Uses for an SGI Machine

[Ville Valter Walveranta]

(I'm sorryI cannot quote appropriately - only line editor in usee)

Anyway as for the uses of SGI workstations I could bring up the animations
you already hinted. I have been comparing different workstations to be used
for creating superb animations - mostly for commercial use. During the 
six-months-long comparsion I ended up with SGI and Alias Animator.  In about
a month from now I'm starting to set up the system for the companies I made
the comparsion for. 

For the workstations Silicon Graphics was very obvious choice for it's 
market-leader position and wide range of workstations of different performanc
(and price ;). For instance the VGXB graphics available for the PowerIris
workstations is something that animators really crave for - real time 
texture mapped (!) rendering for analyzing the final animations sequences
almost as they will appear on the tape.

After the comparsion the choice of the sofware was - as apparent as SGI
was THE brand for the workstations - Alias Animator 3 (Design Studio).
With Alias you are able to create incredible animations as well as 
visualize the blueprints of the architects. Also, Alias has the options
needed to link the system to the stereolitography (for creating prototypes
in industrial design) as well as designated features for evaluating the 
objects (stress-analysis, etc.). The price of Alias varies a lot depending
on the optional modules that have been added as well as on the SGI platform
the system is being used. The GUI of Alias is *very* easy to learn, even
for the people who haven't ever before used a computer. The competitors
on the field of animations are Wavefront Visualizer and TDI Explorer.
However, the first one is maybe more aimed towards the technical design
(robotics, etc.) while the latter one has an interface that is 
considerably more complicated to learn than the one of Alias'.

On the hardware side I'm looking forward to 4D/310 with VGXB graphics
(to be used as the workstations) and probably 4D/35S (to be used as a
render server).

After I had ended up with the above described configuration I wanted to 
find out about the other available software we would need to have. So far,
however, it looks like everyone who'll start working with the SGI work-
stations will have a PC as well loaded with a word-processor and a 
DTP program. I'm aware that e.g.. some DTP packages are available for SGI
as well - they just intend to be pretty feature-loaded while in our
application mostly a 'light' word processing and DTP features would be
needed (for creating memos, letters, transparencies, etc.). If I find
such package(s) for SGI I'm glad to drop the PC's off and integrate also
those functions to the workstations.

While I've gone through great lists of software during the last fall,
I came to notice that there's_lots_ of software for SGI out there!
Actually there's probably a package for almost any purpose, it's just a 
question of finding them :-)

- Willy -