IMAGINE A SHORT HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE
In 1986 it occured to the owner of Impulse, that the images and animations that he had seen on the newly introuduced Amiga computer from Commodore Business Machines, now defunct, was the direction that Impulse should try and move toward. Impulse had spent the last several years working with the Macintosh computer from Apple. Impulse developed the MacNifty line of products which thousands of people enjoyed. Impulse was the first company to introduce a real time Audio Digitizer for the Mac. The writing was on the wall when Apple included thier own digitizing chip with the Mac. Impulse sold the rights to the digitzer and moved over to the Amiga full-time, and the journey into the unknown world of Ray Tracing, Object Building and Movie Making.
From this simple idea Impulse found a great programmer who started the creation of Silver. Silver is the great grand parent of Imagine. At the first Ami-Expo in New York city, Impulse introduced Silver and it was recieved by the Amiga community with praise and the all important support of sales. There were others in the market which drove Silver to become Turbo Silver. Turbo Silver brought on board a new captain of the keyboard, Zack Knutson. Zack has led the feature chase and code building since 1989. The 3D rendering wars marched on and Turbo Silver was the first ray tracer on the Amiga that the end user could do Imaage mapping, as well as the inclusion of computer generated texturing. Turbo Silver was faster than any other rendering product at that time on the Amiga, and then the Amiga got faster with the introduction of the 68040 FP processor. Now images were taking hours to make, prior to this a days render was not uncommon. The idea of doing an animation with a computer and a rendering program for the first time seemed to make sense and be something that coud be completed in a few months.
Then in 1990 Impulse upset the apple cart and introduced Imagine. The name said it all. If you have the ability to Imagine, Imagine could do it all. Now with a new spiffy quad view, point, face and edge capablity, new faster rendering speed, more textures, in short Imagine was new from stem to stern. Users around the world grabbed Imagine as fast as the postman could get the package to the mail box.
The weeks passed and the user based started asking for more. New features like Inverse Kinnematics, Bones, more sophisticated animation, lighting techniques that belonged only to the high end software like SoftImage or Alias. Impulse dug in hard and improved Imagine to version 2. Then just when it seemed like Impulse was on the verge of if they weren't already the industry leader for the Amiga. Commodore decided to up and quit, or at least the rumors were flying everywhere. Impulse made that difficult and costly decision to add the PC to its product support of Imagine. Having worked with the Amiga, the transisition was painfull and woefully long. Little did Impulse know of memory managers, or for that matter Windows. Windows was at that time just barely Windows 3.1. Never-the-less, Impulse pounded on the keyboards and eventually made the introduction of Imagine 2.0. It worked, it had memory problems, the mouse driver if not perfect made the software very ill. It was a modest introduction. Windows was a 16 bit OS, Imagine needed the full power of the Intel 32 bit processor, Windows was still out of the picture.
More time passed and Impulse introduced Imagine 3.0. More new features, more speed, and still more user requests. While the requests were coming in fast and furious, Imagine was taking more and more time to develope. It was obvious that the requests that users were making were no longer simple features, they were and still are today, math intensive, and require much effort to work. Still to this day Radiosity illudes Impulse, not for want of the algorithm, the process is 100 times slower than a simple ray trace. (there was a time in '87 where a ray trace was not a simple thing.)
Through all of this activity Commodore Business Machines stopped all US operations. The writing was not only on the wall it was everywhere Amiga users looked. It was the beginning of the end. Impulse made a comitment then which it still upholds today, continued support of Imagine for the Amiga. Each new version of Imagine has included a new version for the Amiga. Even now with the soon to be released version of Imagine for Windows, the Amiga version has just shipped to Amiga users around the world.
Imagine had reached version 4 before the release of Imagine for Windows. New features like the Texture playground, new and faster textures, improved interface control were only a few of the new features in version 4. It was obvious to Impulse and evey Imagine user that with the introduction of Windows 95, Impulse needed to make a version that would take advantage of a true multi-tasking OS. Oddly enough Imagine had finally come full circle. Although the Amiga computer was a mult-tasking computer from day one, Now the PC with more power and lower cost had finally reached the same lofty goal.
The history of Imagine is now almost 10 years in the making. Impulse has been dedicated to making a new version of Imagine about once a year. Sometimes it has seemed like eons before the next version found its way into the hands of Imagine users. Now Imagine for Windows is just over the horizon. Another milestone in the journey of Impulse and its simple goal to make really cool pictures and animations with a computer.
We at Impulse have made many friends over the years and we want to thank all of those who have made this journey a journey worth doing. We have to thank the many people who have pushed Imagine and pushed Impulse to new heights. Were it not for the dedication of the user to support Impulse and Imagine thee would not have been a journey, of course. So thanks to all of you who have supported our efforts, and we at Impulse applaud you for all of your interesting use of our software.
Impulse and its staff has lived by the phrase that "We are Listening". Now today 10 years later, this phrase is no less true than it was when we began. We are still listening. The market is getting very crowded out there, from the Amiga where 3 or 4 rendering programs co-exsisted, the PC has no less than 20, some with big name, and big money behind them. Impulse is a small company dedicated to only the market of 3D. We don't do 90 things poorly, we concentrate on the real matter of making Imagine the best that it can be.
Imagine is and will be the most powerfull and cost effective rendering product in the market. The future is as it was 10 years ago, when first we began, full of possibilities. If you already own Imagine, you have to be excited, if you don't own Imagine do your self a favor and get your copy on order today. Check the SPECIALS are of this site for an offer that is just to good to be true.
Of course this is the abridged version of Impulse and Imagine, look for the soon to be best selling book on your retailers shelf sometime in the next 10 years. Complete with real time page video, pop up holographs, new weblink and who knows what else......The more things change, the more things end up just where they started.
Most of all, thanks for stopping by, drop us a line and let us know what you think.
The Gang at Impulse webmaster@coolfun.com
