NG
I'm only casually following this thread on occasion, but was interested in your comment. Do you have the link to it (again?). We had a Quantel Cypher and whilst it was a very clever piece of kit I don't recall it could actually manipulate the 'shape' of graphics so you've peaked my interest.
I had previously noted a cypher operator credit on the programme credits so don't doubt it's use.
The Cypher Op had designed the trajectory and position paths of the letters and words so that it made shapes - rather than the letterforms of the text being altered.
The Cypher was effectively leveraging the processing designed for Mirage - but with only one of the four processing cards ISTR. Each on-screen character was effectively a 2D video key and fill element in a frame store that was allocated a 'DVE' tile of its own - so could be positioned, and moved anywhere independently of any other character. It could also have feedback of its own (hence the trail effects etc.).
Really neat way of creating a new product using tech developed already. Of course an operator user interface more suitable for CG use - and without the requirement for coding in Pascal that Mirage required- was also needed.
This is all a very dim recollection though... ISTR that NBC Sports were very big users of Cypher (and had a big cheque book) - and at times had an NBC employee permanently based at Quantel in Newbury working on new functionality.
(Talking of 'shapes' - Quantel's Mirage was often used for basic 'Computer graphics' as it was easier/cheaper to design a shape within the Mirage 3D DVE and 'paint it' with a 2D video frame, than it was to design a similar 'computer graphic' in a real 3D CGI system. Plus the Mirage effect was realtime - and needed no offline rendering...
A lot of the planets in Star Trek : The Next Generation were 2D textures wrapped onto a Quantel sphere effect to create a globe. You could create them very quickly with a Paintbox and a Mirage in an online edit suite.
Cypher was based/housed in/on the Quantel Encore crate rather than Mirage. But I dare say it shared a fair bit of the principles. Someone asked me recently if I could get my hands on the operator panel as they wanted it for old times sake as a momento - but it had flown off into a skip a long long time ago.
That would make sense - though I think the processing was more Mirage-y - as I don't think Encore had tile-based moves (just a single flat 2D surface)? Maybe it was an Encore processor card after all...
ISTR that the Cypher control panel had a trackball, like Encore. (The Encore panel had a yellow trackball and was known as 'a fried egg' controller ISTR)
noggin
Founding member
I'm only casually following this thread on occasion, but was interested in your comment. Do you have the link to it (again?). We had a Quantel Cypher and whilst it was a very clever piece of kit I don't recall it could actually manipulate the 'shape' of graphics so you've peaked my interest.
I had previously noted a cypher operator credit on the programme credits so don't doubt it's use.
The Cypher Op had designed the trajectory and position paths of the letters and words so that it made shapes - rather than the letterforms of the text being altered.
The Cypher was effectively leveraging the processing designed for Mirage - but with only one of the four processing cards ISTR. Each on-screen character was effectively a 2D video key and fill element in a frame store that was allocated a 'DVE' tile of its own - so could be positioned, and moved anywhere independently of any other character. It could also have feedback of its own (hence the trail effects etc.).
Really neat way of creating a new product using tech developed already. Of course an operator user interface more suitable for CG use - and without the requirement for coding in Pascal that Mirage required- was also needed.
This is all a very dim recollection though... ISTR that NBC Sports were very big users of Cypher (and had a big cheque book) - and at times had an NBC employee permanently based at Quantel in Newbury working on new functionality.
(Talking of 'shapes' - Quantel's Mirage was often used for basic 'Computer graphics' as it was easier/cheaper to design a shape within the Mirage 3D DVE and 'paint it' with a 2D video frame, than it was to design a similar 'computer graphic' in a real 3D CGI system. Plus the Mirage effect was realtime - and needed no offline rendering...
A lot of the planets in Star Trek : The Next Generation were 2D textures wrapped onto a Quantel sphere effect to create a globe. You could create them very quickly with a Paintbox and a Mirage in an online edit suite.
Cypher was based/housed in/on the Quantel Encore crate rather than Mirage. But I dare say it shared a fair bit of the principles. Someone asked me recently if I could get my hands on the operator panel as they wanted it for old times sake as a momento - but it had flown off into a skip a long long time ago.
That would make sense - though I think the processing was more Mirage-y - as I don't think Encore had tile-based moves (just a single flat 2D surface)? Maybe it was an Encore processor card after all...
ISTR that the Cypher control panel had a trackball, like Encore. (The Encore panel had a yellow trackball and was known as 'a fried egg' controller ISTR)