CompuServe Messages

Brian, I don't know a lot about Renderman other than it uses procedural textures (materials created by algorithm's) rather than bit-maps, which is more like the way 3d Studio does it (although 3ds has procedural textures). 3ds is supposed to be more optimized and directed towards animation and is easier to use apparently. An Autodesk dealer would probably give you a better run-down of AS/RMan feature. The .gif's are 256 colours maximum and were 640×480 resolution. They were "resampled" down from high-resolution (1275×975) targa files (true colour or up to 16.77 million colours max). Photostyler is my favourite windows imaging package, but I also have CorelDraw which includes CorelPaint which is the same as Zsoft Photofinish (costs about $150 at Egghead Software) which also does true colour images but has less features than Photostyler. The one I use most, however, is still HiresQFX because it is not slowed down by Windows and supports alpha-channel and I know it better than the other 2. Martin