CompuServe Messages

>>The heat will definitly be on Autodesk. Agreed. I think the situation will be similar to when 3ds first hit the PC market, when the only options were Topas (at 10,000 or more, I think) or DGS (which was also lots). Two advantages I feel 3ds has over those two, and two of the reasons I think 3ds will not go the way of DGS or Topas and will improve dramatically in responce to Lightwave are; (cynical) ADesk is behind 3ds. There are better (from what I've been told; I don't use cad) cad systems out there,but ACad holds the lion's share of the market. (Non-cynical) The Yost group are as committed to producing an improved 3ds as Hastings is for Lightwave. From what I understand, ADesk was the primary player in r4, where as the Yost group has been at work on r5 since either April or August; r5 should (if previous enhancements (r1-r2-r3) are any indication) be much more improved and functional than r4 is in comparison. Regarding image quality; what I was refering to was more the color richness and depth, which I feel is better in 3ds. I don't have the time to respond to the specifics at this time, but in essense (and I will be happy when Forge and Essence arrive on the PC) you are more than correct in your statements on procedurals on both sides; using image maps only, my eyes tell me 3ds is better. Using projector maps, there are workarounds in the shadow dept. Although I lost the post (indeed, my entire message base due to a file getting corrupted) and can't get the exact quoted, the people who used 3ds to do about 4+ minutes worth of 3ds animation for the upcoming 'Johnny Mnenemic' film by William Gibson (they used Alias for the motion capture sequences, due to the fact that Puppeteer wasn't out then) said that 3ds gave them near Renderman quality output, at a vastly greater speed. They also wrote a lensflare IPAS of equal quality of Alias's, which is a similar factor better than Lightwave's as Lightwave's/3ds's; don't know if they're going to make it availible though. Have you seen the 3ds Siggraph tape (94 one)? There are some animations on it that some have sworn could not have been done on a PC. To close… >>Quality is often a distant second I could just as easily say a similar thing concerning Lightwave; what we end up seeing as examples of any program are generally the best stuff done on that program; most of the people who make it on the 'demo tapes' would, IMHO, make any program shine if they chose to work on a specific program. I can't argue as far as TV; Lightwave has shown up in a lot more places than 3ds. I firmly believe that the end result is more dependant on the talent of the artist (or in my case illustrator) than the program itself. I've seen stuff that I've considered crap from all platforms, Lightwave included (lord, the number of SGI things alone is scary; having the best paint does not make one a maste painter). I don't think anything I've placed on Cserve (with the exception of the modified polyhedra; those really need refraction) would have benifited from doing them in Lightwave; they would has benifited more from me having more time than after hours/between projects to do them. For me, 3ds has produced the best results, and I've developed workarounds to sidestep some of the percieved flaws in 3ds. When Lightwave comes out I may add it to my toolkit, but I'll upgrade before I add. I really feel that one should use whatever works best for them. John Stetzer JWS PS. Did see the press release concerning the script extension; if it does what it says (and after seeing the key scripter, I see no reason why it shouldn't), it will permit users to write their own IPAS's without a great deal of programming knowlege; that might be the sleeper in the whole equation. Oh, and do you know if Lightwave will come w/a network or batch rendering system (not refering to Screamernet, which I've been told is extra (but I assume included in the Raptor II's)?