#CIS Mag/Wish List
6 messages in this thread
Greetings! I'm writing a story for CompuServe magazine about the Wish LIst
section on this forum. I'm looking for specific examples of people who've
posted their wishes, and *poof* had them fulfilled!
Any takers out here?
Andrew,
Poof, 3D Studio release 2 was composed quite a bit of user requests.
Of my extensive wishlist of features/changes, 80% or more were implemented,
while some others didn't make it due to time constraints, but are in the
queue for the next release.
Kevin Krell – Computer Support Associates
Thanks, Kevin. That's great to hear how some companies actually listen to
their users! Can you give me some specific examples of features that were
implemented due to your suggestions?
Andrew,
As Kevin stated, a HUGE percentage of the new features in Autodesk 3D
Studio Release 2 were taken from wishlists submitted on this forum.
Without this forum, our effort to come up with a balanced list of new
features would have been much much harder. Compuserve has been a
tremendous help to us.
– G
Thanks, Yost. As I asked Kevin, can you think of some specific requests
that were implemented? Can you estimate how many requests made it into
Release 2? Are CompuServe forum members more vocal about their requests
than other users of your product? Thanks!
Here are just a few of the features that our 3D Studio users on Compuserve
were very interested in seeing implemented in 3DSr2. Note that over 100
new features were added to Release 2, and this list represents about 50-60%
of the new features gleaned from CIS wishlists.
– Accelerated renderer…
– BROADCAST quality rendering
– Field rendering
– Automatic environment mapping
– Bitmap backgrounds loadable in Shaper, Editor and Keyframer
– You can look at sample textures on either a sphere or a cube
– Video rotoscoping is possible with any VTR controller.
– You can view bitmaps directly from the materials editor now.
– Video Safe and Title Safe frames
– ASCII geometry/database file reading and writing
– Surface/Mapping/Adjust/Acquire
– TGA-DEPTH=16/24 parameter added
– Vertex Snaps for precise object placement
– KF: Tracks/Reverse function for inverting animation tracks.
– Keyframer Paths commands for complete control over motion paths
– You can now use any command in the KF or Editor "by object name"
– Boolean operations (union, subtraction, intersection)
– FLIC speed checking for locked preview speeds to video frame rate
– Loading of incremental image file "scripts" (of up to 32-bits deep)
as animated maps, backgrounds, and post-production layers.
– New DXF loading code that loads every entity from AutoCAD
and automatically welds coincident vertices, unifys surface
normals, expands blocks, and even loads colors.
– 2-sided material override in Renderer and KF previewer
– Surface/Mapping…/Align…/Face Align feature installed.
– CopyTracks in KF now has a Relative/Absolute switch.
– Alt-key and G-button cause T,C,B and Ease sliders in KeyInfo
dialog to affect all keys for global control over motion in
KF.
– Loads Postscript Type 1 fonts into Shaper.
– Loads Adobe Illustrator-88 format (.AI) bezier spline files
into Shaper
– Automatic backup (.BAK) file creation for all data types.
– Improved ADI interface. (For example, 3DS now allows
HiColor RAM DAC VGA card support for single-screen
32000-color VGA cards.)
– VTR ADI interface.
– Better dithering for 8-bit still images.