CompuServe Messages

You're going to get a lot of answers to your questions, but just let me tell you that I started with Playmation and went to 3DStudio because I could see that I wanted to do 3D animations (from the Playmation) but I needed more power. 3DStudio is everything I ever thought it would be…and more. It's about 100 times faster than Playmation, the quality is at least ten times as good, and now that I've read Michelle's books I think it's much easier to use than Playmation. It is a different approach — it doesn't have the same character based animation stuff — but it can do anything you ever wanted to do with animation, and then some. I've never regretted the money I spent on 3DS (unlike Playmation). You can definitely make curved surfaces easily, you can extrude 2D into 3D (and with some cool tools that make some VERY impressive stuff easy — I made a cactus the other night that was dead on and I can't draw to save my life). You can rotate objects, much as in Playmation, but there are other lofting tools (lofting takes a 2D object into a 3D one) that do things Playmation couldn't dream of. The Yost group IS 3DStudio (they are the software engineers) and a better support team you couldn't wish for (here on CIS). Interfaces are as good as they get in DOS, meaning adequate (although I do like R3 being able to define your own keystrokes — why NOT the material editor?). If I were you, I'd go ahead and buy R3 and just make sure you remind your wife of the legal penaties for murder in your state.