Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    For those who are interested..... I received a one page letter
    from Impulse announcing that it was time to order your copy of
    Imagine, if you are a registered user.  They apologized for the 
    wait and indicated that a couple of weeks more should do it for the
    packaging and documentation.  They also said that the 60 day window
    will start soon... the letter itself said that the 60 days hinged
    on the product 'announcement'.  Now to find that credit card........
    
                                 Bob
                                                                

    I've been waiting for that letter myself.  When did you receive it?
    
    mark

    Saturday.
    
    Bob

    While the rest of the world is waiting for the letter,I was waiting for 
    no letter. I got home,and mine was on the kitchen table. I had mixed
    feelings about it. I for sure want Imagine,but my wallet is going to
    take a beating for the 150.00. So I was content to know it was on it's
    way but not yet ready. Now I'll have to scramble to get the funds for
    IMAGINE. Sixty days is going to cut it close for me at present. I was
    hoping for another month to pass before it was released. Of course this
    is why it is ready now,so ... 
    	I reformatted my hard drive last night,and have not put Silver back
    on yet. Here I am, looking at the announcement of the next generation
    rendering software for the Amiga,and wondering if I will miss my old
    friend Turbo Silver. It seemed strange not to have SV on the drive. 
    I decided to break my drive into 4 partitions and have been busy with 
    Pro Video Post, so when the letter came, along with my SAS update I
    figured it was time rebuild. So when I do get IMAGINE I have a home for
    it. The possability of a package that may retire Turbo Silver is to me
    a mind boggling thought. Most times when I update I use the old
    original disk for working copies.(ie: 1.0 PPage disks). In this
    instance I guess I'll just tuck the disks away for awhile. Anybody else
    have thoughts on how IMAGINE will do in replacing Silver??

re: -1

I for one will wait for a couple of reviews before I get Imagine.  While
Turbo's rendering capabilities are very nice, the UI and the documentation
range from mediocre to amazingly bad (IMO).

If Impluse doesn't improve on these items, I'm not dropping $150.  I got
the impression from their letter that documentation was still an afterthought.
What did they call it, a "goodie"?  Sigh...

Steve

    I want to create a head.  Any head will do, but mine would be better.
    A bust of myself.  I am hoping that Imagine will let me do that.  I've
    been trying to create this head in Silver, sweeping, spinning,
    extruding, splitting, cutting, pasting, molding, etc...and have gotten
    to know SV pretty well, albeit no closer to the magnificient head I'm
    envisioning-with sun rising through the clouds in the background and
    as the dappled sunlight falls upon this head it says,(in a sampled
    James Brown voice) "Hyeaahhhhhhh".  Leaving Silver behind for, hopefully, 
    a better piece of software(and double hopefully a better manual) will 
    leave me no regrets.  I recall waiting 16, 18, 28 hours for a rendering
    to finish(before I installed a 25Mhz FPU), waiting for this shining
    ray-traced masterpiece to illuminate my screen, to save and to show
    my friends and to say, "THIS is why I use an AMIGA", only to view
    in dismay a muddied, lackluster mess due to over-use of the dreaded
    "Reflection" attribute.  Yea, Silver has a steep learning curve and I
    have yet to reach its crest.  Sounds like a eulogy, huh?  For all the
    frustration and education it has given me Silver is still one of the 
    best values for the money.  On to Imagine!
    
    md

    
    Re: making a head etc...
    
    Never used Silver, but Sculpt 3D/4D uses a 'magnet' tool that can pull
    or push on selected vertices.  I've seen some very respectable human
    heads modeled in Sculpt.
    
    Ed.

    
    Yeah, I've dissected a couple of the Sculpt heads after converting them
    into Silver's format.  They gave me some ideas but...  Last night I
    downloaded and installed DKBtrace.  I am going to give it a try.
    
    md

	Since I have held on through TS and TS/SV I figured I'd just go for 
Imagine sight unseen (after all it could hardly be worse).

	About 3 weeks back I called Impulse and asked about the release date
(which was of course 'just a couple more weeks'), since it was still close I
placed an order with them to be shipped when available.  Just received my
plastic bill but have not yet seen the software (a bit suprised at that).

	In the Amazing article on the Firecracker-24 the author writes that 
they used the Imagine Object Editor to build a skull type object for rendering
to the display board.  The author commented very favourably on the ease of use
and the good display (sounded good to me anyways).

wayne

    Hey guys,
         I got my first copy of IMAGINE version .9.  The software does not
    have all the functionality yet.  It looks very classy, and the manual 
    explains the function of commands, not how to put together something.
    However on the disk there is a tutorial that creates a morph of a
    sphere into a cube.  The stuff looks incredible, but looks like it will
    take a while to learn to use effectively.  I haven't used it much yet,
    I got is yesterday, but if anyone else got theirs and done some neat
    stuff please don't be shy.
    
    Ian

    I spoke with Impulse today.  As of Monday they stopped shipping version
    .9 and will start shipping the "full commercial version with all
    functionality and packaging" in about a week.  They told me that if I
    ordered Imagine today I would receive it in two weeks.
    
    md