CompuServe Messages

No, Gary, nobody's perfect, but an awful lot of R3, itself, does come pretty close. I did just try a test render of Willow, and only got what looks like a bunch of strings hanging off the ends of branches. I could send you another sample if you would like. The deciduous, roses, and other stuff do seem to work. I thought to be a beta tester, you had to live in California, and achieve some sort of sainthood status. <g> I did mention it to you at one time, but at that time, you told me you had plenty of beta testers. That was back around the release of R2. I am flattered that you would have considered me, though. In reference to the IPAS programs not being more closely tied to the core program, first of all, I will agree that 3DS is one of the most, if not the most robust animation package on the PC. So, I'm going to try to be really careful in how I say this because I do have great respect for you and the others at the Yost Group. But my frustration level, as a one man animation studio, with some of the IPAS routines is much higher than it has to be. I don't know how else to say it, but they just don't work as easily as they could. And granted, I may be somewhat spoiled by 3DS's grace and ease of use, but when you've got to turn out production work, you just don't have time for multiple test renders, all too often, where absolutely nothing is happening at all because the multiple sliders and dialog boxes have succeeded in confusing you, making 14 hours of rendering time all for naught. I know I'm not the only one that feels this way. I really feel that if some of these things were incorporated into the core program, a lot of the clumsiness could be worked out. I don't begrudge you, or anyone else, value for your efforts. I, myself, would rather pay more for the upgrade, and have these tools more closely integrated than struggle with third party applications. Gary, I do very much have confidence in your work. That's why I'm so sure these things could work so much better inside the program itself. With Topas selling for something like $700 to 3DStudio users, it was almost tempting, but I find 3DStudio to be too professional a package to jump ship and try to learn the idiosyncracies of something else. If you don't think I'm loyal, I could give the phone number of a couple of Amigaheads who might disagree. I do hope you're feeling better. We went through the flu 2 weeks ago and I'm still not totally up to par. I suppose I could have been more tactful, and relayed my original comments in email, but I didn't think in my moment of frustration, when blur.ixp was giving me conniption fits, that you would have considered the comments from somebody out here in flyover country to be urgent.