beware of novice!

[David Boles]

Hello !

  I am currently looking into buying a computer or computers for
work. Since I am extremely new to this, I was wondering if I
could get some feedback from "the guys in the trenches" on my
computational needs. Basically, I need scientific visualization
and image processing capabilities. Some of the things being tossed
around are:

   (1) Suppose I have data that will be viewed as a 3d sur-
       face; I would like to map other 2d data onto this
       surface. Is it possible to animate a series of 
       images in which the 3d surface stayed the same but
       the 2d data changed? Is there any fundamental change
       in considering this for a 40x40 grid, 100x100 grid,
       200x200 grid?

   (2) Suppose that I bought a machine that could not 
       smoothly animate the images that I have created.
       Could I then render them in advance, store them,
       and somehow replay them? Would this then be trans-
       ferable to videotape?

   (3) If I started on a small SGI machine initially and
       later upgraded to a larger, faster unit, how hard
       would the transition be in terms of software?

Any response on these questions as well as general comments will
be greatly appreciated.  Please send these to (me) :

       aviator at csdfx8a.arlut.utexas.edu