CompuServe Messages

Since I jumped in earlier, I feel sort of obligated to respond, and clarify my POV somewhat; (disclaimer)no offense is intended to anyone or any program. Very nice side by side; you've brought up some of the things that I'd like to see from Lightwave; primarily, better procedurals, selective raytracing (actually, I'd prefer a refraction faking technique ala Topas for speed reason), parallel lighting, envelopes (although I've been able to fake them quite nicely) and Metaform (although I haven't used Lightwave since 3.0, the descriptions of Metaform sound like it'd mesh well w/my building style). You've also helped clarify, for myself, why I went w/3ds. When I said that I found 3ds more productive, I didn't mean it in a speed of rendering sense. Lightwave has a great deal more in the way of precision tools, but I've never found someone who looked at an image or animation and said 'that should be a foot longer'. 3ds has from start to finish allowed me to create things that look correct, even if they aren't actually correct. When I was a student and had access to all manner of equipment, I used whatever I could and focused in on what seemed promising. I managed to get more done in 6 weeks w/3ds than I was able to in 6 months w/Lightwave; very intangible, I know, but it's my experience. That's why I tend to recomend trying something first before committing to it. 3ds has poor procedurals; I'll use image maps and take the memory hit/speed increase. 3ds uses triangles as opposed to multipoint polygons; I've had 230,000+ polygon scenes render in 3 1/2 minutes at PAR resolution, and 25,000 polygon scenes take 10-15, really tends to depend more on mapping and options in my experience; vertexes and faces are the least memory intensive of how 3ds does things. I'd have to use the displace IPAS and move the map icon about to create morph targets; not as elegent, quick, or potentially accurate, to be sure, but doable. To do a passable underwater effect, I'd have to render a Zbuffer (white self illuminated and depth cue of an image, then composite in Video Post the actual rendered image w/the Zbuffer as alpha over a background)For a still, I'd prefer to trace; have to fake it w/mapping instead at this point. And autoreflect works well enough for animation (for me at least). And I'll tend to have done it faster than if I'd pressed buttons in Lightwave (partly experience, I realise; partly because my paradym fits 3ds better than Lightwave). About the only thing I'll take issue w/is the most subjective one; had you been comparing r2 and 2.0's output, I'd agree w/you. I do prefer r3's output slightly to 3.0+'s (again, MHO; don't throw things at me, please ;^). Just in glancing over the 3 part missive, though, the only thing I noticed missing was face mapping in 3ds. You are correct in your supposition regarding 3dsr3 and r4's interface. Lessee, Lightwave 4.0 will have an open architechture; 3ds has it (and the plugins) now; it'll be interesting to see what comes from opening up Lightwave (and I'm aware of DMM, Sparks, PowerMacros, so Lightwave shouldn't be coming in w/a blank slate). As far as 3ds goes, there will be a basic style language availible for all IPAS's (r4 will have the Keyframe Scripter included) that will basically (no pun) allow one to write one's own IPAS's (the languages provide direct hooks into IPAS routines). What I've seen of the Keyframe Scripter looks promising. Maybe I'll write a better SXP (not ;^). All in all, a very nice comparison. I'm really hoping that Lightwaves inclusion in the PC arena will end up speeding up the evolution of and improvement of 3ds; things can only get better w/competion. Again, just my 2 cents based on my experience. The examples given were just meant to show workarounds. My apologies to all if I tended to ramble; it's late and I'm outta here.