> Hi Russel, > I couldn't agree more. Hi Chris :
OK , please allow me to play so called 'devils advocate' here for a minute or 99 . > I've said before, RS should take a half-year off of development, and > spend it explaining all the goodies already in the program we don't know > how to use. Warning ! Not going to happen and do not hold your breathe . Any business person will tell you "do not try to fix what is not broken" and the Realsoft strategy is working just fine , as is , for now . However , I certainly do understand that the provided Doc's can be a bitch at times and I would agree with you totally, that it would be fantastic if Realsoft would hire a couple of people to re-do the HTML manual and add a series of DVD tutorials based on all kinds of cool stuff that we can very easily do with RS3D . Fact of the matter is , it's not going to happen unless the user community does it , and as we well know , that also will not happen in a way that has any kind of an impact (however , please do see the frog UV mapping tutorial shown in the forum recently by yra ) . I think if we really look at the situation we "kind'a-sort of" have to arrive at some relevant ... and a few most primary conclusions . 1) Realsoft devotes _MOST_ of it's energies into coding advanced 3D . 2) As frustrating as it can be sometimes , almost everything works . 3) A Service Pack update is a free bug fix (please report all bugs!) 4) A Service Pack update is also a free incremental upgrade . > They held some sort of educational conference thingy a couple years > back, and I begged them to throw it on some dvd's. > I will pay! > cm You and me and she will pay , but!!... do the numbers justify a DVD , especially with all the digital pirating going on these days ? With some companies , like http://www.autodesk.com/3dsmax it all boils down to accounting . $20-30-40K USD into any one particular area is just a matter of continued justification . (use it or loose it) With Realsoft , dropping $20,000 on a DVD would probably mean a re-coup of a third of that initially , and then with a V6 release those V5.x DVD's will _immediately_ become suspect to most users . As Russell Jones said "it would be really great" . However , if anyone truly felt the need to provide it , then it might actually happen and if not ... then not . I think if you take a good hard look at RS3D you will see that the included HTML manual is designed to get you going . Beyond that it seems that we have several alternative solutions to our desires ... 1) this mailing list 2) the forum 3) the IRC channel 4) Vesa or Juha (via email) 5) other 3D web sites that use very similiar methodologies 6) the strip club (Amber digs her PS2 graphics) As far as instructional DVD's , or even RS cleaning up it's rusting home site is concerned ... I would say "not" . The RS concentration is on providing state-of-the-art 3D animation tools at a very low price-point , and that will be the impetus for some time to come , I would guess . Or at least until huge 3D companies like autodesk begin to give ultra-advanced 3D softwares away for free , so as to do away with smaller , more concentrated efforts , in a continued effort to gain dominating total unanswerable control of the industry/(art). Let's hope that , that strategy is not so effective after all . To have 3D Studio license your efforts has got to be the best way to go but , then again , how and why hollywood has never caught on to RS3D is totally beyond me . RS is as open-ended as possible , VSL ...Free SDK ...realman and it goes on & on ... but somehow the world-class creators have not yet managed to see the obvious potentials of RS3DV5.1 . That day will most surely come and when it does we will all reap the benefits of the inevitable influx ... Have a Nice Day ! studio www.niagara.com/~studio www.studiodynamics.net > Russell Jones wrote: > > It would be really great if RS came with an extra CD (or preferably > > DVD) that was filled with video tutorials to visually show how these > > things are done.
