#Imagine 3
You're right, the end users will probably be able to come up with
some really nice stuff. It stands to reason, there's a lot more of us
than there are of you at Impulse. However, I personally have seen at
least 5 Imagine sales lost due to a lack of sample renderings. It
usually happens something like this:
I'm in one of the local Amiga dealers and a customer walks in and
tells the salesman he wants to get into 3D animation. He doesn't know
what he wants so he asks the salesman what's available. If the
salesman knows what he's talking about he'll tell the guy about
Alladin 4D, Caligari 24, Real 3D, Imagine, and of course LightWave.
He explains the major features of each package to the customer and if
the guy seems interested in a couple he runs them to show the
interface. They look at a couple of interesting features then they
start to look at sample pictures. They look at the JPEGS that come
with Alladin 4D (really nice pics), They look at the terminator
render done with Caligari (wow!) They might look at the bowling pin
picture from the Real 3D ad, and perhaps a short video clip from
SeaQuest or Babylon 5.
Then, since Imagine has no official sample pictures they go into the
detail editor and load the cow. Don't ask me why but they always seem
to load the cow. They do a quickrender with everything left at the
default settings and in a few seconds they have a 320*200 HAM image
of the cow. Yechh!!! Then the guy looks back at the Babylon 5 video,
then he looks at the terminator render again, Then he looks back at
the cow. The salesman is talking about Essence 1&2, Understanding
Imagine 2.0, The Imagine companion, the Imagine Staging Language, and
how there are thousands of Imagine objects available on BBS's. The
guy's still looking at the cow. It's usually about that time he
picks either Caligari, Real 3D, or the Toaster.
Once in a while I'll jump in and show the guy what Imagine can do, but
I'm not there all the time and it's not my job anyways. I've seen
this happen at least 5 times and a few more where the person just
leaves empty-handed to think about it some more. If you want the
users to show off the power of Imagine why don't you have a contest.
Get people to send in their best Imagine 3.0 renders (once it's
released), pick the best 10 to distribute with the program, and refund
the upgrade price to the people who did them. The cost to you is
minimal compared to the extra sales it could generate.