#IPAS Disk 1
3 messages in this thread
Greetings. I hear persistent rumors that, because of the release of
LENZFX, Yost has allowed Disk 1 to go public domain. Now, I tried to
buy LENZFX, and when I called Digimation to order it for $295, as
advertised in the glossy new catalog I had gotten the day before, I
was told that the price had gone up. Fine, tell me about it, said
I. Oh, it's much better than what's described in the catalog, I was
told. How is it better, I asked. Oh, it's MUCH better. Can you
send me a NEW catalog, I asked. No, was the reply, there's no new
catalog yet… OK, so I call my convenient Autodesk Multimedia dealer
and order Disk 1, for less than I had budgeted for LENZFX, but not
for much less, and I get it in two days. Glorious, say I, and I
deliver to a client my first non-forensic work – my first work,
actually, requiring plug-ins over and above what came with Studio
itself… Now, I'm just starting to meet with some success here, and
from I see of the messages hereabouts, most of the people who
frequent this message base are somewhat cavalier about ordering
plug-ins at hundreds of dollars a shot, but for me it's still very
much a big deal. So, I ask, I just bought Disk 1, and you guys
haven't made it COMPLETELY public, have you? Tell me it's a nasty
lie and my $300 hasn't been misspent. Please?
Dear Eric,
I'm sorry that you had a problem trying to order LenZFX. Our catalog
was created months before LenZFX was actually released. At that time
we thought it would sell for $295. Then the programmer went nuts. The
catalog says that LenZFX comes with the 'popular Photpshop lens
flare". This WAS the original plan. When it finally shipped it came
with the photoshop lens flares, the lightwave lens flares AND the
ability to make ANY type of lens flare that you can think of. We added
special object occlusion options to lens flare and glows to make them
change size depending on their distance from the camera and to make
them interact with their surroundings. We added object tracking to
ZFOCUS, multiple color selections for lens flares, glows and hilights
and many, many other features. When it was all said and done we felt
that it was well worth $395. Most recently we have made it fully
netork aware and there are other upgrades in the works. Still all for
$395. We have learned a lesson though, and the line 'prices and
availability are subject to change without notice' will be added to
our new catalogs. Unfortunately, printing schedules and programming
schedules are wacky things.
As far as Yost #1 going public domain, I don't believe that this is
the case. Gary Yost made a very gracious offer to us if wew would
keep the price of LenZFX down at $395 (instead of a higher priced
networking version) and make a special price offer to users of the
Yost #1 disk. If you called without mentioning the Yost special, you
would have been quoted $395 as this is the regular price. Anyone who
wishes to upgrade from Yost #1 to LenZFX MUST mention that they want
to take advantage of the Yost upgrade offer for $295.
Please accept my apologies for any misunderstanding. If I can be of
any more assistance please call me.
We absolutely have NOT made Disk#1 public domain. We've simply
recognized that LenZFX is a much better solution for doing optical
effects, and we're supporting the 3rd party IPAS developers by
pulling our tools off the market. The exception to that is the
monochrome ixp and stars3 ixp, since they don't have a parallel in
LenZFX. I'll be uploading PD versions of JUST THOSE here to the
forum when I get some spare time.
DavidA's response to your note should answer the rest of your
questions.