#Journeyman
12 messages in this thread
I talk to Martin Hash now and then… Journeyman's out, at $500, available
only direct from Hash Enterprises. It uses spline pathces for modeling
everything, and spines (no L) for modeling "skeletons" that dictate the
"skeleton" that holds the spline patches. I saw a few demos of it at
SIGGRAPH, but that's it.
John, Thanks for the info. Since I posted that message I've spoken with
Martin. He certainly is enthusiastic about the product and sold me on it.
Frankly I've been disappointed with Imagine. I was hoping for some
breakthrough especially in the modeling module. I still feel more at home
with Sculpt. Journeyman sounds like some new concepts to master and lots of
fun – I'm always on the look out for new challenges that I think are
doable.
Shalom
Shalom, I share Martin's enthusiasm for his product, but I feel strongly
about Imagine's massive step up from Turbo Silver and Sculpt 4D. I was a
*true* Sculpt fan, in the days of Turbo Silver, and went to great lengths
to maintain the use of Sculpt for model creation, while using Turbo for
rendering. But Imagine addresses almost every feature of Sculpt. The
notable, and personally KILLER exception, is the absence of an
accelerate/decelerate on a path (or cycle object) function in Imagine. (
Other small nit picks exist, but not worthy of special mention here…) I
recommend both perseverence with Imagine, especially in light of coming
features/improvements, AND trying Journeyman. Both are fantastic products!
Scott
Scott,
Thanks for the reply. I have put in extensive time in learning Imagine and
agree it is a major improvement. It would help to see more exapmples given
by "experts" ( the folks who have alot of time to play around with these
programs) especially in the new areas of cycle editor etc. Far from
forsaking imagine, I'm expanding my horizons by looking into Journeyman.
How does object creation in Journeyman compare with sculpt and imagine?
Shalom
I know at least one of those "experts", who sits in his room month after
month exploring Imagine(was Turbo before) who does some incredible work.
But they're usually so distant from this world, and from people in general,
that no avenue brings them out to tell about it. Offers of big money might
do it… As for Journeyman, the creating process is quite similar to the
others, except you're working with spline control points. It takes a while
to get used to the tools for manipulating the splines, but the possible
shapes are many. The user interface is as intuitive, if not a bit more so,
than the others.Of course, this isn't the place to go into Hash's stuff.
That would be in the Hash Enterprises area 🙂 I recommend you give him a
phone call ( after putting together a list of questions…). He's very
amiable, and open to questions. ( 206-573-9427)
Scott, Thanks for the reply. I've just received journeyman, and for the
last 72 hours have been going through the tutorials and manual. What a
super program!! I think the interface is outstanding. The cubic patch
method of modeling appears to be what I have been looking for. In sculpt I
was creating my best effects with a combination of repeated extrusions of
splines. Journeyman just makes it so much easier. I'll need a few more
days (read weeks to months :)) to really master it but I already feel very
at home with the program. In reality it seems to combine the ease of
modeling I associate with sculpt and the advanced rendering features of
imagine. I'll keep in touch.
Thanks, Shalom
John! John! Tell me you're doing, or considering a conversion module for
Journeyman! Minimally, all it has to do is get the points and lines in,
from Imagine. I can also see a market for developing spline base objects
for the Wavefront/Alias/etc. markets. How about it! Scott
I'd suspect there's only about 200 copies of Journeyman out there.
Journeyman costs $500, and so far, Hash Enterprises won't send us one…
we'd also need info about their file format. I talked with them recently,
so maybe they'll send us something. Meanwhile, we're hard at work on
InterChange 2.0, and I'm not going to spend $500 to get it. If you want a
module, tell Hash Enterprises to help us out! After they send us the
program and the information we need, we've got to invest many, many hours
of work to help out their customers.
Darn those marketing aspects 🙂 But don't forget about the potential for
using Journeyman to build spline based objects for other platforms. I will
put in my $500 comment to Martin Hash about it though… Thanks! Scott
Thanks for helping to pester Martin. 🙂 "Potential"? Oh, you mean that
really big market of the fraction of the people of the fraction who own
Journeyman, who want to make spline models for other platforms. I'm sure
Martin's sold more Journeyman than Syndesis has sold Wavefront modules.
What potential? We get lots of nibbles from people who are apparently
worried about being able to get their objects to high-end platforms, but
sales are generally slow, which forces us to charge higher prices for these
limited-appeal modules, which some might argue reduces the demand again…
on the other hand, someone running AutoCAD has already dropped nearly $2000
on software plus about $5000 on hardware. Wavefront's much higher. Which
spline-patch-based program were you referring to? Renderman?
I understand the "potential" aspect, but at the same time, I could
understand paying $200-$400. for the conversion module. For the amount of
money I might make, I would take a chance and buy it. The availability of
such capable software could go a long way to establishing the Amiga as a
low cost workstation to supplement the high end systems that some mid range
graphic houses are being bottle necked down by during there attempts to pay
off the mortgage on the system. I know of a few places here in Vancouver
that are not all that happy with either their Alias/? modellers, or with
the fact that they pretty well have to leave the system alone while they're
rendering a big project. ( running on SGI 4D/35 and such) The software I'm
thinking of is Alias, Wavefront Visualizer, Soft Image, TDI.
I realize it's a major venture for you to develop these things, and the
risks are high, but I can only tell what I want 🙂 Thanks for listening!
We've got the description of Softimage's format, and just got an update to
Wavefront's format. It's nice to think about all the other ways someone
could make money with this module… but we're only concerned about the
development cost and potential return on investment of making and selling
the module. I'm not about to become an Amiga dealer.