🚀 go-pugleaf

Another fine example of what the amiga is capable of.  (And Apple distributed
it!)  In fairness, most of the texture maps were hand drawn on a mac.  Just
modeled and rendered on something most people perceive as a game machine.

In article <1992Dec14.172306.12779@waikato.ac.nz> ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes:
>On the QuickTime 1.5 developer CD, there's a music video called "Theology".
>It's got an instrumental, Pink-Floydish number for the sound track, but the
>video is spectacular--it's all synthetically rendered. It starts out as an
>egg-like object on a mound in a landscape, and then evolves into a
>Stonehenge-type monument, then the interior of a cathedral-like building, and
>more, with shapes morphing into one another. The movie file is 15MB in size,
>and it runs for 3 minutes and 4 seconds.

   The video is the newest from Todd Rundgren and his Nutopia company.
This premiered at a party at this last SIGGRAPH. 

>The thing I'm wondering about is, there are no credits for that movie that I
>can find, either in the movie's user data (which I checked with Dumpster), or
>anywhere else on the CD.
>
>Does this video sound familiar to anyone else? I'd be interested to know who
>did it.

    Perhaps you had seen Todds previous video, "Change Myself"? That one
and this one were produced with the Lightwave portion of Newtek's
Video Toaster. For the last two people who are unfamiliar with this
product, it's a board that plugs into a Commodore Amiga 2000 and
provides 2 framebuffers, a 4-input switcher and SEG/DVE, paint, color
processing and a state-of-the-art 3D modeling, animation and rendering
program for $2400 US.

    Todd is a big Mac fan (he developed Flowphaser) but Lightwave was
more powerful than anything available on the Mac. "Change Myself" was
one of a handful of fully computer animated music videos, and the first
to be created entirely by the musician. 

    "Theology" is intended to be a final "proof of concept" of using
networked Amigas and Macs to create commercial animation. Photoshop
(and I believe Fractal Design Painter) was used to create the amazing
texture maps, which were then netted to the Amigas into an advanced
version of Lightwave for animation and rendering. 

    One of the heartbreaks of this last SIGGRAPH was "Theology"s absence
from the film and video show, and the final tape was not ready in time
for consideration. IMHO, the selection commitee had an anti-Amiga bias.

>Lawrence D'Oliveiro                       fone: +64-7-856-2889
>Computer Services Dept                     fax: +64-7-838-4066
>University of Waikato            electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz
>Hamilton, New Zealand    37^ 47' 26" S, 175^ 19' 7" E, GMT+13:00

                                Chris Williams
                                chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu

In article <1992Dec14.172306.12779@waikato.ac.nz> ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes:
>On the QuickTime 1.5 developer CD, there's a music video called "Theology".
>It's got an instrumental, Pink-Floydish number for the sound track, but the
>video is spectacular--it's all synthetically rendered. 
>
>Does this video sound familiar to anyone else? I'd be interested to know who
>did it.
>
>Lawrence D'Oliveiro                       fone: +64-7-856-2889
>Computer Services Dept                     fax: +64-7-838-4066
>University of Waikato            electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz
>Hamilton, New Zealand    37^ 47' 26" S, 175^ 19' 7" E, GMT+13:00

yes this sounds very familiar. it happens to be Todd Rundgren's
follow up to Change Myself. Change Myself was created with Lightwave
for the Amiga (LW v1.0). Theology was also created with Lightwave (v2.0).
I'm not into bashing systems, but i'd like to take this time to plug
the most misunderstood computer system on the market: the Amiga. please
take a look at this video if you can and consider looking at the Amiga
in a more favorable light. im sure the poor perception of this machine
is due to nothing more than ignorance as to its capabilities. thanx..

Angel Freire
Florida International University
freire2a@serss0.fiu.edu

In article <1992Dec14.172306.12779@waikato.ac.nz> ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes:
>On the QuickTime 1.5 developer CD, there's a music video called "Theology".
>It's got an instrumental, Pink-Floydish number for the sound track, but the
>video is spectacular--it's all synthetically rendered. It starts out as an
>egg-like object on a mound in a landscape, and then evolves into a
>Stonehenge-type monument, then the interior of a cathedral-like building, and
>more, with shapes morphing into one another. The movie file is 15MB in size,
>and it runs for 3 minutes and 4 seconds.
 [stuff deleted]

>Does this video sound familiar to anyone else? I'd be interested to know who
>did it.

   I'm sure all you Macintosh fans will be thrilled to learn that Theology by
Todd Rungren was done entirely on NewTek Video Toasters using Amigas. Todd's
previous release (the name escapes me now) was also done by himself on the
Toaster.

>Lawrence D'Oliveiro                       fone: +64-7-856-2889
>Computer Services Dept                     fax: +64-7-838-4066
>University of Waikato            electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz
>Hamilton, New Zealand    37^ 47' 26" S, 175^ 19' 7" E, GMT+13:00


-- 
\\\   )))   |||  \ "Take it from me - I know what I'm talking about" 
@ ">  @ ">  @ ">  \   - Ren Hoek in 'Fire Dogs'
 \`    \~    \-    \  colins@garfield.cs.mun.ca             

In article <1992Dec15.143954.19335@cs.mun.ca>, colins@garfield.cs.mun.ca (Colin Stuckless) writes:
|> In article <1992Dec14.172306.12779@waikato.ac.nz> ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes:
|> >On the QuickTime 1.5 developer CD, there's a music video called "Theology".
|> >It's got an instrumental, Pink-Floydish number for the sound track, but the
|> >video is spectacular--it's all synthetically rendered. It starts out as an
|> >egg-like object on a mound in a landscape, and then evolves into a
|> >Stonehenge-type monument, then the interior of a cathedral-like building, and
|> >more, with shapes morphing into one another. The movie file is 15MB in size,
|> >and it runs for 3 minutes and 4 seconds.
|>  [stuff deleted]
|> 
|> >Does this video sound familiar to anyone else? I'd be interested to know who
|> >did it.
|> 
|>    I'm sure all you Macintosh fans will be thrilled to learn that Theology by
|> Todd Rungren was done entirely on NewTek Video Toasters using Amigas. Todd's
|> previous release (the name escapes me now) was also done by himself on the
|> Toaster.

Todd Rundgren's previous release was "Change Myself," an impressive work.  I
haven't seen "Theology" yet.

Matt