CompuServe Messages

I overheard a Pixar employee at the Newtek booth at SIGGRAPH say that CBM had given Pixar "a few Amigas" to coax them to port Renderman to it. That may tell you something. He also said that if Allen's LW3D software came with Renderman support, the Amiga would get used more by the "big boys". There's no reason why this wouldn't apply to Imagine as well. I'm no expert on this, Rick, but my guess is that, as John says, most of us (on CIS) would get little or no use out of Renderman support in Imagine. But people who we have little contact with at the video houses who render for a living on big budgets, might do a lot of their front-end work on Amigas if the Renderman support was available. I'd certainly think their productivity would climb since they could afford more design stations that way. Maybe this is the way to look at it: Since Imagine supports 24-bit output, and Impulse will now produce the FC24, and Imagine's price will edge toward "professional" prices, it's evident that Impulse is shooting for bigger fish. SOME of those fish will get use out of Renderman. Whether it will sell a lot more packages, I'm not sure. But if Newtek does slip it into LW3D, and they do sell the software separately from the Toaster, and Imagine doesn't support Renderman, it may hurt its sales somewhat. Perhaps include it as an add-on option? Those of us using it at home in a hobby sense will certainly get no use out of it, and in a selfish vein, I'd certainly hate to wait longer for Imagine for it. <grin> It was great to see you at SIGGRAPH,