Latest update: October 26

Wow, where does the time go? I have been busy with the new website www.amigarvtour.com, experimenting with the new Dreamweaver CS5 and Photoshop CS5. I am still working on the rollover buttons, as I am not 100% happy with them yet, but the pages are slowly coming together.

Since I don't have much more to report this month (I didn't get anything thing in to work on my A3000T, funds have been really tight, and no one has done any donations this month), I leave you now with an Amiga AGA Demo. Pretty cool, but you will need at least an '060 to run.

 

 

 

update October 6, 2010

Babylon 5 and the Amiga...

This week, I received the Complete Series of B5. Not only have I been watching closely, I have been doing a great deal of research into B5.

For those of you that do not know, B5 IS the Amiga. Let me clarify, I knew for the first 2 seasons, B5 used the Amiga for CGI shots. What I didn't know, is the animators were Amiga fanatics. The problem, was that by the time B5 came to a full TV series, Commodore simply did not exist anymore as a company. The Amiga's they used were getting to be too slow to render the CGI quickly enough for a TV show schedule, and consequently, Alphas and Pentium took the place of the Amiga's.

If you watch carefully, you can see that a lot of the "Viewing screen" shots are totally Amiga, simply done with a Video toaster.In the picture below, you may not see it, but trust me, after staring at OS 3.x all day, you can totally see Amiga screens and fonts.

I know it isn't the best example, but when you watch the show back to back, you see all of it.

The following is an excerpt from Compute! Issue 166, page68 (July 1994).

The making of Babylon 5. (television science fiction series; includes related article) (Multimedia PC) 
by David Sears, David English

Digby demands attention. An insistent yellow-haired hound of indeterminate purpose, he has covered my writing hand with friendly saliva. Wet, organic, unexpected--much like the computer graphics the people here create. Scratching Digby's head gives me a moment to bask in the modest aura of Foundation Imaging's unpretentious Valencia, California, offices and to wonder just how this team came together from what seemed nowhere with no money and managed to win an Emmy for outstanding technical achievement with-in its first year of operation. Digby knows, but in the noncommittal way of an office mascot, he's more concerned with talking to the animators than this transient reporter. Ron Thornton, Foundation Imaging's visual effects director, ambles in to take Digby's place.

Thornton had immediately seen possibilities well beyond a simple and limited number of looming war craft. A fleet is a fleet, and that's what Foundation Imaging delivered. This constant intent to overkill, to ignore the technology envelope and do what hasn't been done--that's Thornton. And to do it on a limited budget (the golden rule of "Babylon 5" production), Thornton needed inexpensive hardware. He found that in the Amiga, Commodore's multitasking wonder baby, and NewTek's Video Toaster, an add-on graphics card. Thornton, a special-effects designer, renounced physical model construction and embraced CG.

Foundation Imaging houses 24 Amiga 2000s, 16 of which serve as dedicated rendering engines. Each of the 16 packs 32 megabytes of RAM, a Fusion 40 accelerator, and a Toaster. All the Amiga's share data through a Novell network and offload data to a 12-gigabyte 486 PC file server. Beigle-Bryant's home-brew task manager parcels out rendering work to each of the Amiga's in the rack and ensures that no machine sits idle. Thanks to his clever resource management, the rendering time for a frame of "Babylon 5" animation averages 45 minutes, not too much more than that required for the less complex models used in the pilot episode. A true technologist, Beigle-Bryant takes pride in the fact that no machine sits through a day without working. Even the animation workstations double as serious data crunchers when the animators themselves take a break.

On the sensitive issue of the Amiga's future, Foundation Imaging's opinion is realistic and familiar. "Commodore as a company doesn't exist," says Beigle-Bryant. "There's no new technology coming from Commodore...and we have to look at the general market for platform availability." On the other hand, Foundation Imaging doesn't throw away equipment, either, and the team's love of the machines is obvious. The Amiga's and Toasters already in place will continue to process graphics data alongside whatever other boxes join them. Foundation Imaging would change a few things about its Amiga's, but most notable is the speed of each animator's workstation. Even accelerated, the machines can perform sluggishly at times, leaving the animators to read novels or romp with Digby. Perhaps this is less a deficiency and more a built-in license for good-natured distractions. After all, as Beigle-Bryant points out, to increase the speed of the animators' interface would dump more tasks on the rendering network. As things stand, work progresses at a comfortable pace.

This discussion raises serious concerns about NewTek's future. Its Toaster, after all, works only with Commodore Amiga's Foundation Imaging makes it clear that NewTek is a forward-looking company and is aware of the steps it must take to succeed.

This leads me to inquire as to just how eager Foundation Imaging is to invest in new technologies, perhaps PC based, or even to use high-end Silicon Graphics workstations. As for the PCs, Beigle-Bryant notes that data is data and the network taskmaster could be tweaked to support parallel processing on a network made up of PCs and Amiga's Currently, NewTek's Lightwave software requires a Video Toaster to run; it could conceivably be rewritten to run on any machine. As to whether NewTek has begun such a project, Beigle-Bryant can't comment, but industry scuttlebutt has long predicted a PC-compatible version of the Toaster. So why not a PC Lightwave package? Furthermore, NewTek's very sexy rendering engine, the Screamer--though still living a beta-version existence--promises Silicon Graphics power at a reduced price. This hardware, too, has found a home at Foundation Imaging.

Is Foundation Imaging otherwise satisfied with its Amiga-Toaster assembly? Not entirely. The company's overwhelming desire to break the rules of what can and cannot be done for television has led the team to believe that a major upgrade to the network will have to occur in the next five to six months.

According to Thornton, the overall look for the series may be set, but the things Foundation Imaging intends to do beggar description. More CG-generated interiors, more sophisticated models still. The hardware direction Foundation Imaging will take remains off the record, but Thornton admits to using PCs and Macintosh computers for various effects seen in the show and for touching up some Amiga-generated images. What probably won't happen, unless Silicon Graphics starts giving machines away, is an upgrade to Silicon Graphics workstations. Prohibitively expensive, that hardware could break a rough-and-tumble outfit such as Foundation Imaging. The team is quite proud of the fact that its entire stock of personal computers costs less than a single Silicon Graphics Reality Engine and that the results are nevertheless remarkable.

Admittedly, no one will mistake the CGI (Computer Graphics Interface) space sequences in "Babylon 5" for the real thing. Ships gleam with an unearthly sheen--but the believability factor depends on how the craft moves, and Foundation Imaging can squeeze a great deal of motion out of Video Toasters and Lightwave software.

"The goal wasn't to make it look not CGI, but to make a cool shot. Design should come first. If it looks cool, great," says Thornton. For an upcoming episode, Foundation Imaging outdid expectations yet again by tackling organic modeling--creating a functional (and dangerous) creature bent on eating brains. This is only the second time that an entirely computer-generated beast has appeared on television; "seaQuest DSV" takes pioneering honors for its squid. It's worth noting, though, that the "seaQuest DSV" team used Amiga's and Toasters to create its creature in much the same way that Foundation Imaging created its brain feeder.

Selling the "Babylon 5" crew on the concept of a fully CG monster wasn't easy. Thornton began pitching the idea many months ago and, even after convincing everyone involved that Foundation Imaging could do the job, still had to contend with a bit of trepidation. In effect, the director kept the actors largely in place, forgoing what he feared was too much motion for the special effects to handle. In the end, the brain feeder looks believably sinister and moves much like any one-legged parasite would. The actors appear a bit silly because they don't move with as much frenzied activity as the creature. With this lesson learned, however, we can expect more daring experiments from Foundation Imaging and "Babylon 5."

In essence, Foundation Imaging isn't so much a CG house as an effects house. Its motto distills to Whatever It Takes, and the team at Foundation Imaging believes this. Thornton has no problem combining physical models or arrangements with CG images. A CG planetscape often looks ridiculous when viewed from space. Why bother, reasons Thornton, when you can scan a picture of a model and expect it to yield believable results? The same holds true for machine textures--just build a miniature and scan away. This saves the art team a remarkable amount of time, and the product looks great. Of course, these down-and-dirty methods upset some Hollywood types. Foundation Imaging has lost jobs because the team wouldn't agree to follow unnecessary procedures and waste valuable computer time. Perhaps the ability to save money frightens adherents to the high end status quo; perhaps the results of ingenious modeling efforts and superior art direction have startled a slumbering Tinsel Town into a predictable arrogant panic. Perhaps.

What's certain? Foundation Imaging does work of superior quality on dreadfully slim budgets. If Warner renews "Babylon 5" for another season, Foundation Imaging intends to generate more stunning CG effects than any other television series. If not, the company will find work doing great things its own way, with people who recognize the team's vision for what it is: breathtaking.

I also think that like the Amiga, B5 is largely ignored by Sci-fi fans. In the TV show "The Big Bang Theory" , B5 constantly gets mocked and jokes are made about it. At least TBBT has not latched on to mocking the Amiga (YET), but I do believe that that has more to do with everyone being paid off in Hollywood to NEVER mention the Amiga, to scrub it from the history books. Imagine a show like "The Big Bang Theory" constantly referencing how good the Amiga was, and what it could do at the time. Why that would force people to actually admit it existed (and we can't have that) and cause people to maybe inquire about what it is/was.

The sad thing is that a few of the cast of B5 have past away. We all Know that Bruce Boxleitner is still around. Lost fans may have recognized Mira Furlan (Delenn). Jerry Doyle (Garibaldi) has a Political talk show now (yea, I was surprised too).

Claudia Christian ( Susan Ivanova) stars in the showtime series "Look"

Sadly Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin ) past away in 2004. Also Andreas Katsulas (G'Kar) passed away in 2006

One of my favorite Characters -Londo, was played by Peter Jurasik (who oddly enough was in TRON and Hill Street Blues) He is now a teacher at NCU for acting.

Speaking of Londo and Peter, some of the absolute best bloopers or behind the scene are done with him. The best was Londo reciting "Tweety Bird's" classic "I tat a ta a puddy kat" made me fall out of my chair.

Lastly I leave you with this Screen shot of Garibaldi's quarters and it's shout out to Warner Brothers (who owns the show) . Remember, the series takes place in the far future.