Subject: Imagine Professional v 1.0 ? (& LW!)
Date: Mon, 23 May 1994 09:12:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: Isaac Psycho Guajardo <psycho@shell.portal.com>

Some time ago I read from someone something that left me thinking ...
"Imagine doesn't do what the user expects, you have to tweek/turn/roll
to "maybe" get what you thought it was going to do at first ... that's
great for a hobby BUT in the proffesional (sp?) market time is money!"

Well Imagine has give me rewards on the income stand point, and if
you move on the known boundaries of the program it works flawlessly
but if you try to be Imagine-ative well most of the times i end up
with frustration (not a very good creativity boost) and a lot of lost
time. Imagine is a very good program - well beyond it's price, a lot
of power is intended in it, but, more and more i can't find the time
to unleash it - and this is NOT because of a learning curve, most if 
not all of the problems that i have encounter have been validated as
bugs by Impulse and some still haven't been fixed for a long time.

When i found the new depth of field feature i was thrilled, my first
rendering - the "photography book" traditional image, three chess
pieces aligned in row at some distance with the middle one in perfect
focus and the front/back blurred because of a narrow DOF, that combined
with a proper new antialiasing settings - and - wide open mouth =8-)
BUT, then it came the animation a 90 frame "camera focusing" simulation
and what i expected was a steady image of three chess pieces with the
camera focusing from the first one to the last one in 60 frames and
then focusing to the middle one while widening the DOF so everything
would be in perfect focus ... result ?, the image bounces on 5 different
frames as if the camera where "hit" by something, it's not the settings,
i have checked them !!!, if i test for strange movement in the animation
within the stage editor preview, it's rock solid (as expected). Well,
overall it "seems" to do what i was expecting except for those 5 frames
which send everything to the trashcan and again FRUSTRATION.

I like Imagine and would stick to it if there is very soon a "proffesional"
version of it - the one that does what i expect whithin its features.
Lightwave unbundled its coming next month and i have been waiting for it
for a long long time (not a lightrave fan - tnx god !) and at the same
price of Imagine - will it kill Imagine as someone said on Usenet ? well,
i know for sure i'm not the only one that was waiting for a real "LW without
a Toaster so i'm stuck with Imagine" option (i'm one of those who beleived
in C= and bought their brand new A3000 technology to be left alone in less
than a year!). Mike i know you and your people have been working very very
hard to get us a great product to be used and abused with joy by us, i
would have waited for it a few more weeks (months) to get it right - not 
a rushed out product, the feeling left in me after my first impressions
with 3.0 ... would you like to share your thoughts about this on the list?

Isaac Guajardo
"How old am i? i maybe younger than the Devil (31), but hell faster than him!"


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