CompuServe Messages

When we first released the Wavefront Converter, it was $395. It's dropped to $295. DXF was $295, now it's $150. When the 3D Studio Converter was released a few weeks ago, we priced it at $150, too. There's been severe confusion about LW Pro's abilities regarding splines. The splines are only in Modeler, and although the spline info is actually stored in the file, LightWave only works with the polygonalized version, and you set the level of approximation in Modeler. It may not even be that flexible, I haven't explored it fully. There's no "surface patch" in LightWave Pro. IGES is darn tough, about 4 times as tough as DXF. I have been considering an IGES-out converter. You must realize that IGES is a veritable kitchen sink: it supports hierarchies of CSG objects combined with boolean operations, all sorts of geometric entities, just piles of stuff. Fortunately, most people can use the DXF converter instead of IGES. I've called the stereolithography people several times to get their format, and they ignore my requests. If you've got a spec, I'd love to see it. .STL should be easy to support. There's one guy in Texas who begs me to write one every nine months. He has his own converter, but it only works with Sculpt files. We've had a few requests to support Pro/ENGINEER neutral files. I have the spec on file, I think. If you've got some sample files, please send them to me. When I get the itch to work on a new format, I look for the spec, I look for sample files, and if I can't find both, I proceed to the next item on the stack. 🙂 It's tough. The higher-end formats are much more complex and problematic than the low-end Amiga formats. It's impossible for us to actually own all the hardware and software necessary to support them. The Wavefront, Digital Arts and soon the Softimage Converters were all developed via a painstaking beta process that involves a lot of files exchanged via modem or mail to our testers. The hobby modelers want every converter to be bundled and/or cost $30. They want to show off their modeler to their high-end buddies. The problem is, the rest of the customers actually own the high-end system, expect a good translation and good tech support. They're making thousands of dollars by using Amigas to model, then selling pricey renderings on their more expensive hardware and software. Our upcoming "Syndesis 3D-ROM" product is one way we're addressing this… It's a collection of more than 500 public domain objects, all converted to most of the formats we support. It's a way for hobby modelers to convert those objects they downloaded from CIS, to give to their friends in Wavefront .obj format.