Re: Animasia 3-D

[fl332@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John L. Graham)]

Jeesh, where to start? After so many disappointments with v1.0 of
Apple IIGS software being incomplete or buggy Animasia was a
delightful surprise. I was originally hesitant to buy Anismasia 3-D
because of the price & v1 syndrome and the fact you couldn't order
by phone (gosh, am I getting lazy or what?). Anywho, I decided to
bite the bullet and order it.

Anamasia is a class act from the word go. It comes with 4 disks
(wrapped in a origami model of the Anamasia logo), a tutorial manual
and a reference manual. Installation is straight forward and simple
and you can be up and tinkering in no time. I'm about half-way
through the Tutorial and I can't praise it enough! The Tutorial is
clearly written, well paced, and easy to follow. But more importantly
Animasia is well behaved, behaves _exactly_ like the Tutorial says
and is a lot of fun. The program itself is unique, but I describe it
as a cross between Deluxe Paint II and Fantavision on steroids with
3-D and animation thrown in for good measure. What's amazing is it
handles 3-D as slick and smoothly as any paint program. It's already
helped me solve some problems I had on how to depict the 3-D sky on
a 2-D screen while I'm working on TSGS v4.3. It's also heping me
with a project at work where I need to draw what a full-scale proto-
type reactor system will look like and Animasia is proving invaluable
in helping me out. Creating animations is shear simplcity. Just for
kicks I've created animations of a spring, globe, and a flat ring
rotating in 3-D. Neat stuff! And I'm less than half-way through the
Tutorial! For all it's simplicity, Animasia offers a suite of powerful
tools I haven't used yet such as cameras and lighting, but so far
Animasia 3-D strikes me as one of those rare programs that's simple
enough you can start doing amazing things right away, but powerful
enough you can spens a _long_ time exploring its capabilities.

Gee, can you tell I liked it? Some of the best dollars I've spent in
a long time :)

Have fun!

John