CompuServe Messages

Mike, I'm not about to flame you for uttering blasphemous words about Essence. I know it's a tad slow, but I love it nonetheless. My main concern with the 2.9 textures is the interim documentation, which doesn't compare with Essence's clear, illustrated manuals. I'm sure that will change with the release of Imagine 3.0. In addition, I've spent a long time daydreaming about Essence textures, their parameters, and the meaning of life <g>, so I naturally tend to gravitate towards Essence rather than those 50 lovely new textures in 2.9. Maybe one day I'll set up 50 versions of a basic object, each one using a 2.9 texture, and set the ole 'puter rendering to laserdisc for a couple of days. (Hmmm… what a wonderful idea for Rick to include on his new tapes: a video catalogue of all Imagine textures!) Mucho thanks for your comments on rendering speed. I tend to be overly cautious in my computer work, compared to my guerilla friends who try anything, and often fall flat on their face. We all learn, but using our own individual styles. Can you tell me what an "object with well-distributed triangles" is? For example, an Enterprise with cylinders for warp nacelles, having points only at each end of the cylinder? Would that constitute a poor triangle distribution, all these big, long triangles, compared to the many small faces making up (presumably) the saucer? (Assuming the saucer top/bottom had a graceful curvature, therefore requiring more than one "ring" of triangles to flesh out their surface from center to perimeter) Thanks again for the informative message. Blaq!