Awesome!  Just awesome!   I'm glad you have the time, Andreas.  comments
follow...

Everyone,
Contact me if you want on the mailing lists.  We are running 5 threads
to consolidate info.  They are (Admin, Parser, Renderer, Writer, adn
Packager)   at the moment.  Tell me which one and remember to reply-all
- I've messed that up twice now..


"Raab, Andreas" wrote:
> 
> Rob,
> 
> > All, the task has been posted!   Wow!  It sounds really neat (and
> > difficult)
> 
> I just read over it and for really solving the problem in Squeak you have to
> 'objectify' it. FWIW, here's my take on it: First of all, the parser needs
> to create Squeak compiled methods rather than a symbolic representation (for
> speed). Then, you'll need a bunch of objects that define the different
> objects used in GML (such as cone, sphere, intersection, union etc) which
> allow you to specialize the intersection tests appropriately. Then, each
> object creation should define a unique subclass of these base classes so
> that the shading functions can be compiled directly into the objects.


Ok, I'll dive into the Nodes right now, and not feel the need to answer
all msgs..   See Parser thread.  

> > Andreas, please say you'll help!  ;-)
> 
> Hmmmm. I'm not quite sure. I have just come back from a trip into the middle
> of nowhere (actually the middle of New Hampshire but for me that's pretty
> much the same ;-) and wasn't planning on spending my weekend in a rush

I know what you mean, I work Mon and Tues.  If we get something put
together, then great and if  not, so what.

> (deadlines and so). Also, I'm not really interested in any of the functional
> stuff - the only thing that would be interesting to me is the actual
> rendering (and how to make it fast). So ... what I can do is to look a bit
> into the fun part (rendering). If you're interested (and not too badly
> suprised if it doesn't quite work out), here's what I can do:
> * Give you the lighting model (Squeak's 3D engine contains basically the
> same lighting model)

Sweet.

> * Give you the intersection tests (it's all in the CG bible)

This is for 3D object intersection?  (Are you referring to Foley, et
al.?)

> * Have a look at optimizing the render() function with a few, really simple
> tricks (this is likely to involve that you don't insist on rendering the
> image top-down, left-right but do have a way of writing into arbitrary
> positions in the output file)

This would be the pipeline then, right?

> [Eventually - if I'm really crazy - I might even look into precomputing
> texture maps]

Could we create a dynamic cache so we can control the size?
 
> Oh, and one important question - can we use Squeak's 3D engine or is this
> considered cheating?! If so, we might actually be *very* fast... ;-))

Yep, but we covered that offline...

cheers,
Rob
 
>   - Andreas

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Smalltalking by choice.  Isn't it nice to have one!