CompuServe Messages

Richard, Kevin answered all of your questions more reliably than I would have, bless him <g>. The only one he didn't address was how it could help you if you already have 3ds/anipro. I would say if you do any kind of 24-bit true colour output then you will need some kind of post-processing tool to modify frames or high rez stills. Animator pro just doesn't offer that – it's great for 8-bit output and even creating simple texture maps where the 256 colour limitation is not a problem. HiresQFX is probably the best tool I know for the money which has great tools for editing single, or multiple frames in it's batch mode, at 24-bit or 32-bit. Most other programs ignore or refuse to accept 32-bit targa files therefore the transparency you can give materials in 3ds is lost when you composite over another image in 24-bit packages. HiResQFX can use the alpha-channel in composition work, for example if you had a house with glass windows in 3ds and rendered against a black background and saved as a 32-bit .tga file, the image could be composited easily in HiresQFX and the glass would show the underlying image through it, but the walls would be opaque. Try that with Photostyler – you'd have to do some fancy moves to create a similar effect. Hope that answers the question. Martin