CompuServe Messages

Sam, I dont believe there is a file anywhere, but one would be nice, and I'll suggest it to Impulse. I have seen your work in GraphDev and I believe you use shareware/freeware renderers like PolyRay and POVRay. I began with these renderers myself, and still us em from time to time. If you like these tracers, Imagine is like Nirvana. Rendering: wireframe, colorshaded, Scanline (no shadows), Full Trace. Imagine's full Trace mode is a very fast octree based raytracer. Reflection mapping is available for Scanline mode (which looks very nice as well). Imagine currently has 100 textures with many more to follow. I make heavy use of textures in my work, with the exception of object like posters, signs, etc. any surface in my work is a texture (or several, no limit on number). Imagine supports lighting textures (things like window frame shadow patterns, venetian blind pattern, etc.). Imagine can make any object a fog object (made of fog). Textures like nebula, fogtop, and ghost can be used to make lightbeams and other fx. Imagines modelling features are its most developed area. When it comes to modelling organinc shapes (trees, people, animals), its hard to beat. Any Post Script type 1 font can be extruded into 3d with several bevel options. Objects can be deformed smoothly with the new Deform tool (place boxes around the object, manipulate the boxes and the object conforms), or bend, stretch, skew, twist, the object. Extrude an object (2d or 3d) along a spline path. Skin, Mold, Conform, etc. etc. Then there's animation. The new bones feature allows you to create 'skeletons' for your objects, 'teach' the surface polygons how to stretch, etc. Then simply animate your critter/thing by posing the skeleton. Imagine takes care of stretching/shrinking skin in appropriate places. This is REAL cool. By 'tacking' textures, you can apply say random bumps to a sphere, scale it in an anim, and the bumps will stretch like the sphere is rubber. This works with Image maps as well. This just scratches the surface. -Steve