Hash Inc Animation:Master 2006 ( Windows / Mac ) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)First, go to www.hash.com and view the online demo. This will tell you more about what the software is capable of than any review will. Additionally, you may find that you can get the software cheaper when bought directly from Hash.
The software is, simply, figgin' amazing -- it does everything they say it does and more! The graphics are INCREDIBLE.
HOWEVER.
The catch is that while the software can do it, UNLESS YOU HAVE SIGNIFICANT KNOWLEDGE IN ANIMATION you'll become frustrated. If you do have even the slightest bit of expereince, you'll LOVE this package.
THERE'S GOOD NEWS, though. The software comes with an amazing manual that provides beautiful walk-throughs of the software's main features, which teaches the basics of animation and gets something up pretty quick!
THERE'S SIGNIFICANT BAD NEWS, though. The manual is nothing more than a light collection of tutorials. Don't expect to find everything laid out and clearly explained. The online help is barely adaquate as a user's guide but is just fine for a reference guide. In short, if you know what want to do, know what you are supposed to do, know what it's called in terms that Hash uses, and you understand the implication of what will happen when you do it, then the online help will tell you the 'how to do it.'
THERE'S EVEN MORE BAD NEWS. I've been looking, and looking, and looking for printed books on this software. I can't find any that pertain to recent versions. At this moment, I see there's a Animation:Master 2000 book that's out of print, but the software is at 2005. Some graphic artist could clean house by documenting this tool.
TECH SUPPORT. Tech support is *GREAT* for installation and basic questions. Tech support is about the industry average for any real questions or advice -- meaning, they don't get back to you for a very, very long time, if at all.
RAZOR AND BLADES. As for the software, value over cost reaches near infinity -- the bang for the buck is impressive. However, without training materials, you're going to go back to their site and buy the many, many volumes of training materials on VHS and DVD. DON'T BE FOOLED BY THE SALES DEMO -- which until itself is awesome. The capabilities demo you see on the website is smooth, well rehearsed, and impressively edited for sound and presence. The web demos have poor audio and the VHS demos look like someone just had a camera at a expo booth. Quite often the demoer will work himself into the very problem you have, say "oops", stumble a bit, say "I know why", and press some shortcut key that solves the problem and move out without explaining what went wrong, how he knew, or how to fix it. The 'tutorials' are just topical demos. Beware.
ON THE UPSIDE, this product accelerated my 3D knowledge and helped me figure out how to use features in POSER that I didn't understand. Between Poser and Animation Master, I'd pick Animation Master for ease of use and power. However, I haven't seen a lot of downloadable models.
ONE MORE THING TO BE CAUTIOUS ABOUT. Be careful when they sell you an upgrade, which comes at a very fair and impressive price. There's a weird scheme where they treat the software more like a subscription. The CD you buy today will also let you download an upgrade patch in the future. But at that point the free ride ends. If you buy the upgrade, they send you a CD with the software YOU ALREADY HAVE, and that is used as the "key" to allow you to download the next upgrade when it comes out. For your troubles, you get 'extras' on the disc that don't come with the downloaded patch.
BOTTOM LINE: GREAT SOFTWARE. WEAK ON DOCUMENTATION. ABOVE AVERAGE TECHINCAL SUPPORT. PAINFUL TUTORIALS. LACK OF 3RD PARTY BOOKS.

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Animation:Master 2006 lets artists tell their story through pictures and motion, more easily than ever. It has the tools you need to bring the world in your head to life. Make a movie, design characters, create 3D presentations & storyboards and more -- you'll be creating your own virtual reality in no time!Build libraries of character models that can be used over & over -- cross-platform compatibility makes it ideal for studios with multiple systems Complete sculpting features and superb rendering tools, for creating beuatiful animation - without thousand-dollar graphics packages Supports Windows 2000, XP, Mac OS 9.2 or OS X 10.3.4 or greater

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Photo Explosion Deluxe 3.0 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I used to have Microsoft's Image Composer (now discontinued) that came with FrontPage '98. What a great, intuitive little program that was for cutting out parts of photos and combining them into collages or new photos! It came with no manual, yet I was able to teach myself to use it just by playing around and trying things out. It was that easy, and it was a lot of fun!
This program claims to have many of the same functions IC did: cutting out pieces of pics by tracing an outline, resizing or recoloring or otherwise manipulating these pieces, and then combining them into a new 'photo.' Unfortunately, this program is so counter-intuitive and inflexible that you can't just play with it to figure things out.
Which would be tolerable if the manual was helpful but, of course, it's useless. It spends 70 pages describing the 'workspace' and how to 'organize your photos' (as if any moron can't do that by creating directories on their PC). After all that, there are only 10 pages on how to use the selection/trace function, how to resize, etc. And it doesn't seem to explain anywhere what to do to 'select' something once you've cut it out of a photo.
The worst part of the program is that you have to create a separate file for the place you want to combine all your images. This is stupid. Why can't you just work on one base photo, add to and alter it, and then do a 'save as...'? That would be simple. This program makes you create a 'project,' which requires sifting through dozens of their templates to find one that you can twist into something like what you want. Why not just let me work without a template? Not fun and certainly not functional.
The templates are very restrictive. For example, you can't size the space of the project once you create it. So if what you create needs to be a little larger or smaller than the template size, you have to shrink everything to fit into the template.
Further, the program's logic doesn't make much sense. If I cut out a piece of a photo and then go to resize it, the program resizes the original picture only (even though the cut-out is highlighted as selected). There's no obvious way to tell the program what I want to manipulate: the original or a cut-out. This is just one example, but there are many others I could offer.
I think the program MIGHT be good if all you want is real basic photo editing (i.e. cut a square shaped piece out of a photo and plop it into some inane greeting card template provided), but otherwise this is very limited and difficult to work with.
I can't see shelling out the bucks for Adobe. And I don't understand why someone doesn't offer an inexpensive version of Adobe (like Image Composer was)? I think I'm going to hunt for an old copy of FrontPage '98 at used software stores and reload IC.

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Photo Explosion® Deluxe made history as the first software of its kind to deliver powerful editing features spectacular special effects and professional-quality photo projects all together in one program.Now Photo Explosion Deluxe 3.0 makes digital photography even easier. And it s packed with exciting new features all designed to let you get the most out of your digital camera.System Requirements:Windows 98 2000 Me XP or Vista; 32 MB RAM; Pentium 166Mhz or faster; CD-ROM DriveFormat: WIN 98ME2000XPVISTA Genre:PRODUCTIVITY UPC:727298403831 Manufacturer No:PRW

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