CompuServe Messages

For the first 3D-ROM, we exploited the talents of dozens of 3D modelers in the Amiga market who had clearly marked their models as public domain. We still extended our "get a free disc" offer to these artists, and gave away hundreds of discs. For the second 3D-ROM, we used only omdels that were explicitly given to us for use on the next edition of the 3D-ROM. Again, we gave away dozens of discs to contributors, and dozens more as promotional items. And we'll most probably throw in a CDROM with each purchase of InterChange for Windows, and perhaps even with the next upgrade of InterChange for the Amiga. See the pattern? The CDROM collections of models are a very cost-effective, nay, profitable way to promote InterChange. For years and years, we never had an effective way to demonstrate what InterChange can do. We couldn't give away a working demo; that would be giving away the farm. 3D models have become a very necessary item for working in 3D. I think the demand for models is inexhaustable – there is no end to the requests for obscure objects that haven't yet been digitized. There's certainly room in this market for companies with an assured supply of high-quality models, and there's room at the other end for companies to use give-away models to promote their product. In that sense, I don't think we're doing anything different than Autodesk and the World-Creating CDROM, or any other 3D package that wants a supply of demo models bundled with their program. Surprisingly, I don't think we get "many" contributors to the 3D-ROM. You'd think that our little bribe of a free disc, a free collection of models would lead to a lot of contributed models… but we've only had a few dozen contributors to disc II, and a similar number so far for volume III. I don't know if you've even seen the Syndesis 3D-ROMs, but we give away free advertising space, both on disc and in print, to any model-making company who wants to participate. It's not even a requirement that they contribute a single mesh to the disc, I'd be happy to include only text files and images. So if we're competing with any model-making company, we're a pretty stupid competitor for advertising their product for them for free. 🙂 My only contact with Viewpoint's brokering program came from a guy who wanted a free 3D-ROM, but he'd already brokered his models with Viewpoint in their exclusive arrangement, hadn't seen any profits from it, and at least thought he could get a free CD from us, but couldn't give us the right to redistribute his demo model…