CompuServe Messages

I don't know 3Ds except causualay and from the million borchures they send me. I was just offering my interprtetation of what Erik said. Additionally, until this past NAB, I was not really impressed with the look of 3DS rendered scenes – they looked fake – like CAD animations I used to see in mechanical system design reviews. This year it seems more "artistic" and "realistic" in its look than previsously. LW development is always going to be slower since it is essentially developed by two guys. The upside to this is that the program is tight, well organized and does not have the confusion of a committe generated product (e.g. most anything MicroSloth ever put out.). Also, the two products have a differnt evolution. LW was evloved from artistic/entertainment animation from day 1. 3DS evolve from engineering drawing and CAD world. So one would expect 3DS to be stronger in IK, (even forward K) equation driven models, physical substance simulations etc.) whereas one would expect LWs strong suite to be in "intuitive" motion and surfacing controls rather than nats eyelash physical world analogy capacity. But both programs are "scaling the same mountain" only on different faces. Hype aside, the true measure of a good 3D packages is whethe when using it you feel limited by the software or your talent. Perhaps I'm just a no-talent, but LW has yet to "get in my way" except in the IK area and occaisionally in my desire for more generic control of procedural textures a la Real3D. From what I am seeing of recent 3DS demos, the similar observation would probably hold true with a minor exception. When I see people modelling in 3DS, it seems to me they have to use an much more mousing and keyboarding about to build the models. But I'd want to spend a few hours with it before I make that as a categorical complaint. Actually the Autodesk product I am interested in is Animator Studio. The prelim demo version looke pretty interesting and that is a product like nothing in the NT-LW stable. wmc – via Autopilot!