CompuServe Messages

John, I'm glad you mention Steve W.s new book – checkout section 1.1 Warning to New Users. It confirms my opinion. If you want to invest time learning you will eventually be rewarded. If you want to start maximizing productivity early, try another package. I used to think it was just me. But AmiExpo changed all that. I was in a class with 11 other confessed Imagine owners. All had roughly equivalent opinions. Very powerful, but it takes lots of time and effort to get what you want from it due to the contra-intuitive nature of the program organization, user interface and terrible documentation. In addition, if a person uses Imagine only once or twice a month for a few objects/seconds of Anims, he spends a fair amount of time 're-learning' the program becuase of its obtuseness. Even some famous graphic/animation gurus in the Amiga realm apart from Steve say that Imagine is based on a philosophy and approach that did not make sense until they spend considerable time on the phone with the creator getting inside his head to understand the assumptions and space form which he came. After that, they claim, it was easier to learn as they had a point of reference, yet it was still not 'intuitive' even with that knowledge. I'm not being emotional or flaming. I have the program, I continue to upgrade it, use it and buy about every book/video taped tutorial on the program. After a year and a half with the program (no prior Silver exposure – Sculpt 3D/4D only) I still don't 'get it' and have to labor through things that are a snap in Lightwave, for example. Like, try wrapping a map of the world onto a globe in Imagine. THen try to do it in Lightwave. I gave up after 4 days about 6 – 8 hrs per day trying to do it in Imagine. I accomplished it in 15 minutes in LW and in the next 4 days did 3 different versions of earth fly-by/landing animations. Now, if I was getting paid for producing, based on that experience it would be clear where some extra room on my Hard drive would come from. [ MORE ]