Background music is Copyright © 1996, 1997 by Michael D. Walthius. All Rights Reserved.
hapter
4 deals with the detail editor. The third sentence says "The
drawings in Appendix A show all the menu contents of the Detail
Editor". I did not find any appendix A anywhere.
Objects may be quick rendered by selecting the option from the editor
drop down menu or clicking on the quick render icon. The quick render
dialog box has many options. An image of any size may be rendered
depending on the amount of RAM available. There are 6 different
rendering types available. Trace is short for raytrace which gives
the highest quality and is also the slowest. The manual devotes a few
pages to the other rendering methods, what they do and when they
should be used.
I didn't see any mention of pixel aspect ratio in the manual even
though it is an option for adjustment. The lighting tab allows the
user to turn on a light for rendering purposes. The user can control
the color, intensity and angle. The globals tab provides access to
settings for the background color and ambient light color. The
globals tab also provides for defocusing the image and for loading a
global brush and a global backdrop image. The stars/fog tab provides
access to settings that allow the user to set a global fog by color,
length, top, bottom and allows for fog falloff with height. The stars
options include density, size and color saturation. The anti-alias
tab provides sliders that allow the user to reduce the effects of
jaggies as much as possible. The options tab provides for everything
else Impulse wanted the user to have but didn't exactly fit into a
neat category. The options tab deals with genlock color, resolve
depth, soft shadow element count for raytracing, ground points for
the quick modes, etc.
ext
the manual goes into the variety of menu options and controls that
the detail editor has. I will hit on a few of them. One of the more
interesting and powerful features of Imagine is the ability to
customize the toolbars. I didn't verify every single one but after a
brief examination of what tools are available I suspect that
everything on a drop down menu can have an icon associated with it. 
Of course all the tool bars can be dragged about and placed wherever
the user wishes. New tool bars may be created and then selected for
whatever specific work is being performed depending on the user's
needs. Imagine also has a coordinates feature that provides the user
with the location of the cursor in 3 dimensions at all times. Images
created in Imagine may have a wide variety of appearances via the
view/perspective drop down menu. The edit mode will display a sphere
as a simple circle. The color mode will display the sphere as a solid
with the base color determined by the user. Wireframe, solid and
shaded are also available. Imagine has a zone feature via the view
drop down menu. This is analogous to an area render feature that
other applications have. The user can select an area of the window to
render. This is extremely handy when working on large, complex
images. With the zone feature a small portion of a large object can
be modified then just that area can be rendered. 
2D
objects can be imported and converted into Imagine objects via the
object/convert image drop down menu. The manual describes how
object/new/ground and sphere are special, procedural objects and are
different from the primitive objects. Right mouse button support is
good in Imagine. The adjacent image shows what controls are available
when an object is selected and the right mouse button is clicked. The
object is going to be moved in all 3 axis. The small image is what
appears when the cursor is at the right edge of a window and the
right mouse button is clicked. This allows immediate selection of any
window or the quad view.
ext
the manual has the user create a sphere primitive, select the pick
point selection method and use the lasso to select a small group of
points on the sphere in the front view window. The selected points
turn yellow. The user is then instructed to look in the top and front
view windows and notice that several points are selected there as
well. 
The
selection process is thus demonstrated to be 3D in nature. The user
then moves the selection around. Holding the shift key allows
additional points to be selected. I couldn't figure out how to
deselect a point. I would have thought holding down on the alt key or
control key then clicking on a point would have permitted this but it
didn't. The manual discusses open paths and closed paths. It includes
a mini tutorial on open paths. An open path is created. Then the mode/edit
path drop down menu is accessed. The manual instructs the user to
create a pretzel. I was not able to do this although I did stretch
and twist the line around. Next the user creates a plane primitive,
places the plane next to the path then selects the
functions/conformations/to path drop down menu. The result is the
adjacent image to which I added some texture and color. Frankly I
think it would be difficult to achieve specific results using this
method without a lot of practice. 
Next
the manual deals with deformations. First a plane is created. Then
the object/new/deform tool is activated which launches the previously
illustrated deform tool dialog box. 
The
OK button is clicked. The user can now observe that the deform tool
is a mesh that encompasses the plane primitive. It is important that
the deform tool's mesh completely overlaps the primitive being
deformed. 
Next
the deform tool is selected then stretched, sheared and twisted.
Next the shift key is held down and both the deform tool and the
plane are selected. Then the function/deform tool drop down menu is
accessed which launches the select deformation tool dialog box. The
dtool_3_3_3 icon is selected, the OK button clicked and the image
rendered. The adjacent image, above left, reflects the results. The
manual states this deformation feature is analogous to the NURBS
feature of more expensive 3D modelers. Unlike the conformations to a
path feature I didn't have any problems controlling this. Imagine has
a check object feature via the object drop down menu. This is to
ensure that the object's surface has structural integrity with no
overlaps. There is some discussion about the transformation dialog
box which is accessible via the object drop down menu. The importance
of axis and the proper selection of the correct axis for
transformations is discussed at length. Imagine's join function on
the object drop down menu turns multiple objects into one object.
They do not have to be touching or even near each other. They cannot
become unjoined after joining. Imagine can perform skinning
operations. The adjacent image, above left, was created by creating a
disk, going to the pick point selection mode, selecting the center
point then deleting it. This left a circle which was copied and
pasted 3 times then each circle was resized. Each circle was selected
in turn then the skin feature was used to skin the 4 circles. Imagine
has a slice feature however I was not able to get it to work by
following the directions in the manual.
All pages copyright © Roger A. Moncrief, Indepth Reviews, 1996, 1997
Thanks to Judy Gefter, !LuM! and Charles Blaquiere for their advice and counsel, some I heeded and some I didn't.