#Works FIne for Me!
6 messages in this thread
Tom,
Thanks for your positive comments.
There are a lot of people out there that love this program. It does so many
great things its hard to know where to begin.
I used to bill myself as the first person to totally give his life over to 3D
Studio. I find Animator Studio equally exciting and just as much fun.
Especially the integration with sound, makes this program a dream come true.
It is release 1, so certain problems will crop up. If you remember 3D Studio
release 1, it was also not without it's share of the above. One thing we're
pretty good at, here at Autodesk, and that's finding out where we need to fix
things, and then fixing them.
To all you guys who had negative experiences, hang on, we'll convert you yet.
Send in your bugs and we'll get them fixed.
–marK
Mark,
Thanks for replying to my positive comments about Animator Studio. Now,
for some less than positive observations. Overall, the program puzzles me.
It's target market seems to be the "average" Windows graphics user, considering
its limitations with Win 3.1 only. But from there, the "average" stops. I've
never seen a WIndows (or other) program that makes such demands on system
resources. Were someone to ask me what type of system they should get to run
Animator Studio, I'd probably suggest a fast Pentium, at least 32 megs of RAM,
a fast, expensive video card and at least a one-gig hard drive, with high
access speed. This is what it seems to take to fully utilize the program's
features. These are extraordinary requirements, and I've read notes from many
eager users with smaller systems who are greatly disappointed.
Was product management not aware of these requirements when you designed
the program? Or were you counting on us all upgrading to systems like this
sooner or later anyway? I'm a heavy graphics user, and find I don't need near
that type of system to create products for the high-end market.
Don't get me wrong — you have an exceptional product. It's just
severely lacking when it comes to memory management. Frankly, I thought I'd
be able to create a great 640×480 game demo with Animator Studio. I gave up
about two weeks ago and went back to AAWIN, which works fine. Sorry for the
negative feedback, maybe you should have let a sleeping dog lie (g).
Tom
Marlin Studios
Hello Mark
I really appreciate it when developers are willing to work closely with
users.It sounds like thats the situation with AS.etc. user who wasintending to
buy AS until I became concerned with some of the issues raised here. The manual
was a miscalculation but a minor issue ( yes I vote for a manual ), NT and Win
95 support are on the way. The major issue for me is the necessity for huge
swap files. If you could get that one under control I will buy it and begin
complaining about the little details (G).
<<Recommendations – Use smaller brush, or buy a faster machine.
Its hard to accept the inevitability of such slowness of paint brushes when the
same feature is faster in another program (Painter). I waited until Painter 2
because of the same kind of reports about painter 1.
<<we don't recommend using this on 486 50
3ds, photostyler, Painter, Elastic Reality all work fine on my 486/50. Are
they less sophisticated and powerful than AS or is the code tighter?
Ed
Ed, may I put in a word?
I have been one of the vocalists here, however, I use AS every day 6 – 8 hrs. a
day. On all graphics programs that are this powerful you will run into the swap
file scenario. For instance, in Photoshop or Composer you need 5 – 6 times the
file size to work with a single frame image. With various swap buffers going
this can get to be a very large empty space needed. It's the way it is.
Will
<<Photoshop or Composer you need 5 – 6 times the file size to work with a
single frame image.It's the way it is.
You are right about the demands of working with bitmaps. The problems of
working with huge files in photoshop has led to Live Picture, a different means
of handling images. Fauve is also comming out with a software rather than
hardware ( more ram, faster cpu) solution. These are creative solutions to a
problem that had been solved by using workstations. The problem of working with
hundreds of video resolution files may also be mitigated by innovative
solutions created by software designers who dont accept that thats the way it
is.
BTW as a test, Ive just loaded a number of 752x480x32bit frames into Painter
that far exceeds my RAM and swap file. Its not fast but it works without
crashing.
The tools we use are both incredibly advanced and at the same time
primitive,productive and frustrating. Thats computers.
Ed
<<The tools we use are both incredibly advanced and at the same time
primitive,productive and frustrating.>> Ed, your'e right. I started with a
Commodore 64 at the same time I had created a continuous tone offset printing
technique for my hand drawn lithographs. Boy did the computer dissappoint me.
But along came the original (320 x 200) Animator and I bought it then had to go
out and buy a 386 to work with it. then came AniPro, 3DStudio, blah, blah,
etc., so I sold my printing equipment and here I am a computer graphics junkie.
Altamira Composer is one of the very nicest programs. Too bad it never got to
version 2. Version 1 is really out there.
Will