CompuServe Messages

Gary; Thanks for asking. >> (feel free to be as verbose as you want here) You said I could do it! <g> Recently I picked up on a discussion of how people learn. Some people can read something, and understand a concept clearly. Other people need Visual stimulation to pick up a concept. I believe there was a third catagory, but it slips my mind at this time. I must have read it somewhere, so I don't remember. I am one that cannot get that much out of reading. I don't like to read. Even though I do the tutorials, I do not grasp the essentials being taught, unless someone shows me. I like to see it demonstrated. The manuals are great, and they have all the information in them, but sometimes I cannot find what I am looking for. In this case online indexing allowing searches for all key words or simalar variants and where they are found in the printed manual would be GREAT. The on-line manuals I have used have been very limited in information. They were almost useless. In your case, if you put everything that is now in the manual online, maybe the information would be available, but then sometimes it is difficult to locate depending upon the hyper-text engine. Another item I'm against is more hard disk space lost for "JUST TEXT". I wouldn't like 3D Studio exclusively online because my computer is too expensive to use as a text reader. But I would have plenty of time to read the printed manual while it is rendering. My renders typically range from 5 to 30 minutes per frame. So that would be a lot of time I couldn't read the online manual. If picture is worth a thousand words. An animation or video must be worth 1,800,000 words each minute. I can't read that fast! <G> Improvements I would like to see are a video of the neat features. The Animator software had a video. Corel Draw has had videos. It is a quick way to see how to do something, then do it. I would watch the video, then go do it. I attended an Autodesk presentation on 3D Studio where they showed how to morph a 57 Chevy. I took a tape recorder to the session and recorded the whole thing. Then I spent the weekend learning how to do what they did. It was most enlightening. I learned more in that 90 minute presentation (after doing it myself) than all the books I had read to that point. Maybe I should buy Digimations tapes? If they show stuff like that, I guess so. The type of things I picked up on at the presentation were the 3 color grey scale tif images and how to position them in the scene. I saw it done, but it took me a while to find that in the manual, but without the manual, I would never have figured out how to do it. I think initially, I could not locate (in the manual) the key command <ALT G> for displaying the background. But I located it on the Keyboard alternatives sheet. Months later, I found it in the manual. If I hadn't seen this done, I may never have discovered it. I knew it was there because I had seen it. This is the type of item I would want in a hypertext reference manual online, but only to point it out in the printed manual. Also, somehow I never realized I could morph a car, or anything that complex. Seeing that done was an eye opener. Again, I had to search the manual for just how to do this. I am a pilot. I learned to fly many years ago, but within the last 6 years, I worked for my rating as a flight instructor. One item that was pointed out in the training is that most people learn quickest by seeing. And according to the Federal Aviation Administration, about 85% of most peoples learning occurs via seeing. So they emphasize that visual aids are one of the best ways to help people learn to fly (or anything for that matter). Present information to people so they can see what they are expected to do. 3D Studio is a visual medium. If possible, make it visual. In the discussions that recently occured between the forum members, and Black Belt systems, someone pointed out that a software that is great for visualization that has no graphics in it's documentation is missing the boat. I upgraded to WinImages F/X over a month ago. I still have not had time to load it onto my computer. If I don't have time to load it, am I going to have time to read online docs. I would like images. Show me what it can do! I also purchased some IPAS routines recently. I find that the documentation on these are extremely bad! It is nice to provide the many features to the users, but if you have 10 switches you can change, the possibility of variation on your animation is phenominal. If my math is correct this is 10 factorial, or 10x9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1 possible combinations assuming only on or off. That is 3,628,800 possibilities on your animation by trying all combinations. Do I have time to work through these for my animation due next week? Maybe if I don't eat or sleep, I can do it. Yeah, I think so. That's all I have to do! <g> Do you have time to work through these to put into a package? Maybe if you don't eat or sleep….. Obviously not. But something more than text is needed! A few animations provided in the packages on what effects can be produced using what switches would make using these a lot easier. I bought these IPAS routines thinking I could make them useful quickly. I guess I need to be a genius to figure some of them out. One was talking about bubbles following a "Power Law trajectory". WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THAT? I don't know. Is there an example? No. Is there a description? I don't understand it. So I start rendering animation number one of 3,628,800 to figure it out. No dinner tonight. <g> Another thought for your longevity. Online docs provide an easier way to pirate software. With printed doc's, no one will give away their only copy of the manual! True, you can put it on a CD-ROM, but even though I want one, I can not afford one yet. I spend my money on IPAS routines. <G> Just my thoughts. I hope it helps. Dennis Fenske