Imagine 3D v5.xx or V6.xx
 

Dear Fellows, z!Erec here.

Is it still possible to buy the latest and greatest Imagine3D
V5.xx or even V6.xx. From my researches the latest is a 5.19 by CAD Technologies. Are they still in business? Last activity was around 2012 iirc.
Hope you can prove me wrong as I would love to see a Version more recent that I can cover in a big Review of the Amiga Future Magazine.
Release candidates and betas are welcome!
Hope to here from you guys :-)

Thanks in advance
z!Erec

It's funny you should ask this because I was a paying Imagine user back in the day and I payed $100 for the Constant Upgrade Program (CUP) from Imagine v5 to v6:
http://www.imaginefa.com/Acup_feat.shtml
Can't remember exactly when this was but I'd guess around 1998..
Lack of updates was the final straw that made me abandon the Amiga and move to Windows PC and 3dsmax.

By now I'm pretty sure v6 isn't coming :D

I have seen V5 versions on the FTP, but it is all rather messy as the CUP did result in multiple versions. So many of the Amiga software programs were for sale by smaller companies, but they seem to be dead.

Last original physical floppy I got simply reads Imagine 5 then all versions released after that were digital downloads from the ACUP download area.. Supposedly it would be updated in many small updates finally leading to v6. (which never came out)
I could only find 5.13 on my old hard drive so that was the latest I ever got but it seems there were more versions after that, but by then I had given up.

Interesting. I never got to V5. I moved my V4 across to the DOS version until 3D Studio Max came along and worked inside Windows NT. Never looked back.

The developer Martin McKenzie is easy enough to find on LinkedIn (just add the words CAD / BIM manager to your search) and funnily enough he lists the Imagine freelance development on his page dated as 1997-Present ;-)
Who knows, maybe he can still find his code :laughing

Imagine 3D is a nice program. It's sad that it hasn't been upgraded in years.

Thanks for your thoughts.
I will see if he excepts my invitation over at LinkedIn.
Otherwise no chance to communicate as I’m no premium.

Yes it is! Let’s try to get it or at least get excess to the source
so we could work on it or maybe motivate Martin again.
IMO it was badly advertised from 5.xx on. I want to make a big review of it in the Amiga Future and need the most recent Version. It will be free advertising for Martin.

What about Aladdin4D btw? Any updates? Can I motivate you by doing an awesome review with cool renders?

;-)

I had pretty frequent e-mail contact with Martin back in the day, I even did a HTML based manual for about 110 procedural materials or so for free but he never used it :crazy
Anyhoo, here's a small gallery of some stuff I did with imagine between 1996 and 98. I'd say the older ones are done with Imagine 4 and probably just the last ones with 5.0

https://www.exretro.com/galleries/co...ers/index.html

Nice pics eXeler0. I second that Aladdin 4D info. With the rejuvenation of Amiga gathering pace, getting the tools back to active development is the next step.

@zerec@hotmail.d

That's a question for A-EON Technology Ltd. The Amiga version of Aladdin4D is owned by them since 2014. I too would love to see an update to A4D. You're always welcome to do an awesome review with cool renders, I would love to see that.

Really nice renders! :great

I played with Imagine last year to make a boing ball but found the UI impenetrable. It's a shame because I really enjoyed using it back in the day with the Amiga Format tutorials. Ended up using Lightwave instead.

Thanx, ye the GUI in Imagine needed some "getting used to" but I had bought it (original in box with manual) so the fat included manual helped a lot back then... long before the the days of youtube tutorials ;-)

I also had a go at Lightwave in the transition between Imagine on Amiga and 3dsmax on PC as Lightwave was by then available on both platforms. Lightwave was nice but at that point I decided to go all in on 3dsmax as it was already getting pretty big in the gaming industry. At this point in time the PC was getting its first OpenGL cards so that really transformed the way you could interact with your 3d scenes, so it was no going back from that point on.

slightly OT, but given the knowledge herein is there a suitable interchange format between 3ds (MAX) and Imagine? It would appear that Max cannot output Imagine file format, Can Imagine import anything?

This one should do the job ;-)

http://www.micromouse.ca/file_formats.html

Imagine actually has a dxf importer, a format which 3dsmax can easily export to, but there is one big drawback with the dxf format and that is that the orientation of the faces (triangles) can be randomly interpreted by some software. So if the software you import into doesn't have good options for flipping normals then you'll probably have a model that looks like its full of holes. For renderings, it might still work in some cases where materials can be rendered as double sided, but its not a "fun" model to work with.

Also, I'm pretty sure (but not certain) that Okino's Polytrans used to have support for Imagine's format a long time ago but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Maybe if you can scout a 15 year old version of Polytrans ;-)

Edit: Just saw that Zerec posted a link to AccuTrans 3d. Looks useful for sure.
However note that it reads/writes .iob which is the Imagine Object format. It wont convert an entire scene / project with cameras, lights etc..

I probably can find a 15 year old copy of Polytrans lol, We used to have Nugraf (which was the big brother of Polytrans, with most of the optional extensions) I'll give that a look, never even thought about it ...

I'll also check out Zerec's link. Thanks all.

The wavefront OBJ format is a good choice here. It is still relevant these days as an option when all other options fail.

You can have more success if you can get the scene or object into Lightwave or Cinema 4D. They had wider support late in the Amigas life and are still around today, so might give you more options.

Howdy,
pixelfill asked for a "pipeline" between 3dsmax and Imagine, and the answer to that question is DXF and that is the only format I know of that Imagine can import/export (and also 3dsmax reads/writes). So .obj (the wavefront variant) is of no use here unfortunately.
So the next thing would be to find a third party converter.. (like the few mentioned here in the thread)
And if someone had the sources and the knowhow, and the desire... I guess they could write a custom importer for Imagine that reads say .obj then life would indeed become easier.. But what is the market for that ;-)