Pie-Rat!
8 messages in this thread
In talking to Roman, our understanding is that you can (somehow) create new
primatives and add them to the li. There are even open spots for them in
the editor screen. But I have no idea how to do it, or what the
limitations are. Without phong shading and the ability to take advantage of
HAM for shading, It's not currently worth the $2000 to us to find out.
Caligari does not allow you to build arbitrary solids the way S3d does and
Tsilver would if a human could use the miserable interface. Also: that
gorgeous 3d -wirefram environment has its own mouse handler. Side effect:
you cant use a serial-port pad like Kurta or Summagraphics with it. Net
usefulness to serious users: 0. Works nice with the mouse, though. Other
packages may ve worth looking at. BTW, the $2000 is for the Professional
version. "consumers" should be getting a knocked down , non animating (I
think) version from Electronic Arts if it ever gets finished. same basic
problems though. Mr. Know-it-all J H H Lowengard
Henry – We it appeared from the demo that arbitrary objects could not be
built. And keeping a list of primatives in memory does allow for much
fancier manipulation. It appears that The author has completed the
interface to 3-demon for Turbo Silver, and If modeler ever ships, using it
with interchange should provide an alternative editor.
We have decided NOT TO change our editor, as no matter what we propose we
seem to get flamed from one side or another. This is unfortunately an
situation where we probably can't make the majority happy. There are, you
should know a fair amount of users who don't have a problem with our object
editor. I have heard about the EA version, of Caligari, and I don't think
that anyone in the rendering biz sees either version of the product as much
of a market threat. We will just keep pluggin along…….
Stan – I much, much prefer your interface to 3D's. The only alternative
that I've seen that may be as much to my liking is 3-demon. But, only
because of the fact that you can see the solid shapes (hidden line removal
would be helpful). My only regret where TS is concerned is the need for a
HD. <<sigh>> I've been shopping for one since I got TS, so, I guess it's
not TOO much of a regret. <grin>
Jim – quite frankly I prefer 3-Demon to our interface too!. I have
finished testing their Turbo Silver save feature, and it is now flawless.
You might want to give them a holler, to see what they are going to do
about upgrading current owners. You don't need a hard drive as long as you
don't want to do any animations! <very large grin>. Stan
Stan- that may be cured in a week or so (fingers crossed). I might be able
to get a hard drive, if certain things go right. <grin> I don't have
3-Demon yet, but, maybe sometime. I wish it had a TS load feature. As for
animations, I may make them using TS stills and the Director. Anyway, my
primary use for animation seems to be for video, so, TS is still okay.
<smile> -Eet-
I used 3-Demon for about 4 hours and it is too sloppy for me. It
seems like nothing is ever exact. And the pointerare cute, but just slow
down the speed of the program. The solid is a nice feature, but again when
you add shading, the shading is very sloppy. The one thing that I like
about the program is the magnet function, it works so much better than the
SA function. The magnet function is the only reason I use 3-demon, it alows
me to create sloppy objects, like pillows and blankets.
Agreed on the speed of 3Demon. I have always felt it was a little slow
perhaps due to all the gadgets,dials & Other widgets. I'm planning to
spend some time on MOdeler 3D this afternoon to see how is fares up against
the others. We also got FIF version II, but I still find that one too
cumbersome for me. BTW I Did notice that 3Demon runs alot better on an 020
machine. If you don't have a horrendously large object the speed isn't too
bad.