View Full Version : Lightwave workspace export through toaster

09-12-2003, 12:10 PM

In my travels for MoCo work, this has come up for previs stuff.

I would love to see the lightwave 3D workspace (selected window) ported out to the switcher bus so it can be displayed on a TV or mixed with other sources.

This way what I am doing in Lightwave can be shown in realtime or recorded.

My need is basically to use the viewport as a previs source (LWS in wireframe for general positioning of actors and lights on set) and mix that with the camera tap.

Is this a possibility??

Don't tell me if its unlikely newtek will cook it up I just want to know if its possible currently and I will take a look at getting someone to cook up the tools to make it happen.

That's my feature suggestion for today. :)

09-12-2003, 12:27 PM
Brilliant thought!
I never thought to accept wireframe action out but that makes all kinds of sense.
And if the system is fast enough even the complex scene can play wires back realtime.

Well said, djlithium.

09-12-2003, 01:22 PM
....unless I'm wrong...

I remember the Amiga Toaster being able to do this.



09-12-2003, 01:36 PM
I ... don't think so...

Really pushing the brain cells, there....

Nope, I'm pretty confident it didn't. There would've been many more green screen tutes, if so.

09-12-2003, 09:26 PM
My graphics card has S-video out; I haven't tried it, but don't see why I couldn't simply put that into one of my SX-8 inputs...

09-14-2003, 12:43 AM
If your VGA card doesn't have video out you can hit "printScreen" and in Aura do a "new layer from clipboard" you can even bind that to a key. Not completely interactive.. but might help.

09-14-2003, 10:07 AM
Yes the video out from video cards can be recorded,
I can send my work on the VT2 directly to the Amiga flyer to be recorded :p

And yes, the Amiga can output the workbench directly thru toaster board to the output of the Toaster to TV

As a matter of fact I was hooking up my S-video card into the Amiga yesterday and I can overlay the workbench onto live video, with only the Icons showing up and the grey workbench showing the live video, and smaller versions of the live video show up in different opened windows ( kinda like a picture in a picture)

09-15-2003, 02:43 PM
Ok let me drop the hammer here and give you some more details as to why this has to be done a certain way.

The idea is that the Toaster the way I have them rigged fires a motioncontrol camera unit using a timecode audio signal which is read by a GPI trigger that goes off and stars the camera motion pass at a designated offset.

My goal is to be able to take the motioncontrol data of the camera in real time and feed it back into lightwave 3d and have it then control the 3D camera in the same motion at the same time or pretty damd close to it. I then need to see what the camera sees in wireframe directly ported out the switcher bus so that I can lay a 50% mix over it of the camera head video tap and show the previsualization of this "shot" to the director and VFX supervisor in realtime.

The alternative is to translate the mocon head info to lightwave then cook the scene out in wire frame and run it off VTedit in the mix which is something along the lines of what I am doing now.

However the idea is for this to be realtime real fast where changes made by the camera operator and recorded into the head for use as the motion control pass is automatically sent into lightwave as the camera does its moves.

This way its very automatic, fast and changes can be made instantly.

Any thoughts??
Any fancy assed LW 3d plug in people on this list who want to take a crack at writting the translation plug in from the head to the software?? There is cash available for such work.

Get back to me at [email protected]