in Lightwave or Maya and see a 'realtime' preview of the animation you're working on. But I'm sure ILM's version looks little bit better.

D

But you will soon

There are also Linux apps that don't work on Windows.

So while you have a point, the majority of commonly used apps exist on both or have equivalents on both. And with a TCO argument undercutting Microsoft's biggest argument for using their systems...

AFAIK, you can't use the Lightwave UI on Linux (yet) - but one can use a linux cluster as a ScreamerNet render farm for Lightwave.

So, Linux already has its foot in the door.

Here's what NewTek says:

***"Many larger LightWave® facilities already have substantial Linux rendering resources, and they are eager to add this power to their LightWave® rendering arsenal," said Arnie Cachelin, NewTek's 3D development manager. Cachelin went on to say, "There are also facilities that require Linux rendering to consider using a package in their pipeline. Adding a Linux render engine to our Windows and Mac engines is just one more way we meet the needs of our customer." Cachelin concluded, "In the current economy, studios are increasingly cost conscious, so the opportunity to get an affordable state-of-the-art renderer into their pipelines is very appealing."
***

And if you yearn for new versions of your favorite Amiga raytracers, then Real 3D is available for Linux.

No. Thats right. Lightwave inc. havent lost out.

Did you know there is a Lightwave student edition? Looks like Lightwave is down $395 to me. That looks like 1/4 of their normal price of $1600 or so. Or heck, there is even a free version that has some reduced capabilities, but would be perfectly suited for learning the product. This is the offer Lightwave has chosen to extend to students and those who wish to learn the software, it is not fair for you to just say, "Nah I just want to use an illegal copy of the full product"

[Textures Benchmark]

Oh my, everyone chooses the benchmarks that suit his point best, right?
Please tick what you consider more CPU-intensive:
[ ] Raytrace
[ ] Textures

Point is: the Macs Performance is not nearly as bad as professional Mac-Flamers like yourself want to make people believe all the time!
Thanks btw for the selective quoting, totally neglecting the point that one can (normally) not buy Dual Athlons or Xeons in the shops anywhere!

Those are your words.

No, actually not (Notice the gains with both and then go on claiming SSE2 is 'superior'!). But go on believing that the Mac is totally inferior if that makes your penis seem bigger! ;-)

Which means you can buy 3 dual athlon machines instead of a single G4 tower and not just double the G4s performance, but render frames 6 times as fast for a given cost.

Taking the Dual GHz above as a Basis, please do tell where i would find a Dual Athlon for $833, which is a third of that Macs cost!
Oh, and make sure it has GBit-Ethernet, 64bit-PCI, a DVD-burner, Indesign, a DVD-authoring software, DV-Videoediting-Software, an Office-package and loads of other goodies, too!.. Oh, damn, i forgot: Software doesn't count cause 1337oes like you get that for free anyway from the FTPs and the donkey!...
Too bad that Software needs to be developed and the costs of that are a significant part of a Macs price, and too bad ignorants like you always fail to get the big picture and look at the machine as a whole!..

btw: here's one of your ex-soulmates!.. Age should be roughly the same!

"I'm a Lightwave animator, so spare me the 'Linux will solve all your problems' crap."

Ahh, you speak in haste! Newtek has announced ScreamerNet for Linux. Available later this year for free!

And, lest we forget, A/W also released the Maya render daemon for Linux first, the full package a year or two later. Maybe Newtek will follow suit? As a Lightwave animator, I can only hope.

I believe they have a competing product.

Didn't Wil Wheaton work there?

W

Try LightWave. Right now you can only run the Windoze version using WINE, but you might be able to talk to NewTek about bringing LightWave to Linux.

It also hurts the competition -- are you as likely to buy Carrara, Cinema 4D, or Bryce now that you can get Maya Personal Edition for free? What about using/trying/buying Autodesk or Lightwave?

It's like Solaris x86 -- a great way to get Solaris experience on a tight budget.

...does this remind anyone of the good ol' Digiview for the Amiga back in the 80's? It used the exact same process to make color HAM ('Hold And Modify' for the uninitiated) images. I remember being so impressed with the results, especially when one compared it with the B&W Macs of the day, and the 16 color EGA x86 clones.

Wow, you may wanna tell NewTek about the SUSTAINED transfer rates you are getting with a 4 HD IDE Raid, cause the required 70mb/sec sustained transfer rate required for the Videotoaster NT 2 is, according to them only obtainable with at least 4 SCSII 160 HD's at 10k rpm