From: alexr@capella.EETECH.McGill.CA (Alex Rousseau)
Subject: Re: Caligari and other features
Keywords: n
Organization: McGill University - Montreal, CANADA.
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 92 06:30:36 GMT


Please save your money for something else than Caligari 2. It absolutely stinks
! I bought it 4 months ago, used it for 2 weeks during which I grew from an
initial admirer of the interface to the eventual despiser of everything else
about the program; it stinks. (again).

Let me be a bit more objective.

How about: 

	Mouse acceleration: No. slower than usual actually; to the point
that it takes by my calculations about 4 feet of travel (pad time) to cross
the screen.

	Hierarchical design: Yes.

	Hierarchical animation: No. What the hell is the point of creating
hierarchical objects if you cannot even access sub-components of the hierarchy
in the animation module. Go figure...

	Visible lights: No sir! You have to move your point of view to where
you want the light to be. Then click. Of course, you cannot move your lights
at animation time. Hell...

	Rendering: HAM-E, DCTV, HAM. That's it. Come on guys, everyone else
offers 24 bit rendering. What makes you so special ? (Not the price...)

	The interface looks great: Yes.

	The interface sucks as well: Yes! Show this program to a Mac owner and
he will look very tired, believe me. No continuity, related items in different
menus (and I am not hard to please).

	The manual is an example of good prose and logical design: NOT!

	Did I forget to mention that multitasking is disabled ? Yes indeed, 
incredible but true. The only non-multitasking program since ...blank - I
don't remember... Oh yeah, Psygnosis games don't multitask...

	I could go on.

	I will...

	Non-standard file format for textures. You need ADPro for that, with 
the optional rendition saver...

	The support: what support. No newsletter, no mailing list, NO NOTHING.


By the way, I do not work for Octree...

Your question: What can I get (besides Imagine and the Toaster) ?

My answer:	If you have an accelerator board, get Real3D. You will get
hooked in no time at all on the quality of rendering. The program is responsive
and solid modeling can become very addictive, very quickly. The program suffers
from a few minor flaws (and I mean minor...) but version 2.0 (due in October)
should more than make up for it. I believe it will be called Reality and was
shown at a recent Toronto show. How about particle animation, camera lens flare
effect, DXF (Autocad) input and output, Bsplines, customizable interface (a 
window that holds your favourite tools), multiple windows in the modeler, 
including a rendering window that renders while you design your object, that
allows copy and paste operations and which does not stop its rendering upon
receiving the new object but rather incorporates it in its ongoing calculations
, a Forth interpreter in a window (for the stack-oriented among us), a revised
interface.

I do not work for Activa...

No accelerator board, well that's an easy one. Get Draw4D Pro. The manual is
a joy, texture mapping is the easiest of all the programs that I use, rendering
times are fast (Real3D with a 68040 gives me an average rendering time of 20
minutes - range: from 4 minutes to 8 hours depending on complexity (although
we are talking ray-tracing and great quality) / Draw4DPro (scanline only)
renders always in less than 2 minutes. I believe that it is being renamed
Aladdin for version 2.0 (also due out next month) and will feature even more
... euh, features. A solid buy this one. Their support is outstanding, what
with 4 newsletters a year, a great manual and a knowledgeable technical
crew. Definitely a 2 thumbs up (just like Real3D actually).

Have fun.

Alex.