Steven Worley Apex Software Publishing 405 El Camino Real Suite 121 Menlo Park, CA 94025 July 20, 1992Mr. Worley: In response to the Feedback section on page 4 of Understanding Imagine 2.0, here are some suggestions, some constructive criticisms, and some things I have observed while working with Imagine. I'm sure many of these you've heard of already, since the book has been available for a while now. So knowing the risk of redundancy, let us move on.(1) section 3.4.3 pages 39 and 40 - Imagine will use its' own formats, RGB8 and RGBN, as well as IFF for brush mapping.(2) section 3.4.3 page 40 - Although this version of Imagine will read and use Halfbrite pictures for brush mapping, many times the Halfbrite colors will map as black. It is best to convert these images to another mode before using them. There are other problems that I suspect may be caused by the IFF chunk that DPaint writes, more on this later.(3) section 3.4.3 page 45 - Altitude mapping.... It does indeed work with a flat wrap. Make sure you input a size into the transformation requester instead of scaling the y axis. Imagine is smart enough to know that you want your Altitude brush to go all the way through the object. But it won't work with a DPaint picture. I suggest converting it with ADPro to 24 bit RGB8 or IFF. Imagine does that internally anyway, so there's really no extra memory required.(4) section 3.4.3 page 47 - Animated brush maps - Just this past weekend I attended a meeting with Victor Osaka and Tim Wilson and others, and we had a very animated discussion (no pun intended) on this subject. This is an area of Imagine that is giving people fits. I'm sure there is more than one solution to this hassle, but this is a surefire method that works for me. You need to rename your sequence of images to pic.0001.0001, pic.0001.0002, pic.0001.0003, etc. Then, when you are entering the full path into the brush or globals requester, you DO NOT use the second file extension. In other words, Work: ADPro/Anim.pics/pic.0001. Imagine will automatically append the second extension(s). The max sequence field should be input with the last two digits of the second file extension.(5) 3.7.3 page 56 and 57 - Skin - If you are willing to do a little work, then Skin, in conjunction with Convert/IFF, is an unbelievably powerful tool. If you have access to a scanner, Convert/IFF will let you load a sequence of images such as CAT Scans, blueprints, topological data from a map, or any other sectional information. You can then use Skin to create a 3D object from this data. The only bringdown is that you have to rework the points and edges so that everthing matches. One of the numerous suggestions that I've sent to Impulse is that when you select an image for Convert/IFF, a requester should appear letting the user input the number of points.(6) section 3.8.2 pages 58 and 59 - Bugs and the Evil "Error2" - I've never had the software lockup, but I've had it take a very, very, very long time to either return an error, do the slice, or do nothing at all. On occaision I've even had it give me a bunch of useless axes. The longest I've had it wait is 45 minutes.(7) section 7.4 pages 106 and 107 - Position and Hinge - Hinges are very poorly documented but arguably the most powerful feature of all of Imagine's animation capabilities. The key to understanding Hinge is to realize that it requires the use of both the Stage (reset relative, reset alignment, Right Amiga C) and the Action (hinge bar) editors. And to fine tune the Hinges you have to move freely between the two, similar in concept to the relationship between the Cycle Editor and the Detail editor. In essence Hinges allow for unlim ited heirarchical grouping, ungrouping, and regrouping of ALL objects during the course of an animation. I did an intro where the camera was following a spline, and the track object was following another spline. The words of the Flying Logo were Hinged first to the camera, then to the track object, one by one. The result was a very elegant animation that would have been a bear to do any other way. By the way, in your book you mention the Hinges ability to modify trajectories, but the alignment of the hinge object can modify the trajectory in three dimensions.(8) section 8.2.1 pages 123,124, and 125 - B/W and Color Wire and Shade - It should be mentioned that Color Shade is supported in 24Bit, including DCTV, so that it is possible to render 24Bit animations incredibly fast.(9) section 8.2.2 pages 125 and 126 - Picture Sizes - Imagine 2.0 will render up to 32,000 by 32,000.(10) section 8.2.2 page 126 - Stereo 3D - Both DCTV and the FC24 support the Haitex glasses.(11) section 8.2.3 page 127 - Frame Options - The only time I render in ILBM-24 bit is when I know the images are going to be single framed through a Toaster. That is the only time the penalty in rendering time (vs. RGB8) is worth it. When doing complicated ray-traced stills, the RGB8 option will render 15% to 30% faster than ILBM24. The RGB8 files are considerably larger, however.(12) section 8.2.3 page 127 - Frame Options - Although Imagine will only write 4 bitplane DCTV pictures, you can specify a 600x200, non-interlaced, non-overscan image by setting the aspect ratio to 5x12, turning off the lace button, inputting a 600x200 image size, and selecting the DCTV button. Imagine will even happily build the animation for you, although you'd probably want to use one of the PD conversion programs to drop the the individual frames to 3 bitplanes and then making the anim. Well, there it is. I hope this is of some use to you. Though I've only gone through the book lightly, I have to congratulate you on a fantastic product. It is truly wonderful to have such a reference handy when in the heat of Imaginewerk. Please feel free to write or call if you have any questions about these comments. Thank you, Bill Graham