CompuServe Messages

>> Phil — Animator Studio is also the successor to Animator and Animator Pro — so in all probability Animator Pro itself is as close as your going to get for an Animator Lite program. And while prices on Animator Pro are likely to drop, you can bet support for it is likely to as well. << i'd just like to re-iterate that while Animator Studio has the word Animator in it and while it has many functions which overlap with Animator Pro, it is not really the successor to Animator or Animator Pro…. hence it is called Animator Studio Release 1.0 instead of Animator Pro Release 2.0. this can be a bit confusing, but the two packages serve very different needs and each has their own strengths (aside from the more obvious platform issues). there is an upgrade pricing structure, but AniPro users are encouraged to keep their original version too since it has capabilities not found in AStudio… it is not a replacement by any means, but rather a _very_ complimentary package. AniPro will continue to be sold and supported by Autodesk, and there are tremendous resources for it here in the forum, both in the libraries and the folks who read the messages. as far as an "animator lite", it's amazing what one can still find on the shelves… i still see occasional copies of Animator and Multimedia Explorer on the shelves of various Multimedia Dealers. not sure how you categorize "lite"… is it by features or pricing or what? as for Animator Pro's future, there have been no commitments to future releases of it (like an Animator Pro 2.0)… but then, Autodesk rarely comments on product futures, and AStudio group is _very_ aware of AniPro's continuing unique strengths. here are just _some_ (out of a HUGE list) of things AniPro continues to do extremely well: >>PharLap memory management in session and playback through scriptor is very fast, extremely configurable, scriptable! >>player can playback multiple resolution fullscreen flics >>POCO (open ended architecture through interpretive c-compiler) and powerful utilities written in POCO >>8-bit palette control including color cycling >>postscript font handling >>easy text centering >>loop cel streaming >>tremendous existing peripheral support >>requires VERY few system hardware resources to run productive >>unequal vertice-count tweening >>non-linear keystroke playback in scripting (keychoice) >>runs session in 8-bit format (not 24) so is FAST session >>capable of handling huge framecounts in session without need of memory reinitializing my current list has about 100 additional (and equally crucial) items like the ones above. do they both have an elllipse command? yes. do they work the same way? not at all. do they acomplish the same thing? no way. is either program's method to construct an ellipse better? better is relative to task. not to give the wrong impression, AStduio has an equally impressive list of features not available in AniPro… they are apple and orange in most respects. hang on to Ani… she's still a sweetheart. 🙂 -dave