#CONSTANT UPGRADE
TO ALL IMAGINE USERS
OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO CONSTANT UPDATE REGISTERED USERS
Impulse will be releasing in 10 days the first of four updates to
Imagine 3.0. This update will be sent to users who have a purchased
the Impulse service program known as CONSTANT UPDATE. If you are a
owner of Imagine 3.0 you can also become involved in the service
program, CONSTANT UPDATE, by calling Impulse and placing your order.
If you have not heard of this program, it simply is a quicker way of
getting new features out to the user as we develop them, instead of
asking the user base to wait for a year or longer for us to reach a
landmark situation with Imagine.
There will be a newsletter sent out this month of August to all
registered users, there will be further details regarding ordering,
but for the most part this text is a complete explanation of what the
new version of Imagine 3.1 will include.
For more information as well as ordering call Impulse at
1 800 328 0184 or 1 612 425 0557, if you wish you can also fax your
order at 1 612 425 0701. As usual we will accept Visa or Master Card
as well as orders accompanied with personal check from the USA or
Money Orders from our customers over seas.
IMAGINE 3.1 NEW FEATURES LIST
Attributes in the Stage.
Now you can get at any of the attributes of any object in the Stage
editor. This new feature has come from many users who wanted to
change the values of lights and felt that having to go back and forth
to the Detail editor was a bit too much. We agree and have fixed
this problem. But we did it for all objects that you make not just
lights.
State Morphing
While morphing faces and points in the STATES function is easy, this
function would not allow you to morph textures and other properties.
Now States has full morping of all aspects of the objects attributes.
SO now making those amazing textures included with Imagine look even
more realistic will be a real easy task.
DXF
Our first pass at DXF was not that great, well now we have this format
nailed to the wall. YOU Should be able to load any DXF object in any
number of ways similar to 3D Studio and other programs. WE have
tested as many different formats as we could find and they all load
just fine. Also the saving of DXF objects has been improved along
with the loading. So exporting objects properly will be proper for
other rendering systems.
Smart Bones
Using bones is a great new feature of Imagine, but the assigning of
the triangles to the various axes is a real pain, you can never
remember what axis you were working on and keeping a naming
convention in mind is a real problem. Now with the addition of two
new menu items, you scan simply click on the axis that you want to
assign a set of triangles to for both large and small, the menu items
will name and make the new subgroup for you, so all you really have
to do is select the triangles and click on the axis that you want to
be its bone. Much easier and we are sure this feature will make
character animation much simpler.
Backdrop Images.
Several users have wanted to import an image into the Spline editor
so that they could build up a logo or some other object based upon a
scanned image. Now with the Load Backdrop image function you can do
this in any worksurface editor. What's more you can now load in not
only IFF, TIFF, TGA, RGBN but as well ANIMS and FLC files. This
function will make doing ROTOSCOPING for video or other animations a
real simple process.
Light source and Object views
Many users have asked for a view from objects other than the camera,
we looked into this idea and decided that it would indeed be worth
the time. As such, the perspective views that you can now see are
not limited to the camera, you can see what a light or any other
object sees in the scene. This will make it easier to get a sense
of where shadows will be or if the light source that you have made
will cast the light in the proper place.
Field Rendering
For users of single frame systems, you will now be able to create very
smooth and jitter free animations with the Field Rendering option.
Simply click on the Field render button in the Subproject menu, push
the go button and it just works, Very cool and very smooth.
Flic and Anim brushes.
You have always been able to wrap a series of images to an object,
but now you can wrap an animation onto an objects and not have to
hassle with the single images. Using this in conjunction with the
stage editor you can capture video, use the load backdrop image in
the stage and do some serious rotoscoping.
Show Pic
Many times after making a quickrender and saving it, you want to take
another look, now you can click on the showpic button, find the pic
you want to view and Imagine will show it for you without having to
launch another program or exit to DOS.
Anim and Flic built in players.
Showing anims or flc files have been done only from outside the
software, now you can view these types of animation files directly
in Imagine. 3.1
VERSION NUMBER NOTICE or the ole about box.
Many users have asked for a version number notice in the software, so
we put it in, now you will be able to tell us what version you have
and we can tell you what version we are presently supporting.
Several bugs have been fixed as well
Starfield render bug, which did not animate the stars…. Fixed
Clone bug, caused some problems in the stage under various
conditions….. Fixed
Looping anim bug…. Fixed
All in all this is an exciting upgrade with many new features that we
want you to try out and let us know what more you want done to them
before the next upgrade in a few months.
We at Impulse are glad to continue our support for both the Amiga as
well as the PC platforms and hope that our users recognize the
commitment we have made to making Imagine the best that it can be.
Remember we are listening
The Gang at Impulse