CompuServe Thread

Hi Dave, Looking forward to the reports! Tom

I'm sure we'll all be interested in your postings (well, those of us unfortunate enough not to be able to get to SIGGRAPH) but I have a particular interest I hope you (or someone else attending) can help with, concerning the World Builder software by Digimation. I sure hope someone reliable can give us a hands on report on this (very) expensive product. In particular, I have three questions I doubt I can rely upon Digimation to give me an answer: 1) Is it worth it? Specifically, does spending all this money really buy a (fairly) easy to use landscape generator? The examples I've seen are impressive, but nothing I couldn't do using 3DS, _given the time_. To me, the key is how quickly you can do something with this product compared to 3DS. 2) How well does it integrate with 3DS? The biggest problem with VistaPro, IMHO, is that you can't really import the landscape into 3DS — too many polygons, and I don't see how WB can overcome this problem. Yes, I see I can bring 3DS objects into WB, but I want to use 3DS superior renderer and environment. 3) Can you make anything other than a "typical" earth-type landscape? Does the grass always have to be green, do you have to have grass at all, can the atmosphere be yellow or green, how alterable are the plants, etc.? For this price, I would expect a lot of variations possible, yet so far everything I've seen looks like terra firma. Any light (not heat) shed on this will be helpful for those of us homebound.