CompuServe Messages

Obviously we are at two different ends of the spectrum on this one. I only have a couple of questions regarding your use of the two programs. A.) Do you or have you actually owned 3DStudio and used it on a daily basis, and B.) Do you or have you actually owned Topas and used it on a daily basis? From some of your responses, it's unclear to me whether you're responding from a "cash spent/months invested" standpoint, or whether your speaking from a "company owns it/I occassionally use it" standpoint. I think in making a comparison it helps to have rigorously used both programs over an extended period of time in a deadline oriented environment. If you have a copy of Studio and Topas both sitting on your shelf at home, then I'd could probably arrange to show you a true production environment running both programs. In sitting a thoroughly trained Topas animator down directly beside a similarly trained 3DS user and watching them work, I'm confident that 9 out of 10 people in the viewing audience would go the 3DS way. I'm basing my opinion on the fact that I personally own multiple copies of both programs and have tens of thousands of hours on both programs. I have often had new employees say that they wish there was an undo in the Editor of Studio, but I sort of approach it from the standpoint that if you design from a knowledgable standpoint, and "hold" the scene if you're trying something you're not sure of, you really don't require an undo. After all we're talking about professional tools here. As to the surfrev, maybe Topas is better at wine glass design, but the fact is that a trained user can revolve any surface in a matter of seconds in Studio, and in complex scene design 3DS seems to be the choice of the masses. IMHO Feature for feature, 3DStudio wins hands down, and with every revision of Topas yielding a handful of new features versus every new release of Studio having hundreds of new features, I don't see the competition strengthening it's already weak battle for the platform.